My Xianxia Harem Life-Chapter 399 Panda

"What's wrong?" Riley asked. His voice was calm, but every breath he released was steeped in an overwhelming qi of death and carnage, thick enough to make lesser cultivators collapse.

The air around him trembled, as though reality itself feared his exhalation.

The old man still offered no reply.

His expression remained unreadable—ancient, distant, burdened by something far heavier than words.

Then, without warning, his figure blurred and vanished, dissolving into the void like a candle flame snuffed out.

Riley narrowed his eyes and followed, stepping through space itself.

In the next instant, they reappeared inside Riley's chambers in the Rice Clan.

But something was wrong—terribly wrong.

Everything was frozen.

A servant carrying scrolls was motionless mid-step, the scrolls hovering in the air yet refusing to fall.

A candle flame stood still, its flickering tip frozen like a painted stroke.

Even the flow of spiritual energy throughout the entire compound had halted, suspended as though time had been shackled by an unseen hand.

Only Riley and the old man could move within the stillness.

Riley slowly swept his gaze around the room, then turned back to the old man.

"Tell me what you want? Why did you disturb me?"

The old man didn't answer.

Instead, he moved toward the center of the chamber, where an old tea set appeared on a low wooden table—an object that hadn't been there moments ago. He gestured lightly.

"Sit," the old man said, but his tone carried none of the warmth of a host.

It was a command wrapped in fatigue.

Riley remained standing.

The oppressive aura rolling off him was enough to make the entire chamber creak under the pressure.

A minute passed in absolute silence before Riley finally allowed himself to lower into a lotus position, his gaze never leaving the old man's face.

The old man began brewing tea with movements so slow and precise they felt like part of an ancient ritual.

The sound of boiling water was the only living noise in the frozen world around them.

He poured Riley's cup first, then his own, setting them gently on the table between them.

They drank without speaking.

One sip.

Another.

Minutes stretched, blending into half an hour, then a full hour.

Outside this locked pocket of time, the world remained paused.

Inside, only the sound of their breaths and the faint clink of porcelain existed.

Riley remained patient, though the aura around him pulsed—dark, violent, barely contained.

Finally, when the last drop of tea had been drained and the silence had grown too heavy to bear, the old man exhaled a long, weary breath.

He set his cup down.

"My name," he said softly, "is Apollo."

The name carried weight—ancient, primordial, as if it echoed from eras long buried.

Riley's eyes sharpened, the deathly qi around him trembling in response.

"Apollo," Riley murmured, tasting the name as though testing its weight. He nodded once.

"A good name. Fitting. And it's good that I finally learn the name of the one who owns this multiverse."

His expression remained still—too still.

The calm of a man who had stood on battlefields for countless eras, who had waded through blood deep enough to drown mountains.

The air around him rippled with killing intent so oppressive that reality itself seemed to stiffen beneath it.

Any lesser cultivator would have lost their sanity, collapsing into hysterical terror in seconds.

But Apollo didn't blink.

He didn't flinch.

He didn't even shift his posture.

Before him, Riley's unbelievably vast strength was nothing more than a drop of dew lost in an infinite sea.

Apollo was that sea—boundless, old, and so deep that even light would drown in it.

"Tell me," Apollo said quietly, "why do you fight?"

There was no scolding, no accusation. Only curiosity—genuine, ancient curiosity.

Riley didn't hesitate.

"Why not?" he answered simply.

Apollo's brows rose slightly, but he said nothing. He waited.

Riley leaned back just a little, his fingers tapping once on the table between them.

The frozen world outside remained motionless, suspended as though holding its breath.

"We both know the truth," Riley said. "This multiverse… this world we stand in… it doesn't have long. A few trillion years at most. A blink of an eye in the grand scheme. And when that time is up, it'll be swallowed whole by the enemy. Completely. Irrevocably."

His gaze drifted toward the frozen servants outside the chamber, then back to Apollo.

"When that happens, my clan—my people—will be homeless. Like dogs driven out into the void with nowhere to rest, nowhere to rebuild. You know what the void is like. Endless, uncaring. Death without form."

His tone hardened.

"How long do you think we'll survive out there? Without a realm, without laws, without even the bare minimum of shelter? We'd be prey. We'd be gone."

