Passing through the spatial passage, as his vision gradually cleared, Feng Qi found himself standing within the territory of the Blood Soul Clan.
Looking ahead, he saw countless floating islands suspended in the sky.
Each island floated at different altitudes, connected to one another by thick black energy chains. Together, they encircled a massive floating landmass in the center, towering like a mountain and exuding a sense of pressure, like stars orbiting the moon.
At the center of the main island, a dark red banner flapped violently in the wind. Just one look at it made Feng Qi feel as though some mysterious power was pulling at his consciousness—like it wanted to devour his soul.
That banner... in the previous timeline's dream of the future, the Mist Lord had explained its nature.
He said the banner was called the "Blood Soul Banner," a miraculous divine artifact, and the foundational treasure of the Blood Soul Clan.
Every soul of every living being slain by the Blood Soul Clan would be imprisoned within that banner, becoming part of its strength.
Now, 1,500 years later...
No one knew just how many souls were trapped within that Blood Soul Banner. Waving it could summon billions of vengeful spirits to fight in battle. It far outclassed even Jian Ji's Million Sword Spirit Array.
That banner was the ultimate guarantee behind the Blood Soul Clan's position as one of the Eight Great Royal Clans of the future world.
At this moment, beneath their feet was a floating platform formed from a fragment roughly 10 square meters in size.
Around them, many similar platforms drifted in the air. Whenever a spatial vortex appeared, these platforms would automatically sense it and fly over to catch whoever emerged from the passage.
"Qi-shu, let's go."
As Zhang Daowen spoke, frost mist appeared beneath his feet, lifting him up as he flew toward a smaller island beneath the main island of the Blood Soul Clan.
While flying, Feng Qi couldn't help but ask curiously,
"Xiao Wen, you've been here before?"
"I have. But I didn't go to the cultivation altar. Besides the altar, the Blood Soul Clan offers a lot of other open facilities—like trade markets. As long as you're not from one of the forces at war with them, you can use their facilities in exchange for resources. It's one of their major revenue streams and brings them quite a profit every year."
After a long flight, they descended onto one of the smaller islands beneath the central floating landmass of the Blood Soul Clan.
Just then, a black shadow suddenly emerged from seemingly nowhere, blocking their path.
As the figure came into focus, Feng Qi could see their appearance clearly.
They had dark red pupils, a humanoid body, standing around 1.6 meters tall. They wore a thin black gauze robe made of some unknown material. Their right arm bore a tattoo of a dark red flag, and three dark red diagonal lines were tattooed on each cheek.
Their cold gaze locked onto the two and they spoke in a deep voice:
"What's your purpose here?"
In response, Xiao Wen reached up and pressed his finger to his brow. A streak of light pulled out from his forehead, eventually forming into a glittering golden crystal in his palm.
"Here to use the cultivation altar."
The Blood Soul Clan member took the golden crystal, scanned it with a wave of consciousness, and replied coldly,
"Resources insufficient. Only one may enter."
Xiao Wen didn't look surprised at all. He simply nodded and turned to Feng Qi.
"Qi-shu, you go. I'll wait outside."
Seeing this, Feng Qi felt a pang of guilt in his chest.
It was clear Xiao Wen was low on resources. With his strength, he could've used them to get further ahead. But clearly, he had given almost everything he had to support the human population of Dawn City.
Sighing inwardly, Feng Qi still nodded.
"Alright."
At that moment, Xiao Wen placed his palm on Feng Qi's back. A cold energy surged into his body. Before Feng Qi could react, his vision blurred—and when it cleared again, he found himself already inside the cultivation platform.
The platform was about the size of a football field, covered in a nearly transparent barrier of mysterious material.
All across the platform were dozens of figures currently undergoing the Heart Refinement Trial.
With just one breath, mysterious energy flowed into Feng Qi's body. His head started spinning and his vision blurred rapidly.
Realizing he was about to enter the heart-refining domain, he immediately sat cross-legged in a corner and steadied himself.
His vision spun violently.
