The ongoing experiment with the infinite body continued without a hitch. The path to Immortal King took only a short few million years, but reaching Immortal Emperor was another beast entirely—a whopping trillion years. For Mike, who was barely a youth at not even a billion years old, it was a marathon of sweat and sheer will. He almost threw in the towel more than a few times, but in the end, he gritted his teeth and held on, hanging on by the skin of his teeth as time stretched endlessly before him.
The reason for the delay was simple: the difference in power between an Immortal King and an Immortal Emperor was like comparing a candle to the sun. Immortal Kings, as strong as rank 11s, were masters of complete laws, but Immortal Emperors, on the same level as rank 12s, were masters of universal law. The gap wasn't just a single step—it was the gulf between a mountain and the stars.
A rank 12 being could snuff out an endless number of rank 11s without breaking a sweat. Even the mightiest rank 11 was less than a flicker of dust caught in a hurricane, so insignificant it might as well have never existed. In fact, comparing them to atoms in front of a rank 12 being was giving them too much credit.
A single rank 12 could exterminate every rank 11 being in existence. It wasn’t a matter of numbers. The gap was immeasurable. Given that, it shouldn't be surprising that it took Mike so long to cross that yawning chasm of strength. Not to mention, Mike's Immortal Emperor rank wasn’t just any rank 12—it was leagues beyond that of other newly promoted rank 12 beings.
...
A man with a long beard sat on a boulder, his black hair flowing down, skin pale as moonlight. His eyes, emotionless, stared ahead without a flicker of life.
This man was Mike.
Time hadn't just dulled Mike’s emotions; it had sanded them down until they were smooth, flat stones—cold, hard, and forgotten at the bottom of a deep, silent ocean. Even a decade can transform a person beyond recognition, but a trillion years? That was an eternity that could unmake a soul entirely.
"Immortal Emperor..." He closed his eyes and sighed, the word falling from his lips like a heavy stone sinking into the water. Not a trace of excitement gleamed in his eyes; his mood could be summed up with two words: dead inside.
Desire and emotion were distant memories. For the last few hundred billion years, Mike had lived like a machine, doing martial poses out of nothing but habit—no purpose, no reason. Revenge? Fun? Such things were relics of a past life, echoes from a world long gone.
People deal with time in different ways. Some become crazed, some harden into steel, and others—like Mike—become something entirely alien. For most immortals, time is a relentless tide that washes away all traces of emotion. The typical path to advancing in rank took so long that by the time most reached rank 10, they were more like robots than living beings.
Of course, advanced artificial intelligence could mimic emotions better than most humans, so even calling them robots was an insult to machines.
Lana, Zagronan, Jack, and a few others were the rare exceptions—people who managed to retain a shred of their original emotions. They had Rachel to thank for that. Rachel had lifted them up through the ranks without subjecting them to the boring grind Mike endured. They hadn’t gone through natural selection, and that made all the difference.
Take Lana, for instance. She was too unstable, too twisted to ever reach rank 10 on her own. Her rise to rank 13 was pure dumb luck. A chance meeting with Rachel, thanks to her closeness with Zagronan, had rocketed her up the ranks. If not for that, she’d be nothing.
Jack? He had a cheat system that made him a walking powerhouse, but without Rachel, he would've been sealed away by some higher immortal. As strong as he was, Jack’s early-stage abilities were nothing compared to those who could bind him forever.
And Zagronan? Without Rachel, he would have died in his first world, buried under a pile of corpses without a second thought.
Mike opened his eyes, stepped off the rock, and teleported away. He needed to get another loan now that his resources were exhausted.
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...
A trillion years had passed, and yet the southern continent remained eerily unchanged. The reason? Lana had preserved it like an ancient artifact, keeping it from evolving as the years ticked by. Without her influence, the place would've long been reshaped beyond recognition.
"Where is Master Black?" A voice like thunder boomed across the continent, shaking the heavens and the earth. Even the simplest creatures understood its meaning.
This was Mike’s voice.
After exiting closed-door cultivation, he couldn't find Master Black, hence the question. Back then, Master Black was a perfection-rank soul master with an infinite lifespan. Yet now, after a trillion years, he was nowhere to be found. Mike's martial domain had expanded beyond even the imagination of rank 12 beings, yet he couldn't sense Master Black. Obviously, something had happened.
