Chapter 0773: Opening the Temple of Time
Sitting in front of a dark gate for a few days, Duan Gantai suddenly stood up. His hands then created vague traces as he slammed them down.
A desolate aura immediately filled the entire space, mixing in with the yet-to-dispel fragrance of None-to-depend-on Wine. In the next moment, the gate started to open.
Duan Gantai, with an excitement-filled face, went into shock on seeing the things behind the open door. His ugly face couldn’t stop twitching.
He had developed a habit of grabbing any spiritual object regardless of its origination. It didn’t matter if it were Guardian Pills, Permanent Essence Pills, or even Starry Sky Spiritual Veins.
As long as he received information about it, he’ll do everything to get it. Whether it meant killing people, setting fires, deceiving people, even destroying families, Duan Gantai wouldn’t hesitate to do anything. For Duan Gantai, nothing else mattered apart from cultivation resources.
But even if he looted and pillaged huge amounts of cultivation resources till now, he had never seen such a shocking scene as it appeared in front of him. He saw Starry Sky Spiritual Veins, but even a Starry Sky Spiritual Vein couldn’t have made him feel this excited.
That’s right. Starry Sky Spiritual ‘Veins’. This room didn’t just contain one, but a bunch of them. He saw Starry Sky Spiritual Veins piled over each other like dragons coiling around each other. Just doing a rough count, he found no less than a hundred of them. He hadn’t even entered through the door, but the Starry Sky Essence Qi from the spiritual veins had already wrapped around him.
Even if he didn’t step inside, he could feel his cultivation improving with each breath.
The Guardian Temple, it truly contains many treasures. Moreover, this was just the entrance to the inner hall of the Guardian Temple. From his position, he also saw another gate at the deepest part of the Guardian Temple. There seemed to be a statue in front of it as if a gate guardian. But judging from what he saw, there had to be even more treasures behind the gate guarded by the statue.
Thinking of all this, Duan Gantai started boiling with excitement. He believed that after entering the gate, Ning Cheng, who made him always feel uneasy, would never catch up to him again. He couldn’t wait to see Ning Cheng again after this. Not to talk to Ning Cheng, but to crush Ning Cheng with his momentum, so that Ning Cheng would never go against him, Duan Gantai.
……
At the same time, under the Ice-crystal Forest within Time Wilderness. It was Ning Cheng’s second time standing before the triangular-shaped ice-crystal gate of the Temple of Time.
The first time he had come here, he didn’t have the three Perpetual Moon Time Keys, and forcibly tried to break it down with the Nirvana Spear. But the Temple of Time’s gate erupted with a terrifying wave of flowing time that almost took his life. If not for the Mysterious Yellow Bead, he would have fallen in this place.
Ning Cheng took in a deep breath and stood in front of the Temple of Time’s triangular-shaped gate. But before Ning Cheng took in a deep breath, he took out the three Perpetual Moon Time Keys and gently waved them out towards the door.
The three Perpetual Moon Time Keys flew out as if they had eyes of their own and aligned themselves with their respective keyholes.
The next moment, the three Perpetual Moon Time Keys disappeared into the black, white and grey keyholes causing the Temple of Time’s ice-crystal gate to flash with a black, white and grey light. It felt as if the passage of time had taken a physical form, as the black, white and grey colours began to flow. It then gave a burst of light rays filled with Dao Charms. The triangular ice-crystal gate seemed to open at this moment, and then also close up at the same moment.
Ning Cheng, however, didn’t seem to see the Temple of Time’s opening and also didn’t seem to care about the Temple of Time’s door closing. At this moment, he had unconsciously immersed himself in the Dao Charm of flowing time. It allowed him to touch the Laws of Time once again, letting the passage of time to grow brighter and substantive within his consciousness. Ning Cheng completely forgot that he stood at the entrance, he even forgot that he came here to enter the Temple of Time.
Years seem to flow by like flowing water before his eyes, but it all felt substantive as if he could just reach out with his hand and catch the flow of time.
