I gain ten years' worth of cultivation every day, and even geniuses will only see my doorstep!

The Guardian is right. His path has never been chaos, order, or disorder. His path is protection. From an outer disciple of the Xuan Yuan Sect to the Dao Ancestor of Myriad Realms, from the Dao Ancestor of Myriad Realms to the champion of the Tai Xu Heavenly Pride Battle, every time he wields his sword, every time he kills, every time he struggles on the edge of life and death, there is the same reason behind it all. He wants to protect some people.

"The Way of Protection." As Qin Yuan uttered these four words, the chaotic power within his body suddenly began to circulate on its own. It did not circulate along the route of the Nine Transformations of Chaos, but along a route he had never cultivated before. That route opened up a completely new meridian within his body, running unimpeded from his dantian to his chest, from his chest to his brow, and from his brow to his right hand holding the bone blade.

The bone blade lit up again. This time, it wasn't the light of stars and the Milky Way, but a purer, warmer light. The light shone from deep within the blade, rekindling the extinguished patterns on its surface, one by one. With each pattern illuminated, the blade became a little brighter.

The guardian's smile widened slightly.

"Go," he said, "before it fully awakens. Once it fully opens that eye, the power of the outer realms will surge into the void like a tide, and then even I won't be able to stop it."

Qin Yuan glanced back at the void behind him. The seven women were still on the other side of the door. Su Yao's star-fixing disc beam pierced through the darkness of the void, like a thin thread connecting him to the way home. They were waiting for him.

He withdrew his gaze and gripped the bone blade tightly.

"When you made that strike back then, were you also saying goodbye to everything you were protecting?" Qin Yuan asked.

The guardian did not answer.

Qin Yuan didn't ask any more questions. He took a deep breath and took his first step toward the enormous eye that blotted out the sky.

Ripples spread across the void beneath his feet. In the sea of ​​chaos, the pupil of that eye locked onto him. Countless gray-white wills surged towards him like a tsunami, each telling him: Give up, return to chaos, where there is no pain, no separation, nothing to wear you down. Qin Yuan cleaved through the oncoming tide of wills with a single strike, the protective principles on his blade tearing the gray-white wills to shreds.

The first step. His cultivation broke through. The bottleneck of the ninth level of the Dominator Realm shattered like paper, and the gate to the Immortal Realm opened wide within him. The laws of the Chaos Sea severed his connection with the Void, and no heavenly tribulation descended, but his physical body and soul underwent a complete reforging at the moment of breakthrough. His bones became harder, his meridians wider, and the vision of his Chaos Eye expanded more than tenfold.

The second step. He saw the core of that eye. Deep within the all-encompassing pupil, there was an inconspicuous gray dot of light, smaller than a sesame seed. But all the gray-white will, all the corrosive power in the chaotic turbulence, and all the instincts of the chaotic creatures in the outer realms originated from that dot of light. It was the core of the primordial will of chaos.

The third step. He raised the bone blade. All the patterns on the blade roared, countless lines flowing like countless rushing rivers, converging at the tip and transforming into a radiant light condensed to its ultimate form. It wasn't the light of a blade, nor the intent of a sword, nor a manifestation of any law—it was simply the light of the Way of Protection itself. The essence of the Way of Protection is not destruction, not annihilation, but protection. But the strongest protection in this world often requires the most complete destruction to achieve.

The pupil of that eye suddenly contracted. It sensed a threat—a being born from chaos was threatening its true form with non-chaotic power. It opened its mouth—though no one could see where the mouth was, everyone heard the sound. That sound traversed the void, pierced through the barrier of the door, and crashed into the consciousness of everyone behind it.

Then it rushed over. Not the entire eye, but a grayish-white humanoid shadow that split off from it, exactly the same shape as Qin Yuan, as if his shadow had been torn off and given life. The shadow also held a bone blade in its hand, but the blade was gray, without patterns, without light, only pure nothingness.

Qin Yuan looked at the shadow that was exactly like himself, without surprise. The most powerful attack of the Chaos Origin's will was not the chaotic turbulence, nor the demonic corruption, but this mirror. It reflects your shadow, and then uses your shadow to kill you. The stronger you are, the stronger the shadow becomes; the more exquisite your moves are, the more perfectly the shadow can replicate them. Ten thousand years ago, it reflected the guardian's shadow in this way, forcing the guardian to exhaust his own life force to barely repel the shadow along with the original body.

The shadow drew its blade. Its stance was exactly the same as Qin Yuan's, down to the grip on the bone blade, the angle of force, and the rhythm of its footwork. Qin Yuan raised his blade to parry, and the two bone blades collided, creating a blinding halo of light at the point of impact.

Then Qin Yuan noticed something different. The shadow could replicate his power, his moves, and his cultivation, but it couldn't replicate the light on the blade—that warm and pure light that only the Way of Protection could produce.

Because it has nothing to protect.

In the instant the blades crossed, Qin Yuan released his grip on the hilt with his left hand and struck the shadow's chest with his palm. The shadow reciprocated with his left hand. Both palms struck simultaneously, causing a dull cracking sound to emanate from Qin Yuan's ribs, and cracks appeared in the greyish-white light and shadow on the shadow's chest. But the corners of Qin Yuan's mouth were curved in a smile.

"You lost," he said.

The shadow tilted its head, seemingly not understanding why Qin Yuan had said that. Qin Yuan didn't give it time to understand. He gripped the bone blade tightly in his right hand, withdrawing the blade from its entanglement with the shadow's bone blade. The light that had been accumulating on the blade exploded all at once the moment he withdrew it. He didn't slash at the shadow, but at the giant eye behind it.

The shadow mirrored his movements, slashing at the void behind Qin Yuan. But there was nothing behind Qin Yuan, only that boundless void. The shadow's strike missed, while Qin Yuan's blade pierced the giant eye's pupil, the light penetrating the pupil and striking the tiny gray dot of light at its deepest point.

The moment that point of light came into contact with the light of the Path of Protection, it emitted its first and last sound in ten thousand years. It wasn't a bombardment of will, but a crisp sound like shattering glass. The first crack appeared on the surface of the point of light, then a second, a third—countless cracks spread across the entire surface of the point of light in the blink of an eye.

The point of light shattered.

As the colossal eye, capable of blotting out the sky, shattered, it began to collapse outwards from its center. The pupil, iris, sclera, and vein-like structures crumbled layer by layer into the finest chaotic particles, then were swallowed by the chaotic turbulence. The greyish-white shadow froze at the moment the colossal eye collapsed, then shattered into countless pieces like a broken mirror.