The passage of years, a fundamental law, held sway over all creation. While myriad beings might grasp its existence, few truly comprehended its depths. Even those who did could only glean a mere understanding of its underlying essence. Long ago, upon the Vermilion Bird Star, Wang Lin encountered a figure whose very being resonated with the power of ages.

Even then, Wang Lin sensed the formidable nature of this temporal essence. Even Cloud Sparrow, powerful as she was, regarded it with great interest. Truly, on the entirety of Vermilion Bird Star, only this one individual possessed such a profound grasp of the flow of time.

Now, the words of the Blood Dragon Ancient echoed, and upon its form manifested a power far exceeding mere temporal essence. This was something altogether different, a raw, untamed force, a rule made manifest! And this rule was governed by the Blood Dragon, wielder of this forbidden art.

Under the oppressive weight of this age-binding rule, the entirety of the Voidlands was enveloped. Within the emptiness, a band of Roaming Heaven cultivators flew cautiously, ever vigilant against the dangers around them. Numbering several score, they believed themselves capable of holding their own, provided they did not encounter any of the more formidable Ancient Qi Refiners.

But as the power of ages swept through them, a tremor ran through the body of the youngest among them, a youth who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, though his true age was likely far greater.

His trembling was involuntary, as if a chill had risen from within his very bones. Slowly, imperceptibly, fine lines appeared on his once smooth skin, wrinkles that multiplied and deepened with alarming speed. He felt a weariness creeping into his soul, his cultivation faltering as if burdened by an unseen weight.

All of this transpired in the blink of an eye. A moment of confusion, then faint cries reached his ears from a great distance, cries filled with terror.

He attempted to turn his head, but his limbs felt heavy and unresponsive. Even so simple an action felt labored.

“What… what is happening to me?” The youth’s vision blurred, the clear world around him obscured as if by a thick mist. He raised a hand, rubbing at his eyes, hoping to dispel the haze.

Perhaps the action had some effect, for his vision cleared momentarily. He saw his companions pulling away from him, their faces etched with horror and fear.

He saw the maiden to whom he had secretly pledged his heart, now standing at a distance, her face contorted in terror, all trace of affection gone.

His gaze fell to the hand he had used to rub his eyes, and his mind reeled. It was a hand withered and wrinkled, covered in age spots, the hand of a man nearing his death.

“This…” The youth trembled violently, his shaking limbs hardly able to lift his hand to touch his face. He opened his mouth, a scream of terror building within his throat, but the sound never escaped. It was forever trapped within his rapidly decaying body.

His eyes dimmed, losing all semblance of life. Before the horrified gaze of his comrades, he withered and aged with impossible speed. His hair fell out, his teeth crumbled to dust, his bones turned brittle. In the end, even his skin could no longer contain him. He collapsed into a pile of dust, his flesh consumed by an unnatural and accelerated decay, dying of old age in a single instant.

The grotesque scene silenced the surrounding cultivators, surpassing even their wildest nightmares. Yet time, ever merciless, offered them no respite. Another of their number, a woman this time, began to show the telltale signs of rapid aging.

Soon, the decay spread, as if contagious, afflicting every member of the group.

In that moment, it seemed as though the heavens themselves had stripped them of their status as cultivators, denied them the centuries or even millennia of life that should have been theirs. They were stripped of all privilege, forced to endure the weight of those lost years in a single, excruciating instant.

This group of cultivators was but a single example. Across the vast expanse of the Voidlands, the same scene played out again and again. Regardless of their origin, those caught within the reach of the age-binding rule were doomed. Only the Soul Rend cultivators possessed the power to resist, but such beings were few and far between.

Each time a cultivator succumbed to the ravages of time, a formless energy emanated from their dying body, rushing towards the heart of the Voidlands.

Soon, countless streams of this energy raced through the emptiness, moving with a speed beyond the comprehension of mortal cultivators. As if they were part of the fabric of the universe itself, they converged upon the Blood Dragon, wielder of the temporal art.

As the death toll mounted, the energy grew stronger, flowing into the Blood Dragon’s body. The icy crystals that encased it began to crack and crumble, its form imbued with a newfound vitality, causing the frozen prison to shatter.

