"What's the cause this time? Is it because I returned 500 years into the past, or is it because I attempted to rewrite someone else's fate? But my relationship with that miko doesn't seem particularly close, nor are we familiar to any significant degree... So why did the mere act of going back 500 years consume so much of my... time?"
Xin Yu leaned against a tree, his entire body feeling like a student's arm that had gone completely numb after being pressed under their head while napping during a class break.
"Could it be that returning 500 years ago is an incredibly pivotal event, significant enough to alter many things, and that's why this crucial juncture in time triggered such a severe backlash?"
Xin Yu frowned, looking at the 1/4 of his lifespan that had been lost again. If this continued, with only half his lifespan remaining, could he truly rewrite anyone's destiny?
Currently known methods to increase his lifespan were:
First, random transmigrations. The reason was unclear, but each random transmigration would increase his lifespan by a certain amount—small, but a definite increase.
Second, eating three meals a day on time. Each meal could increase his lifespan by 1 to 3 hours.
Third, advancing his own cultivation. Of course, rather than simply advancing his cultivation, it was more about undergoing some sort of transformation, progressing towards a higher level of existence.
For example, when he broke through to Foundation Establishment, fusing the Void and Honkai energies within him to create new magical power, his body had thoroughly transcended the limits of ordinary humans, becoming largely detached from humanity. His lifespan had then reached a terrifying length.
"According to that miko, the black box sealing the monster should also contain something related to Honkai. That entity should possess a large amount of Honkai energy within it. After absorbing a substantial amount of Honkai energy, my cultivation realm should advance somewhat, and I should be able to replenish some lifespan then."
Xin Yu glanced at a large patch of his own vomited blood not far away, which had corroded the ground down by twenty centimeters.
Or perhaps "corroded" wasn't the right word; it was more like it had been directly devoured and assimilated, becoming part of that pool of blood.
Xin Yu had a feeling that if he left that pool of blood unattended, allowing it to persist, it could even reach the point of destroying the planet.
"Good heavens. If I ever encounter enemies in a massive group battle, with numbers so vast they're unimaginable, I could just use the Heavenly Demon Disintegration Grand Method, break myself into pieces, scatter them all out, and then assimilate all the enemies to strengthen myself. I might even be able to achieve a breakthrough across a major realm in one go."
As Xin Yu made this sarcastic remark, he paused for a moment. What the hell? Had he been practicing the Great Thousand Record? Resorting to self-harm to deal with enemies.
Xin Yu shook his head. Better forget about such a scenario. Just thinking about it sounded incredibly painful. He wasn't a madman, why would he self-harm? If he couldn't win, he'd just run.
But if there are people behind you whom you must protect, would you truly not do so?
The numbness throughout Xin Yu's body finally subsided. He stood up from under the tree and stretched his limbs. After ensuring there were no issues with his movement, he immediately went to the shallow pit.
What had initially been a few mouthfuls of blood had, in the short few minutes Xin Yu had spent sitting aside to recover, already formed a pit half a meter deep, containing at least a liter of blood.
Xin Yu placed his hand into the strange blood. The blood, like sentient slime, climbed up his arm and eventually merged completely into his skin.
Only the half-meter deep, forty-centimeter wide shallow hole, devoured out of the ground, remained.
"Devouring matter, assimilating it, and transforming it into a part of myself... This also symbolizes the inherent assimilative nature of the Void itself..."
After a moment of contemplation, Xin Yu coughed, then, after brewing it for a while, spat a large glob of saliva onto the ground.
He squatted down, observing the saliva on the ground. After waiting silently for a while and watching the saliva slowly increase in volume as the ground beneath it began to sink, Xin Yu's eyes instantly turned into a pair of dead fish eyes.
After collecting the saliva on the ground in the same manner as his blood, Xin Yu stood up and looked at the sky, somewhat speechless.
"What in the world have I become? I can understand the blood, but why has even my saliva acquired Void characteristics! This is bad, I need to recall if I've ever randomly spat or expectorated before. Otherwise, a world might be destroyed just because I spat on the ground somewhere?! A world destroyed for such a reason would be too ridiculous, not tragic at all!"
After venting his emotions through these sarcastic remarks, Xin Yu let out a sigh of relief. Fortunately, fortunately, he was a cultured and civilized young man who had never done anything like spitting on the ground.
He had also been worried about his blood causing undesirable consequences before, so he had reabsorbed the vomited blood, thus avoiding any trouble.
That was truly terrifying.
Xin Yu now felt absolutely no sense of accomplishment from having traveled through time to save someone. Instead, it was an inexplicable, bizarre feeling that had sapped his once overflowing motivation. He even felt like finding a rock, lying down on it to bask in the sun, and just being a salted fish for a while.
And after a moment of silent contemplation, Xin Yu put his thoughts into action. He gathered some materials from nearby, fashioned a deckchair, and then silently lay down on it, beginning to enter a Void state.
He gave up thinking.
When he snapped back to reality from this state of slacking off like a salted fish, Xin Yu inexplicably found that the energy within his body had actually increased by a fair amount, even slightly faster than his usual persistent cultivation.
"...So, slacking off is also a part of the Void. And because I have embodied a part of the Void, the Power of the Path within me has strengthened, leading to an increase in my cultivation. After all this time, my previous diligent efforts in cultivation were actually me running in the opposite direction..."
Xin Yu had an epiphany. He now understood his future cultivation method: find an auspicious location, then become a dead salted fish that thinks about nothing. Anyway, his cultivation had already become instinctive; even if he completely gave up thinking, his body would instinctively absorb energy.
It looks like I'm slacking off, but actually, I'm not.
This too was a part of the Void, proving the characteristic that even mere existence can still bring about change.
"...Why do I get the same feeling as when Master taught me the Taixu Sword Ki, and I subsequently messed around with it... It seems I've messed with something strange again..."
Xin Yu stopped dwelling on this baffling and incomprehensible matter. After changing the deckchair he had been lying on back into ordinary soil, he began to fly up into the sky to see where exactly he was now.