The Quantum Path to Immortality
Chapter 68 - 67: Echoes of the Past

Chapter 68: Chapter 67: Echoes of the Past

The instant Elias activated his Quantum Universal Teleportation, the grand, humming interior of the Nexus Spire vanished. In its place, a chill, musty silence enveloped them. Lumie, usually a vibrant orb of light, shrank slightly, her glow dimming as she pressed herself against Kaelen’s shoulder. They stood within what was undeniably the interior of an ancient, alien vessel. Dust motes, seemingly millennia old, hung suspended in the stale air, catching the faint, ethereal light filtering from Elias’s presence.

The ship’s interior was vast, a testament to craftsmanship far beyond anything known on Xianwu. Alien materials, unlike any metals or alloys Elias had ever encountered, formed sleek, curved walls that seemed to absorb ambient light. Complex consoles, covered in intricate, dormant glyphs and strange, non-Euclidean displays, lined the hull, their power source a central, luminous core that was now utterly dark, a husk of inert energy. It felt less like a vehicle and more like a tomb, a silent, forgotten sarcophagus of cosmic ambition.

Then they saw him. Stretched across what appeared to be a command seat, his form desiccated and mummified, were the skeletal remains of the humanoid alien pilot. These were not ordinary bones. They glowed with a faint, ethereal golden hue, a silent testament to an immensely powerful cultivation base or a unique biological composition that defied conventional decay. Even in death, a subtle, residual Qi radiated from him, hinting at a power that once rivaled the stars.

Elias’s Quantum Divine Sense (QDS) immediately went to work, sifting through the lingering energetic imprints. "A Universe Realm cultivator," he murmured, his voice echoing in the confined space, his Divine Processor instantly mapping the alien’s shattered internal universe and collapsed Qi pathways. "And he suffered catastrophic injuries. A violent, utterly fatal event. Not a peaceful end." He also noted the unique, yet utterly depleted, power signature of the ship – undeniably a multiversal-level vessel.

Kaelen shivered, despite the warmth radiating from her own nascent cultivation. "He’s been here for a very long time, hasn’t he? What happened to him?"

"Indeed," Elias confirmed, his gaze fixed on the skeletal pilot. His cosmic curiosity, long dormant during his mundane period, flared to life. This wasn’t just a crashed ship; it was a cosmic mystery, radiating questions he felt compelled to answer. "We shall see."

He raised a hand, his refined control over the Law of Time focusing on the alien’s remains and the surrounding ship. He wasn’t merely observing; he was actively reversing localized causality, tracing the energetic and temporal ripples backward from the ship’s current state to its point of catastrophic failure. His nascent Law of Causality comprehension (a mere 10% yet still terrifyingly potent) allowed him to reconstruct events with perfect, terrifying clarity.

A vivid, ghostly, yet palpably real projection materialized within the main cabin, shimmering like a perfect 3D hologram. It was a replay of the ship’s last moments, seen primarily from the alien pilot’s own internal perspective, complete with his thoughts, sounds, and faint energetic signatures. Kaelen gasped, Lumie let out a soft "boop," and even Elias felt a spark of awe at the seamless reconstruction of the past.

The projection flickered, and the interior of the ship, once silent and dead, sprang to ghostly life and then the scene changed. The alien pilot, a being of regal bearing even in his frantic movements, was revealed. He was clearly a Universe Realm cultivator, moving with a suppressed power that hinted at his formidable strength. He was not alone; the spectral figures of other cultivators, some at Galaxy Realm or even his own Universe Realm, flitted around him in the projection.

The scene shifted, displaying the interior of an opulent, cosmic locale – the Immortal Cave of a Reality Realm Expert. It hummed with the lingering aura of a being who had mastered 100% Reality Law before ascending. It was a treasure trove, filled with cosmic artifacts, spiritual herbs that glowed with inner universes, and techniques inscribed on impossible materials. A chaotic free-for-all was underway, a frantic scramble among the spectral figures.

