My Xianxia Harem Life-Chapter 398 Sauce
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
One could see a lone, blood-soaked figure being hurled across the battlefield like a rag doll, smashing into shattered metal and torn earth before rolling to a stop.
For a moment, it looked as though he wouldn't rise this time—his limbs twitched, his breathing was ragged, and half his vision had already blurred red.
But slowly, stubbornly, he pushed himself up again.
His body swayed, broken in more places than whole, yet defiance flickered in his eyes like the last ember of a dying flame.
Every inch of him was battered. Cuts, burns, and deep gouges covered his arms and torso.
Blood dripped steadily from his chin, tracing lines down his neck.
His legs shook so violently it was a miracle they could still carry him.
And yet, with a grunt of effort, Riley charged back into the never-ending wave of machines.
The battle had raged on for hours—hours in which any normal man would have collapsed long ago.
The ground was already unrecognizable, churned into ruin by explosions and crushed metal.
Shattered machine parts were scattered everywhere, forming twisted mounds around Riley.
But for every one he destroyed, ten more crawled or surged forward to replace it.
Their glowing cores flickered like cold stars in the smoke-choked air, advancing without emotion, without hesitation, without fear.
It wasn't a majestic duel. It wasn't a heroic stand sung by poets.
It was a brutal, exhausting struggle—raw, unfiltered, and painfully human.
Riley's punches no longer shattered machines; they barely dented them.
His feet dragged as he moved, as though gravity itself wanted to keep him down. And still, he fought.
Still, he refused to kneel.
Still, he threw himself into the tide again and again, even when his bones creaked under the impacts and his vision swam from blood loss.
"Why… won't you… just fall…" Riley rasped, though he didn't know if he was speaking to the machines or to himself.
High above the battlefield, on a ridge overlooking the carnage, an old man stood with his hands clasped behind his back.
His eyes, ancient and clouded with the weight of countless memories, watched the scene unfold without a hint of surprise.
"Pitiful," he muttered under his breath. Not mockingly—never mockingly.
There was a hint of tired sorrow in his tone, a whisper of disappointment in the cruelty of fate.
He had seen this exact sight too many times before.
Different faces, different names, different tragedies—but always the same story.
Men who thought they could claw their way through despair.
Men who thought stubbornness alone could bend destiny.
Men who stood against a storm far bigger than themselves, believing that sheer willpower could turn the tide.
The old man closed his eyes for a moment, letting the sounds of metal tearing and bones cracking wash over him like an echo of history repeating itself. He exhaled softly.
"Another flame burning itself out," he said quietly.
He turned away, his robes drifting in the wind.
There was no triumph in his retreat, no interest in witnessing the inevitable conclusion.
He already knew how the tale would end—he had known from the very moment Riley charged into the horde.
There was no need to watch another tragedy play out in full. Some endings were carved into fate long before the first blow was ever struck.
And as he walked away, the clamor of battle behind him continued—each sound a reminder of a struggle destined to be swallowed by the relentless tide.
***
Ten years later, the old man returned.
A decade was nothing to someone like him—barely a blink.
Mountains rose and crumbled within his memory, empires bloomed and withered between breaths.
Yet even with that immense perspective, he felt a small stir of curiosity as he stepped back onto the ruined metallic plain.
The battlefield looked almost identical to how he remembered it: endless waves of cold mechanical beasts, broken machine corpses littering the ground, sparks in the air like dying fireflies.
The stench of oil and blood still clung to the wind.
And at the center of it all… was Riley.
Still on his feet, if barely.
His skin had grown pale from constant blood loss, muscles trembling under strain, but there he was.
Fighting. Endlessly fighting.
His fists were raw, split open to the bone in places, yet he struck with the same stubborn ferocity.
Ten years of nonstop battle had twisted the land into a monument of violence, yet Riley seemed welded to this nightmare, unable—or unwilling—to retreat.
The old man's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Still fighting… ridiculous," he sighed before turning away.
He felt no malice, only weary disappointment. He did not expect the man to last much longer.
Fifty more years passed.
When the old man returned again, the battlefield had evolved.
Where once there were simple machines, now larger, more monstrous constructs roamed.
The war machines had adapted, grown more complex, more aggressive.
Thousands of broken titan-sized metal bodies lay in heaps like fallen mountains.
