Beyond the Timescape-Chapter 1173: Begone, Sir Star Ring!

Sir Star Ring’s heart swelled with astonishment. He felt like an infinitude of lightning bolts were smashing into him, causing him to struggle to breathe.... He could clearly sense an unstoppable force slowly peeling his consciousness away from his host’s body. It was completely irreversible!

The so-called predestined affinity was the main reason why he had chosen Fourth True Monarch as his host. Right now, that foundation was collapsing! The unstoppable force was causing his consciousness to desiccate and rot. It even affected the surrounding world, like rotting leaves rapidly withering away.

At the same time, orders and natural laws alike fell into nothing. That included the golden chain that was the manifestation of Sir Star Ring’s canon. As Sir Star Ring’s consciousness withered, the chain... broke! Rings cracked apart, causing indescribable pain to Sir Star Ring’s consciousness. For the first time in his entire life, he felt terrified. As for the judgment he had called forth.... The moment the marriage contract appeared, the judgment could not be enforced!

The thirteen coffins trembled, and the voices inside of them slowly went silent.... In fact, it was as if everything was being reversed. The words that had been spoken formed canon and materialized, but now they were sent spinning away until they didn’t exist. The might of an Immortal Lord surpassed all else in existence.

It wasn’t just Sir Star Ring who was flabbergasted. So were the two immortal swords. Hordeslayer and Rampart hovered in midair, trembling. The scene playing out in front of them surpassed anything they could have imagined possible. In fact, event after event on this day had surpassed anything they could conceive. Some mysterious person had acquired an identity that should have been impossible to acquire. In an inconceivable twist, they had been forced to be bonded to him.

And now... that marriage contract appeared! Contrary to expectation, the words written on the contract had been put to use.

As a result, Hordeslayer and Rampart were deeply, deeply shaken.

In this space-time, the marriage contract was above everything else in terms of position and significance. It was paramount! Contained within it were blessings from Immortal Lord Aurora to his son. Those blessings contained a will. The will permeated each word in the contract, making each word canon in this space-time. They were law! When canon flowed, order had to bow its head, and rules had to conform. Acting in contradiction would amount to acting in contradiction to the will of Immortal Lord Aurora.

In all of the immortal palace, there were only two people who could use such an item, and they were Aurora and his son. Therefore, the moment the marriage contract appeared, the conclusion of this event was set in stone and could not be changed.

The reason Xu Qing could cover some of the words on the contract in order to make it conform to his needs of the moment... was that written up on it was the name of the young lord who he had possessed! It went without saying that he qualified!

There was just one element he needed, and that element... was space-time waves. And the space-time waves needed to reach a certain level before they would be effective.

That was why Xu Qing had forced everyone to change history in order to reach their goals. All of that led to the dramatic changes to space-time that he needed. He needed the space-time waves to reach the level of a tsunami! By doing so, he would have the strength he needed to cover over some of the words on the marriage contract.

It might seem like a simple thing, but the reality was that, to make it happen required a host of complicated steps that all had to be accomplished properly. The level of difficulty was astonishing.

Thunder boomed in the sky. Sky-obfuscating, land-enshrouding mightiness weighed down on the location of the sword furnace. Looking up, it was possible to see a net of electric sparks connecting to the tsunami of space-time. A figure stood on the tsunami, hair flowing, energy surging, and a fierce gleam in his eyes, as if his gaze could pierce the depths of the world.

He was looking at Sir Star Ring in the form of Fourth True Monarch. The sixteen words on the marriage contract shone with dazzling, endless light.

The glow of it illuminated the twisted, distorted face of Fourth True Monarch. His entire body was emanating black smoke. The smoke swirled together into the form of Sir Star Ring, which immediately began to dissipate.

All defiance within him was meaningless. None of his struggling did a single thing.

The sixteen words on the marriage contract were unstoppable. Maybe he was the number one Shining Star on the outside, but that didn’t mean he could stop what was happening. All he could do... was wait to be expelled!

His predestined affinity with Fourth True Monarch had been severed. He had been filled with a power of withering that was immensely harmful. Previously, he had expelled other people. But now, he was being expelled.

The foundation of his canon had been broken. Not only had he failed to benefit from coming to the fourth world, but also, he had been seriously hurt.

As he was disappearing, he glared at Xu Qing with killing intent in his gaze.

“I admit that you beat me this time. But... our fight isn’t over. I’m going on to the fifth world, a place you can never go to, and there, I’ll become a Quasi-Immortal! And to repay you for blocking me from completing my canon... I’ll just wait until the immortal palace event is over. Then, when you don’t have the identity from this space-time, and are back outside, I’ll kill you in an instant!”

Then Sir Star Ring’s consciousness crumbled into ashes. He had been expelled from this space-time. In the game between order and chaos, order had been thoroughly defeated. There was no possibility for order to make a comeback.

Sir Star Ring’s final words had been full of deadly threats. But the stage had already been set, so Xu Qing wasn’t going to let deadly threats affect him.

By the time the immortal place event is over, I won’t have the same cultivation base I do now!

Xu Qing looked over at Fourth True Monarch’s body. Without Sir Star Ring’s consciousness in it, Fourth True Monarch was like a bubble that just popped and disappeared. A thoughtful expression appeared on Xu Qing’s face.

Now that order had been defeated, space-time was thrumming. It was like a wild horse that had been freed of any reins, or raging waters free of a dam. In an instant, the space-time waves surpassed anything from before. Massive amounts of space-time sand appeared out of nowhere, flying from all the living beings in the immortal palace and congregating around Xu Qing like rain.