In the next instant, countless colorful threads of light swirled before his eyes. Then, blurry statues began to appear within his field of vision, carrying with them an overwhelming sense of ancient history.
Every statue was marked with time-worn etchings, saturated with the weight of countless years.
There were a total of 18 statues, each with a gemstone embedded in its forehead.
The first two statues at the front had dimmed gems—clearly reflecting that he had already passed two rounds of Heart Refinement Trials.
The first Trial was "The Trial of the Journey."
The second, "The Trial for Immortality."
In "The Trial of the Journey," he had to walk 300,000 li on foot, without any special abilities. He had to step across mountains and rivers, measuring the world with his feet.
In "The Trial for Immortality," he had to experience death over and over again—until he discovered the path to immortality through repeated reincarnation.
Both were trials designed to temper the spirit.
Neither of them had been easy to complete, but every time he succeeded, he could feel his heart and mind growing stronger.
That's also the reason why the Heart Refinement Trial could suppress negative emotions.
Even though it couldn't completely erase them, it was like expanding the container that held all the negative emotions—letting the person endure and carry more of them without collapsing.
At this moment, the third statue from the left among the 18 statues suddenly opened its eyes.
The gemstone embedded in its forehead lit up with a flash.
The statue raised its hand and pointed at him. In that instant, the world in front of Feng Qi shattered, like glass breaking into pieces.
Just before he lost consciousness, he heard an ancient, booming voice explode in his mind:
[All is suffering—only self-redemption brings salvation. Eighteen Trials, Third Level: The Trial of Intention!]
The old voice echoed in his mind.
The world in front of him shattered completely.
Darkness engulfed him.
His consciousness faded into silence.
No telling how long had passed.
A sudden bang above his head woke him from his deep sleep.
Slowly lifting his head, his vision became clear—and to his surprise, he found himself sitting in a familiar classroom. Next to him sat his old buddy Mo Fei. Sunlight streamed in through the window.
Looking toward the podium, Old Wang stood in a patch of mottled sunlight, glaring at him with a furious expression.
"Feng Qi, I told you to stand up and answer the question!"
At this moment, Feng Qi had already forgotten all about the Eighteen Trials. His mind still lingered in the struggle through countless timelines, fighting to save the future.
Waking up like this, all that effort across timelines felt like a long, surreal dream.
Those vivid struggles in his memory now felt like illusions meant to fool himself.
"Feng Qi!"
Old Wang barked again. Beside him, Mo Fei had turned pale from fright, frantically giving him signals and even pinching his thigh hard.
The jolt of pain snapped him back.
This wasn't a dream.
He stood up and faced Old Wang.
After answering the question and sitting down again, Feng Qi's mind was still dazed. Everything around him felt unreal.
Was it really all just a dream?
"Narrator…" he called out in his heart.
But the voice didn't respond.
"Narrator-son?"
He tried again with his usual teasing tone—but still, nothing. If it were before, the Narrator would've definitely jumped out to bicker with him.
In that muddled state of mind, he finished the class.
Afterward, he was stopped by Old Wang, who asked why he'd been sleeping in class.
Feng Qi brushed it off casually—he honestly didn't know what was going on.
Right now, he couldn't even tell if this was reality or still part of a dream.
Back in the dorm, he ignored Mo Fei's questions and started searching online.
What he found, though, shocked him.
There was no information about Wei Wei at all.
On the Star City forums, there wasn't a single mention of a student named Mu Qing.
The facts were right in front of him—but he refused to believe that everything he'd gone through was fake.
Wei Wei, Mu Qing, Lin Ran, Lü Yue, Mu Yan, Mist Lord, Xiao Wen… they were all real people to Feng Qi. How could they just be part of a dream?
And dreams—how could they feel this real?
To prove to himself that everything really happened, Feng Qi asked Old Wang for leave that afternoon and left Star City No. 1 High School.
He took a taxi straight to Star City Academy.
The campus gate looked exactly like what he remembered—this made him even more sure that his experiences were real.
After all, back in his time at Star City No. 1 High School, he had never actually visited Star City Academy.
