After a thousand years of cultivation, he returns at the pinnacle!

The Apostle Realm, beneath the eternal dark golden sky.

On the second throne, Thran's eyes remained closed. His long, silvery-white hair cascaded over the shoulders of his pure white robe, swaying gently in the air, his posture as serene as a Buddha statue that had been in meditation for a thousand years. From the beginning of the meeting until now, he had not uttered a single word.

But his perception has never closed. His title is "Mirror of Nothingness," and his law is "Reflection"—reflecting everything that has existed, exists, and will exist. He can see without opening his eyes, arrive without moving, and make everyone hear his voice without speaking. Three hundred years ago, the Apostle descended to earth, and all the secrets of human civilization—the number and weaknesses of the Awakened, the military deployments of various countries, and the defense systems of every city—all originated from his reflection. He is the intelligence core of the Apostle realm, the most silent yet most indispensable of the thirteen Apostles.

At this moment, he closed his eyes, reflecting the image of the boy who had just killed Astra.

Her silvery-white eyelashes trembled slightly.

"I've seen him," Thran said. His voice was soft, as soft as the wind blowing across a dry riverbed, yet it caused the dark golden light in the entire void to pause for a moment.

All the apostles' gazes focused on him at the same instant. Baal's black pupils stopped flowing, Mephisto's deep purple pupils contracted slightly, and a subtle ripple appeared at the edge of the black hole in Morgana's eye socket.

"Jiang Chen. Seventeen years old. From Jiangzhou, Dragon Kingdom." Seran's voice was unhurried, each word precise as if cut with a ruler. "On the day of his awakening, he was judged to be powerless. That afternoon, he was hit by an out-of-control car and hospitalized with minor injuries. That night, his consciousness was no longer in this world."

He paused for a moment.

"His consciousness went to a higher-dimensional universe. There was no spiritual power, no core of laws, no origin of the void. There was only the Heavenly Dao, only true essence, only cultivation. He lived there for a thousand years, cultivating from the lowest level of mortal to the pinnacle of that civilization. Then, his consciousness returned. A thousand years in that world was only one night here."

A moment of silence fell over the void. Then, Baal let out a low, rumbling laugh that seemed to roll from the depths of his chest.

"A thousand years?" His voice was rough, like the friction of volcanic rock.

"That's interesting. How long have I lived? I can't even remember. Three hundred years? Five hundred years? Or a thousand years? Does time even matter to us?"

His dark eyes began to surge again, his short, fiery hair burned silently on his head, and from the vertical crack in the center of his chest, a dark golden light pulsed intermittently, like a heart gathering strength.

"He cultivated in that so-called immortal civilization for a thousand years, becoming a so-called Immortal Emperor. Then he came back and killed Astra." Baal's lips curled into a wild smile. "And then? Astra died because he relied too much on that Reversal Law. For three hundred years, he never encountered an opponent who could truly threaten him; the core of the law had long since dulled. I fought him three times, losing every time, but I managed to injure him every time—guess why? Because my War Forge grew stronger with each battle, while his Reversal Law became slower and slower. He didn't lose to Jiang Chen; he lost to his own three hundred years of complacency."

Her black emptiness turned toward Thran.

"Thran, you projected his future, didn't you? What did you see?"

Thran remained silent for a long time. So long that the other apostles thought he wouldn't answer.

Then he spoke. His voice was softer than ever before, as soft as a sigh.

"I cannot reflect his entire future. The True Essence System is outside my scope of reflection; his destiny is shrouded in a fog I cannot penetrate. But I have reflected something else."

He opened his eyes. Those eyes had no pupils, no irises, no color. Within their sockets lay only a pure, absolute, boundless void. Stars were born, burned, and extinguished within them; time flowed, reversed, and stood still within them.

"I have considered every single one of the proposals you just put forward."

His gaze—if that void could be called a gaze—slowly swept over Baal, Sorgol, and Mephistopheles.

"Baal's War Furnace lasted less than ten breaths against his sword domain. It wasn't that he lacked power; it was that he had deciphered the War Furnace's legal structure. He took three breaths to find the resonant frequency of your core laws, and then seven breaths to dismantle it from within. You weren't shattered by him; you were killed by the backlash of your own accumulated power."

