The Power of The Three Supreme Kings (3K)

"Eh!"

The hunched old man turned around and was startled by the long-haired man who had suddenly appeared before him. The instinctive tremor in his muscles and the dilation of his pupils could not lie.

With Shiyu’s perceptive abilities, he could even clearly hear the faint tearing of the old man’s internal fibers as his heart suddenly contracted, as well as the trembling of his vessel walls as large amounts of blood rushed toward his brain.

The man was lucky. A fright of this magnitude had a considerable chance of causing a fatal cerebral hemorrhage.

Shiyu stared intently at him. Though he had never specifically learned any mind-reading abilities, when the gap in Mental Power attributes was too great, a powerful mind could directly take control of the other person.

This old man was an utterly ordinary person.

Shiyu narrowed his eyes, and the old man’s body shuddered as he lost control of himself.

"Let me see whether that Bai Cangshu was really your handiwork…"

Shiyu closed his eyes. Scenes began flashing rapidly past him, a condensed version of an ordinary person’s life.

A lifetime was too long. Many scenes always remained buried deep in one’s memory, yet as the brain aged, they became impossible to retrieve under normal circumstances.

Now, under the effect of Shiyu’s powerful Mental Power, the past began to reappear.

The old man trembled all over as cloudy tears began sliding down his face.

Even an old fellow like him, who had remained in the deep mountains waiting to die in his declining years, had once lived a magnificent life in his youth. He had known love, hatred, meetings, and partings. It was the final epitome left behind by the few brief decades of humanity, a short-lived species.

Shiyu had no interest in any of that. He had no intention of letting the old man savor those memories, continuously rewinding further and further into the past.

He needed to see something earlier!

At last, he saw the scene he wanted.

The old man was still wearing a sleeveless undershirt. While laboriously reclaiming wasteland, he spotted a basket wrapped in pink velvet floating down the irrigation channel beside him.

Curious, he walked over and fished the basket out.

He lifted the velvet cloth covering it. Inside was an infant, whose hair had not even grown in yet. It was clearly only a few days old.

The old man looked up, but saw no one.

This irrigation channel was not particularly long. In theory, no matter who had placed the baby there, he should have been able to see them.

Yet in the end, he had not seen who abandoned the infant.

Powerful Mental Power made the surrounding forest stir without wind. For a moment, the atmosphere among the mountains became eerie and murderous. The birds fell silent, and insects vanished without a trace.

Within the mental world of memory, the old man suddenly turned his head uncontrollably and looked in another direction.

Humans could actually receive far more information than what remained in their impressions. It was only because of their own physical limitations that they could not retrieve it.

But Shiyu was different. He could read any information that had been received.

At this moment, he was forcibly mobilizing every scrap of information the old man’s brain had recorded at the time, piecing together the truth that the old man had been unable to see—with his own eyes!

The old man trembled in agony, veins bulging across his forehead as though his head would explode the next second.

Shiyu’s gaze swept around and looked toward the sky, a place the old man had never raised his head to see before.

There, a man dressed in a white high-collared martial outfit stood ten meters in the air. He had short chestnut hair and a smile on his face.

Shiyu’s pupils contracted. The figure within the memory actually met his gaze!

"Heh heh, so someone really did find this place."

Shiyu’s body instantly tensed. Even he felt a chill crawl up his spine at this bizarre phenomenon.

This was not merely an uncanny, mystical display of power. It also spoke of planning so far-reaching that it vastly exceeded his expectations.

"Relax. This old man is innocent. If you make his head explode like this, that would hardly be a good outcome."

Shiyu’s thoughts raced. He quickly realized that the other party had not addressed him by name. Most likely, they had merely made such arrangements and preparations in advance.

Given the abilities and intelligence of those three, it was entirely reasonable for them to foresee that someone would eventually notice Bai Cangshu’s unusual nature and investigate this place.

Combined with some Fate Aspect abilities, it was indeed possible to create something akin to a conversation across time and space.

He quickly calmed down, and the overwhelming Mental Power dissipated with it.

The man who had been staring at him raised his lowered eyes. Amusement brewed within his chestnut-colored pupils.

"Do you think this is some performance we prepared in advance?"

Shiyu’s expression stiffened. That hair-raising sensation returned as he looked at the other man’s face, at the reserved arrogance he carried, and felt an enormous disparity between them.

The next instant, the space before him was empty.

His pupils trembled. The man had already appeared directly in front of him.

One finger pressed against Shiyu’s brow.

A sharp pain pierced Shiyu’s forehead, followed by the sensation of time and space reversing. All manner of scenes came flooding in once more.

When he opened his eyes, he had already left the old man’s mental world. As though nothing had happened, the old man turned around and hunched his way back into his wooden hut, his movements accompanied by the groans peculiar to the elderly.

Their bodies had aged. Every movement came with exhaustion and pain.