When he reached the entrance, a security guard stopped him.
That's when he thought of Bai Fusheng.
He asked to meet Bai Fusheng.
The security guard hesitated but still helped him contact Bai Fusheng.
During the call, the guard sent Bai Fusheng a scan of Feng Qi's identity records.
Once the call ended, the guard waved him through.
As he walked through the campus, everything looked just like it did in his memory. That only strengthened his belief that all the things he experienced in the timelines weren't fake.
Following the familiar path, he arrived in front of Bai Fusheng's office.
He knocked.
An aged, hoarse voice came from inside:
"Come in."
Pushing the door open, he saw Bai Fusheng—now gray-haired—sitting on the couch, sipping tea. He looked up and met Feng Qi's eyes.
Smiling, he nodded.
"Come, have a seat."
Feng Qi didn't hesitate. He walked over and sat down beside him.
"You're Wang Jinsheng's student, right? What brings you to me?"
Feng Qi didn't answer that question. Instead, he asked solemnly:
"Shi-gong, do you know someone named Mu Qing?"
"Mu Qing? Who's that? A student from Star City Academy?"
That answer made frustration rise in Feng Qi's chest. He asked again:
"Then what about Lin Ran? The student from Winterfell Academy who was recruited early by the Tiger Soul Research Institute? There were plans for her to transfer here under an exchange program."
"Recruited early by the Tiger Soul Research Institute? Lin Ran? I've never heard of him."
In Bai Fusheng's eyes, Feng Qi saw real confusion. It was clear this wasn't a case of Bai Fusheng deliberately lying to him.
Still unwilling to give up, Feng Qi started asking about other people connected to the Dawn organization.
But all of Bai Fusheng's answers confirmed the same thing—those vivid lives that once filled his memories simply didn't exist in this world.
When he left Star City Academy, Feng Qi's heart was full of uncertainty.
In the end, he decided to go to the Crimson Research Institute.
Maybe Wei Wei was still there—just heavily classified, which was why she didn't appear in any online searches.
When he took a cab to the gates of the Crimson Research Institute, a warning came from the external broadcast: access denied.
But he didn't turn around.
Instead, he looked straight into the surveillance screen and said:
"I want to see Wei Wei."
The guard on the other end of the screen stared at him with visible confusion—it was obvious they'd never heard of someone named Wei Wei.
Seeing this, the last of Feng Qi's persistence crumbled.
By the time he returned to Star City No. 1 High School, the sky had already darkened. He didn't go back to the dorm but instead headed up to the school building's rooftop.
He sat down on the chair Old Wang had placed there long ago and looked up at the night sky, his heart filled with doubt.
Just a moment ago, he had been deep in the future timeline, talking to the little guy who had given the human race a future by pushing through for centuries.
But now, everything seemed like an illusion, as fleeting as mist reflected on water.
Feng Qi couldn't help but start questioning his own experiences.
He remembered something the Narrator once said:
The Narrator had joked, maybe everything you've gone through is fake—just a dream in the mind of a student burning with passion and a savior complex. All that struggle, all that dedication? Maybe it was just you getting emotional over a fantasy in a daydream. And when you finally wake up, you'll still be sitting in Old Wang's classroom.
Now, that joke had become reality.
Glancing to the side, he saw a metal box filled with bottles of alcohol.
Old Wang kept that stash there. Whenever life got too heavy, he'd come here, drink, and stare at the stars.
"Maybe the time-travel ability glitched. I went back to the very beginning. And when I fall asleep again, everything will reset."
Without hesitation, Feng Qi opened the box, grabbed a bottle, and started gulping it down.
His alcohol tolerance was terrible. Before long, his head started spinning.
When the bottle dropped to the floor, Feng Qi's face was red, and he drifted off into sleep.
When he woke up, the sky had already brightened.
In his dream, there was no towering blood moon, no howling wind, no split-legged welcome from Little Cripple. All the signs pointed to the same truth—his assumptions were wrong.
Feng Qi slowly clenched his fists.