Baal's dark pupils suddenly contracted.

"Sorger's spatial labyrinth was solved in a simpler way than you expected—he didn't break through it layer by layer. He forcibly created a passage between the core and the outer space of your labyrinth using his true essence, and then walked directly in front of you. Your spatial folds, in his eyes, were not a labyrinth, but a straight line."

The runes in Sorger's eye sockets stopped flowing.

"Mephisto's Mirror Law did indeed replicate his appearance, memories, and abilities. But you cannot replicate his Dao Heart. That is something he honed through a thousand years of battles in another universe; it does not belong to the spiritual power system, the law system, or even the concept of 'existence' itself. The 'Jiang Chen' you replicated only possessed his true essence and swordsmanship, but not his Dao Heart. The real Jiang Chen only needed three sword strikes to cause your replicated image to crumble from the very beginning of its existence. Because the moment that image saw his true self, it asked itself a question—'Who am I?' It could not answer. A mirror image that cannot answer 'Who am I' does not even have the right to exist."

Mephistopheles' deep purple pupils reflected the endless emptiness in Thran's eyes. The smile on her lips vanished completely.

Thran closed his eyes. The void vanished, and the void returned to its eternal dark gold.

"I am showing you these things not to undermine your faith. Quite the opposite."

His voice regained its extremely soft and distant calm.

"Jiang Chen is very strong. His True Essence System, his Sword Domain, and his Dao Heart are all things we haven't encountered in the past three hundred years. Astra's death at his hands was not unjust. If you had used the same methods you just used to face him, you would have died too, and even faster than Astra. Because at least Astra allowed him to unleash his Sword Domain. You didn't even have the ability to make him take things seriously."

In the void, none of the apostles spoke. Baal's black eyes surged, but more violently than ever before—not with fear, but with the pure, burning battle intent that surged from the depths of a beast's marrow after confirming its prey's strength. The runes in Sorger's eye sockets began to circulate again, several times faster than before, countless new spatial formulas generating, deducing, and verifying within his core of laws. Mephisto remained silent, something slowly rotating deep within her deep purple pupils, like a mirror adjusting its angle, attempting to reflect an existence she had never seen before. Morghana's lips curled slightly upward, revealing a cold, almost morbid smile.

"Interesting." Her voice was as soft as the wind whistling through a needle's point. "So interesting. For the first time in three hundred years, I feel—it's good to be alive."

Seran remained silent. He transformed back into the meditating Buddha statue. His long, silvery-white hair floated gently in the air, and his pure white robe shimmered softly in the dark golden light.

"But I want to tell you something equally important."

All the apostles’ eyes were refocused on him.

"Jiang Chen's strength is individual strength. He alone can kill Astra, Sorger, Baal, and Mephisto. He can walk through each Apostle's Temple and kill us one by one. But he can't kill all the Apostles."

His voice was as calm as if he were stating a fact that had already been clearly revealed.

In the void, Baal's black pupils ceased their surging. The runes in Sorger's eye sockets slowed their rotation. The mirror within Mephisto's deep purple pupils stopped spinning.

"He can't," Thran answered for everyone. "His true essence comes from the Heavenly Dao of another universe. That Heavenly Dao doesn't belong to this world. He can use true essence in our world because his body is from this world—his physical body is from Jiangzhou in the Dragon Kingdom, which is why his soul carries true essence. His power has an upper limit. This upper limit is the compatibility limit between his physical body and true essence. How much power did he use to kill Astra? Thirty percent? Fifty percent? No matter how much, that's not all of him. But if he were facing the Apostle Temple itself—facing the dimensional anchor point embedded in the void's origin when we descended into this world—the power he would need to use might far exceed the limits of his physical body."

His voice softened.

"That's the fundamental difference between us and him. No matter how strong he is, it's the strength of an individual. We are the strength of a system. Individual strength has its limits, but systemic strength has none. He can kill one apostle, he can kill two apostles, but he can't kill the apostle civilization itself. But we—as long as we still have a Temple of the Apostles, we will always have a chance to turn the tables."

He closed his eyes again, his long, silvery-white hair floating gently in the air.

