To the esteemed king of the sura:

I apologize for hiding my identity for so long. I'm a warlord of the third realm who descended to the second realm in search of revenge.

An ill stroke of luck deposited me in the heart of the sura lands, and I became your concubine. My intention was to take advantage of you to obtain treatment for my injuries, but as I interacted with you day after day, I gradually developed feelings for you. As a human, as a warlord, I am an enemy of your kind, and you of mine, but my feelings for you are genuine.

However, with my enemy yet dead, with my revenge yet sought, I have no choice but to depart. I don't dare to tell you this in person, and I hope you won't blame me for my decision upon reading this letter. If you are willing to accept me after I succeed in my revenge, I hope to remain your concubine.

Yours truly,

Musi Yu

With trembling fingers, the sura king glanced at the letter that Musi Yu had left him.

"Darling, darling, how could you have been so muddle-headed!" The sura king's cries rumbled through the entire palace. "Darling, what would I do without you? How could you bear to leave me without a word?"

He sighed, desolate, while the sura elder watched on in disbelief and exasperation. The sura king was fascinated by humans, and he insisted on a human consort. Not only that, he had become besotted with a male human! Could his mind have gone haywire after all the sex he had been having?! If not for the sura king's ridiculous strength which no one could overcome, the sura elder would have staged a rebellion long ago.

"Your highness, hasn't your concubine promised to return?" the sura elder hedged.

The sura king suddenly stood up. "No. I can't wait, I have to find him—I have to reclaim my precious concubine!"

His eyes were resolute and determined. "I won't let any of my concubines leave me. Even if he has to die, he'll do so on my bed!"

The sura elder sighed. "I left a tracker on his body that may help you, your highness."

The sura king's eyes widened. "Truly?"

"Yes, your highness." The sura elder wouldn't leave an unidentified male as the emperor's consort without taking some precautions. He wasn't worried about the sura king given how strong he was, but he had left a small tracker in the man's body as a contingency. To his surprise, it had actually come in handy.

The sura king waved an arm. "Have an army head out in search of my beloved concubine!"

Back in the Zenith Dojo, Zhang Lie retrieved the manual of [Black Sun] that he had obtained. [Black Sun] and [Eclipse] were two mirrored techniques, two halves of a whole. Zhang Lie spent two weeks learning [Black Sun] at an introductory level.

Behind him now was a wheel of black sun, just like the one that had appeared behind Musi Yu. When he first activated [Black Sun] in its entirety, [Eclipse] suddenly flared up, activating automatically by his feet. The two techniques resonated with each other, seemingly about to combine even without any input from Zhang Lie himself.

Zhang Lie sat down, circulating the flames of [Black Sun] through the left half of his body, and the moonlight of [Eclipse] through the right. The energies from both techniques coalesced in his genetic core. Instead of clashing with each other, they melded into one united whole.

The flames of the black sun, combined with the pure-white beams of moonlight, swirled around each other like yin and yang. The black flames granted the moonlight strength, and the moonlight served as fuel for the black flames. The two techniques supported and fed into each other in cohesive harmony.

To his surprise, upon combining the two techniques, Zhang Lie found that his physical strength had improved as a result, an augmentation even more impressive than when his framework had evolved into its third form.

The domain of [Eclipse] had grown far larger than before, and its effect had been increased dramatically, as had the augmentation provided by [Black Sun].

"No wonder Musi Yu had been seeking this technique for so long..."

This combination technique would need a new name; the original name hadn't been preserved in either the Eclipse Sage's nor Musi Yu's memories. Given that it was a combination of [Black Sun] and [Eclipse], Zhang Lie named it [Syzygy].

Pleased with his progress, Zhang Lie then turned to investigating the fragment of a treasure map he had found in Musi Yu's possession. Unfortunately, he wasn't successful—there weren't any obvious landmarks that the treasure map seemed to point to.

He urgently wanted to head to the third realm and resolve the issues from his past life, but he knew waiting was the logical choice. Even if he were to ascend to the third realm immediately, he wouldn't be able to accomplish anything with just the clues he had now, and he would even startle his target.

Suddenly, his transceiver beeped. Sun Mengmeng and the others had returned from their hunt, and they had even found an herb that would be necessary for the peak-grade limit-breaking potion. Zhang Lie rushed out of his study, leaving the treasure map behind.

The sura elder pointed at a furrow on the ground. "This was where your concubine vanished, your highness!"

The sura king scooped up a handful of earth. "How could he have vanished? Didn't you leave a tracker on his body?"

"I'm not sure, your highness." The sura elder didn't dare say that the most likely reason was that Musi Yu had died.

The sura king frowned. "I sense a trace of another lifeform around."

Before the sura elder could speak, the sura king had already vanished from sight. He sighed, "You really can do whatever you want if you're strong..."

Wang Yanyi and the other members of the Tianji Council, who had just left Qi, suddenly found a sura standing in front of them. Their eyes bulged; the sura was so massive that all the others they had seen seemed malnourished in comparison.

"What? The sura are here! Run!"

Wang Yanyi and the others tried to flee back toward Qi, but the sura king forced them all to the ground before they could.

The sura king clucked his tongue. "How pretty you all look. I'm very upset that I can't find my beloved concubine, so I think I'll take it out on you."

"No, no, nooooo!" The cries of Wang Yanyi and the other members of the council echoed through the skies.