From then on, he started relentlessly searching for the truth behind his memories.
But no matter where he looked—online, at the Tiger Soul Research Institute, or at the Crimson Research Institute—everything pointed to the same conclusion:
It was all fake. None of it had ever existed.
The only thing that was eerily similar was the state of the world.
Just like before he fell asleep, humanity was in crisis. The pace of domain expansion was accelerating.
And if the information from his memories was correct, then without the ability to travel through time, humanity had no chance of turning the tide. Extinction was inevitable.
But… he no longer had the power to change anything.
The dream of saving humanity hadn't changed—but now, he had no special ability to help him do it.
At this point, even though he was a top student at Star City No. 1 High School, he was nothing more than a talented young man—a name easily forgotten in the grand scope of human history.
Half a month later, Feng Qi graduated.
This time, he didn't follow his original dream of applying to Galaxy Academy. Just like in his memories, he returned to Star City Academy and enrolled in the Cultivation Techniques class.
Back then, he hadn't given up on finding the truth.
But every search only brought disappointment.
This class didn't have Lin Ran.
There was no senior student named Mu Qing.
Every time he went to the school cafeteria, the northern corner table was filled with unfamiliar faces.
That's when Feng Qi thought about the knowledge stored in his mind.
If those precious memories could be replicated in reality, it would prove that his experiences weren't illusions—just that, for some reason, he'd lost his time-traveling powers and was forced to start over from scratch.
So in the days that followed, Feng Qi picked himself up and began experimenting.
But his initial hope was quickly crushed by the brutal facts of reality.
The knowledge in his mind didn't work here. None of it could be replicated.
Take Tiger Fist, for example—he followed the technique exactly as he remembered it. He almost coughed up blood and died on the spot.
Still, Feng Qi didn't give up.
He tried again and again.
Failure followed him everywhere.
As the years went by, he graduated from Star City Academy and joined the Tiger Soul Research Institute.
There were no Night Shadow Clan here. No other lurking domain forces either.
Even though it frustrated him, he eventually began accepting the truth.
All those years in his memory—maybe they really were just an incredibly vivid dream.
But even though everything else had changed, his original purpose remained: to help humanity rise.
Working on the frontlines of cultivating new techniques, Feng Qi made new friends. Like him, they carried dreams of humanity's future.
During this time, he developed many new techniques—and got hurt plenty during testing too.
His once-empty room slowly filled with medals and honors.
At thirty-five, the Tiger Soul Research Institute arranged a matchmaking session for him. He wasn't emotionally ready, but the higher-ups insisted—saying he needed to pass on excellent genes for humanity's future.
So he went along, confused and half-hearted, and came back just as muddled.
At thirty-eight, somehow, he got married.
The other half of the arranged marriage came from the Tiger Soul Research Institute—a woman from the military.
Life gradually settled into something ordinary, but Feng Qi could never let go of that long stretch of memory buried deep in his mind. He always found himself missing it, even if it was just a dream.
Later, he had children.
Raising them, shaping their values, became a new part of his quiet life.
Under his guidance, his children grew up diligent and outstanding. Just like he'd hoped, they were admitted to Star City Academy and achieved excellent grades. Before they even graduated, both the Galaxy Research Institute and the Tiger Soul Research Institute extended them early invitations.
Even in the midst of this peaceful life, the yearning for those old memories never faded.
When his children got married and he became a grandfather, his hair had already turned white.
Unable to keep working at the frontlines of research, he was placed in a retirement home in Star City. His children, now busy with their own lives, rarely visited. He only heard about their accomplishments through occasional news updates—and felt proud of them.
Time had worn away the sharp edge of his youth. But every time he lay down to sleep, that vivid and unbelievably real dream returned to him.
Before he knew it, he was eighty-seven.
On the day his children called to wish him a happy birthday, he looked up at the black-and-white photo of his late wife hanging on the wall. He thought of the "early death" curse he once remembered from his dreams and shook his head with a laugh, leaning on his cane.
Even that had been fake.
His body was deteriorating day by day. Feng Qi knew he didn't have much time left.