A minute later, a man dressed in red robes came flying on a massive, fiery sword. Bowing deeply, he introduced himself, "I am Master Red. Your honor must be Lord Mike, the true ruler of the southern continent!"
Master Red was a peak eruption cultivator, quasi-rank 10, but standing before Mike, he may as well have been an ant bowing before a god.
"Where is Master Black?" Mike asked, his voice sharp, slicing through the air like a blade.
Master Red hesitated before answering. "He was taken to the royal palace to serve the queen."
"Fine, whatever. I want another loan." Mike waved his hand dismissively as if the details of the universe were beneath him.
Master Red, eager to please, handed over a credit card. "Certainly! Our queen has long prepared the funding."
Mike took the card, restocked his storage ring at the shopping center, and vanished. He had no other desires except to continue his poses. Years of doing nothing but martial training had twisted him into something less human, more machine.
Master Red let out a long sigh of relief. He’d worried that Mike might snap at any moment and wipe him out with a thought. Fortunately, everything had gone smoothly. Still, he remained bowed for a month straight, just in case, and only dared to stand when he was sure Mike had gone back into closed-door cultivation.
"Thank heavens," Master Red muttered. "The crisis is over." The sun seemed brighter, the world warmer. Mike wouldn’t be back for trillions of years. By then, Master Red would reach rank 10 and leave this cursed place behind.
...
"Again!" Lana shouted, a playful smirk on her face.
The black cat leapt, doing its best to snatch the small fish from Lana’s hand but, as always, fell short.
Lana laughed. There was nothing she enjoyed more than watching Master Black fail at the simplest tasks. "Come on, Master Black, just one more try," she teased, waving the fish tantalizingly above his head. "You know you want it!"
"Okay, fine, here you go!" She finally tossed the fish down, and Master Black pounced, devouring it hungrily. It had been days since she’d last fed him.
A few hundred billion years ago, when Lana had been bored out of her mind, she decided to make a pet out of her most loyal agent in the southern continent. She turned Master Black, a once-proud dark beast, into a harmless black cat, stripping him of his intelligence and destroying his cultivation.
For countless years, Master Black had served her well in his new form. But sometimes, even he made her angry—and that always earned him a punishment.
Lana was a loose cannon of a demon, as unpredictable as a summer storm. She did whatever tickled her fancy. Take 14 billion years ago, for example: she got bored and whipped up a virus that wiped out 99.9% of the mortal population without batting an eye. When the world was left in shambles, with species hanging by a thread and cities crumbling, she shrugged and decided to shake things up again. In the blink of an eye, she cranked up fertility by 100,000 times and repopulated the world in a few short centuries—just like that.
A few thousand years later, she came up with another harebrained idea: turning trees into people and people into trees. Because why not? And if that wasn’t enough, a couple of hundred years ago, she decided to swap animals and humans—just for the fun of it.
These were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Lana's antics. She had isolated pockets of the world, like the southern continent, where she ran her twisted little survival games and held experiments that would make your hair stand on end.
And don’t get started on her other pastimes—like turning herself into an average human woman just to seduce some poor mortal’s husband for kicks. Then, she’d flip the script, turning into a man to woo the wife. Oh, and the best part? She’d hold contests where the winners ended up on her dinner plate—literally.
As for her culinary tastes? Well, Elven meat was her current favorite. Not meat produced by the elves, but the elves themselves. She got a special kick out of devouring them when they thought they'd be having fun in a very different way. Watching hope flicker out of their eyes gave her the biggest thrill.
Then one day, with a gleam in her eye, she came up with another “brilliant” plan. “Let’s make a zombie virus, but with a twist!” she giggled to herself. "Anyone bitten can only be cured if they kill one of their own blood. Oh, it'll be a blast! Mothers killing their kids, kids killing their parents—it’s genius!" She patted herself on the back for the twisted idea.
But just as she was about to put her new game into play, a surge of power erupted from the southern continent. Mike had awakened.
“Oh, so he's out already? Damn, he’s hit rank 12, and stronger than I thought!” she muttered. “Looks like my little project will have to go on the back burner. Time to call Luther; I can’t fund this anymore."
Her fun would have to wait.