Song Wei slammed the doors open. “I’ve brought your statue!”

Hui quickly fixed his robes and climbed off the throne. “Yes, yes. Thank you!”

Still sitting on the throne, Bai Xue clicked her tongue. “We barely even had time to get started.”

Song Wei glared at her, the silver mask hiding his face.

Without a word or hesitation, Bai Xue glared back. Murderous intent clashed between the two of them, all but sparking on the air.

A…anyways, let’s leave them to it, and I’ll focus on bringing back Ying Lin! Hui looked the statue up and down, only to frown at the dirt attached to the bottom. “Song Wei, how did you get this statue?”

“I took it,” Song Wei said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Er, took it… how?”

Song Wei smiled.

“You know what, I’d rather not know,” Hui muttered to himself.

Zhubi leaped off Song Wei’s throat and flew to Hui’s, quickly wrapping himself tightly as if to apologize for leaving. Hui gripped at him a little, choking. “Zhubi—help…”

Tian Lan flew over after Zhubi, going for Hui’s neck. Hui’s eyes widened. I’m going to die, I’m going to get choked to death for real!

Rearing up, Zhubi hissed at Tian Lan. At the last second, she diverted and wrapped around Hui’s upper arm instead, leaning up to nose Zhubi. Zhubi flicked her away with his tail. Only when he saw that Tian Lan wasn’t going for Hui’s throat did he loosen his grip on Hui’s neck.

Hui gasped. “Thank you, Elder Brother!”

Zhubi looked up at him and tilted his head, confused.

Drawing closer to the statue, he inspected it again. There’s the faint aura of the power of time, but… I’ve been wondering. Is that a bluff?

Most people don’t have many different types of barriers. If the Golden Immortal created the principles of the Inspectors’ barriers—the way a Senior or Sect Master would in a Sect, then I can probably use the same principles I used to attack that barrier to attack this one.

Well, it’s a reasonable starting point, anyways. Let’s crack it open and take a look!

Hui looked over his shoulder at Song Wei and Bai Xue, still feuding. “Can I trust you two to guard me while I break this barrier?”

“That’s a barrier?” Bai Xue asked.

“Fool. Anything is a barrier if Master says it is,” Song Wei countered.

“Er, can I trust you?” Hui repeated.

“Of course. Master can trust me with anything,” Song Wei declared.

Bai Xue thumped her chest. “I’m not your spouse for nothing! I’ll protect you.”

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Song Wei immediately whipped around and glared at Bai Xue, who grinned back.

I’m not really sure that I’m happy with the two of them going at it like this, but on the other hand, at least Bai Xue isn’t all depressed and sulky anymore. Hui nodded. He sat down on the floor, assuming a lotus pose, and immersed himself into meditation. Immediately, the barrier appeared in his mind’s eye, gold and bright. A powerful blast of the power of time washed over him, then faded. On the other side, he found himself facing a familiar barrier made up of large golden characters.

He took a deep breath and settled himself. Okay. Step one. Corrupt one of the characters. And when the self-repair feature comes out, that’s when I strike!

Drawing out his qi, he twisted it into a compressed thread and jabbed it at the nearest character. The character shimmered. It trembled, then darkened, slowly torn apart by Hui’s death qi.

Hui held his breath. He prepared to catch the shards of qi and reform them.

Just as it was about to fall apart, the power of time thrummed out from the character. All the corruption reversed, and the character returned to its beginning bright gold shine.

Hui licked his lips. Well. Fuck.

No, no. I guess I can’t be too surprised. It did have the aura of the power of time. And even if the Inspectors’ barriers are based on the principles of the Golden Immortal’s barriers, it isn’t too much of a surprise that they failed to fully comprehend the true form of his barriers and instead created a sort of halfway point.

Damn. Couldn’t have made it easy for me, huh?

Hui sighed aloud, then threw himself back into it. I can’t throw a tantrum just because I failed once. I’m going to defeat the barrier one way or another!

The power of time to roll back the damage. Do you have enough comprehension of the power of time to fight that directly?

No… no. I have enough for our purposes, but I can’t exactly… fine grained stuff is…

Understood. Then let’s find another angle.

Hui put a hand on his chin and sunk into thought. If I corrupt a character, the power of time undoes all my progress. Then… will the power of time not intervene until I’ve corrupted a certain amount of a character?

I won’t be able to fully break the barrier. Even if I corrupt all the characters to the maximum non-power-of-time-proccing level, it won’t be enough to break the barrier.

But do I need to break it? What if I lift it a little? Loosen it up? Ying Lin is alive. If I loosen it enough to wake her, she can escape on her own.

Hui nodded. Let’s try it. If it doesn’t work, in the worst case, I’m back where I am right now. Nothing lost, but I have the chance to gain something along the way.

Once again, he formed the thread. This time, though, he made a dozen threads, then a hundred, pouring all his death qi and phoenix fire into them until he had no more to give. He threw his hands out, spreading his threads over the surface of the barrier. Each thread hovered over a character, the threads lined up precisely with the characters in a neat grid. The threads’ sharp ends bobbed with the natural motion of the barriers.

Here we go. Hui dropped his hand. The threads hurtled down toward the characters. Black smashed into the gold, and the gold shimmered, building up energy to fight back. With all the characters attacked at once, the energy wavered, unable to gather enough power from its central power source to fix all the characters at once.

Of course, the second the power amps up, or if I let up, the gold power of time will erase everything. The power of time isn’t something I can currently fight back against… or at least, that this me can’t. This is my shot. My one chance. I need to overwhelm the barrier just enough to give Ying Lin a chance to break through!

Ying Lin, I’m counting on you!

“Yes!”

The characters trembled, decaying to the greatest extent they could before the power of time burst out. Hui clawed his hands and yanked them apart, tearing the characters under his control away from one another. A gap opened in the barrier.

A hand thrust out, reaching. “Master!”

Hui looked at his hands, holding the gap open. Even as he stood there, his arms trembled. The gold energy pushed against his hands, pushing them shut. He grit his teeth, thinking for a moment, then quickly swapped into lotus mode and grew a third arm. His third arm reached out to Ying Lin. “Quickly!”

Ying Lin clasped his hand. He hauled back. Even as he yanked, the gap slammed into his arms with its full strength. His grip slipped. The characters slammed toward Ying Lin like a guillotine.

“Ying Lin!” Hui shouted, terrified.