Qiu Li now had two choices.
Leave directly.
Or get beaten up first, then leave.
This was not a difficult choice.
The skirmishes between emperor seeds could indeed benefit both sides, but that was when the gap in strength between them was not huge.
For one-sided beatings like this, there was no benefit at all.
It would just be getting beaten up.
As an emperor seed, Qiu Li had pride, but certainly no foolishness. He patted his clothes, grinned, and without looking at Chen Xia, yelled at the back of Emperor Capital:
"You forgot something!"
He didn't say what it was. Emperor Capital didn't look back either, just kept walking straight ahead.
Qiu Li frowned and muttered softly, "How absent-minded."
Then he didn't say anything more, just hurried to catch up with Emperor Capital. The two emperor seeds then walked side by side, appearing to be murmuring to each other.
The immortal gate stretched across the heaven and earth vanished abruptly.
Chen Xia stood on the ground with a calm expression, arms crossed over his chest. He felt this was meaningless.
He had just been about to start fighting seriously when these two ran away.
The elder disciples who had been watching on the side had guessed Chen Xia would win, but didn't expect it to end so anticlimactically.
They had just run away after getting beaten?
The elder disciples shook their heads slightly. They really couldn't blame Qiu Li and Emperor Capital. If it had been them instead of Emperor Capital, they probably would have surrendered as soon as the fight started.
Getting beaten up was not worthwhile, and getting beaten up without being able to fight back was even less worthwhile.
Moreover, the power Chen Xia had displayed was clearly overwhelming, no longer at the level of a reserve disciple, but even higher than a formal disciple.
To put it bluntly, it was at the elder level.
Based on his age, Chen Xia looked to be less than two thousand years old. With such terrifying strength, he could have a chance at an elder's seat in Blue Sky Sword Sea if he met the age requirement!
Thinking of this, the elder disciples smiled wryly, filled with complex emotions.
They had bitterly cultivated for thousands of years, spending over half their lives to barely reach the Mountain Moving Realm and obtain the low-level elder title. This was already a great joy.
Yet Chen Xia was so young and already had the strength of a formal elder. His future prospects were unimaginable to them.
If they also knew of Chen Xia's endless lifespan, they would be even more depressed.
They really could not beat him in fighting nor in living longer.
The skirmish between the last group of three emperor seeds ended just like that. Calling it a skirmish was too dignified - it was more like a farce.
But it could also be called a one-sided beating, since Chen Xia was certainly beating a pair.
After this incident, no disciples dared to come to the reserve disciple area to challenge Chen Xia for the next half year.
The elder disciples flat out said that other than the top five formal disciples - those abnormal monsters - if any disciples came to fight Chen Xia, they would just be sending themselves to their graves.
The strength of the formal elders might be close to Chen Xia's, and they had a chance at beating him.
But it wouldn't sound good to spread that around either.
A formal elder beating a reserve disciple, how embarrassing would that be if word got out?
Even if the elder won, people would not praise how powerful the elder was, but say how shameless he was.
There was also another possibility - that the formal elder could not beat Chen Xia either.
Then the embarrassment would be even greater. A formal elder who couldn't even beat a reserve disciple, how could he still be called a formal elder? He might as well go home and raise pigs!
If that spread, the elder would become a joke across the entire Star Region.
So winning brought no benefits, while losing meant having to go home and raise pigs.
Only elders out of their minds would seek a fight with Chen Xia. Wouldn't it be better to just peacefully keep their positions?
Therefore, to beat Chen Xia now and keep a good reputation, it had to be one of the top five formal disciples making a move.
But that was difficult too. The top five were at the critical period of their closed door cultivation, not having come out for hundreds of years, all striving to seize the elder seats.
None wished to be inferior to the others.
The current situation was that those who could beat Chen Xia were unwilling, while those unable to beat him didn't dare.
He had really become the local tyrant of the reserve disciple area!
Everyday he would lounge half-paralyzed in his cave, pondering over his techniques and constantly thinking of ways to improve them. Occasionally he would go out for a stroll.
Chen Xia discovered something - the stronger he became, the more leisurely he was, not rushed by time.
He entered a state of disregarding time, the number of his strolls around the reserve disciple area was the highest.
Describing him as a street idler was pretty fitting.
But Chen Xia was not totally idle during his leisure time. He would read books on pills, artifact forging, formations and so on, even if just out of curiosity, it was still gaining knowledge.
The days were like cycles, monotonously passing by one by one.
Each day was much like the last, yet could never return to the past.
Sometimes when Chen Xia sat alone in the empty cave, he would start missing the days gone by.
What he missed most was still the Tail Creek Town days, with its crowds and liveliness, where he had been an insignificant patroller.
The patroller position was quite interesting, and even more so for an insignificant one like him.
He could take benefits without doing any work.
It was similar to his current situation at Blue Sky Sword Sea, valuing nothing more than collecting protection fees.
Unfortunately such days would never come again.
Later was the time spent messing around with Big Yellow Dog and Chi Yu, also pretty good times.
The three scumbags often played chess together, yet never managed to play a decent game in half a day, just evenly mediocre.
There would be occasional minor disputes, mainly Big Yellow Dog trying to cheat Chi Yu, but still fine, just little quarrels.
But all that was gone too.
Perhaps there was a time when the three walked the same path, but eventually each would have their own path.
If the branching of paths was too wide, then walking on, they would eventually unlikely meet again.
Chen Xia hoped that when they met again in the future, it would not just be an exchange of polite smiles, unable to find words to say.
That would be a very sad thing.
This afternoon, Chen Xia walked out of his cave, steps slow as he kept his head lowered looking at the ground, ignoring the greetings of other disciples, lost in his own thoughts.
Only when the big sun was right before him, radiating its last glow, did Chen Xia slowly raise his head. He stood in the middle of the setting sun, brows knitted, his features tinged with the golden yellow of dusk in the fading light.
"Human lifetimes..."
He drew out the words in a sigh.
All things in the world were driven by the flow of time.
Yet time itself had no emotions, only the other things did.
Chen Xia with his undying life could be considered a branch of time in some ways.
How many emotions would he have left after hundreds of millions of years?
He couldn't answer this question himself. He turned and left the setting sun, the bright moon rising now hanging behind him.
After hundreds of millions of years, he would surely have reached invincibility, but how many human feelings would remain, that was really uncertain.
What would that be?
An emotionless invincible machine?