After yet another failed attempt where the Silver-Robed Ancestor escaped without hesitation, Leopard Gold was the first to give up.
"This Silver-Robed Ancestor is too slippery. I, Leopard, lack the ability to kill him, so I won't waste your time anymore," Leopard Gold said in a low muffled voice.
Soon afterwards, his figure slowly dissipated as his soul left Crescent Moon World.
He had given up on this mission.
It didn't require much energy for Star Rulers to wander about the Inner World, but it was different once they entered a plane. Every moment they spent inside the plane consumed soul power.
Leopard Gold wasn't very strong to begin with and belonged to the category of Star Rulers who didn't have their own astral worlds yet, so he decided to cut his losses as soon as he determined that the mission was hopeless. He was actually quite decisive.
Gu Nan secretly sighed. 'This is the systematic problem with randomly formed parties!'
Once they encountered overly difficult content, it was very likely for someone to leave the party.
Nie Shuangshuang, on the other hand, was clearly used to this already. She asked, "Do we keep fighting?"
Gu Nan naturally nodded, but Nie Shuangshuang suggested, "Let's stop here for today. I'll go back and prepare a little."
...
Gu Nan slowly opened his eyes from inside the Divine Kingdom, then sighed slightly.
He, Leopard Gold, and Nie Shuangshuang were ultimately unable to clear Crescent Moon World on the first try.
Leopard Gold chose to cut his losses in time, and Nie Shuangshuang also didn't continue trying to clear the mission—this wasn't actually because the high and mighty Star Rulers lost their patience. Rather, it was because this kind of attempt was too inefficient.
Nie Shuangshuang expressed that she would go back to prepare for a while, planning to devise two attacks capable of dealing explosive damage in a short time.
This was also a move to sharpen the axe in order to split the wood faster, so Gu Nan naturally wasn't against it. He also didn't need to clear the dungeon on the first try.
The two agreed to meet in the Myriad Heavens Starry Road again in a month.
Moreover, they were now one party member short. Gu Nan began to consider whether to recruit another random passerby or personally find someone to clear the dungeon.
Many of the people he knew actually weren't weak, but they didn't have much of an advantage against the Silver-Robed Ancestor, whose design was based on Gu Nan himself.
Only now would Gu Nan lament: 'Why in the world did I make myself so powerful?'
It hadn't even been two days since Gu Nan returned to the Evil God Temple when Red Tail sent another message over—an uninvited guest had dropped by White Bones Realm.
...
In White Bones Realm, Bai Qiaozhen stared at the woman before her with a helpless expression. "Your Excellency…"
"You can call me Ling'er," Long Ling'er interrupted expressionlessly. She was currently using her human form that looked like a young girl, so Bai Qiaozhen could see her expression.
Bai Qiaozhen took a deep breath. The number of extraordinary occurrences in White Bones Realm this past year had almost caught up to all the abnormal events in the previous twenty years combined.
Her father, Daoist White Bones, was an "iron-fisted monarch" who exercised strict control over his astral world, but he obviously couldn't personally attend to everything due to his identity and status, so that task fell to her instead.
If it was an ordinary powerful figure, then she naturally had subordinates who could handle it. But both the earlier Gu Nan and this Dragon of Space currently standing before her were obviously not ordinary people.
A single Gu Nan already gave Bai Qiaozhen quite a headache when he stirred up great trouble in White Bones Realm a while back, but she didn't expect another troublesome person to appear so soon.
"Why does Miss Ling'er want to visit my White Bones Realm?" She considered for a moment and finally chose to ask directly.
Long Ling'er also didn't let her down and gave a rather clear answer, only this answer might not necessarily be what Bai Qiaozhen wanted to hear.
"I came to find Gu Nan. I want to fight him," Long Ling'er answered matter-of-factly.
"....Why?!"
"He defeated me before," Long Ling'er explained with four brief words. In reality, she meant that if she wanted to hone her combat awareness, then she had to crawl back up from the exact same place she'd fallen down at.
Bai Qiaozhen tried hard to keep the anger from showing on her face. "Then can you guys fight somewhere else?"
Long Ling'er thought for a moment. "Yes."
Bai Qiaozhen immediately sighed in relief. As long as these two didn't destroy her family's astral world, she didn't care if Gu Nan lived or died.
However, a voice cut in beside her before she could say anything, "This isn't a bad place to fight either!"
