My health recovery is incredibly fast.

What he just said was all for the purpose of better plundering the bloodline power of pure-blood mages!

Xia Zuo would never trust such a person.

Perhaps the method of using the Chaos Vessel taught by the Faceless Man contains a vicious trap that allows for complete control over a mage's mind and will. Any pure-blooded mage who falls into his trap will become his blood vessel.

Xia Zuo firmly rejected the Faceless Man for another reason:

Only by being able to fight can we stop war.

At this moment when the pureblood mage faction is completely at a disadvantage, all the goodwill shown by the faceless man is only to reduce the cost to his side and enslave the pureblood mages at a lower cost.

Only when the pureblood mage possesses sufficient combat power to challenge the faceless man will the faceless man back down and temporarily cease fighting against the pureblood mage.

Based on this logic, Xia Zuo offered his own answer:

"I need to think about it. I'll give you an answer in a month."

“Alright.” The faceless man nodded. “Let’s make our first deal.”

The faceless man rubbed his hands together lightly. "You'll keep this a secret from the Holy Rune Department, the Demon Hunter School, and the Inquisition. In return, I won't touch your blood mage descendants for now, including the few you left in the Western Continent. This deal is valid indefinitely, until you leak it. How about it?"

"Deal." Xia Zuo replied indifferently.

"Looking forward to our next meeting." The faceless man put on his hood and disappeared into the end of the corridor as a white shadow.

After he left, Xia Zuo clenched his hands tightly.

The small deal that had just been completed put Xia Zuo under tremendous pressure.

If one day in the future I can fly out of this planet and wander into outer space, Xia Zuo will definitely take one person with me, and that person is Anru'er.

This is something that many people find incomprehensible, or even think Xia Zuo is extremely foolish.

But Xia Zuo had to do it.

Everyone has their own unchangeable nature, and everyone's driving force for spiritual sublimation is different.

Many people enjoy having a harem and derive pleasure from being surrounded by beauties, but Xia Zuo can only find sublimation in protecting his one true love.

This is his inherent nature, an unchangeable fundamental personality trait, which has remained unchanged even after two lifetimes.

The threat posed by the faceless man made Xia Zuo crave power for the first time.

“Uncle Xia Zuo…” Janice awoke within the blood magic shield, looking around at the crimson barrier and the familiar face so close to her with a bewildered expression.

"You're awake." Xia Zuo smiled at her. "Go back to your dorm first. An Ru'er will explain to you later."

"Oh, oh..." Janice packed her schoolbag under Xia Zuo's urging and walked towards the other end of the corridor, looking back every few steps.

Xia Zuo's clone transformed into a blood-red shadow and burrowed into her schoolbag.

The vine-covered pergola has returned to tranquility under the warm breeze and sunshine.

...

The underground cave system of the Wild Hammer Kingdom.

The faceless figure appeared in the alchemy chamber.

The human-shaped bonsai was already waiting there. Beside her, a young woman dressed in a mage's robe lay peacefully with her eyes closed in a sleeping basket woven from vines.

"Is Rena ready?" The Faceless Man glanced at the female pureblood mage in the sleeping basket. "Well done, Merlindora. According to the agreement I reached with Shazo and Krestor, I will consider whether to extract her bloodline power in a month."

Merlindora remained silent, her two eyes, composed of flower petals, fixed on the faceless man. The branches on her body moved slowly and trembled, their tiny tendrils taut like sharp thorns.

The Faceless Man noticed Merlindora's unusual behavior. His gaze slowly swept over her body, sensing an impending outburst of anger. "What's wrong with you? Why are you so angry?"

"I promised you I would bring you Rena, and I did. But why did you go to such lengths, orchestrating the events on the atoll and spreading your theories so widely?"

Merlindora said through gritted teeth:

"This will expose us to the Holy Mark Clan's attention and make us their enemy. Our past covert operations will cease to exist, and the provoked Holy Mark Clan will lower their standards and use more methods to deal with us. Why do you want to attract their attention?"

The faceless man tried to keep his tone as calm as possible:

“Merlindora, you brought me Rena, you did a great job. I highly commend your execution. But you must also understand that a less peaceful temple is more in line with our needs in order to achieve our goals.”

"You..." Merlindora wanted to say something, but was interrupted by the Faceless Man.

“Wait, calm down. I don’t want to start a fight, Merlindora. I know that I didn’t consult you before doing these things, which makes you feel that I don’t value you enough. But please believe me, what I’m doing won’t cause us any trouble. All the tails have been cleaned up by me and the others. The Holy Mark Department, the Inquisition, and the Demon Hunter School—none of them can find anything.”

Perhaps it was the Faceless Man's promise that worked, or perhaps the Faceless Man's authority remained; in any case, Merlindora calmed down after a few seconds of silence, and her words became less harsh:

"Okay, I'll believe what you say for now, and I hope we can keep this secret."

Merlindora paused and asked:

"You revealed your secret to Xia Zuo. Aren't you worried about it being leaked? He has the ability to transform ordinary people into pseudo-blood mages, which would create a blood connection between them that outsiders can't detect. Are you so sure he won't use that blood connection to reveal your secret to the Demon Hunter School?"

The faceless man waved his hand. "My assumptions about the pure-blooded mage faction were flawed. I didn't expect them to maintain such a tough stance even after my prophecy about the ring island came true. I was indeed wrong in that regard. As for the leak you mentioned... I need to go to the End of Time to confirm whether Shazo has kept his promise."