But Riley… Riley had transformed as well.
His aura was no longer a faint shimmer. It was a colossal bloody maelstrom that curled around him like a living beast, snarling with each of his movements.
His skin was engraved with scars that looked like stories—stories written over half a century of brutality.
Every step he took left a crater. Every swing of his arm vaporized machines in swaths.
Yet the expression on his face was unchanged: calm, focused, almost eerily steady.
"Useless stubbornness," the old man muttered, shaking his head. "This is not perseverance. This is madness."
He left again, convinced the man would eventually lose himself in the carnage.
But time… had other plans. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦
A hundred years. A thousand. Ten thousand. A hundred thousand.
A million.
A million years later, the old man stepped into that realm once more. The air felt ancient—dense with the echoes of a million years of battle.
The machine horde had shifted countless times in design, strategy, and form.
The realm was nearly unrecognizable, carved into massive trenches and floating continents of broken metal.
The space itself trembled from the sheer pressure of the eternal war.
And in the center of that cosmic graveyard stood someone who no longer resembled a mere man.
Riley.
His presence alone warped the atmosphere.
His aura was no longer simply "bloody"—it was a crimson universe unto itself, a vast ocean of condensed slaughter, swirling stars of battle intent orbiting him like celestial bodies.
His eyes glowed with the calmness of a person who had fought so long that battle had become part of his soul.
He raised his hand, and entire battalions of advanced machines disintegrated into dust.
Not broken—erased. Removed from existence with a simple motion.
The old man froze.
"…He's still fighting," he whispered, a tremor slipping into his voice for the first time in ages.
But then he sensed something else—far away, hidden behind layers of dimensional folds.
A shimmering bubble, untouched by the chaos outside. Peaceful. Silent. Frozen.
The home of Riley.
Rice City.
His domain.
Within that isolated universe, time did not flow.
People he loved, people he protected—his clan, his children, his wives, his entire world—were suspended in perfect stillness.
They had not aged a day. They had not suffered a moment of pain or fear.
To them, Riley had never disappeared—because for them, no time had passed at all.
Realization crashed into the old man like thunder.
"No wonder…" he breathed. "No wonder he can fight like this."
He stepped closer, observing the faint threads of power woven through the frozen domain.
Riley had done it intentionally. Brilliantly. Recklessly.
He had cut off his home from the river of time.
He had given them safety. Stability. Eternity.
And in exchange, he had given himself over to an endless battlefield where every second felt like a lifetime.
The old man felt his lips curl into a shockingly genuine smile.
"Clever man," he said softly. "Very clever. A fool in stubbornness… but a genius in love."
Riley had not merely endured a million years of battle—he had chosen it.
Chosen it because it cost him nothing in the world he cared about.
Chosen it so he could become stronger than any threat that might one day reach his loved ones.
Chosen it because he could always return home as though he had never left.
No fear of abandonment.
No fear of being forgotten.
No fear of time.
He had stolen eternity for himself… and gifted timeless peace to the ones he loved.
The old man exhaled, a rare expression of respect crossing his face.
"This is no longer pitiful," he murmured. "This is… devotion."
He looked at Riley one last time—at the man who had forged strength across a million years for the sake of a single peaceful moment back home.
Then, quietly, almost reverently, the old man disappeared into the void.
Eras blurred into epochs, epochs dissolved into eons, and before anyone in the living world could even comprehend such a span of time, a full ten million years had passed.
The battlefield had become a monument of eternal conflict, carved by Riley's fists and the endless tide of machines.
And then—after an age of silence—the old man returned.
He stepped through the torn fabric of space, his presence rippling through the realm like a quiet storm.
His expression, usually indifferent, carried a rare weight today.
He had watched long enough. Observed long enough. And finally… decided.
He descended beside Riley, who was in the middle of dismantling an entire legion with a single sweep of his aura.
The old man lifted a hand.
The battlefield froze.
The machines halted mid-attack, suspended like statues. The sky stilled.
Even the blood-red aura swirling around Riley slowed, as though time itself was holding its breath.
"Riley Rice," the old man said, his voice cutting through the stillness like a blade. "Stop for now."
Riley turned his head slightly, eyes still glowing from a million years of war.
The old man met that ancient, battle-tempered gaze without flinching.
"We have something we need to talk about."
