The ultimate machine floated in mid-air, humming from within, hollow eyes glowing with crimson light.
This ancient weapon, dormant for countless years, had finally awakened.
But there was still a problem facing Feng Qi.
Now that the ultimate machine was awake, how was he supposed to control it?
There was no manual or guide, no control levers or panels—he had no clue how to operate it.
With doubts in mind, Feng Qi rose into the air, circling the hovering ultimate machine, trying to find a way to control it.
Just then, a panel in the machine's chest popped open, revealing a silver-white helmet.
Seeing the helmet, Feng Qi immediately lit up with joy.
If he guessed right, this helmet was the key to controlling the ultimate machine.
He'd seen similar tech before when he was undercover in the Institute of Technological Research.
The helmet acted like a signal transmitter. Inside the institute, many large machines were controlled through consciousness-linked helmets, which improved the operator's sync with the machine and allowed more complex operations.
Feng Qi flew to the front of the ultimate machine and reached out, trying to grab the silver-white helmet.
But just as his hand was about to touch it, a strong sense of danger surged. He quickly pulled back his right hand, but it was a second too late—his arm exploded into a mist of blood.
He fell back to the ground, staggering several steps before regaining balance.
Looking up, the ultimate machine still floated there, unmoving.
Just now, he had seen a green beam emit from the helmet, scanning his body. Then a red light appeared at the center of the helmet, releasing a violent elemental surge.
Thankfully, he reacted fast—he only lost an arm instead of getting blown apart.
He had been just one step away from death.
Feeling a bit lucky, he waved his left hand, and the Demon Blade flew into his grip.
Pure flesh energy from the Demon Blade poured into his body.
His right shoulder writhed, flesh wriggling and stretching, quickly regrowing tissue as his arm began to regenerate.
After a while, he waved again, dispersing the blood light around his arm, revealing a brand-new right arm.
Looking up at the ultimate machine again, Feng Qi's expression turned serious.
At this moment, the Demon Blade's voice sounded, "If I'm not wrong, that green beam was scanning your bloodline, verifying your identity. Too bad you're not a descendant of the Silver Serpent Empire. Even if you activated the machine, you can't control it."
Feng Qi nodded, agreeing with the Demon Blade.
He had suspected the same—that this was how the ultimate machine verified its operator.
As the last light of the Silver Serpent Empire, this machine was too important. If it fell into enemy hands, it would've meant destruction for them.
Of course, they would've added multiple layers of security.
Clearly, even after unlocking and starting it, he still couldn't use the machine.
Because he didn't have Silver Serpent blood, he couldn't pass the identity scan from the control helmet.
Realizing he still couldn't take the ultimate machine with him, Feng Qi felt a pang of regret.
But at the same time, a new idea formed in his mind.
Maybe he could seek cooperation with the Silver Moon Clan to control this machine.
The Silver Moon Clan no longer posed any threat to Star City. In future timelines, they were supposed to become the first big source of resources for Star City's growth through flesh supplies.
But the appearance of the ultimate machine sparked a fresh idea in Feng Qi's heart.
The Silver Moon Clan's value wasn't just in flesh resources. In the previous sacrifice timeline, he had already considered whether to work with them.
Now, after learning from the murals that the Silver Moon Clan were descendants of the Silver Serpent Clan, he reassessed their worth.
Their value now centered around three main areas.
First, war engineering technology.
He'd noticed this right from his first contact with the Silver Moon Clan.
Back then, he used Black Dragon from the Domain Weak Tribe Alliance to lure Yin Ling into a trap to kill her.
But the plan failed.
Yin Ling didn't come in person—she sent a puppet machine instead, causing the ambush to flop.
Maybe the Silver Moon Clan's war engineering tech had declined due to lack of resources, nowhere near what it was in the Silver Serpent Empire's prime, but they still had parts of that knowledge.
If humans could gain this technology through the Silver Moon Clan, it would open a new future path.
For example, if in the end, Mo Yue devoured the human world and the cultivation system collapsed.
Then, war engineering tech might become one of humanity's new directions for development.
Compared to rune modification tech, war engineering wouldn't corrode the human body.
But it had obvious downsides too.
War engineering technology needed massive resource support to develop and advance.
But as long as this path could be walked, and combined with psionic technology, it would open a brand-new alternative tech route for humanity to grow in the end-times.