This was a hundred times more than anything he had seen before! The scintillating grains of sand fell constantly, forming together until they made the shape of an hourglass! And it came to float right in front of Xu Qing![1]

The moment the hourglass formed, heaven and earth shook. The immortal palace trembled. The world rippled. Dazzling light shone out that could suppress all things. This was a precious treasure of space-time!

Xu Qing’s heart raced. By means of his own canon, he could sense that this hourglass would only work for fifteen minutes.[2]

Put precisely, it could transcend this space-time for fifteen minutes! He could use the hourglass whenever he wanted. It could be used in the past, or in any time. And whatever happened then would be permanent. Whatever happened... existed outside of time and beyond the timescape![3]

At the same time, the moment Xu Qing gained enlightenment of the hourglass, his personal canon advanced. Innumerable bits of enlightenment regarding time filled his consciousness, bolstered his canon, and nourished his laws. As a result, in a very short time, his canon advanced in a way that would normally take countless years. He instantly reached the peak of the eighth extreme!

As his canon advanced, Xu Qing’s aura, battle prowess, and cultivation base all rose dramatically. He was now on the very cusp of being a nine-world Smoldering God!

My reserve powers are more than sufficient. When I make that final advancement and reach the nine-world level, I will become an Imperial Sovereign! Not only will I be stronger than ordinary Imperial Sovereigns, but thanks to all of my accumulated knowledge and advanced preparation, the Imperial Sovereign level... will be nothing but a stepping stone! I’m just around the corner from being a Quasi-Immortal!

Xu Qing took a deep breath and looked off at the horizon. Because the workings of heaven were in chaos, the horizon was blurry. Yet it was just barely possible to see... the rising sun. It was daytime. Sunlight pierced the clouds, landing on the sword furnace as well as Xu Qing. He looked away from the horizon and at the sword furnace.

“Come out,” he said coolly.

Distortions appeared as a figure took shape. It was a young man clad in white. He didn’t seem very special, but his face was kindly, and he smiled in a very unthreatening manner as he bowed to Xu Qing.

“Well met, Young Lord. It is I, Zhou Zhengli. Whether in terms of strategy or actions, Young Lord, you were spectacular in this fight. It was like immortal might shocking the world. You are truly a dragon amongst men, sir!”

This young man was of course, Zhou Zhengli, who had been working with Sir Star Ring this entire time! His expression was calm and sincere, his smile rueful but admiring.

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered coldly.

The moment Sir Star Ring’s consciousness had been expelled, Zhou Zhengli had arrived. Though he had remained hidden, his aura made it obvious that he was waiting for someone to notice him. Each and every one of the Shining Stars was an extraordinary individual. But during the entire fight between Xu Qing and Sir Star Ring, he had remained completely out of sight.

It would be easy to discount someone like that. Yet despite the fact that Sir Star Ring was gone... he was still here. That was suspicious.

Furthermore, as Xu Qing had dealt with Sir Vilespirit, and came to know how conniving he was, he had come to some conclusions about the person Sir Vilespirit considered his nemesis, Zhou Zhengli. Zhou Zhengli was a sneaky person, who liked to hide his true strength, his true thoughts, and of course... his true goals!

“You aren’t actually trying to maintain order, are you?” Xu Qing said. “I suppose I owe you some thanks for how things ended with Sir Star Ring.”

If Sir Star Ring had been around to hear such words, he would have been shaken to the core.

Xu Qing sounded very certain of his conclusion. If Zhou Zhengli had also been devoted to order, then Sir Star Ring’s departure wouldn’t have resulted in such monumental space-time waves. But Sir Star Ring’s departure had felt like a complete and utter defeat. There was only one explanation.

“Brilliant, Young Lord,” Zhou Zhengli said in a soft, obsequious voice. “I have no intention of being an enemy of you, sir, neither here nor in the outside world. The fact you acquired a seemingly impossible identity indicates that you... are no ordinary individual. You’re obviously someone I want to get along with, sir.

“Sir Star Ring is obstinate and self-opinionated. To be honest, I couldn’t do much other than nudge him a bit in one direction or another. That was my goal. The moment I realized that Young Lord Aurora was not who he should be, my goal... was to make friends with you.

“The truth is that it doesn’t matter to me which side I’m on in the fourth world. I could try to maintain order, I could stay neutral, or I could try to make waves. That is my canon. My dao.” With that, Zhou Zhengli bowed his head in a very obsequious way.

Eyes glittering, Xu Qing said, “You certainly went into a lot of detail just now.”

Zhou Zhengli didn’t seem ruffled. Maintaining his bow, he said, “I want to make friends with you, and I want to stay in the fourth world. If you don’t understand me thoroughly, then I doubt you’d agree to be friends, and you certainly wouldn’t let me stick around.”

1. For the sand to make an hourglass shape makes more sense in Chinese, as the word for hourglass in Chinese is literally “sand filter.” ☜

2. In reality, the hourglass will work for ‘the time it takes an incense stick to burn.’ For a number of reasons, I’m going to render it as, simply, fifteen minutes. One reason is that the word ‘time’ is important, and the characters for “incense stick of time” do not actually contain the character for time. I generally render it as ‘time it takes an incense stick to burn’ for clarity’s sake. But I want to avoid unnecessary wordplay elements in this part of the story. Generally speaking, Er Gen uses ‘incense stick of time’ to mean something roughly between fifteen to thirty minutes (I asked him about this in person once). I’m going to go with fifteen minutes for ease of reading. What’s important here is not the specific number of minutes involved. It could be 15, 20, or 30. All would work. The important thing is that it’s a relatively short time. ☜

3. This is yet another instance in which “time” and “timescape” are clearly different terms that are either synonymous or near-synonymous. And yes, this is a title drop as the author uses the exact characters from the title of the series. ☜

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