Xie Buruo with Explosive Scales and Gushing Blood

Xie Buruo was currently in a state of panic!

He had survived the cataclysmic collapse of the Divine Realm solely due to the favor of his once-peerless master, the Supreme Sovereign of the Divine Realm, and his own razor-sharp instinct for danger.

Back when his master was still around, he hadn’t realized just how sensitive he was—after all, his master was invincible, and danger was practically nonexistent.

But when his master detected the faint signs of the Heavenly Dao’s impending collapse and decisively handed him a supreme treasure, his survival instincts had triggered their first frenzied warning—scales bursting from his tail, blood seeping from his forehead!

Seeing this, his master grew even more certain of his judgment. With a grave expression, he instructed Xie Buruo to heed his instincts, preserve himself at all costs, and safeguard the last ember of hope for the Divine Realm, biding his time for the right moment.

At the time, Xie Buruo didn’t fully understand, but he revered his master’s words as absolute law. Trembling with unease, he immediately went into hiding, retreating deep into the Abyssal Void and never emerging again.

Later, just as his master had predicted, the worst came to pass—the Heavenly Dao crumbled, the world collapsed, and all living beings withered away.

And yet, thanks to the lifebound treasure bestowed by his master, which shielded him from karmic retribution, Xie Buruo managed to escape the calamity unscathed.

But all he could do was drift helplessly in the shadows, watching as his master sacrificed himself to save the world, as his senior brothers and sisters perished in the catastrophe, as his closest friends and loved ones were twisted into monsters by the encroaching corruption...

He endured humiliation and suffering—not because he was cowardly, but because his master had entrusted him with the last hope, the final spark that must not be extinguished.

Even if his teeth shattered from gritting, even if his eyes bled from staring, he could not step beyond the safe haven his master had carved out for him.

When the catastrophe finally subsided and the Divine Realm lay in ruins, he wanted to leave—to retrieve his master’s body, to bury his fallen brothers and sisters. But the moment he was about to step beyond the safe zone, his instincts screamed at him once more!

This was the second time his tail scales burst and his forehead bled. The overwhelming sense of danger was like an invisible hand strangling his throat, a python coiling around him, suffocating him in dread.

Heeding his instincts, he stayed put.

And then he saw it—a Great Luo Immortal from the Celestial Realm, wielding a chain of divine laws, dragging several corrupted Divine Realm Great Luo behind him as he prowled, as if searching for something.

At one point, the immortal came within half a step of the safe zone.

Xie Buruo guessed that this Great Luo was likely hunting for him.

Thankfully, he hadn’t stepped out. The consequences would have been unthinkable.

At the time, he had only just broken through to the Golden Immortal realm. Even with his master’s treasure, he stood no chance against a Great Luo.

Then came the third instinctual warning—250 million years later.

During those 250 million years, his instincts had occasionally flared, but never to the point of bursting scales or bleeding.

By then, he had just attained the Great Luo realm. With his newfound power and the completion of his Life-Infusion, he finally felt confident enough to leave the safe zone.

Yet before he could take a single step outside, his instincts erupted without warning—scales bursting, forehead bleeding.

Though not as intense as the first two times, it was enough to dissuade him from venturing out to seek opportunities.

But even though he stayed put, lying low and not daring to move a muscle, his instincts continued to thrum, growing stronger and stronger!

That was when he knew—this time, there was no escape.

In a desperate surge of defiance, he followed his instincts and finally uncovered the source of the impending disaster.

Within the River of Time, an unknown intruder was watching him.

The intruder seemed like a mere rookie, a first-time traveler in the River of Time, only at the Taiyi level of strength. Meanwhile, Xie Buruo was a Great Luo—the advantage was his!

So why were his instincts warning him about this man?

Ah—because he had come from downstream in the River of Time, emerging from the boundless sea of infinite possibilities in the future.

For beings in different historical periods, the length and endpoint of the River of Time differed.

Xie Buruo was observing the past, but he himself was also part of that past.

If his guess was correct, this man would one day become an immense threat to him in the future—hence the instinctual alarm.

His intuition had never been wrong before.

So he acted.

He leapt out from the River of Time and struck at the man’s knees, trying to provoke him into retaliating. If he could lure the man into attacking him within the River of Time, the backlash from the taboo rules of causality would erase him from history.

But to his utter shock, the man refused to take the bait. He remained unshaken, no matter how Xie Buruo taunted or goaded him, steadily advancing step by step into the past.

He even traversed the temporal barrier of the Celestial Realm’s Great Upheaval with ease—something Xie Buruo, a Great Luo, couldn’t even do. Yet this Taiyi-level anomaly managed it effortlessly.

From that moment on, Xie Buruo knew—he was doomed.

That freak would be waiting for him in the future.

And now, the fourth instinctual warning had arrived, as intense as the first two.

"Master... what should I do?"

"I feel like even the Great Luo realm is powerless against this calamity..."

"The Primordial Axis Mirror might not be enough to protect me this time. Have I... failed to safeguard the spark? Have I failed your expectations after all?"

Xie Buruo slowly drew out an ancient octagonal mirror, over three zhang in diameter, its edges depicting the grand scenes of the universe’s inception.

The mirror’s surface was neither metal nor jade, but something between mist and light, swirling with the trajectories of countless realms and the true patterns of the Great Dao. At times, it darkened into an abyssal void; at others, it blazed with nine-colored divine radiance.

When Xie Buruo tapped the mirror’s surface to activate it, the artifact expanded into nine concentric rings, each inscribed with primordial chaos runes, interlocking and unfolding to release a mist of causality dense enough to shroud all realms!

Yet even within this protective mist, Xie Buruo’s scales continued to burst, and blood now streamed from his forehead.

"No good... still no good! Using the Primordial Axis Mirror only makes it worse—I can almost feel a pair of hands reaching across time and space, coming for me!"

"Master... Master..."

"What should I do?"

In despair, Xie Buruo closed the mirror. He tilted his head back at a forty-five-degree angle, but unbidden tears still trickled down his cheeks.

At this moment, he missed his master more than ever—those carefree days when his scales never burst, his forehead never bled, when he could spar with his brothers and debate the Dao with his sisters, living without a worry in the world.

"Master... Senior Brothers... Senior Sisters... I miss you all so much. Why did you leave me alone? I’m so tired... I can’t hold on anymore..."