Returning to the Mysterious Era

"My fourth time-travel… The third time-travel node of the Wind Elephant Ivory Pendant… Used up 2.9 units of time-travel energy…"

Cassius took a deep breath, his eyes instinctively shooting up to the display in the upper-right corner, showing that only 0.6 units of lingering attachment energy remained. Once this time-travel sequence ended and he returned to the real world, he would have to immediately find antiques with lingering attachment to replenish his energy.

The time-travel ability had become his ultimate trump card—a life-saving tool to be used in critical moments.

Cassius snapped back to reality, and surveyed his surroundings, as was his habit each time he time traveled. He found himself in a cramped wooden cabin with rudimentary facilities, furnished with only a few handmade chairs and beds. Outside, the last sliver of the sun's light was fading.

Instinctively, he tried to push himself upright, but a tidal wave of pain and weakness surged through him. The most intense pain radiated from his abdomen, a stabbing, drilling sensation that seemed to pierce his very core.

Cassius was confused. Was this pain a continuation of his real-world injuries? Perhaps his mind had not yet recovered from the pain?

He reached out and, with some effort, lifted the blanket. Beneath it was a frail, tortured body. It was like looking at a piece of pork ribs that had been soaked in water until it began to rot. The surface of his skin was covered in centipede-like scars and wrinkles, remnants of healed wounds. His physique was far from strong. In fact, he was so thin that his ribs jutted out prominently, forming deep grooves.

The most alarming part was his abdomen. There was a white bandage wrapped around it, and at the center of the bandage, a dark purple-red stain was slowly seeping through.

"No doubt about it. This body is definitely Li Wei's… he's been gravely injured," Cassius muttered, closing his eyes to sense the body's condition more clearly.

He could feel the body's life force flickering like a candle in the wind, on the verge of being snuffed out. Suddenly, a violent, tearing sensation erupted in his brain. It was as if knives were stabbing into his temples, twisting and churning inside his skull. The relentless stabbing pain was enough to drive anyone to the brink of madness.

Letting out a groan that was only barely stifled, Cassius pressed his fingers to his temples where the veins throbbed as if they were being burned by flames. "What's wrong with this body? It's so broken…" He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

He glanced at the upper-right corner, where the symbol of the Wind Elephant Tusk Pendant appeared. At his mental command, the emblem expanded instantly, flooding his mind with information.

Some people could change overnight, while others would take years. Without a doubt... Li Wei was a coward. He feared the night and even feared the dawn. The thing he excelled at was running away.

On the day his sister Li Chu was brutally violated, he cowered in a corner. On the night of the clan's annihilation, he shamefully fled. His feet weren't made for bravery, they were made for escape. He would run until he reached the edge of the world, and until danger and malice could no longer chase him.

But in life, there were always some things that could not be outrun. Even if they fled from that one moment, it would always endlessly torment them.

After the clan's massacre, as Li Wei himself put it, he lived in a nightmare that he could not escape from. It was his own doing and his well-deserved punishment. It was also a part of himself that Li Wei could never let go of.

In the aftermath of the massacre, the successfully escaped Li Wei wandered through life in a daze, like a walking corpse. He was like a stray dog, homeless and adrift. Of course, he didn't deserve sympathy. Even he believed that, too. And he lived like that for over a year.

Until, by chance, Li Wei saw his master, Lisa, again. Of course, it wasn't a resurrection—Dead Blood had taken over her body. The monsters that killed Lisa didn't even spare her corpse, desecrating it in a final act of contempt!

Li Wei could never forget that day. He felt a new kind of rage that burned his mind to ashes… He had never experienced such a feeling before. It was as though molten lava, not blood, was pumping through his veins, threatening to explode from his chest.

Sadness, regret, cowardice, despair—all of it vanished, leaving behind only pure fury. So after twenty years of weakness, he finally had one moment of courage.

Li Wei threw a punch at the monster that had taken over his master's body, but he was swatted away like a piece of trash. With such a feeble attack, he crumbled under the monster's overwhelming strength.

To the monster, Li Wei was like a lunatic vagrant—a filthy and insignificant human that was as appetizing as frog urine.

For the first time in his life, Li Wei had mustered up courage, only to be dismissed. However, the fire in his heart refused to be extinguished.

That night, curled up in a heap of trash, as he pondered his life, he decided that he could no longer run. The world wasn't boundless; a fleeing horse would eventually be driven to the edge of a cliff with no way out.

He had awakened. Five years too late, but an awakening nonetheless.

Though it was too late in many ways, he wanted to believe he still had time to avenge those wronged. Gradually, Li Wei gained the courage to take up arms.

First, he needed to pick up his sword and shield. The Wind Elephant Covert Martial Arts—the will of the wind, the legacy of the elephant.

Li Wei began to change. He understood the overwhelming strength of those monsters and his own frailty. So he sought stronger and more effective powers in his training of the Wind Elephant Covert Martial Arts.

During that time, he visited many martial arts schools of various sects in the southern Covert Martial Arts world and even retreated to remote mountains to train. Where there's a will, there's a way. Li Wei broke through the limits of the human body and reached the realm of pugilist—a feat considered a miracle.

After gaining some power, Li Wei began investigating the Dead Blood's whereabouts while also searching for other mysterious forces in the world.

He knew his talents were limited, and that following a conventional path would likely never give him the power he needed for revenge. Therefore, he had to acquire more power by any means.

Thus, Li Wei joined a loosely organized group called "the Gate Organization."

The Gate Organization was mysterious and highly disorganized. It had a leader who was as elusive as a dragon, and the other members had no clear hierarchical structure. They were more like a trading platform, exchanging secrets and information amongst themselves.

