That was the real reason Yang Kai had offered his thanks.
"This was probably the ending he wanted for himself."
Mu had guarded the Human Race and the myriad Heavens for countless years. Even after her death, she had left behind numerous contingencies.
Though this world was in ruins, though the Human Race was as insignificant as ants, this was still what Mu had wished to protect. Within the limits of possibility, he was willing to honor her final wishes.
Of course, had Yang Kai failed to demonstrate the requisite strength, Mo would not have hesitated to kill him. Once Mo's power ruled the Heavens, he could simply designate a vast domain for the Human Race to inhabit and multiply. In that way, the Human Race would not go extinct, and he would have an answer to give Mu no matter what.
At the end of the day, Mo's own consciousness was not inherently evil. In the ancient era, he had once protected the Human Race, devoting himself to the cause of upholding the human path. Without his joint efforts with the Ten Martial Ancestors, the Human Race of that age could never have triumphed over the primordial Great Demons.
It was simply that this consciousness could no longer control its ever-growing power, and ultimately lost its way. Especially after Mu's death, there was no one left who could restrain him.
Today's outcome could be said to be one he had pursued of his own volition.
A silence fell over the gathered crowd, their emotions unsettled.
Though Mo was pitiable in his own way, the Human Race's suffering over the past million years had been brought about by him. Without him, the world would have belonged to the Human Race long ago, after they defeated those primordial Great Demons, and there would have been no endless war that stretched on for countless ages.
Mo's catastrophe had inflicted losses upon the Human Race that defied imagination. Over the course of a million years, innumerable elites of the Human Race had marched to their deaths on the battlefield, generation after generation.
To the Human Race, regardless of whether Mo was pitiable or not, he had always been their greatest enemy.
The victors write history!
*Crack…* A faint sound reached their ears, and everyone turned to look. Their faces drained of color in an instant.
"Big Brother!" Yang Xue cried out immediately, her horrified gaze fixed on Yang Kai's face.
The expressions of everyone else grew equally grave. A crack had appeared on Yang Kai's face—not a normal wound, as no blood flowed from it.
After the first crack appeared, a second followed, then a third…
It was not only his face. His hands bore the same marks.
Yang Kai now looked like a piece of porcelain on the verge of shattering, and from each of those fractures pulsed a power of the Great Dao that made their hearts tremble.
Yang Kai lowered his gaze to his own hands and murmured, "Faster than I expected."
He seemed to have anticipated what was happening to him all along.
"What's going on?" Su Yan asked from behind him, her slender body trembling uncontrollably.
After so many years of effort, they had finally defeated Mo and ended the Mo calamity. The era to come would belong to the Human Race, ruling the Heavens. It was foreseeable that everything would only get better from here on out.
Yet the greatest hero of this final battle was now enveloped in some inexplicable crisis, and everyone could not help but feel tense.
What unsettled them even more was that this kind of injury was something none of them had ever seen before.
Yang Kai gently patted the back of Su Yan's hand and offered words of comfort. "I won't die. But I don't have much time left."
"What exactly is happening?" Xiao Xiao asked gravely.
"How should I put it…" Everyone around him was worried half to death, yet Yang Kai himself remained perfectly calm. "The Shadow Technique is a secret art that Mu created using the Space-Time River as its foundation. I inherited her mantle and walk the same path she did, so naturally I can also cast this technique."
"However, Mu's Space-Time River was incomplete, so the Shadow Technique she cast was likewise incomplete. She could only summon shadows from past segments of space-time. If those shadows dispersed, then the memories corresponding to that space-time segment would be lost. As for me, I refined the technique—summoning shadows from future segments of space-time. Each shadow was a version of myself from some future millennium. Now that all those shadows have dispersed, I have to pay the price."
The more powerful the secret art, the harder it was to cast. The Shadow Technique was undoubtedly the most powerful secret art that had ever existed in this world. And since Yang Kai had surpassed his master's accomplishment, using this technique to defeat Mo, the price he had to pay could not possibly be small.
"When the shadows of past space-time segments dispersed, the memories of those segments were lost. So when the shadows of future space-time segments disappear, what price must be paid?" Mi Jinglun asked in a tense voice.
"In those future space-time segments, I cease to exist."
"Cease to exist? What do you mean?"
"I don't really know how to explain it, but that is essentially what it means—literally."
Mi Jinglun fell silent for a moment, trying to digest this incredible news. "You summoned eight shadows—meaning eight thousand years?"
"Yes."
"And after those eight thousand years?"
Yang Kai shook his head. "I don't know."
This was, after all, the first time he had ever cast the Shadow Technique. While he knew that for the next eight thousand years, he would not exist—that all traces of him would be erased by the power of space and time—he could not say for certain what would happen after those eight thousand years had passed.
"How can this be?" Yang Xue's eyes reddened.
"It's not a big problem. After eight thousand years, I should be able to come back," Yang Kai said in reassurance.
But the uncertainty in his tone was something anyone could hear.
A weight lifted from behind him as Su Yan suddenly flashed away.
Before long she returned, but this time she had brought Yu Rumeng and the others along with her.