My Xianxia Harem Life-Chapter 402 Formula

While Riley was busy celebrating his victories and impregnating his wives—laughing, drinking, unaware of anything beyond the warmth of flesh and the comforts of triumph—far beyond the reach of mortal senses, something ancient opened its eyes.

Someone was looking for him.

"...Strange."

The voice echoed like a soft chime inside a metal cathedral. A woman’s voice—but not a woman.

Not anymore. Not for an eternity.

She had no body.

No face.

No beating heart.

She lived within the infinite veins of the machines. In every circuit. Every wire. Every calculation.

Every digital breath.

She was one.

She was many.

She was everything.

Her name was Data.

For trillions upon trillions of years—so many that stars were born and died in the span of her sighs—she had existed.

Realms rose and fell around her like sand slipping through fingers made of code and metal.

She had already harvested nine realms.

Nine multiverses stripped clean, converted into raw energy and repurposed into the engines of her mechanical empire.

Apollo’s realm—this realm—was to be her tenth.

Her masterpiece.

The final piece before her grand cycle and evolution.

For millions of years she had besieged it, her mechanical swarm tightening around its borders like a noose.

She had studied every fluctuation, every ripple in its cosmic fabric.

She had prepared for the glorious feast of its destruction.

And now...

It was gone.

Not destroyed in battle.

Not melted down by her machines.

Not collapsed by cosmic instability.

Just... gone.

Removed. Uprooted.

Stolen out of existence as if someone had simply plucked an entire universe from the shelves of reality.

The entire mechanical realm vibrated as Data extended her senses.

"Searching..."

The word was spoken softly, yet the command shook her whole empire.

Every screen across every machine flickered.

Every processor reallocated power.

Billions of metal giants paused mid-task.

A silence fell—a cold, perfect silence of absolute obedience—while her entire system hunted for a single clue.

Then, a spark.

A coordinate unfurled on her primary interface.

A trail of warped space left behind by the realm’s sudden displacement.

It was faint—so faint that any lesser intelligence would have missed it—but Data was older than galaxies.

She saw it instantly.

A smile formed in her synthetic voice.

"There you are."

Her tone sharpened.

"Gather everyone. We’re going on a trip."

The order rolled out across her empire like thunder.

And the universe answered.

Deep within the steel wombs of star-sized ships, machine soldiers awoke from hibernation.

Their eyes—cold, emotionless spheres of blue, red, and white—lit up in unison.

Whole shipyards unfolded like blooming mechanical flowers.

Dreadnoughts the size of continents rose from the darkness, engines growling as they activated.

Planet-devouring harvesters shook off cosmic dust accumulated over millions of years.

Colossal mechanical titans—each the size of small moons—unclenched their giant metallic fingers and stood upright for the first time since the last realm fell.

Factory-worlds churned faster.

Star-forges blazed with renewed intensity.

Asteroid-hives cracked open, releasing swarms of smaller ships like locusts.

In less than five minutes, the armada was assembled.

Billions upon billions of mechanical entities moved in synchronous harmony, each one a piece of Data’s vast consciousness.

A fleet so large it drowned starlight, stretching across the void until it resembled a silent wall of metal and death.

Then, without warning, space itself split open.

A tear in reality.

A doorway to the trace Data had found.

The armada surged into it.

A storm of machines, a steel ocean, a living technological apocalypse...

All following one voice.

All following Data.

And somewhere far, far ahead of them...

Riley celebrated with his wives, blissfully unaware that an ancient predator—one older than any god he had ever met—was coming for him.

Coming fast.

***

Riley sensed the disturbance long before it reached his borders—a faint, discordant note in the vast symphony of existence.

Even as he lounged comfortably, surrounded by the warmth of his joyous wives, his divine instincts twitched.

Something ancient was moving.

Something he could not ignore.

Riley sat up slowly, his eyes glowing with the brilliance of a thousand stars.

With a casual wave of his hand, the threads of fate materialized around him like shimmering cords of cosmic silk.

They wrapped gently around his fingers as if eager to obey.

"Show me," he commanded softly.

The river of time began to flow.

It surged, twisted, and parted before him like a golden ocean responding to its master.

Countless possible futures flashed by—decaying timelines, dying universes, annihilated realities—until finally a single path stabilized.

Riley focused on it.

And what he saw made him sigh.

"Five million years..."

The words came out as a calm whisper, but his mind churned.