A pulse of killing intent surged from him, cracking the floor beneath his seat despite the time-stasis in the room.

"So I sharpen myself. I push. I claw forward. I fight. Not for glory… not for some childish ambition."

Riley's voice grew quieter—but infinitely more dangerous.

"For survival."

He allowed a long silence to stretch between them, the kind that made even the frozen world around them feel suffocated.

Then he continued:

"I suspect something else too." A faint smile tugged at his lips, a dangerous curve that promised violence.

"That the structure of realms is uniform across every multiverse. The same ceilings, the same hierarchies, the same chains. The same power level."

He lifted his eyes, meeting Apollo's with unshaken determination.

"And only beings like you—the creators, the architects—stand above that order. Far above. Untouchable by the rules you yourselves established."

Riley leaned forward slightly, the atmosphere around him thickening with resolve.

"So I'm preparing. Preparing to protect my clan. Preparing to carve out a new home when this world breaks. Preparing… even if it means standing face-to-face with the ones who built the realms themselves."

He exhaled slowly, a warlord's smile spreading across his face—fearless, defiant, and utterly unbowed.

"That's why I fight."

"Wise," Apollo said, returning Riley's smile with a faint curl of the lips—an expression so gentle, so worn, it seemed to carry the weight of billions of years.

Silence pooled again between them. Not an awkward silence, but one thick with something unspoken—anticipation, inevitability, fate.

Then Apollo inhaled deeply and spoke.

"What if I told you," he began slowly, "that I want to live a normal life? That I'm tired of sitting at the peak of creation, tired of immortality, tired of holding together a realm I forged long before your ancestors learned to crawl?"

Riley's gaze sharpened, but he said nothing.

Apollo continued, his voice almost wistful.

"What if I told you that I want to step down? To finally rest. To sleep. To be… insignificant, for once. And that I intend to hand over my dominion—everything I possess—to you."

He leaned forward, and the room seemed to tilt with the weight of his words.

"What do you say, Riley Rice?"

Riley's jaw tightened. His aura, once calm, wavered like a disturbed storm.

"I'd tell you you're crazy," Riley said, shaking his head. "Absolutely insane. No one gives up power. Not without a reason so good it bends reality."

Apollo let out a soft laugh—one filled with exhaustion so ancient it felt infinite.

"Well," he said, "I suppose words won't convince you. So I'll stop speaking."

He raised his hand.

Riley instinctively tried to move—tried to rise, to defend, to resist—but the moment Apollo willed it, Riley's body froze.

Not bound, not suppressed—overridden, as if Apollo had reached into the code of existence and typed a new command.

Then Riley felt something impossible:

He was being lifted. Not with force, not with energy—but with authority so absolute that even resistance was meaningless.

His body drifted into Apollo's waiting palm.

"Wait—" Riley tried to speak, but the sound never left his throat.

Apollo's fingers touched his forehead.

And the multiverse shattered open inside him.

A roar of power flooded his soul—too vast, too pure, too ancient for any mortal or immortal to withstand.

Yet he did. Somehow, he did. His being expanded, erupting outward across creation.

He felt every world, every law, every star, every life.

He could sense the flow of time like a river he could freeze with a thought.

He could feel realms spinning like marble spheres in a cosmic machine.

He could reach out and change them—reshape them—rewrite them—bring them to life or erase them without consequence.

It wasn't just power.

It was authority.

The fundamental right to command existence.

Riley gasped as the last titanic wave settled, grounding itself inside his core.

When he opened his eyes, they were not the same eyes he had before.

"It's done," Apollo whispered. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Riley looked up…

…and saw the old man smiling. Not with triumph. Not with pride.

With relief.

And sorrow.

A soft, shimmering light began peeling off Apollo's body like falling petals of dust.

His form disintegrated, fading into glowing motes that drifted upward, each one carrying a fragment of ancient weariness.

"Live well, Riley Rice," Apollo murmured, his voice already fading into the wind.

"This multiverse… is yours now."

Then he vanished completely—erased so thoroughly that even time did not remember him.

Riley remained alone in the frozen world, the weight of infinite dominion settling over his shoulders like a mantle woven from the fabric of creation itself.

His heartbeat echoed like thunder across countless realms.

He was no longer a warrior struggling for survival.

He was the master of a multiverse.