The Eight Kings of Corpse Yin Sect, untouched by the effects of the temporal art, pressed forward, their forms drawing ever closer to the Blood Dragon’s location.

In a direction opposite to theirs, Flame Thunder followed respectfully behind a black-robed elder. With each unhurried step the elder took, the Voidlands beneath him seemed to shrink, as if compressing the infinite distance into a single, infinitesimal point. This was not the integration with the heavens of a diminishing yard, but rather the reduction of space to nothing! He did not need to integrate with the heavens because the places he occupied where the heavens, even a realm was nothing more than a point!

He did not rush, maintaining a measured pace, his movements as fluid and natural as flowing water. Flame Thunder’s reverence deepened, for he was naturally sheltered by the elder’s strange and profound power.

As the age-binding rule enveloped the Voidlands, Wang Lin felt its presence as well. But his body, crafted from ancient stone, hewn from the very moon at its birth, stood defiant. The passage of ages was meaningless, for without the winds of change, stone remained stone.

He moved forward, a silent witness to the tragic fate of the cultivators who crumbled to dust around him. “Without the power of cultivation, without our skills, we are but mortals after all…” Wang Lin mused, though his pace never faltered.

“Had I come in my true form, I would have shared their fate… How ironic that a cultivator, having spent millennia honing his skills and comprehending the laws of the universe, is no match for a simple stone…” Wang Lin shook his head, witnessing the scene unfolding before him. He gained a new understanding of the meaning of Dao.

At the heart of the Voidlands, the Blood Dragon absorbed the energy of countless fallen cultivators, and the blue ice that imprisoned it shattered.

The dragon raised its massive head and roared into the heavens, its voice echoing across the void. Above it, a colossal vortex appeared, swirling endlessly with a deafening roar. A cold, disembodied voice emerged from within the vortex, its echoes reverberating through the Voidlands.

“I await your arrival!” As the voice faded, the black-robed elder halted in his tracks, a look of profound contemplation on his face. Flame Thunder remained silent, having heard the voice twice before, though this time it was clearer, filled with an immeasurable arrogance.

This arrogance scorned all rules and laws, disdaining even the very concept of heaven, yet Flame Thunder could not dismiss it. The power he had witnessed on Vermilion Bird Star, the single shot that could destroy stars, warranted such hubris. The Eight Kings of Corpse Yin Sect paused as well, their gazes fixed on the swirling vortex before them. They remained silent for a long moment, but soon their eyes gleamed with a mix of ambition and greed.

Wang Lin also heard the voice. He stopped, his eyes fixed on the scene before him, filled with a quiet defiance. Regardless of how powerful the person behind this was, regardless of how difficult the path ahead, he would never yield! “Many have sought my death, and yet, I still stand…” Wang Lin’s lips curled into a cold smile. He took another step forward. It was the truth.

At that moment, there were more than these few who still stood in the Voidlands. A number of Soul Rend cultivators had resisted the age-binding rule and were quietly approaching the center of the vortex from all directions.

And beyond the Voidlands, at the outer gates, those who had not ventured into the forbidden space were spared the temporal doom and lived to see another day.

Within the Ancient God’s Land, there existed one place that did not even belong to the Ancient God’s Land, for it *was* the Ancient God’s Land.

The statement may have been paradoxical, but it was the truth. The Ancient God’s Land, which had but a single entrance on Vermilion Bird Star, led to a spatial tear that did not belong to that star cluster. This tear was vast, large enough to contain the massive body of an eight-star Ancient God!

The Voidlands and the gates were all within the Ancient God’s body. Wang Lin, the Eight Kings, the black-robed elder, all were within the chest cavity of the Ancient God.

Within this silent spatial tear, the ancient body lay dormant for countless years. Within the fourth of the eight dim stars upon its brow, one could see, magnified an uncountable number of times, a single figure sitting cross-legged in the deepest recesses!

He was a middle-aged scholar, his face plain but radiating an aura of arrogance. He had sat there for eons, never moving. His name was Limitless…