“Life within heaven and earth; passes by like a white colt….”
Since the realisation of the spirit technique ‘Dusk’[1], this sentence had given Ning Cheng many revelations. But this time, when he immersed himself in the Laws of Time once again, he gained another brand-new understanding of this sentence.
Time was like a white colt that flashed by as it leapt over a gap to reach the other side. If one wanted to seize ‘time’, then one just had to grasp this ‘gap’.
This gap went by very fast, and this gap was also very short. But no matter the speed, as long as you can understand the essence of this ‘gap’, you can then grasp it. Even if the colt cannot see it, as long as it could feel this ‘gap’, it could reach into this ‘gap’ and seize it at any moment or even let it pass.
The Dao Charm flowing around Ning Cheng started to grow bright. One could vaguely begin to sense the formation of a Dao Charm Spirit Technique similar to that of the Temple of Time’s gate. However, this Dao Charm Spirit Technique felt slightly different from the Dao Charm Spirit Technique embedded in the Temple of Time’s entrance.
The Dao Charm Spirit Technique within the three-coloured Temple of Time’s gate started flowing more quickly. At the same time, the spirit technique’s Dao Charm began to fuse with the Dao Charm around Ning Cheng.
“Boom….” An explosion erupted within Ning Cheng’s Sea of Consciousness, and he opened his eyes.
Ning Cheng breathed out slowly. It was the third time he experienced an epiphany because of the Laws of Time since entering the Time Wilderness. However, although just touching upon the Laws of Time, Ning Cheng vaguely felt that the Laws of Time within the Time Wilderness weren’t perfect. Even if he understood all the Laws of Tine within the Temple of Time, it would still feel as if it lacked something.
To truly control the Laws of Time, he had to integrate what he learned into his understanding of time and change it again.
Looking at the Temple of Time’s gate, which still shone with three colours, Ning Cheng did not continue to perceive the Dao Charm of Time. He felt that he had already learned and understood everything that was to be understood. If he continued to study someone else’s understanding of the Laws of Time, it would cause him to deviate from his own Returning-to-one Dao.
Moreover, deep in his heart, he felt that all the Laws of Time in Time Wilderness were of low-level, and not the real Laws of Time of the universe.
Ning Cheng’s gaze finally focussed on the Temple of Time’s three-coloured ice-crystal gate. As he kept looking at the faint aura of flowing time, he saw the door open again and closing at the same time. He recalled that opening the door had forced him into a state of epiphany.
Ning Cheng took a step forward, raised his hand and waved it.
A Dao Charm filled with flowing time, invisible to the naked eye, gently blew by the ice-crystal gate of the Temple of Time. As Ning Cheng’s Dao Charm-filled ‘flowing time’ flowed past the ice-crystal gate, the three-colours on the ice-crystal door gradually slowed down, before finally stopping.
Ning Cheng then began counting before suddenly stopping and spitting out a blood arrow. At the same time, he also stopped moving his hands.
It’s not that he did not comprehend the full spirit technique, which could theoretically turnaround time. It’s just that he wasn’t strong enough to sustain it for more than a few moments. Moreover, he understood that he still did not have the power to reverse the flow of time, to let the triangular door return to the moment before it just opened.
The three-colours quickly faded and disappeared, letting the three keys fall to the ground.
Ning Cheng didn’t feel disappointed. He raised his hand once again and picked up the three keys. The three keys then entered the three keyholes on the Temple of Time once again.
The triangular-shaped ice-crystal gate, just like before, started to flow with a black, white and grey coloured Dao Charm. Just a moment later, the triangular-shaped ice-crystal gate opened once again.
But before the triangular-shaped ice crystal gate ‘closed’, Ning Cheng raised his hand and manifested a seemingly profound Dao Charm.
After Ning Cheng cast the Dao Charm Spirit Technique, it connected with the ice-crystal gate. It forced the Dao Charm’s flow over the ice-crystal door to slow down once again.
