"Get back here, you scum!" a quite-wrinkly old man shouted in anger, sending spit in the air all around him.

The old man shot out beams of light from every part of his body, looking like a human-shaped kaleidoscope. The beams condensed the power of an 8th realm Nihility cultivator, only one step away from becoming a true divinity. The beams went almost as fast as the speed of light, and anything that obstructed their path was completely obliterated. Humans, beasts, spirits, nothing could stop those lights of destruction.

That's why I didn't even try to block them. Even if those lights could destroy me, if they don't hit me, then nothing will happen. We were in a race in the air, and I was trying to fly away as fast as possible from this crazy old man who wanted to kill me. I would've most likely been caught had it not been for the ring on my pinky finger. This ring, made of a special alloy and an extremely intricate pattern engraved into it, was the treasure that I had stolen from a sect nearby. The old man chasing me was the sect leader, an influential figure who was known to be one of the most powerful beings in this dimension, right under the Gods.

The ring itself was the sect treasure, created from the power of the now-deceased Time Divinity. It had many special features, and one of them was to increase your affinity with Time.  I could now see 20 seconds into the future with the help of this ring. It would've been nice if I could've kept this ring without attracting too much attention, but I was careless and now had to deal with the old man that could quite literally torture my soul for eternity if I wasn't careful and got caught.

There was absolutely no way I could escape now. I was also an 8th realm Nihility cultivator, but my power was still a bit lacking when compared to someone like the old man behind me. I didn't even know it was possible to reach such a level without becoming a God. You learn something new every day huh?

The ring on my finger glowed with a silver light as I channelled my power into it, sending it right behind me. The burst of power was even quicker than the old man's light, appearing as if it got teleported right in front of him.

"FU-" The old man tried to curse before he got frozen in time. It wouldn't last long, but long enough for me to do make one more move. There was another special feature that this ring gives the user. A one-time ability to go back in time. How far you went back was determined by how much power the ring obtains from detonating your cultivation base. Someone in the 4th realm Spirit Heart would be too weak to get sent back at all, and they would just detonate on the spot without any chance of survival. I only knew of this information because this ring has had many owners in the past thousands of years. I didn't know how far I was going to get sent back, and I knew I wasn't going to keep my cultivation. However, in life, there will always be setbacks. Cultivating back to Nihility will not be as difficult as it was in this life.

I took the ring off of my finger, holding it in my palm while gazing at the old man who was trapped inside of that stasis. I balled my right hand into a fist and shattered the ring into many pieces that bore a hole into my skin and freely went inside. The fragments of the ring settled in different parts of my body. My forehead and palms started sweating, and my entire body started rising in temperature. In no time, it felt as if five hundred suns were all packed inside of my mortal body. The wildlife that was in range of my body quickly dried up, and the once-moist air around me became unbearable to be in.

The old man broke out of the stasis just a few seconds after the detonation process had already started. He stared at me, not bothering to attack anymore. Instead, he sighed and slowly took steps in the air towards me, only stopping when he was within arm's reach.

"Even though I am unwilling, it seems that there's nothing I can do to stop you now. What is your goal in all of this? Is it more power? Or maybe you want to save a loved one? Well, it doesn't matter anymore." The old man said. He stretched out his arm and placed it on my shoulder, sending extreme amounts of power that made the detonation even more destructive than it was before.

"With your power level, you'd only be able to go back a few hundred years. With the addition of my power, you'll be sent back hundreds of thousands of years instead. I only have one request." The old man looked me in the eyes excitedly, his pupils even shaking a bit.

Usually the detonation process would have been finished by now, but the process cannot be stopped until the flow of power is completely condensed. In my mind, I was completely shocked at what the old man had said. My power can only send me back hundreds of years, but his power can allow for hundreds of thousands of years? The difference between us was that much? Without this ring, I definitely wouldn't have stood a chance. Going back that far, back into the ancient times, when the human race wasn't as dominant as it was now. It would be dangerous, extremely dangerous. Even if I said no, I couldn't just expel the power that had already flown through me.

"What is your request?" Eventually, I gave up on trying to think of another solution and I tried to hear the old man out.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"I would like you to take me along with you. You don't have to worry about the specifics, you just have to accept and it'll be done." Did the old man think I was a newborn? As if I haven't seen this trick used thousands of times, albeit not in this exact context. He would've probably tried to destroy my soul with his own, that was in fact far, far stronger than my own.

"No way, I will not allow you to destroy me so easily!" I shouted while trying to move my body to pry the old man's hand off of my shoulder. Sadly, my body was entirely constricted and I could only move the parts that didn't have condensed detonation power inside of them.

