According to the message from her mother, what happened to her was the same bullshit story that can be found in any typical cliché cultivation novel. the mother was the daughter of the family head of a powerful clan on the most dominant continent, known as the Banana Continent, in this mortal world. The father, on the other hand, came from the low-level Apple Continent. The mother came to the Apple Continent for an outside experience to achieve a breakthrough in her cultivation. However, during her journey, she met the father and fell in love with him.
They had a child during this time, Tania. However some time after Tania was born, problems began to arise for them. For some reason, the mother's family started hunting them down, They wanted to kill Tania at all costs. In order to protect their child, the parents thought to sought refuge at the general's mansion. Unfortunately, they were ambushed on the route, but this time, the attackers were different from the mother’s clan; and they were there to kidnap the father.
With the father kidnapped by unknown assailants and no word about him, the mother came alone to the general. The general was an old friend of her father's, so the mother waited and searched for a year for the father while living in the general's mansion, hiding from her clan. Just as she was about to be discovered again by her clan, she entrusted Tania to the general, giving him many treasures in the hope that he would raise Tania and protect her from the mother’s clan while she fled to distract the enemy, she promised to come back after some time.
Sadly, the reunion never occurred, and the mother never returned. The exact reason for her and the father's absence is unknown; since the recording was from before she fled, Tania could only guess what happened to them.
As Tania looked at the treasures, something interesting caught her eye: it was a beautiful white artifact made of a special spiritual stone, shaped like a bowl containing golden sand. It had a dial on top at the right side of the bowl that allowed the sand to flow upward before cascading back down, completing a cycle. With her experience, Tania could tell at a glance that this artifact was designed to help in manipulating time for those possessing a special bloodline.
Most likely, the mother’s family possessed a unique bloodline that allowed them to somewhat manipulate the flow of time around them. However, this was not a complete treasure; it should have two dials and bowls, and this was only one part of it. The other part must be with the general, as the mother mentioned in the message stone that she had traded powerful treasures with the general to care for Tania. To bring out the full power and using treasures like properly would generally require a high cultivation level of at least the Spirit Transformation Realm, so the general could not possibly utilize its full potential with his low cultivation. However, even a fraction of the artifact's power would have made him a formidable force in this backwater place. Perhaps this was why the general had kept Tania alive—to obtain her treasures, knowing she would likely be aware of where her powerful mother had left them. But knowing she was deemed useless, he abandoned her.
Tania smirked while holding the treasure, thinking, "With this artifact, it will be much easier to track the location of mother." The part of the treasure with the general would go to Anna after she dealt with him. The other half would be used by her to locate the last user of this artifact, who was most likely her mother or a close relative of her.
Tania didn’t want to waste any more time this, so she directly used her primordial energy to invoke the artifact's memory. Being a time-related artifact, it responded more easily to her call. The artifact began to glow blue as she injected primordial energy into it. The flow of golden sand into the dial stopped, and the sand began to flow into the void, crossing the boundaries of space without breaking them. Within the void existed a place that was without time but all the time in the world existed there, it was filled with countless rivers flowing as the sand was, each river representing a different world They are called the river of time. They moved at their own pace, with no visible end, as time was infinite for the things it is flowing for.
Tania willed the treasure to connect to the river of time for this mortal world and begin its search for its last user. The golden sand flowed along a specific river, synchronizing with it. This would be impossible for any cultivator to achieve, but bending the nature itself was a talent of primordial creatures. Connecting a time artifact to the river of time was trivial thing for them. When she was the queen of the Divine Phoenix Clan in the Immortal World, she could easily travel to the time void where all the rivers of time flowed and connect herself to any river of time in any mortal world using her own body. Now, however, she had the ability to even alter the flow of a river of time in any mortal world. Generally, the most powerful beings from the Immortal World stand guard at this time void, and Tania didn't want to cause conflict with them until she ascended to the immortal world by herself, so she refrained from going to the time void directly. Instead, she concentrated on the artifact, allowing it to guide her.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
As Tania continued to channel her primordial energy, she felt the connection strengthen, almost as if the artifact was awakening to its purpose. However, after a brief moment, she noticed that the sand flowing along the river stopped at a point in it, looks like it has tracked the last user according to its memory. Tania then called the golden sand back to the artifact from the river of time and stopped injecting the primordial energy. Even in this short amount of time of injection of energy the artifact started cracking, it was not made for this type of work, it was made to only help the bloodline users in manipulating time. Tania had been very delicate into her use of primordial energy but the artifact couldn't withstand it. Tania hurriedly stooped the time around the artifact to prevent its destruction.