The time around the door still kept flowing, but the flow on the triangular-shaped ice-crystal gate paused. It’s as if a barrier split the two into two different worlds.
This ‘pause’ was like a gap for the white colt to pass. If one didn’t take advantage of this gap, this gap would pass by in the blink of an eye.
But this gap was more than enough for Ning Cheng. When time paused, he stepped through the Temple of Time’s gate which had not yet closed.
When Ning Cheng entered through the Temple of Time’s gate, the three colours on the ice-crystal gate of Temple of Time started to flow once again. It felt as if this door had never opened at all. The only thing different was that Ning Cheng, who stood outside the door a moment ago, now stood on the opposite side of the door.
“Ding….” Ning Cheng had just entered the Temple of Time when the three keys fell in front of him.
The other side of the Temple of Time’s gate looked precisely like the outside, with the same three keyholes. He had opened the door from the outside. But after he entered the Temple of Time, the keys also fell in.
Ning Cheng picked up the three keys and felt a little speechless about the Temple of Time’s creator. Facing that mighty gate, even if one had the three Perpetual Moon Time Keys, it wouldn’t matter. Without comprehending the Laws of Time, one couldn’t open the door at all, let alone enter.
If he had known about it earlier, he would have let Duan Gantai give it a try first. In any case, Ning Cheng didn’t believe that Duan Gantai had prior experience with the Laws of Time.
In any case, Ning Cheng felt quite happy with entering the Temple of Time. However, he couldn’t see any treasures. Wasn’t the Temple of Time supposed to be a place filled with treasures?
Therefore, after Ning Cheng scanned the Temple of Time with his eyes, he then scanned it more thoroughly with his spiritual consciousness. Very quickly, however, his expressions turned ugly.
The Temple of Time, famous throughout the four grand starry skies, turned out to be just a circular chamber with an area of less than 20 square meters. But it contained nothing. Nothing at all, apart from the ice-crystal walls composed of array formations and random ice crystals.
Even the Starry Sky Spirit Qi inside wasn’t any different to the outside.
Ning Cheng frowned. If the Temple of Time was this bad, he shouldn’t have even bothered to come here.
He had gained a deeper understanding of the Laws of Time Spirit Technique at the Temple of Time’s triangular-shaped entrance. However, this kind of enlightenment was just icing on the cake. Even if he didn’t come to this place, his understanding of the Laws of Time would have eventually reached this level by itself.
Ning Cheng felt quite disappointed at such a turnout and looked around the Temple of Time a few more times. But even after using his spiritual consciousness to scan everything for over an hour, he couldn’t find anything. In the end, he finally came to a stop once again at the triangular-shaped door. It looks like the Temple of Time was a misnomer. There wasn’t anything good here except for the Laws of Time embedded in the door.
It meant that the benefits one would obtain from the Temple of Time weren’t even comparable to those one could get from the Sea of Twilight and the ice plains ravaged by time wheels. At least in those places, one could still obtain some Time Stones and other treasures.
Ning Cheng took out the Perpetual Moon Time Keys again and decided to leave this place. He sent the three Perpetual Moon Time Keys into the keyholes in the Temple of Time’s triangular-shaped entrance. It once again lit up like the time when Ning Cheng came in, and the Dao Charm once again began to flow over the Temple of Time’s gate.
But to Ning Cheng’s surprise, he didn’t see the Temple of Time’s door open despite sensing the almost substantial flow of time. Moreover, this time, the flow felt completely different from the flow of time he had detected before stepping inside the chamber. Previously, the Laws of Time he comprehended felt soft and elusive, almost fleeting. But this time, it felt sharp and violent, like a fierce and ruthless blade.
Although it was not Ning Cheng’s first day to come in contact with the Laws of Time, it now felt as if he had never perceived the Laws of Time.
[1] ‘Dusk’ and ‘Sunset’s Twilight’ are the same spirit technique despite the different words. Old Five switches the wordings for the technique every few chapters.