Looking back, his life hadn't been filled with grandeur or chaos—just steady, quiet growth.
He was like a screw in the vast machine of human civilization. He'd done his part, given his whole life to the cause. And now, rusty and worn, he was being replaced by the next generation, who would carry his research further.
Time kept moving.
Bit by bit, his hearing faded. His vision began to blur.
The only things left clearly perceivable were his weak heartbeat and the rasp of each breath.
In his final days, Feng Qi wore a hearing aid and listened to frontline reports on an old radio.
Looking back on his life, he had no regrets—but there was always that one lingering sorrow he couldn't shake.
The monitor connected to his arm beeped rhythmically.
He turned his head and looked out the window. The wind gently shook the branches outside. A pale crescent moon hung high in the sky. The night was beautiful.
And in that moment, he thought of them again—those people from his memory.
Standing at the edge of death, he felt the presence of familiar figures slowly gathering around him.
Their voices echoed in his ears.
"Yo, little bro, wake up already. Falling asleep again? Don't you still want to save the world or what? If not, we're splitting up the team."
"Qi-ge, I'm gonna be a master of cultivation technique studies one day. This is my latest work—hurry and take a look!"
"Ah Qi, no matter what the future holds, in the next timeline, let's keep moving forward together."
"Ah Qi, you promised you'd face the future with us Mist Clan folk. How are you gonna just fall here?"
"Uncle Qi, I hope I've made you proud."
"Qi-ge…"
So many voices overlapped in his mind. Feng Qi reached out, trying to grasp them—but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't hold on to those fleeting, unreal figures.
It had all just been a dream from his passionate youth.
But it had felt so real.
So real that even after all these years, he still couldn't let go. It still left his heart in turmoil.
He looked back at the black-and-white photo of his wife on the wall. Tears blurred his vision.
"Old man… it's been so many years already. It's time to let go."
In that moment, he seemed to hear his late wife's gentle sigh by his ear—like she was still there, always softly persuading him.
His hand, which had been reaching out to the air, slowly dropped.
That weight in his heart… finally turned into a long, quiet sigh.
In the very end, he chose to face those memories in peace.
His mindset changed in that moment. The voices and illusions that had haunted him all faded like mist.
The only sound left was the monitor's steady beeping.
His breathing grew weaker, but Feng Qi was smiling.
He had spent a lifetime searching and never truly found joy.
But now, for the first time, he faced reality with clarity—and let go of the memories he'd held on to for so long.
That unresolved sorrow in his heart finally gave way to acceptance.
He had made it through on his own.
His breath stopped.
His heart ceased its beating.
And the monitor gave off one long, drawn-out beep—"beeeeeep—"
…
Endless darkness surrounded Feng Qi.
At that moment, he slowly opened his eyes.
"I… did I die?" he muttered to the darkness.
[Yes, you died. Hurry up and die already. If it weren't for this heart refinement Trial still needing to continue, I'd have cursed you out long ago. I've been holding it in for eighty-seven years just so your trial wouldn't break. You know how painful it was to keep my mouth shut that long? I nearly exploded!]
Feng Qi: …
As the Narrator's furious rant blasted in his ears, all the memories surged back into his mind like a rising tide.
He finally understood—he was still in the middle of the Heart Refinement Trial. Everything he had experienced in that dream was fake.
And in the final moments of that fake life, he had overcome the hardest part—the regret that weighed down his heart.
He had chosen to let go.
The scene before him shifted.
The Eighteen Tribulations Trial statues reappeared. The gems on their foreheads shimmered with light, illuminating the entire space. The third statue slowly closed its eyes, and the gem on its forehead dimmed.
That meant he had passed the third level of the Heart Refinement Trial.
Looking down at his right forearm, he saw the black markings of negative emotions slowly receding. In the end, they withdrew entirely into the center of his palm.
The Trial was over.
His state of mind had ascended once again, further suppressing the negative emotions that once spread through him.
The stabbing pain in his head faded.
A sense of rebirth washed over him.