On the island where Liu Xing had met Yin Feng, another notable man was present. The island was originally sacred ground for a sect that raised special flowers to nurture and awaken their bloodline. The sect had vanished long before the Wild Tide Region was plagued by the Nether Lotus Sect and the Mirror Tide Empire emerged. The sect was forgotten because it was insignificant in the grand scheme of the world. Only a few people knew about the sect, and among them, only one knew the true value of the flowers.

  In a cave, a mortal crouched in front of a little white flower. The mortal had black hair, black eyes, and tan skin from years of manual labor. On this island, he was the only one without power. Even some of the hidden spirit beasts—afraid of the battles raging on the island—could kill him.

  However, the man did not look concerned. He looked at the little flower and smiled. Then he touched it and felt it on his finger. It was cold, as if it were made of ice. He pulled out his tools and harvested the flower. His hands were full of calluses, proof that he often did manual labor. He harvested the flower as gently as possible. Once the flower was perfectly uprooted, he pulled a small vase out of his bag. This was a spatial bag, quite special and rare because it did not require qi from its user.

  When the flower was placed inside the vase, a handful of dirt materialized, as well as the nutrients and qi the flower needed. The flower, as if it had finally found the soil where it truly belonged, began to bloom wider. Its white color sharpened, but instead of getting colder, it actually became warmer.

  The Divine Sun Flower was said to be a flower that bloomed from an ancient god, and after more than one hundred years, the man had finally gotten his hands on it.

  After admiring the flower for a while, he put it in his bag. Then, he climbed out of a tiny opening, emerged from a spacious cave, and walked outside.

  The sky was dark, and the clouds swirled angrily, with lightning raining down on the island as if the clouds wanted to sink it entirely.

  The mortal man walked calmly despite the rain of lightning, the shaking ground, the shockwaves that tilted trees to the side, and the loud sounds. It was as if the man truly believed nothing would ever hit him, because it was indeed true. This mortal man was special; he would not be killed by a stray rock or smitten by a stray bolt of lightning. Only an attack with intent could move toward him, and even then, it would be hard for people to attack him since he was effectively invisible.

  Indeed, this mortal—who wore white and green clothes typically worn by the servants of the Verdant Mountains Sect—was shrouded by darkness. The darkness covering him was so thick, yet it moved around him with a certain motion, like a cage that did not want harm to touch him, or perhaps, a cage that did not want him to touch the world. If Liu Xing had seen him, he would have been alerted by the sheer amount and quality of the darkness he wielded.

  The man walked silently on the dirt path until the rain of lightning stopped and he found a newly created clearing. In this place, he saw nine corpses and one dying man. Seeing the dying man, the mortal took steps toward him until he was standing beside him, then he bent a little to observe the man’s face. His face was thoroughly scorched, his skin had turned to coal, and his breath was quite shallow. The mortal man had no qi, nor the ability to sense it; however, he was quite proud of his brain, and while he needed time, he soon recognized the man.

  This scorched man was the son of a prominent elder of the Verdant Mountains Sect. He was still young but had already reached the late stage of the Sun Refining realm. While he was not the best, he was not the worst either, and seeing him dying from fighting a Core Splitting realm cultivator was surreal. Though this mortal man, of course, had no right to be surprised by it, considering the mind-boggling number of cultivators he had killed despite being mortal. One time, he even successfully created and enacted a plan to kill a White Sun Cultivator on the verge of breaking through to become an Immortal, though if asked, he would say that he succeeded because of fate, luck, and his preparation.

  "Hm," the man said, pinching his chin as he looked toward the dying man. The darkness shrouded him so thoroughly that the blades of grass beneath him did not know he was there.

  The mortal wondered how he could get back to the floating island. After all, he was no cultivator, so he had no ability to fly or swim to another island. He wondered whether to ask his friends. Recently, Emerald Fang was quite a bit more talkative, and he was happy about it. If he asked him, Emerald Fang would rush here and help him. There was also the option of asking for help from Little Dragon and Little Head—both of them needed to choose their new names like Emerald Fang, however, they were too overbearing, and he did not want to cause trouble for them.

  Should I save him? he wondered, looking down.

  The man would die, but since he was a cultivator, it would be for quite a long time—perhaps two days at the very least.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  At that moment, the mortal decided he would gather more information about the man who did this.

  “Yin Feng, huh?” the man muttered as he walked toward the sound of a fight in the distance. Yin Feng was already on his radar. He was young, talented, and probably one of the strongest fragments. The fact that he had an old monster teaching and guiding him from inside his ring indicated that he was quite favored by the heavens. Sooner or later, the mortal man needed to kill Yin Feng.