The golden sand had flowed with the river of time, along with the timeline of the last user, making it relatively simple to track that individual’s location. Suddenly, the surrounding spiritual energy surge again with Tania's order, and started merging with the golden sand. Now, the sand would create a direct path, flowing directly to the place where the user is right now across the void toward its destination, just as it had when it navigated through the river of time.
Tania observed intently as the golden sand flowed into the void, she teared the space and made a tunnel to directly follow the sand. Although travelling in the void don't take much time, the person travelling can sense everything outside the void. So after crossing many continents and oceans from within the void the stream of sand suddenly halted, but tania could sense that this was not the last location. Now her anticipation turned to irritation as she sensed that something was amiss;
She checked the place and found that the golden sand had stopped because a powerful barrier enveloped the final destination. The barrier was so strong that it even covered the void, it was something that should not exist in the mortal world but tania has seem many of these types of barriers and also have a lot of experience in making them herself.
Without wasting any time, Tania adeptly let her soul sense flow past the barrier, doing so effortlessly. Inside, Inside the barrier was a secret realm, a secret realm large enough to encompass ten Apple continents. The barrier was made to have the rules installed into the secret realm, like it controls the opening and closing time for this secret realm, and monitors everything that is happening inside the realm after its opening. The location of this secret realm is at the Banana continent, so it should be opening on the banana continent.
Having confirmed it was merely a secret realm, Tania entered it alongside the golden sand, but as soon as they arrived, the sands failed to continue their journey. Confounded, she assessed her surroundings and sensed that something was off her about this realm. This was a very unusual secret realm and there were a lot of factors that bothered her after coming inside the barrier. It was not just its sheer size; there was something within calling to her—a pull so powerful that it felt intimately familiar, as if she were the rightful owner of whatever it was and she has to take it for herself no matter what.
However, Tania was aware that primordial beings like herself could never be easily swayed by the trivial allure of a mundane treasure. So there were only two things possible: either the object truly did belong to her, or it was so powerful that it can mentally influence a primordial being at the heavenly realm. With that in mind, she decided to investigate the source of the call later, as there were more pressing matters at hand—namely, locating user of the artifact inside this secret realm. This secret realm was opened at least 16 years ago, so the being inside must be living inside this secret realm for 16 years as they should not be dead because time flowed for them and golden sand located their current location.
Tania carefully stored the artifact and exited the void, the place where she came out was a corner in the periphery of the secret realm. But this measly corner was also looking like a paradise with a lot of spiritual energy in the nature and in front was a forest with a lot of different beautiful trees. The trees were very big compared to outside of the secret realm with a lot of tasty looking fruit. If not for the trees and plants being man eating trees and plants and the fruits having strong poison and hallucination effect that make the consumer think that they were born for serving the tree whose fruit they ate and the tree is their god so give everything to the tree. Tania would have liked to make a picnic house in a place like this because of its beauty.
This shows that the secret realm is very dangerous for people of this continent and the beings living here must have considerable power among mortals. Although the secret realm was unusually big for a secret realm, it was not a problem for. Establishing a protective barrier around herself, she settled cross-legged in midair, after closing her eyes she solely focused on spreading her soul sense to the every corner of this secret realm.
Now, she had the capability to perceive everything within the secret realm, systematically scanning each living entity until she could pinpoint the user of the artifact.