The faceless man pointed to the flowerpots by the wall. "You should go back first. If Xia Zuo breaks his promise in the End of Time, I will let you know."

Chapter 18 The End of Time for the Faceless Man

The faceless man decided to check if the end of time he was seeing had changed.

He waved towards the center of the alchemy room.

Dozens of silver sand hands appeared in the air, moving the alchemy table, shelves and other furniture to the wall and surrounding the potted plants, clearing a large open space in the room.

The faceless man arrived at the center of the room and summoned a spacetime container to envelop himself.

After a brief period of darkness, a beam of seven-colored light suddenly appeared in the center of the field of vision, and a radiant passage came from afar. The faceless man's consciousness entered the passage and quickly traversed it.

Countless images flashed across the inner walls of the passage, depicting the life of a faceless man.

Some of these scenes are real, while others have been altered by the arrival of the faceless man.

One part is a true reflection of the past and what will happen in the future, while the other part is the historical fact that the faceless man foresaw the future and changed his fate, resulting in changes.

The faceless man's consciousness traveled through the spacetime tunnel for an extremely long time, which was related to his personal strength:

The longer one lives, the longer the passage becomes. At the same time, the stronger one becomes, the greater one's ability to withstand risks increases, and the longer one survives. In other words, the past and the future will change because of the Faceless Man's increased strength.

From the day he discovered that the spacetime container could contain him, the faceless man used it countless times to foresee his fate. He had lost count of how many times he had altered the course of his destiny.

Countless people and events changed because of his alteration of his own destiny.

Only two things remained unchanged.

First, those living in the western part of the continent were largely unaffected.

The extreme storms between the eastern and western continents prevented the Faceless Man from closely monitoring events on the western continent. He could only influence its development to a very limited extent. After several attempts to interfere with the western continent, the Faceless Man realized that his input and output were mismatched, essentially resulting in a deficit, and thus he completely abandoned the area.

The second one that hasn't changed much is Faceless Man's End of Time.

The end of time can refer to the moment a world ceases to exist, or the moment a person or thing is completely annihilated.

It is the death knell of all things, the end of all things, the final destination of all things, devoid of life and hope, only silent nothingness.

Theoretically speaking, nothing can escape the end of time, that is, nothing can achieve eternity, and all things will eventually return to nothingness.

In this long race against time, the only one who can win is time itself.

For the faceless man who has a glimpse into his fate, knowing his end in advance but being unable to change it is the most despairing thing.

After 20 hours of sensory experience and 20 minutes of real time, the faceless man's consciousness finally reached the end of the spacetime tunnel.

This is a vast panorama, like a bottle cap covering the top of a cylindrical spacetime tunnel, blocking the path for further flight.

The images on the scroll are three-dimensional, forming a unique space where time stands still, freezing the moment when the faceless human life is extinguished.

The faceless man's consciousness flew towards the ground of the time-stopped space, descended from the "sky," and landed on his own end-of-time scene.

He looked up at the "sky," which was a vast sea of ​​stars, where countless strange and bizarre celestial demons gathered.

"Sky" is the direction from which the faceless man's consciousness arrived.

In the very center of this "sky," there are many brightly lit circular openings in the starry sky image, with colorful light emanating from within.

Each circular spacetime portal corresponds to an independent timeline.

The timeline is divided into three segments according to the time axis.

In the first segment, all timelines share the same spacetime tunnel, meaning that in the real world, what has already happened will not change.

Using the "now" in the real world as a watershed, the second segment of the timeline begins to diverge, branching into an almost infinite number of timelines based on the possible actions of the faceless man.

In the third segment of the timeline, all the timelines converge and merge, eventually forming a dozen or so entrances at the end of time.

In other words, no matter what strategy the Faceless Man adopts after casting this spell, and no matter how he uses the wonders of the spacetime container to change his fate, his ultimate destiny has already been determined.

In the faceless man's end of time, he died at the hands of the Starry Sky Demon.

The faceless man, on the verge of death, had his body blasted apart by the enemy, his fragments scattered across the cracked earth.

The Starry Sky Demons roamed the sky, howling and spreading fear mercilessly, slaughtering living beings.

The faceless man guessed that it was Vasaksat who shattered his body.

Looking around, the Star Demons flying in this sky are not that powerful to the Faceless Man. Even if the Star Demons swarm him, the Faceless Man can easily deal with them.

Where is Vasaksat?

This problem has been troubling the faceless people for a long time.

Since discovering the wonders of the time-space container, every time the Faceless Man arrives at the end of his own time, he spends some time searching for Vasaksat's whereabouts within this time-stopped area.

But strangely, this alien lord of the stars, whom no human has ever seen before, doesn't seem to be here.

The Faceless Man could identify the species and strength of each of the Starry Sky Demons that committed atrocities, and was 100% certain that they were not worthy of the title of Starry Sky Demon Lord.

So, who killed me? ...The Faceless Man asked himself this question more than once.

If the culprit can be found and eliminated beforehand, things might change at the end of time.

The Faceless Man has always believed this.

His consciousness arrived at a mountaintop at the end of time, gazing out at this vast, time-stopped space.

Many humans witnessed his death. The number, identity, strength, and other factors of these humans would change depending on what the Faceless Man did in reality. Therefore, the people here would be different each time he came to the End of Time.

Tauvinset, Master Merlindor, and many other members of the Temple who follow the Faceless Man are here. They are gathered around the Faceless Man, trying to collect his broken body parts.