Li Wei used Gate to exchange secret information, which helped him identify his target. Now, getting information was one thing; obtaining the power to act on it was another.

He ventured near the Mororensa Demon's Horn, the Ten Thousand Mountains, the once-in-a-century Eternal Island, and the Black Rain Manor only heard of from old legends. It took him several deeply challenging years to finally acquire the powerful abilities he sought: the forbidden techniques and dark arts.

Though those arts gave him tremendous power, they came with equally severe side effects. Some drained his body's lifespan with each use, while others inflicted terrifying mental repercussions, causing madness, schizophrenia, and excruciating pain.

He had fallen into the path of darkness and evil. However, Li Wei didn't care much about that. He had come to understand his purpose—revenge—and he would sacrifice everything for it.

For some, forgetting can be more terrifying than death, while for others, a goal could become more vital than life itself.

So began Li Wei's quest for revenge. However, the Dead Blood were secretive, with greater restraint and intelligence than most dark creatures. Li Wei could only continue his pursuit and wait for the right moment. Along the way, he hunted many other dark creatures.

He also met Shirley, a woman he should never have fallen in love with. Death came too easily for ordinary people. Shirley died, without warning, without a chance to say goodbye.

Shirley's final words to Li Wei were to bury her ashes in the place where he would finally have his revenge. To an outsider, Li Wei was undoubtedly a tragic figure. His misfortune was not just a result of his own cowardice; misfortune seemed to seek him out as well.

After losing Shirley, Li Wei threw himself wholeheartedly into his search for the Dead Blood. He encountered many battles, yet time and again, the trail went cold.

During this period, whether intentionally or unintentionally, he saved many people. Toma, a boy, and Xiala, a girl, were two such orphans whom Li Wei briefly cared for.

In the blink of an eye, over ten years had passed since the night of the clan massacre. Now in his thirties, Li Wei relentlessly pursued the Dead Blood and fought them when he could, occasionally achieving small victories. However, he too had reached a state of physical and mental exhaustion.

The forbidden and dark arts Li Wei had acquired were not without cost. Some of the power was even borrowed, such as the sorcery totem he had obtained in the Ten Thousand Mountains.

Others had been stolen through any means necessary, and naturally, the guardians and heirs of those forbidden techniques eventually came looking for the thief.

The gaping wound in Li Wei's abdomen was inflicted by two shamans who hunted all the way from the distant Ten Thousand Mountains. At that moment, Li Wei was at his absolute lowest, both physically and mentally.

First, there was his unfulfilled goal—after more than a decade of searching, he still hadn't avenged his clan. Second, there were countless enemies, not only dark creatures but also the wielders of forbidden techniques. And finally, his power had started to wane, and he could no longer make any other progress.

Had Li Wei followed a regular path of Covert Martial Arts training, his limited aptitude would never have been enough to achieve the strength he needed for revenge. He had no choice but to turn to dark arts and forbidden techniques—and accept their devastating side effects.

This was not a sustainable solution. Those arts drained his lifespan and his mental capacity. If not for his body's ability to barely reach the second-level accelerated blood flow, he would have died long ago. Now, his body had limited potential and with so many powerful enemies surrounding him, Li Wei was on the verge of falling into despair once again.

The recent moments of his pain and struggle flashed before Cassius's eyes before he slowly opened them.

"At least, this time, you're not being a coward, Li Wei. Those who can see themselves clearly are never truly weak…" He sighed, understanding why his body was so frail, and slowly wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Cassius's present situation wasn't much better. It was, without a doubt, the most challenging of all the time-travel jumps he had experienced, though Li Wei in his third-stage neo-human form wasn't exactly weak.

As Li Wei's potential had been almost completely drained, the world became a much more dangerous, difficult place.

Cassius had a superior constitution, but Li Wei's original body only had an average constitution, making any further advancement significantly more difficult.

Although the reliance on dark arts and forbidden techniques had provided powerful short-term combat abilities, they had also nearly exhausted his body's potential, making it harder to improve. Li Wei now suffered from numerous side effects, like the splitting headache and extreme weakness Cassius had just experienced.

Sigh, this is worse than I imagined. Cassius forced himself to sit up. His frail back rested against the rough wooden wall.

He reached out his hands and lightly brushed his emaciated chest. There, etched into his skin, was a mark in the shape of a black coiled snake. The Rune of Wisdom had been brought into this timeline, so there was still hope.

With such formidable enemies closing in, Cassius knew his own efforts wouldn't be enough. He needed external help—though whether the Rune of Wisdom could save him remained to be seen.

Cassius was more concerned than confident. The Rune of Wisdom's best and most useful ability was triggering breakthroughs in bottlenecks, which was great, but he feared that no matter how hard Li Wei's body trained, it would never even reach a bottleneck. There was still hope, though it seemed far out of reach.

Moreover, the immediate crisis loomed ahead—Cassius was likely about to face an attack from dark creatures and the pursuing shamans. Frowning, he leaned against the wooden wall, deep in thought.

Night had truly fallen. The sun had set, and the moon had risen. Soft, white moonlight shone through the window, softly illuminating the small cabin and Cassius's body. A cool breeze swept through, bringing with it a faint, refreshing chill.

He covered his mouth, coughing uncontrollably. When he pulled his hand away, there was blood in his palm; it was a dark purplish-red, possibly a side effect of the forbidden techniques. In the moonlight, it emitted an eerie glow.

Cassius froze, keeping his head lowered. His eyes locked onto his right arm. It wasn't the purplish-red blood on his palm that concerned him, it was his wrist. There, a black artery ran through his forearm! It was writhing beneath his skin, like a worm.

"A mutation caused by radiation… How did it follow me through the time-travel?!"