Chapter Twelve: The First Journey Through Time

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Nan Housheng kept shouting for a rope, but this was a restaurant—where would you find a rope here? He felt the door had been pushed open five centimeters. That wouldn’t do; if a zombie stretched its hand through the crack, it would be impossible to close it again. His eyes reddened as he threw himself against the door, pushing it shut with all his might.

“Aaahhh!” he screamed, finally managing to pull the door closed.

But outside, the zombies were gathering in ever greater numbers. When they all pushed together, Nan Housheng knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them off. Yet, knowing this full well, he continued to fight desperately. His own life was at stake, and so were everyone else’s in the room. He had no choice but to block the door with everything he had.

Inside, the battle was just as intense. Three people were locked in fierce combat with eight zombies, leaving them no chance to break away. The zombies outside the door had to be dealt with by these four.

Xiao Fengyu glanced at the tablecloth beside her, a sudden inspiration flashing in her mind. She ran over and yanked it free, twisting it into a rope-like shape. Qiu Xiaoyan immediately grabbed the makeshift rope and began tying the door handle fast.

The door gradually became more secure. The fat man felt the pressure lessen significantly and breathed a sigh of relief. If things had continued as before, the zombies would have broken through in thirty seconds at most.

But just as the three women and the fat man relaxed a little, a sharp, ominous sound rang out.

Crack! Crack!

The four of them were petrified. The handle tied with the tablecloth was about to give way under the pressure! If it broke, the zombies outside would pour in at once.

The sound drained the color from Nan Housheng’s face. Looking at the three women beside him, he shouted, “Quick! Find anything you can to block the door! I’ll hold it—go!”

The tables were bolted to the floor and couldn’t be moved, and any movable ones had already been used by Qi Xi and the others to smash at zombies—how could they get them back now? That would be suicide. Chairs? What good would they do? The three women, faces ashen, scoured the room desperately for anything to barricade the door, but after a frantic search, they found nothing suitable.

At the same time,

Qi Xi hurled a chair with all his strength. After so long, his arms were beginning to fail him; Watermelon and Li Feidao were surely in the same condition.

The situation was dire—worse than dire.

Damn it!

Qi Xi’s eyes turned red. He gritted his teeth and silently resolved to risk it all. Closing his eyes, he stopped attacking.

Of the eight zombies, three now lay motionless on the ground, two were incapacitated for the moment, and one had been finished off. That left five to deal with, which he and his companion could just barely manage for now.

Watermelon and Li Feidao were alarmed by Qi Xi’s sudden inaction. “Qi Xi! What’s wrong?”

“Brother Qi?” Watermelon recalled something from a previous life and nodded quietly to himself.

No matter how anxiously the others called him, Qi Xi remained unmoved, as if detached from the world, as though nothing here had anything to do with him. All that mattered was recalling the memories of his first battle in another realm.

It was a land of martial heroes…

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Winds rose, clouds surged, heroes roamed the martial world, and tournaments crowned the supreme!

In that first realm, Qi Xi’s “golden finger”—no, it was more like a golden leg—was the Pure Yang Body. As long as the Pure Yang Body remained unbroken, he would always be a virgin, and his skill would grow at a day’s pace what would take others a year!

The internal skill scripture, “The 9x9 Pure Yang Art,” could only be cultivated by those with a pure body. Ten years for the fifth level, twenty for the ninth, forty for the twelfth, eighty for the sixteenth, and only after a hundred and eighty years could one reach the pinnacle, the eighteenth level.

But who among ordinary people had such a long life?

Even with diligent practice, a healthy lifestyle, and single-minded focus, the average martial artist’s span was no more than a hundred and twenty years.

Thus, the eighteenth level was little more than legend.

But Qi Xi, blessed with his golden leg, entered the martial world at eighteen, spent half a year rising from an errand boy, survived countless perils, and ultimately struggled his way up to become the supreme of the land, cultivating the “9x9 Pure Yang Art” to its highest level.

