Li Yun cupped his hands. “Senior, please give me your guidance.”
He did not waste another word. His previous battle had taught him an important lesson: if he let the Verdant Sword Sage act first, the fight would be over in an instant. So Li Yun attacked before the man could even stand up.
Six thousand precious swords burst out at once with an astonishing speed. Compared with three months earlier, the whole formation moved at least three times faster.
The swords crossed the space so quickly that they left only faint afterimages behind them, and almost instantly the formation appeared in front of the Verdant Sword Sage as all six thousand blades came down together.
“Oh?”
The Verdant Sword Sage looked a little surprised, and then he smiled.
“So that’s your plan. You mean to beat me with speed.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately, speed alone won’t work.”
He raised one hand gently, and an invisible ripple spread outward. A strange field immediately formed around him, covering an area several dozen feet wide.
The moment Li Yun’s sword formation entered it, everything changed. The six thousand swords stopped completely and hung motionless in the air. Not a single blade moved another inch, and it was as if the entire formation had been frozen inside a painting.
Li Yun’s expression changed. ‘A Temporal Domain?’
The Verdant Sword Sage slowly got to his feet.
“It was a good idea,” he said calmly, “but speed by itself can’t beat me.”
Li Yun’s gaze turned extremely serious. Until now, he had focused almost entirely on the guardian’s offensive ability, which on its own had seemed nearly impossible to overcome. Now he had found out that the man also had an equally terrifying way to defend himself.
He used the Temporal Dao to attack and the Temporal Domain to defend, which meant he had almost no obvious weakness. If Li Yun’s attacks could not even move once they entered the domain, then what good was more speed?
The Verdant Sword Sage took the three-foot sword from his back.
“Go back and cultivate a while longer.”
Then he swung it casually. A snow-white streak of Sword Qi crossed the air, and Li Yun had no time to react before it struck him. The Everlasting Pagoda immediately reconstructed him outside.
“He’s out!”
Thousands of cultivators turned toward Li Yun at once.
“Did he do it?”
“Did he clear the third floor?”
Their faces were full of anticipation, and then they noticed his expression. Li Yun stood there in silence with a solemn face, and his eyes seemed unfocused. The crowd’s excitement faded quickly.
“He failed?”
“He actually failed?”
Disbelief spread through the gathering. Li Yun had shown the greatest talent Chronospace Island had seen in countless years, and his strength had risen at a frightening pace over the past three months, to the point that even Yuan Zhenhai could no longer hold him down the way he once had. Yet he had still failed.
Yuan Zhenhai’s expression changed as well. He understood Li Yun’s current strength better than almost anyone, since they had fought more than a hundred times.
In his view, Li Yun had already pushed his combat power almost to the absolute limit possible at his level, and there seemed to be hardly anywhere left for him to improve without raising his cultivation.
Yet the third floor had still beaten him. Yuan Zhenhai’s heart sank. If even Li Yun could not clear it, could anyone really do so?
An oppressive silence settled over the area. Thousands of people had gathered, yet almost no sound could be heard. Li Yun had become a symbol of hope. Even though his success would not free them directly, seeing someone pass the third floor would have proven that escape was possible. Now that hope seemed to have been shattered.
At last, one cultivator could no longer stand the atmosphere.
“Why is everyone acting like it’s all over? Li Yun only failed once. That doesn’t mean he can never succeed. Maybe he just needs more cultivation.”
He tried to sound optimistic, but even he did not look convinced. Everyone had watched Li Yun’s battles with Yuan Zhenhai and understood how powerful he had become.
At his current cultivation level, there seemed to be almost no obvious room left for him to improve. If he advanced to a higher realm, however, the Everlasting Pagoda would also raise the difficulty of his trial.
That created a terrible contradiction. Staying at his current cultivation limited his strength, but breaking through would make the trial guardian stronger too. To many people, this failure therefore felt almost final.
“Enough,” a weary voice said. “Maybe the creator of Chronospace Island never meant for anyone to leave.”
Another cultivator gave a bitter laugh. “I’m done cultivating. What difference does it make how strong we get? If we can’t leave this place, it’s all meaningless. Let’s go.”
One person turned away, then another followed, and more cultivators began to leave. The hope that Li Yun had stirred up over the past three months vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.
Many of these people had endured thousands of years of disappointment, so their hope had always been fragile, and Li Yun’s failure was enough to break it again.
Soon more than half of the crowd had left, and people kept leaving with every passing moment. Before long, less than a tenth of them remained, and several hours later, only a dozen cultivators were still near the Everlasting Pagoda. Li Yun had not moved.
“Li Yun?”
Yuan Zhenhai looked at him with concern. For half a day, Li Yun had stayed exactly where he had appeared after leaving the pagoda, with a distant gaze and a motionless body. To everyone else, it looked as though the defeat had dealt him a tremendous mental blow.
Yuan Zhenhai knew how dangerous that could be. Sometimes, the more talented a person was, the more damage an unexpected setback could do. A genius who was used to overcoming every obstacle could suffer terribly when he ran into something completely beyond his ability.
“I hope you get past this soon,” Yuan Zhenhai said with a sigh, and then he turned away.
Li Yun’s failure would not make him abandon his own path. Even if escape seemed impossible today, he would keep searching, because he intended to leave Chronospace Island one day.

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