Gu Nan's saint clone had arrived, still in that same gaudy silver robe.
Bai Qiaozhen's expression instantly darkened and she said angrily, "Do you want me to kick all of your subordinates out of this realm?"
In theory, as the Star Ruler's spokesperson, Bai Qiaozhen wouldn't kick people out of the astral world just because a powerful pursuer was on their tail.
After all, they could provide power to the Star Ruler as long as they remained in the astral world, so if Bai Qiaozhen expelled them just because someone was chasing them, then Daoist White Bones would lose face as the ruler of White Bones Realm.
But she couldn't restrain herself at all when faced with a shameless person like Gu Nan!
"Oh, I was just kidding," Gu Nan absentmindedly replied, then glanced at Long Ling'er. "You want to fight me?"
Long Ling'er just nodded wordlessly.
"Aren't you afraid I'll beat you to death?" Gu Nan's voice was as serene as usual, but his words were somewhat frightening.
Long Ling'er thought for a moment and answered, "He gave me something that can resurrect me."
This "he" naturally referred to Lu Wen. As one of the Thirteen Heavens who controlled the law of time, he absolutely had the ability to rewind time as long as prior arrangements were in place.
Thus, Gu Nan discarded the thought of killing the opponent with one punch—this kind of opponent who didn't fear death had to be handled differently.
Gu Nan's gaze fell on her, and he suddenly thought of something. "Come with me."
After saying that, he turned around and walked into a small plane. Long Ling'er hurriedly followed him inside.
But before she could even see what the new plane looked like, a sharp pain had already traveled over from the back of her head.
He actually ambushed her!
The rage of being tricked surged up in her heart. Long Ling'er instantly transformed into her true body. A mysterious, razor-sharp power of space flowed out in all directions, bent on cutting Gu Nan to pieces.
However, Gu Nan didn't dodge, so much so that most of his body was directly torn apart, but his fist hit the giant silver dragon's body.
This wasn't a normal punch; it also contained the formidable power of shadows!
Since he didn't borrow the power of his true body inside the Divine Kingdom, this attack only used Tier 4 law of shadows, but it was still enough to pierce the spatial barrier that Long Ling'er hastily put up.
He didn't use the power of laws the last time they fought because he feared that killing her in one punch would provoke the Lu Wen backing her—it wasn't because Gu Nan couldn't kill her!
So this punch directly blasted her head apart.
As soon as Long Ling'er was killed, a strange force flung Gu Nan away, while the silver dragon's giant body quickly recovered and was as good as new in the blink of an eye.
Long Ling'er stared at Gu Nan in a daze, watching his half of a body also quickly heal itself. For a while, she didn't know what to say.
She didn't expect to be killed in a single exchange after the other party stopped holding back.
"Again," she said in a low voice.
She lacked experience, but her combat IQ was actually very high. She immediately realized the mistake she made earlier.
The opponent's physical body was too powerful, so she mustn't give him a chance to get close to her. She should've fought while keeping her distance!
...
Four hours later, Long Ling'er, who'd been kited by Gu Nan for the entire afternoon, finally couldn't stand it anymore and roared, "Don't run if you have the guts!"
Of course Gu Nan wouldn't listen to her, so he fired shadow arrows from an extreme distance, draining Long Ling'er's power one arrow at a time and literally grinding her health to zero.
The newly-resurrected Long Ling'er rushed up to Gu Nan with a dark expression, but he didn't actually run this time.
"Want to learn how to fight? I can teach you," Gu Nan proposed with a smile.
Long Ling'er had long since lost her initial naiveté. She stared at Gu Nan warily and asked, "What are your conditions?"
"Haha, why would I have any conditions? By the way, can you enter the Inner World?"
Although her face was full of disbelief, she still answered after some slight hesitation, "I can… You're really willing to teach me?"
"Yup, I won't charge any tuition fees and will also be responsible for finding you practical combat targets." Gu Nan said with a smile, "What a good Samaritan I am."
Long Ling'er thought for half a day and didn't think Gu Nan had anything to gain by lying to her, so she nodded. "Then what should I call you? Teacher?"
In her eyes, fighting techniques should be something very profound, so someone willing to teach it to her should be addressed respectfully.
"No, you can just call me Lei Feng[1]."
[1] Lei Feng: A soldier in the People's Liberation Army who was portrayed as a selfless and modest model citizen whose example people were encouraged to follow.