Ultragene Warlord

"[Ninesoul Dragonblade—Fourth Form: Warping Space and Time]!"

Temporal force whirled around Zhang Lie. This technique drew on even more of that force than even [Shadow and Light]. Time itself was disrupted and distorted. As Zhang Lie slashed with his longsword, the river of time flowed backward. His surroundings seemed to tear apart like a curtain.

The three hunters sensed everything in their vicinity rewinding in time. By the time they came to their senses, they had returned to the lake where all this had begun. Even their energy expenditure had all been restored.

His face pale, Zhang Lie let out a long sigh, then a smile. "It looks like it worked."

Yang Ze opened his eyes wide in shock. "Captain, have you become a deity?!"

Zhang Lie rolled his eyes at him. "What nonsense are you talking about?"

Yang Ze seemed incredulous. "If you aren't a deity, how could you have reversed time?"

Just now, they had been surrounded by cultivators and besieged on all fronts. Now, however, they were back where they started. Everything that had happened in the past seemed to be like a dream.

Yang Ze couldn't help but add, "If you aren't a deity, how could you play around with time?"

Li Feng nodded thoughtfully. "The only possible answer is that Captain has been hiding his strength and has secretly transformed into a deity."

Zhang Lie rolled his eyes. "I haven't given up on being single just yet."

Yang Ze frowned. "How do you explain all this?"

Zhang Lie was still panting from exertion. The tremendous cost required for his technique left his cheeks pale.

"I didn't reverse time fully, just a small part ifo it."

Yang Ze shrugged. "Isn't that the same?"

"It's not. Reversing time would entail undoing everything that had happened. If I had really done so, would you still have memories of the past?"

Yang Ze frowned. "So it's not what we guessed, then. How did you do it, Captain?"

Li Feng asked, "We were surrounded by a group of cultivators. How did we suddenly appear by the lakeside, where we initially started out?"

"All I did was bring the few of us within a small range back in time. I set us as the targets." Zhang Lie pointed at him, then the three members of Team Zenith before him.

Yang Ze's eyes lit up. "I understand it now. Captain, you used temporal force to move us back in space following our temporal trajectory, but not in time!"

Zhang Lie nodded. "That's right. I reverted our spatial location with the side effect of replenishing our genetic energy and healing our wounds. The other cultivators are where they were."

Yang Ze smirked. "They must be stupefied."

Fang Yi gave Zhang Lie a thumbs up. "Amazing, Captain."

"Haha!"

When they thought about how gobsmacked those cultivators had to be, the four hunters all laughed.

Indeed, they were as stupefied as Zhang Lie and the others imagined them to be.

They had just surrounded Zhang Lie a few layers of cultivators deep. Even if the cultivators on the outer edges of the encirclement weren't able to attack Zhang Lie and the others, neither would they be able to escape. However, Zhang Lie's four-man party had vanished from sight right then and there!

Where's my inheritance?

Where's my bone talisman?

Where are the cultivators I trapped?

How could they have gone missing?

Where did they go?

How could they have just vanished like that?

One moment, the four cultivators were right there; the next moment, they were gone.

The cultivators stared at each other in shock, some even considering digging up the ground in case Zhang Lie and the others had suddenly burrowed underneath it.

"The four of them couldn't have vanished just like that. Something had to have happened. Search! We have to find them!"

The majority of cultivators didn't have enough insight or understanding to sense that the disappearing act had to do with spacetime. Some did sense it, but they didn't dare believe that any cultivator of their generation had sufficient command over spacetime to perform such an act.

Back at the lakeside, Li Feng couldn't help but mutter, "Captain, if you were able to do this, why not do it sooner? We wouldn't have had to spend so much energy fighting them off. I thought we were done for!"

Zhang Lie rolled his eyes at Li Feng. "Do you think it's an easy skill to use? I might be able to replenish our supplies of genetic energy, but not my mental energy. Furthermore, we aren't that far away. They'll find us in no time."

The cultivators chasing after them weren't particularly weak; unless they were to displace themselves far enough in space, they would quickly be found.

Zhang Lie was only able to displace the hunters of Team Zenith over a short period of time. Before they arrived at the lake, the hunters hadn't been moving at a rapid clip, and it would have expended too much energy for Zhang Lie to displace them too far back in time—too much for him to keep on fighting.

Yang Ze shrugged. "At any rate, we managed to escape. I suppose we're done for the time being, then."

Fang Yi looped his arm around Yang Ze.

"What were you doing all this time? You only showed yourself at the end. Be honest, now: were you hiding in the crowds and watching us fight all this time?" Fang Yi demanded.

Yang Ze shrieked. "Save me, Captain! I'm innocent!"

Zhang Lie laughed and shook his head. "Alright, alright. Let him go. I'm sure Yang Ze had his own reasons."

Fang Yi released Yang Ze, who rubbed his neck as he said, "I did notice the commotion rather early on—or rather, only the blind and the deaf wouldn't have noticed it. Later, I snuck into the crowd of cultivators that were chasing after you, and I was indeed waiting to see you and Li Feng being pummeled by the crowd. It's a pity that never happened."

Li Feng turned to Fang Yi.

"He confessed. Now what?"

Fang Yi cracked his knuckles and smirked. "What else? Get him!"

Li Feng held Yang Ze down as Fang Yi tickled him vigorously.

"You wanted to see us pummeled? It's fun to watch the show from the sidelines, isn't it?! You were right there and didn't even intend to help! Do you still consider yourself part of the team?"

Yang Ze shrieked. "Hold it, hold it! I had a reason for not helping, a special reason!"

Fang Yi stopped short. "What's the reason? Tell us. We'll use what you say as testimony."

Li Feng continued, "What you tell us will determine whether we tickle you for the next half-hour, hour, or thirty hours!"

Yang Ze asked, "Won't it tire you out to do it for thirty hours?"

"We can easily take turns," Li Feng replied.

"Isn't that tiring, too?"

Li Feng took a deep breath. "You have ten seconds left to reveal your intentions."

Fang Yi grinned. "After ten seconds, you'll see just how tired we are. Ten, nine, eight,..."

If they really tickled me for thirty hours, I'd be dead even with my monarch gene fragments supporting me! Yang Ze immediately said, "I trusted in your abilities. Even without me, you would have been able to hold them off. I had a more important task at hand."