"So, yes. Jiang Chen is very powerful and very special. He is the most special individual I have reflected upon in the past three hundred years. But he does not affect the status of the Apostles. Because the status of the Apostles is never based on how strong a particular Apostle is. The status of the Apostles is based on the facts that we come from a higher dimension, that we possess laws that humans in this world can never touch, and that our Apostle Hall is a dimensional anchor embedded in the origin of the void."

His voice regained its extremely soft and distant calm.

"He can defeat us, even kill us, on an individual level. But he can never replace us on a civilizational level. Because his civilization, his Dao, his true essence, do not belong to this world. He is just an accident—an isolated case from another universe. And we are the system."

There was a long silence in the void.

Then, Baal let out a deep, rumbling laugh that seemed to roll from the depths of his chest. The laugh was more unrestrained, more intense, and filled with a kind of long-suppressed excitement finally being released.

"Well said! Well said!" His dark eyes burned, and the dark golden light from the crack in his chest pulsed rhythmically with his laughter. "He's an isolated case; we're part of the system! He can kill me, but he can't kill an Apostle! So what do I have to fear?"

He suddenly stood up, his fiery short hair shooting up high on his head, turning the entire void a blazing white.

"Next time he comes, I'll stand before him and let him strike. Every time he strikes me, my War Forge gathers strength. Ten strikes, and I'll repay him tenfold. He can't kill an Apostle, but I can show him—an Apostle isn't someone he can kill so easily!"

In Sorg's pure white eyes, the speed at which the runes flowed increased again, but this time it wasn't tension, but a state of near-excitement, a high-speed deduction process.

Kahn looked at the crowd in front of him.

His lips twitched slightly.

The curve was so faint, almost imperceptible. But if someone could see it, they would recognize it as a smile. A smile that appears only when someone has suppressed their emotions for countless years, finally finding an opponent worthy of serious consideration.

Meeting adjourned.

His voice wasn't loud, but the entire void resonated the moment each word fell.

The dark golden light on the twelve thrones went out at the same instant.

Jiangzhou.

The sun had completely sunk behind the distant mountains, and the last rays of its golden afterglow were fading from the horizon. The streetlights in the neighborhood came on, their dim yellow light falling on the crooked locust tree by the flowerbed, casting a long shadow.

Ye Wuhen stood at the entrance of the residential compound.

He had been standing there for a while. From the moment the special plane landed at Jiangzhou Airport, to getting into the car arranged by the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, to the car stopping at the entrance of the residential area, to Chu Tianxiong asking, "Do you want me to go up with you?" and he saying, "No need," then opening the car door and standing here. He had changed into a clean white shirt, the cuffs rolled up twice, and his right hand still gripped the longsword, now only the hilt remaining. The binding rope on the hilt had developed a dark patina from the warmth and sweat of his palm. He didn't put it down.

He took a deep breath. There was a mixed smell in the air. The family on the first floor was stewing pork ribs; the aroma of star anise wafted from the kitchen window, mingling with the cooking fumes from the third floor and the sandalwood scent from the fifth floor, creating a unique ambiance belonging to this old residential building. He stepped into the complex.

Fourth floor. He stopped in front of an old-fashioned security door. A faded "Fu" character was pasted on the door, and below it, with transparent tape, was a small note with three words written in ballpoint pen: Jiang Chen's Home.

Ye Wuhen raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Footsteps came from inside the door. Then the door was pulled open from the inside.

Jiang Xueqin opened the door. She was wearing an apron and holding a spatula, with a few scallion pieces stuck to her apron. She froze the moment she saw Ye Wuhen.

"You..." Her voice was a little strained.

"Is Jiang Chen home?" Ye Wuhen asked, his voice calmer than he had expected. "I want to see him."

Before Jiang Xueqin could answer, a lazy, hoarse voice, as if she had just woken up, came from the direction of the living room.

"Mom, who is it?"

Footsteps approached from the living room. Jiang Chen emerged from behind his mother. He was wearing a white T-shirt and gray athletic shorts, his hair was a little messy, and his eyes were half-open, clearly indicating he had just gotten up from the sofa. A trace of drool remained at the corner of his mouth from his afternoon nap, and there was a red mark from the sofa cushion pattern on his left cheek. He walked to the doorway, stood beside his mother, and glanced at Ye Wuhen.