So, working with the Silver Moon Clan would be leaving humanity a backup plan.
Second, the transformation and upgrade of the city's energy system.
The last sacrifice timeline had already proven that the Silver Moon Clan played a vital role in the new energy planning and upgrades of Star City.
After the Silver Moon Clan was sacrificed by Old Mist, Star City's energy plans and upgrades did make rapid progress early on, thanks to the "legacy" left behind by Yin Ling and the other Silver Moon pioneers.
But without the Silver Moon Clan to continue updating, the pace of energy structure upgrades clearly slowed in later stages.
After all, humanity's knowledge base was still far behind that of the Silver Moon Clan.
With the Silver Moon Clan's help, Star City could greatly improve its resource usage and transmission efficiency every year.
Over time, the Silver Moon Clan could keep updating the city's energy plans and utilization, saving Star City huge amounts of resources.
Third, war machines.
Letting the Silver Moon Clan control the Silver Serpent Clan's ancient war machines would greatly boost their strength, and humans allied with them would obviously benefit too, raising their overall deterrent power.
But one issue had to be considered.
The problem of raising a tiger that could bite back clearly existed.
He couldn't guarantee that once Mu Yue won, humanity's cultivation system collapsed, and they were at their weakest, the Silver Moon Clan wouldn't turn on them.
Especially after gaining control of the war machines, the Silver Moon Clan would fully have the power to destroy Star City.
Equal strength was the foundation of alliances.
Once the balance broke, whether the Silver Moon Clan could still be trusted was anyone's guess.
So strength and trust were key to forming an alliance.
Looking up at the ultimate machine hovering in the air, Feng Qi's mind was spinning with thoughts.
Without the Silver Moon Clan's help, this last remnant of the Silver Serpent Empire was just a decoration—a huge waste.
As for why the Silver Moon Clan didn't take this ultimate machine with them when they split from the Silver Serpent Empire, he didn't find it strange at all.
The murals had explained it clearly.
Back then, when the Silver Serpent Empire collapsed and various regional factions split off, it wasn't really a betrayal.
These forces still respected the Silver Serpent Empire's rule.
But they could no longer provide resources to support the central royal city's development.
On top of that, with the Silver Serpent King's death in the final battle, the empire could no longer operate with just the priesthood.
The split was inevitable.
The priesthood understood this outcome too, so they took the initiative to propose the division and departure of the Silver Serpent descendants in the regions.
At that time, the priesthood faced a major crisis.
The powerful enemies had only temporarily retreated—their victory was only for now, and those strong clans could return at any time.
The already exhausted Silver Serpent Empire would be totally destroyed if they kept fighting.
So it was better to let the factions split off and become wandering forces, escaping the ancestral domain field. That way, they could at least keep the Silver Serpent bloodline alive.
This was also why the priesthood gave blessings to the split factions.
In the end, the Silver Serpent Empire's territory fell apart, and only the royal capital faction stayed behind.
This ultimate machine was the last weapon of the royal faction, its final guardian.
Before leaving, the factions never considered taking this ultimate weapon.
Deep down, they still felt a sense of identity and belonging to the Silver Serpent Clan.
Through the murals, Feng Qi had also solved a past doubt.
When the Silver Moon Clan abandoned their domain field and came to the human world, Yin Yue told Lin Ran it was to lower the chances of being discovered on the Path to Heaven—it was all about playing it safe.
But now he saw there was another reason.
The Silver Moon Clan's domain field wasn't even their ancestral domain field.
Maybe it was a territory seized by their ancestors during migration, or maybe they picked it up along the way, but it definitely wasn't their original home.
So that domain field wasn't as valuable as it seemed.
The Silver Serpent domain field beneath his feet now—that was the one truly suited for the Silver Moon Clan.
In the Mist Lord's words, migration was a major trait of domain world species. Many races would gradually adapt to new environments after migrating.
But no matter what, adapting to a new environment took a long time.
Before full adaptation, their birth domain field was clearly still more suitable.
That's why many races, after rising up, would try to reclaim their old lands.
Of course, there were exceptions.
If their domain field had already been fully devoured or destroyed, there was still one option—rebuilding their ancestral domain field.
But this process was also very long.
Old Mist spent massive resources to rebuild a domain field, pouring almost all the resources gained early on into constructing their ancestral domain field, which caused the Mist Clan's early development to be very slow.
