Multiversal Level!

"I could handle a little price!"

Li Congxin’s words were brimming with Haki and rang out with force!

He wasn’t making a false show of politeness or trying to win some empty favor. He was genuinely willing to bear some of the cost for Ancient One.

Ever since becoming the Sorcerer Supreme, Ancient One had worked tirelessly to protect Earth from invasions by other dimensions. Later, because a suitable successor failed to appear, she had even endured tremendous pain to absorb Dark Energy and prolong her life, walking a tightrope through sheer willpower.

She had endured that suffering for hundreds of years!

Now that Strange had finally appeared, her life was about to reach its end. At the very last moment of her life, she would die in the line of duty at her post.

From beginning to end, she hadn’t even enjoyed a single day of peace before leaving just like this?

That wasn’t fair!

Nor was it the ending a warrior who had fought bitterly for Earth for hundreds of years deserved.

Even ordinary people could enjoy a wonderful retirement after working hard for decades. Why couldn’t Ancient One?

If Li Congxin lacked the ability, so be it. But now that he possessed it, he naturally had to do his best to win her a little more time.

However, to his disappointment, Ancient One seemed not to think that way…

"No!"

Ancient One’s attitude was extremely firm. "I have peered into the future many times. Earth’s future will absolutely not be peaceful."

"And compared with the Sorcerer Supreme, you will play a far greater role in what is to come. Therefore, your strength absolutely cannot suffer any damage because of me. Don’t bring this up again."

Seeing how resolute Ancient One was, Li Congxin could only give up helplessly.

This Sorcerer Supreme, who had protected Earth all her life, seemed to have been thinking of Earth even at the end of her life.

Although Li Congxin’s methods were brilliant, if Ancient One refused to cooperate, his life-prolonging plan clearly couldn’t proceed. After remaining silent for a long while, he could only remind her to get more rest before leaving helplessly.

The moment he stepped out of the meditation room, he ran into an old acquaintance. "Doctor Strange, I only just returned to Earth today, but the people at Avengers Base told me that you came looking for me. Did something happen?"

Stephen Strange Impression Points +9999!

I couldn’t find you anywhere when I needed you, and then I learned you’d gone off to have fun on an alien planet. Now that my problem’s already solved, what use is there in asking?

Although he complained inwardly, Li Congxin had left Earth before Strange’s accident, so he had no grounds to blame him.

He could only respond with a polite smile and casually say, "I was in a car accident before, and both my hands were crippled. But I’m fine now. After cultivating magic, I healed them. I just didn’t expect to run into you here."

"Because I already knew Master Ancient One. I even studied two spells here before." Li Congxin smiled faintly, then added, "Your condition isn’t considered a complete recovery. You can use your hands flexibly now, but only with the support of magic. That still places some burden on you. It isn’t much, but it does exist."

"When you have time, you can go to Avengers Base and find Doctor Banner. He can treat your hands completely from a medical perspective. Don’t worry. Having these hands restored won’t affect your magical cultivation. On the contrary, it’ll remove one burden from you."

Amid Stephen’s complicated thanks, Li Congxin teleported straight back to his villa in Los Angeles.

He had Mingyue set the villa to Do Not Disturb mode, then took out the Reality Stone. The BGM for "Moving Heaven" began to play. It was time to fuse with the third Infinity Stone!

This time, refining the Reality Stone took Li Congxin considerably longer.

Under the effects of the "Moving Heaven" BGM, the enhancement he received from inheriting any Infinity Stone was the same. There was no distinction between becoming increasingly difficult or increasingly easy.

What mainly determined the speed of his comprehension was how well he had understood the stone beforehand.

He had been extremely familiar with the Power Stone and could use it skillfully, so refining it had not taken much time. The Space Stone had been the first Infinity Stone he acquired. Even before awakening "Moving Heaven," he had already comprehended many of the spatial laws contained within it, so integrating it had been even easier, and his comprehension had proceeded faster than with the first stone.

But the Reality Stone was different. Ever since he had snatched it from Malekith, he had only used it once, to repair a spatial rift. After that, he had never touched it again.

Even while traveling to and from God’s Quarry, he had never thought to take it out and study it when he was bored.

The "Moving Heaven" BGM was simply too powerful. With the BGM’s support, he could easily refine it completely. Even if he had spent a year studying it beforehand, he felt that at most, it would only have shortened the refining process by a day or two.

