Chapter 309: Even Without You, Someone Else Will Appear

A Qi's forehead was stuck to the alloy floor.

Skin and flesh turned over, blood and sweat mixed and smeared across the whole face.

He begged incoherently, pushing all blame onto the deceased Heavenly Source Ancestor.

Gu Yuan lowered his gaze, looking down at this trembling mass of flesh.

He had heard too many similar pleas, long since immune.

"You spoke so freely out in the starry void before."

Gu Yuan's tone was calm, stating objective facts,

"You were certain you were the Heaven's Mandate Child, that I blocked the brilliance you were meant to have. You judged that without me, you could still step on the corpses of conglomerates and rise to the top of this world."

A Qi's body went rigid, his breath halted.

He dared not retort, for that was exactly the truest reflection of his inner self.

"There are plenty of conceited fools in this world." Gu Xuan Ce trimmed his nails at the side, mercilessly commenting, "A little sunshine and they think they're the sun. Young master, this sort of trash can be crushed outright—dirty work."

Gu Yuan shook his head, raised his hand, and held up the Myriad Path Time Lamp in his palm.

The bronze ancient lamp hovered in midair.

"You regard favors as entitlements, teachings as oppression. With a twisted victim logic, you endorse your own greed and betrayal."

"Since you're certain everything should be yours, then I'll grant you that." Gu Yuan's voice unchanging, "I'll take back everything I lent you. Go walk the path you were 'meant to have'."

The wick of the Myriad Path Time Lamp lit up with a faint glow.

The illusory image of the River of Ages unfurled within the meteorite's core.

On the surface of the bronze ancient lamp, the mottled verdigris began to swim, turning into ancient seal characters one after another.

The River of Ages is not an actual flow of water, but a band of light spliced together from countless still frames.

Gu Yuan's inner world projection descended, forcibly cutting and recombining that band of light.

Before A Qi could grasp the meaning of those words, he felt the blood-colored true essence within his body rapidly receding.

The forcibly widened meridians shrank back, and his Eleventh Stage cultivation dissipated like ebbing tidewater.

Under this force's scouring, A Qi's body took on an eerie semi-translucent state.

His bones grew in reverse, his muscle texture being reshaped.

The cells forcibly matured by the Blood Ignition Infant Conception Technique emitted agonized cries unable to bear the load, finally turning into wisps of turbid qi that dissipated in the meteorite core's air.

Next, his memories began to peel away.

Everything about the Ancient Immortal Sect, the White-Robed Immortal, and the Heavenly Source Ancestor turned to flying ash.

Gu Yuan's inner world projection descended, removing one by one the external variables attached to A Qi's body.

The spiritual energy refined by the Reverse Spirit Technique, and the others' flesh and blood forcibly stuffed in by the Blood Ignition Infant Conception Technique, were all stripped from A Qi's dantian.

This process was excruciating, akin to disassembling and reassembling a person's skeleton. But Gu Yuan applied no anesthetic. He wanted A Qi to experience this loss consciously.

Gu Yuan invoked the Law of Time, forcibly rewinding A Qi's timeline back to one month prior.

From a higher-dimensional perspective.

Heavenly Pivot Eleven City, Zone 9527, landfill.

Acid rain poured down.

A Qi wore that tattered waterproof plastic sheet, clutching a metal pry bar whose tip bore a magnet.

He was evading the Reapers' pursuit.

"Don't run! Pay taxes!" The mechanical synthesized voice echoed through the rain.

A Qi panicked, his feet slipped, and he rolled down the slope of the garbage heap into a concealed collapsed air raid shelter.

Gu Yuan and Gu Xuan Ce stood above the River of Time, watching this scene.

"Young master, is this the Heaven's Mandate trajectory shown in that Old Turtle Water Mirror?" Gu Xuan Ce stroked his chin, surveying the scene below.

"Just the self-preservation instinct of the incomplete Heaven's Dao."

Gu Yuan looked at the teenager struggling in the mire,

"The Heaven's Dao scattered thousands of fortune fragments far and wide. Whoever survives to the end is the Heaven's Mandate Child. A Qi is merely one of them."

Inside the air raid shelter, A Qi painfully climbed to his feet.

He smelled the rotting odor of ancient skeletons.

According to the set course, he would find here the Heaven's Path Remodeling Terminal Ring, thereby unlocking a cheat life.

A Qi groped in the darkness, his fingertips touching a cold, hard metal edge.

A strong intuition welled up in his heart. That belonged to him.

Obtaining it could change this mud-like fate.

A variable occurred.

At another entrance of the air raid shelter, a similarly scrawny figure rolled in.

That was the scavenger from Zone 9528, nicknamed Gouzi.

Gouzi's arm was grazed by the Reapers' hovercar, blood dripping with a patter.

He slid down the slope, landing squarely beside A Qi.

Gouzi's flailing palm hit the ring hidden in the skeleton's crevice before A Qi could.

Blood seeped into the metal's engravings.

A dim glimmer lit up inside the air raid shelter.

A semi-translucent virtual light screen popped up before Gouzi's eyes.

【Heaven's Path Remodeling Terminal activated, bound to sole host.】

The mechanical sound rang in Gouzi's mind, the leaked sound waves caught by A Qi nearby.

A Qi froze in place.

The sense of destiny that had been his was, the moment the light screen lit up, forcibly torn away.

He watched Gouzi's face shift from terror to wild joy, and his heart throbbed with pangs of pain.

Something had been taken away.

It should have been his!

"Give it to me!"

A Qi, like a beast gone berserk, lunged at Gouzi, trying to snatch the ring.

It is worth noting that the judgment mechanism of the broken Heavenly Dao is extremely rigid.

It disregards talent and character, caring only whose blood first contacts the terminal.

It is a typical gu‑nurturing strategy.

Cast a wide net, reap many fish.

Heavenly Dao cares not for an individual's life or death; it only needs a tool that can break the conglomerate's blockade.

A Qi missed that 0.1 second, and fell from destiny's favored child to roadside weed.

On the translucent light screen before Gouzi, data streams raced swiftly.

【Detected host vital signs dropping, initiating emergency repair protocol.】

A tube of pale‑blue liquid materialized out of nowhere, flowing down Gouzi's throat.

It was the soul‑cleansing elixir condensed from the residual essence of the Heavenly Dao.

Gouzi's once withered, stick‑thin body burst with astonishing vitality under the elixir's flushing.

Gouzi swung a reverse punch, sending A Qi flying.

A Qi slammed into the wall repeatedly, breaking three ribs.

He spat out blood, his eyes fixed as Gouzi, in the faint glow, shed his old self and stepped onto the path of cultivation.