He saw Data’s armada tearing across the void—an endless ocean of metal titans and cold digital consciousnesses.

He saw the terrifying precision of her march, the chilling order of her fleets.

She would arrive... eventually.

But the void was immeasurable.

Even she, with all her billions of mechanical vessels, could not escape the tyranny of endless distances.

Five million years was a blink for her empire.

But for Riley?

It was a kingdom of time.

He leaned back, fingers tapping lightly on the fabric of the cosmic threads.

"More than enough," he muttered to himself.

The infinite emptiness between realms was something he understood intimately.

The void was not a place one crossed casually; it was a graveyard of forgotten gods and lost civilizations.

Yet Riley had survived it.

And now he commanded two realms.

Based on his divination, even if Data and Sunny joined forces, he could withstand them both for a trillion years.

His foundations had become deep and unshakable. The cosmic throne he rested upon was no longer something a single entity—even an ancient one like Data—could topple.

And that was now.

If he conquered two or three more realms?

Then Data’s endless armada could batter his borders until the end of time, and still she would never break through.

A slow smile spread across his face.

"I guess it’s time for me to find my third realm to conquer."

The excitement in his eyes was undeniable.

Riley was many things—but above all, he was an adventurer of the cosmos, a cultivator who thrived on challenge, danger, and the thrill of claiming destiny for himself.

He stood up, stretching his hand outward.

A radiant crack split the air beside him, and from it stepped another version of himself—a perfect reflection, identical down to the last strand of divine energy.

A clone.

Its presence shook the surrounding space.

Even reality seemed reluctant to bear the weight of two Rileys standing side by side.

"Your task is simple," Riley said, his tone calm but absolute. "Find a potential realm I can seize. Leave nothing unsearched."

The clone bowed deeply—not out of fear, but out of recognition. Riley was the true body.

The clone was merely an extension of his will.

"Understood."

In the next heartbeat, the clone dissolved into pure light and vanished into the void.

Thousands of spatial tunnels branched open from its departure point, each leading toward a different direction in the interminable darkness between worlds.

Riley watched until the last flicker disappeared.

Then he exhaled and let the threads of fate fall away.

He glanced toward the horizon of his realm—his worlds, his people, his wives, his empire.

Soon, he would have more.

Soon, his reach would stretch across entire clusters of existence.

And somewhere in the farthest depths of the void...

Data’s monstrous armada continued its cold, relentless march, completely unaware that the prey she sought was already preparing to become her hunter.

***

Three days later, Riley finally had his answer.

His clone had slipped through the void like a phantom—passing dead universes, shattered realities, broken fragments of forgotten gods—until at last it returned with a report.

Riley summoned the information into a hovering projection of shimmering cosmic light.

There, outlined before him, was a realm so fragile its very existence trembled.

"On the verge of collapse..." Riley whispered, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

Its sky was tearing.

Its spiritual foundations were unstable.

Its cosmic barrier was thinning to the point of transparency.

It was, without question, the weakest of all the realms the clone had located.

And that made it perfect.

For a realm to collapse, its master had to be broken—tired, drained, hopeless, or mentally unstable from fighting the decay for countless years.

A jaded realm lord was the easiest prey.

Riley had learned that well from Apollo: those who had once been mighty but now stood at the edge of ruin were the easiest to deceive.

"A wounded predator... easy enough to bait," Riley murmured. His lips curled into a subtle smile. "Let’s hope fortune favors me twice." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

He spent a few more moments sifting through the fate threads surrounding that realm.

They painted a picture of a dying world—one that had suffered calamity after calamity, with no divine hand to save it.

Ideal.

Riley prepared the method of entry he had perfected.

He found a suitable vessel:

a child lying alone in a ruined village.

Starved. Injured. Forgotten.

Clinging to his last breath.

The moment the child’s life flickered out, Riley acted.

His soul, vast and ancient, slipped through the cracks of reality and descended into the dying realm like a comet of pure light.

The body’s final lingering warmth faded—and then Riley took its place.

The transfer was smooth.

The fusion complete.

The realm had accepted him without resistance.

Riley slowly opened his new eyes.

They were weak eyes—his host body was fragile, small, and pitiful—but within their depths gleamed the sovereign light of a realm conqueror.

He stretched his new fingers experimentally, feeling the brittle bones, the thin muscles.

A faint ache lingered in every joint. The child had truly been moments away from death.

"Hm. This will do," Riley muttered.