And that was with the support of the "Stealing Merit" BGM. Without it, perhaps ten or eight years of study would only shorten the refining time by a single day.

Compared with that, studying it himself was simply too inefficient—so slow that it was almost unbearable. Li Congxin could be considered diligent, but he wasn’t diligent to the point of fighting for every second.

In the end, Li Congxin spent nearly five days and five nights before finally completing his fusion with the Reality Stone.

By his estimate, this was probably already the upper limit for refining an Infinity Stone. As for the remaining stones, even the Mind Stone, which he had never used once, would probably take about the same amount of time to refine.

At this point, his strength officially stepped into the Multiversal Level, just as he had expected!

However, after entering the Multiversal Level, the anticipated explosive increase in strength did not appear. Or rather, the increase he gained from this upgrade was not very large, at least nowhere near as tremendous as he had expected.

That was because his current strength had already reached the true peak of the Singular Universe!

After all, the ceiling of the Singular Universe was right there. If a giant wanted to enter a house, he either had to smash through the roof or stoop as he walked.

Smashing through the ceiling was certainly impossible. Not to mention that the Living Tribunal would never agree to it, even Li Congxin himself would never do such a thing.

Precisely because of this, he had missed an opportunity to make a major breakthrough. Originally, by refining the Reality Stone, he should have been able to take another small step forward after entering the Multiversal Level. But that small step had been forcibly erased by the limitations of the Singular Universe.

Even so, after refining three Infinity Stones and officially entering the Multiversal Level, Li Congxin’s level of life underwent a qualitative transformation. Although his direct combat ability had not immediately surged, many things he had previously been unable to do were no longer problems for him.

It was like completing a class-change quest after reaching a certain level in an online game. Although one’s level did not change, many new functions were unlocked.

The most important of these functions was that he could now improve his strength through multitasking AFK cultivation!

This was also the usual method employed by the Multiversal Level big shots.

There were two ways to go about AFK cultivation.

The first was the clone AFK mode.

Just like Lady Death and Galactus, one could create clones in Parallel Universes and use them to obtain power, which would then flow back into the main body and rapidly increase its power level.

However, although this method looked wonderful, it also contained many hidden dangers. Moreover, it was usually only available to those powerful beings favored by fate, after they became Multiversal Level entities.

That was because they possessed an innate advantage others lacked: in every Parallel Universe, they already had a destiny-linked counterpart.

Take Captain America and Spider-Man, for example. If one of their counterparts became a Multiversal Level big shot, contacting the other clones and achieving mutual advancement would be extremely simple.

Of course, Captain America and Spider-Man were merely examples. Although their clones were spread throughout the entire multiverse, no individual counterpart had reached that level.

Moreover, even using this method did not guarantee smooth sailing. After all, although every Parallel Universe seemed broadly similar, each person’s circumstances differed from universe to universe. Situations where the clones appeared united in name only, obeyed orders without submitting, or even stabbed one another in the back were far from impossible.

For example, if Captain America became a Multiversal Level big shot, who could guarantee that none of his counterparts in any Parallel Universe would shout, "Hail Hydra"?

So this method required considerable skill, and putting it into practice was an extremely complicated discipline. As for forcibly sending a clone into a universe that originally had no clone, or whose clone had already died, that was even more difficult. Perhaps only the five Cosmic Creator Gods dared to play that game. Other Multiversal Level big shots truly couldn’t afford it.

Li Congxin, meanwhile, belonged to the rather unfortunate grassroots category.

Leaving aside the fact that he had crossed over and taken over this body, even the original owner’s identity in the Marvel Universe absolutely placed him among the cannon fodder of cannon fodder. He could appear in the casualty statistics of some major event at any moment—and probably as someone whose name was never even mentioned.

Because of his good birth, Thanos had a baseline strength of roughly the Sub-Celestial Level in almost every Parallel Universe. Out of ten Parallel Universes, Tony Stark was Iron Man in at least nine of them. In some, he had even reincarnated as a girl and ended up with Captain America as lovers.

But among a hundred Parallel Universes, Li Congxin probably had only this one successful version of himself. In the other universes, the Li Congxins might not all be 9.58-second sprinters, but they were definitely Background Character A or Passerby A. Even if they were lucky enough to survive, their growth potential was pitifully low, leaving them with absolutely no value worth cultivating.

In that situation, one had to consider the other method of AFK cultivation.

That was to hire someone else to level up for him!

Thanks to book friend Sleeping Mark for the 100 Qidian coins!