The old man seemed to have realized what I thought he was going to do. He looked at me with widened eyes and apologized, "I didn't mean it in that way. I swear on my true soul that I will not destroy your soul or body. We don't have much time left, even my own flow of power is starting to run dry. Do you accept or not? Quickly!"

I needed a few seconds to make a decision. He had sworn on his own true soul that he wouldn't try to possess me, which means that his intentions are different. Even if I didn't accept, I would still be sent back to the ancient times. Those times when beasts completely ruled the world.  I didn't even have a body to come back to, so how would I be returned successfully? There's no time left, I need to make a decision now!

"Fine fine! I accept!" At the very moment when I said that, the old man's flow of power had run dry. I felt parts of my body bloat up, and the power that exploded from the condensed power of both me and the old man caused a searing pain that led me to want to scream, yet I didn't have a mouth anymore. My body was disintegrating, and before it had fully disappeared, the old man took out another ring that had a similar aura to the ring that I had stolen. Just like me, he crushed it and sent his soul out of his body to take accommodation in my own.

My vision went dark, but with my senses I could feel myself moving. Not in the physical or mental realm, but in one that was far beyond my understanding. I felt that the further I tried to go back, the higher the pressure on my soul. The condensed power of detonation aided in relieving that pressure, allowing me to go even further back. Within my own soul, I could feel another one that was hiding within it. My soul felt the pressure from the old man's soul as well. Tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. The passage of time was something so grand it could only be managed by the Gods themselves. With this, I felt something in my soul change.  The power of a God, I need it.

Suddenly, I could feel my soul using some of the power of the detonation to recreate my body. The power of my soul and the detonation became dimmer, slowing my journey through the path of Time. Soon enough, I could see, hear, feel, taste, all of my senses had returned to me. Even though I could feel that my cultivation had been fully retracted, the strength and endurance of my body created from my soul and the detonation was on the same level as a 2nd realm Spirit Condensation cultivator.

Feeling the floor on my feet, I forcefully stabilized my body that was extremely disorientated. I expelled the old man's soul and opened my eyes.

Aside from the old man's soul that was slowly gaining a body using a different method than mine, it was too dark to see anything with my vision, but I guessed that we were in some kind of underground cave. The walls and ground felt moist to the touch, and the humidity in the air was quite high. The cave itself was not that big, and it could fit about 6 people comfortably. I allowed the old man to form his body without interruptions since he had already swore on his true soul that he wasn't going to destroy me.

There was a small opening in which I could see meagre amounts of light invading the cave, but it wasn't enough to actually be able to see anything. I couldn't even use my spirit sense because my cultivation was completely abolished and even my soul was weakened from creating an entirely new body for me.

"Old man, you done creating a body yet?" I asked into the darkness. The only reason I could tell the old man was even there was because of the whirlpool of spirit energy coursing towards the middle of the cave. Unfortunately, the spirit energy within was sparse and it would take the old man quite a while to construct a new body.

"Hmph! At this rate, it will take me 2 months to gather enough spirit energy. Boy, try to create an opening to the outside world so that more spirit energy floods in." The old man requested this of me, however it couldn't be done so easily. My body, even if it was far stronger than an average mortal, still wouldn't have enough strength to blast open a hole in the hard rock, I think that I would end up with broken bones instead. Plus, who's to say that the cave itself won't collapse on us?

"Don't you think I would've already done so if I could? This body has no cultivation at all. I can't even use my comprehension on the Law Of Destruction without obliterating this body into thousandths from the sheer power of Law."

"Juniors these days... they can't even escape from a mere cave."

"Look who's talking! Your cultivation is gone too, and you need a whole 2 months to reform your body."

"Your body wouldn't have been reformed even in 100 years if it wasn't for the power that I provided!"

"If it wasn't for you I would've been in my original body in the Celestial Mountain Sect!"

"There would be no point to it anyway. Do you really think it would've been that easy to surpass your original power in that time?" The old man said mysteriously, causing me to swallow the words I was about to say next. Instead, I asked what he meant by that, but he just said that I would find out in time.

Sighing in exasperation, I turned my mind back to how I could escape from this stuffy cave. There were 3 methods I could currently use, but each of them required the use of spirit energy, and I currently didn't have any of tha-

Eyes opening wide in shock, I felt the presence of a small amount of spirit energy inside of this body. It was a small amount, but the quality of that spirit energy more than made up for the quantity. If I could dilute that spirit energy, then I could possibly cultivate to a higher realm and get out.

With that information, I sat down and started working on the task at hand.