Shiyu was briefly dazed. Had the other party used an ability across nearly twenty years of time to affect him, or had they concealed a power within this old man’s mental world?

Click, click…

Faint footsteps sounded from over a dozen kilometers away. That measured stride, advancing and retreating with discipline, definitely belonged to a soldier or someone in a similar profession.

Shiyu knew that East Xia’s authorities had likely discovered his whereabouts. According to his agreement with that person from Azure Sky, he truly should not have entered East Xia’s territory.

But it did not matter. He still had roughly seven minutes…

No, roughly one minute remained.

Shiyu saw an enormous mass of smoke weaving rapidly through several mountains amid the mountain rain and mist. It was clearly some fairly strong Reincarnator searching for him.

Unwilling to accept this outcome, Shiyu was about to seek out the old man again when a voice rang out behind him.

"Shiyu, humans should know when to advance and when to retreat, shouldn’t they?"

The voice was rich and deep, carrying an innate power that bewitched the heart.

Shiyu, however, suddenly froze in place as though encased in ice.

Although he had lost half his crown and could no longer be considered a true Supreme Expert, he had never imagined that a Reincarnator could appear behind him without him noticing in the slightest.

"Some truths and secrets are like Pandora’s Box. Once opened, there is only calamity and destruction."

Shiyu turned around, only to see an intense light bloom before his eyes. In an instant, he could see nothing at all.

You have been affected by the ability of a special unit?. Based on your mental attributes, you may obtain the following information.

You have been affected by Zanpakutō: Kyōka Suigetsu. Exemption check in progress...

Checking...

Exemption failed. You have been affected by Kyōka Suigetsu.

Impossible!

Shiyu’s mind shook violently. He possessed Eternal Discourse and should have been immune to all Cognitive Interference abilities. How could he have fallen under Kyōka Suigetsu’s influence?!

"Impossible?"

"Your understanding of power is still so shallow. It seems there are very few among this generation’s strongest who can truly be put to use."

"Go back, Shiyu. You have no idea how many attempts we made to deal with that final crisis."

Boom!

A smoke dragon descended from the sky. Song Xian’s entire body was covered in Armament Haki. As he clenched his right hand, black-red lightning crackled around it.

He glared furiously at Shiyu, raised a crest engraved with words, and said, "Based on our agreement with the King of Miracles, Reincarnators beyond the Third Tier are forbidden from using their abilities within East Xia. Please… leave immediately!"

Song Xian gripped the crest as though it were some kind of Command Spell.

He knew very well that if the man before him truly chose to act, every Reincarnator who had come here today, along with the Azure Dragon Squad, would be annihilated.

Even the Vermilion Bird Squad’s drones would have little effect on someone like him.

Shiyu looked at the man in white, who still remained within his field of vision even though Song Xian and the others seemed unable to see him at all. He already understood that there was an unbridgeable gap between himself and the so-called The Three Supreme Kings.

Expressionless, he gave the wooden hut one final look, then turned and stepped directly into the clouds and mist, soon vanishing from sight.

This trip had not been entirely fruitless.

At least he had confirmed that Mercenary Tao was indeed someone special, one of the contingencies prepared by those three.

He was quite curious how Mercenary Tao himself would react if he learned of this. Given that madman’s insanity…

Shiyu swiftly flew above the sea of clouds, leaving Song Xian’s Observation Haki range the next moment.

Song Xian looked as if he had collapsed from exhaustion. Only after meeting the visitor had he realized it was Shiyu. He knew full well that the man possessed the power to effortlessly destroy an entire city.

He rubbed his brow, feeling that the world itself was on the verge of collapse. Reincarnators were growing stronger and stronger, like bombs that could explode at any moment.

No one could say what would happen to this world once the order at the highest level of the Space collapsed.

Among this generation of Reincarnators, the forces of the Order Aspect seemed to be growing weaker and weaker. He felt deeply uneasy.

There were increasingly more people like Mercenary Tao in the Space. He suddenly thought of the student named Bai Cangshu. That person was probably the type who had been naturally gifted at combat from birth.

Perhaps he should be developed…

Bai Cangshu reappeared in the March Group estate, where the butler had servants deliver a large amount of food.

Everything belonging to the Li family had already been moved away. Li Xianhou had directly given this estate to Bai Cangshu, including all these servants, who had been left behind as part of the package.

Bai Cangshu took a few bites and found that his Gourmet Cell progress had barely changed.

Frowning, he said, "Go. Bring me all the ingredients. I’ll cook them myself."

The butler did not understand why, but when his gaze met Mr. Bai’s, an inexplicable chill rose in his heart. He immediately nodded and went out, ordering the servants to bring over every kind of ingredient stored in the kitchen and warehouses.

Li Qingzi entered from outside the estate. She paid no attention to the scene and merely said, "We’ve successfully recruited more than twenty Reincarnators. We can hold the press conference now, right…"