  As he walked, the sound of the fighting became louder and louder, until finally, the mortal man crouched near an intact boulder and watched. The fight was too fast for his eyes. Jets of water and lightning flashed about. The ground exploded and upturned rapidly, the ping, ping, ping of metal reverberated nonstop through the air, and hundreds of bolts flew, maneuvering and creating loud whistles. Two flashes of lightning—he could only see the trails they left—continuously clashed and converged. Each motion created deafening sounds, made the world tremble, and sent shockwaves that hit the innocent trees, boulders, and flowers all around him. However, as if he were crouching in the eye of a storm, nothing touched the mortal man.

  As he crouched down, the mortal man watched the fight more closely, trying to use all his senses to observe the battle between the cultivators, but his eyes were limited. He could only see the destruction happening before him. He suspected that he would only see interesting things once both combatants were exhausted. Soon, however, he saw something that interested him.

  Around the battlefield, the mortal man could see several blue butterflies that looked as if they were made from light. They flapped their wings and flew mindlessly, as if they were not disturbed by the intense fight. He observed them more closely and saw that several of them began to dissolve into nothing—likely turning back into qi. The mortal man raised an eyebrow at these butterflies and pinched his chin as he looked toward the clashing lightning that made the world upturn.

  “I see. It is fate, too, I think,” he said.

  A saint candidate.

  Yin Feng was fighting a saint candidate.

  Those butterflies were a true sign of a saint. Though from the fact that the butterflies looked mindless and seemed underwhelming, he must have been only a candidate who had not yet claimed his name, his flaw, and his fate. An egg, essentially.

  Feeling interested, the mortal man tried to focus on this saint candidate, and only after he had crouched for ten minutes straight, observing the fight while the surrounding area was devastated, did he finally get a glimpse of the man.

  The man’s face was quite handsome, though in the world of cultivators, "handsome" had lost its meaning. After all, if all people are beautiful, then none are. The mortal man etched the face into his memory, and it was not too hard. The way he held his sword was not too refined, as if he were merely swinging it. His movement was quite unique, though. He summoned a shield as footsteps to move around, and what a shield it was. Even at a glance, he could see that it was in a sealed state, which indicated that the shield was from the First Era. He remembered there were some prominent shields mentioned in several records from the First Era, and he was about to plan research on this shield when he glimpsed something more intriguing.

  A gun.

  “How could there be a gun in this era?” he muttered.

  It was a shame that the man moved too fast. He could not discern the details of the gun. Though even if he could, he wondered what he would find out.

  That type of weapon was not meant to be in this realm, nor this time.

  As the man thought about it more, his heart began to fill with uncertainty. He instantly reached into his spatial bag and pulled out a bag full of bones as well as a turtle shell. After the preparation was done, he shook the bag and spilled the bones inside the turtle shell, trying to do a divination about the saint candidate.

  Upon seeing the result, the mortal man pressed his lips. “Another anomaly.”

  He, too, was an anomaly. After all, he was a mortal who was aware of the seed inside him, the fragment that was about to dictate his fate. He had swallowed the seed, and he was suddenly free from the dictates of a dead god. He could become free and have his fate unravel in every possible outcome. As far as he knew, he was the only one aware of the seed, but it did not mean that he was the only special one. Other people became anomalies in their own ways, too. The last anomaly he had seen was a girl named Yan Yu. Yin Feng was another anomaly, though his was tied to the old monster guiding him, and now, there was another one.

  [“This… complicates things,” he muttered.

  He was sure that more and more anomalies would surface, and with them would come more and more complications.

  The mortal man decided to divine more about the saint candidate, and as he did so, he also thought about how to approach this problem. He could integrate the saint candidate into his plan. After all, while this was troublesome, he was experienced in dealing with troublesome things. But there was also a simple way to deal with complicated things, and that way was simply to eliminate the complication.

  After several throws, he got something interesting.

  “Hmm, Burning World Sect,” he muttered. As he spoke, a jet of water sliced the air above him. If it had been a little lower, he would be dead, yet the man did not seem to notice it. “And Boundless Ocean Sect, too.”

  The man tried to discern his divination and, in the end, nodded.

  It seemed he needed to paint a target on the back of that saint candidate. This could potentially eliminate him. And if not, it would reveal a great deal of information.

  “If I’m going to do this, let’s go all out. Let’s make him a target of the other great sects, too,” he said.

  The mortal man decided that it was time to go. He walked back toward the dying young master and decided to help him. He would be the key to this whole operation.

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