One strike, and the world was stunned.

Yet, though his inner power was immense, he lacked techniques to match, making it impossible to fully unleash his potential.

So Qi Xi learned a saber technique.

“Staff for a month, saber for a year, spear for a lifetime,” as the saying went. The saber was difficult to master, but progress could still be swift.

The saber technique he chose was called the “Thunderclap Saber.”

With his unparalleled Pure Yang Body, he reached the fifth level in ten days, achieved ninety percent mastery in a month, and after three months, had thoroughly assimilated all twelve levels.

In the end, with both the “Thunderclap Saber” and the “9x9 Pure Yang Art,” he challenged a group of reclusive martial sages and seized the “True Source of Martial Dao” from that world.

He managed to take eighteen percent of the True Source, returning to the Divine Space.

In truth, the True Source manifested in that world only amounted to twenty-two percent; Qi Xi had taken the lion’s share, leaving the rest to be divided among the martial sages.

But upon returning to the Divine Space, Qi Xi lost his Pure Yang Body, and his “9x9 Pure Yang Art” plummeted from the fourteenth level to zero. Even his memories of the “Thunderclap Saber” grew vague, the moves themselves slipping from his grasp.

Still, Qi Xi remembered the first four lines of the “Thunderclap Saber” formula:

As swift as lightning, the blade leaves no trace.
As thunder roars, the blade’s force is boundless.
Swiftness and sound, ever advancing.
Nothing unbreakable, unmatched under heaven!

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He could still vividly recall practicing saber techniques in that world: a bamboo grove, a bamboo hut, a long saber in hand—sometimes slashing swiftly, sometimes slowly. The rapid strikes flashed like lightning, impossible to evade; the slow ones rolled like a great tide, equally inescapable.

But now, he could no longer remember every move with perfect clarity; all that remained was the saber intent he’d grasped while practicing the Thunderclap Saber.

The Thunderclap Saber was never about rigidly memorizing every form and technique. Those were merely shortcuts left by predecessors. If one could truly comprehend saber intent, then every strike would be borne of the heart, each swing a supreme art in itself.

At this moment, Qi Xi was desperately reaching for that saber intent, seeking to recreate his own Thunderclap Saber, guided by instinct rather than memory.

The situation was perilous. The door had been forced open another three centimeters, and the zombies were thrusting their hands into the gap. With the door wedged open, it could no longer be shut—unless those hands were broken off, there would be no hope of closing it again.

“Damn it!” Not just Nan Housheng, but the three women beside him were pale and panic-stricken. Staring at the zombies pressed against the glass door and inhaling their stench, they were on the verge of collapse.

The glass door was transparent; countless zombies pressed against it could be seen in horrifying detail. The women leaned their bodies against the door, separated from the undead by just a thin pane of glass—a most intimate confrontation.

Though terrified, though desperate and lost, they had no choice but to remain where they were. Eight zombies still roamed inside the room; they were trapped in this narrow space, caught between death on either side.

Time slipped by, cold sweat beading on every brow. In a few more minutes, the door would be forced open, and the zombie tide would flood in, drowning them all with no escape. Even if a handful managed to dash past the zombies and reach the upper floor, no more than three would survive; the rest would be doomed. And even the so-called survivors might be scratched and infected, which was no different from death. If, by some miracle, they emerged unscathed, how would they survive in a restaurant teeming with zombies? What then?

What to do?

What to do!

It seemed a dead end.

Suddenly, in a fever of desperation, the three women noticed that while the table itself was fixed in place, its revolving top could be removed. At once, they wrested it free and braced it against the door. But in their panic, a zombie’s hand easily shoved it aside.

Crash!

The glass shattered instantly.

“Ah!”

The women screamed in despair. Shards of glass sliced them, but such wounds were trivial now. Their eyes reddened as they rushed to find another piece of glass to block the door.