But what they got was a huge advantage later on.
Many weak clans chose to bring their domain fields with them, but the Silver Moon Clan gave up theirs. Clearly, this was also part of the reason.
Thinking this through, Feng Qi felt he now held another card to negotiate cooperation with the Silver Moon Clan.
And that was this domain field under his feet.
As for why this domain field ended up in the human world, it wasn't hard to figure out.
Since it arrived, some power must have carried the Silver Serpent domain field's spatial crystal through the Path to Heaven.
As for who that force was, he had no idea.
Maybe, in the long years after the Silver Serpent Empire's fall, this domain field was taken over by some migrating power at some point, and that force became the new master of this domain field in the future.
It was them who brought the Silver Serpent domain field through the Path to Heaven into the human world.
It was just that during his journey across the sea, he never ran into that force directly.
Just like walking in the human world's uninhabited zones—not meeting humans doesn't mean no human powers exist.
Being able to pass through the Path to Heaven already proved this domain field was controlled by intelligent life.
"Let's go, no fate with it."
After understanding the reason, Feng Qi stopped obsessing over it. He slung the Demon Blade over his shoulder and walked back the way they came.
Lei Ting looked at the ultimate machine and shook his head.
"What a shame. I thought this king was going to get a divine weapon, but turns out it's useless to me."
Saying that, Lei Ting put his hands behind his back and followed Feng Qi.
Leaving the Silver Serpent ruins, their journey continued.
The challenge of crossing the sea began again.
After countless times of exhaustion and renewal, Feng Qi and his team finally crossed the sea and entered a new domain field.
Time flew by.
In the journeys that followed, they crossed one domain field after another.
During this time, they witnessed many strange and dazzling new worlds, and also encountered powerful clans they couldn't fight.
In the days that followed, Feng Qi never came across any more Miracle items.
It wasn't that the domain fields they passed through didn't have Miracle items, but he simply didn't get the chance to see them.
For example, when they met clans they couldn't fight, he would always choose to retreat.
And Miracle items were usually held by clan chiefs or kings of powerful clans.
By the time he saw the Miracle item, it would already be hard to even survive.
When he saw that the domain field clans were too strong to fight, Feng Qi would always lead the team carefully around them.
Whether that domain field had a Miracle or not was no longer his concern.
Seven years later.
In a meadow full of blooming flowers stood a gravestone.
Feng Qi stood in front of it, with Xiao You and the negative consciousness body floating beside him, and behind him were Po Jia, Lei Ting, and Taihang.
There was a line of words on the gravestone.
Demon Blade Squad Member: Ku An.
At the bottom of the gravestone were the names left by Feng Qi and the other team members.
Ku An was a new member Feng Qi had recruited four years ago.
Compared to the other team members, Ku An had an optimistic personality. His arrival brought a lot of joy to the team.
Meeting him was a coincidence.
Ku An came from a weak clan. They didn't bring a domain field when they arrived. He was from a weak clan, but Ku An had great talent and was recognized by the Demon Blade.
Facing his clan's difficult future, Ku An took the initiative to ask Feng Qi to join the team, to wander together, to find a new home for his people, and grow through training.
Just like those warriors who joined the Weak Tribe Alliance, Ku An chose to leave his people and try to find a future for them.
But the journey was never smooth.
In a brutal battle a few days ago, Ku An gave his life to protect Xiao You.
They barely escaped, but Ku An was forever left in that domain field.
After fleeing that domain field, Feng Qi built a cenotaph for him in this flower-filled domain field.
Hearing Xiao You sobbing beside him, Feng Qi reached out and rubbed her head.
The simple-minded Xiao You was trapped in her grief, unable to pull herself out.
But he knew this was a process Xiao You had to go through on the road to growing up.
They couldn't always be lucky when facing danger, couldn't always escape by chance. In the hard climb of challenges, life and death partings were inevitable.
Anyone could die on this journey.
Next might be Lei Ting, maybe Taihang, maybe Po Jia… or maybe he himself would die in the next crisis.
Standing before the grave for a long time, Feng Qi placed the flowers in front of the gravestone, then turned and said softly:
"Let's go."
Everyone heard him, silently turned, and followed Feng Qi toward the domain field barrier in the distance.
The setting sun stretched their shadows long.
Sometimes, grief is the best catalyst for growth.
Their journey was still going on.