The alien pilot’s internal monologue began to play out in Elias’s mind via the QDS echo:

"Filthy scavengers! This is the opportunity of a lifetime! Old Man Ximen, the Reality Expert, finally ascended after comprehending his final Law of Reality. His cave is a goldmine! Every greedy Universe Realm fool and Galaxy Cluster wannabe is here. But they’ll never find my target. I spent my entire life savings on this multiversal-level ship for this moment. It’s my one shot!"

The alien, a glint of desperation in his spectral eyes, darted through the chaos. By a stroke of pure, desperate luck – or perhaps a perfectly timed Space Warp maneuver that coincided with a brief opening in the chaotic flow of cultivators – his spectral hand closed around a seemingly innocuous object. It was small, unassuming, like a crumpled, discarded rag.

"YES! I have it! The Cosmic Divine Sense Cultivation Technique! It’s just a crumpled rag, but its true power... oh, Ximen, you truly were a mad genius to hide it so perfectly!" the alien thought, his exhilaration palpable through the echo.

Just as the alien clutched the treasure, a blinding flash engulfed the projected scene. A devastating strike, impossibly fast, tore through the projection. A new spectral figure appeared, radiating boundless power – a Multiversal Expert, clearly the Reality Realm expert’s enraged disciple who detected the intruders and stolen technique .

"NO! That accursed disciple! How did he find me so fast?! This strike... it’s fragmenting my internal universe! My Qi pathways are collapsing! I’m dying! But I have to escape! I might still have a chance with this technique"

He barely made it to his ship. The projection showed him stumbling into the pilot’s seat, frantically initiating the escape sequence. The ship lurched, its engines already catastrophically damaged by the preceding strike, flickering violently. Just as his pursuer closed in, a monumental cosmic event occurred. An unpredictable, immense spatial storm, a swirling vortex of raw spatial energy, suddenly ripped through the region. It wasn’t aimed at them; it was pure, terrifying, cosmic chance. The Multiversal Expert and his allies were swept away into unknown, chaotic reaches of the multiverse, leaving the mortally wounded alien to drift, his ship barely functioning, for eons.

The projection fast-forwarded through time. The ship drifted, a ghost in the cosmic winds, life support failing, the pilot’s powerful Qi slowly leaking from his shattered internal universe. It eventually entered Xianwu’s primitive star system, a faint blip drawn by some inexplicable cosmic current. The ship, due to its critical damage, cannot correct its trajectory and crash-landed violently onto Xianwu Continent. The impact delivered the final blow to the already dying Universe Realm cultivator.

The projection then showed Xianwu through the centuries. The planet was primitive, its inhabitants unaware of the cosmic forces at play. The ship lay hidden, deep under an ancient mountain range, naturally shielded by immense geological density and the residual spatial distortions from its crash. Then, the projection zoomed in. A localized, mild seismic shift, combined with a unique, long-term atmospheric anomaly, disturbed the natural concealment just enough. A curious, uncultivated farmer couple stumbled upon a newly exposed crevice, leading to the crash site.

They found the alien’s desiccated, golden-glowing body. The projection showed them attempting to move it, to cut a piece of it with their primitive stone tools. They grunted, strained, but the body was impossibly heavy, its substance impervious to their tools, not even a scratch. They looked at each other in bewildered awe, confirming its otherworldly nature.

Within the remarkably intact ship, they found the "library." Not digital archives or cosmic crystals, but physical, though durable, alien texts: dictionaries for translation, comprehensive cultivation manuals, alchemy guides, blacksmithing texts, even rudimentary scientific diagrams, all on strange, resilient alien paper or inscribed metal tablets.

The pivotal, tragic misunderstanding then played out. The projection showed the primitives poring over the texts. They lacked any fundamental scientific understanding or cosmic context. They saw diagrams of Qi flow and energy manipulation but misinterpreted them as mystical rituals. They practiced the techniques rudimentarily and mystically, mimicking motions, chanting sounds, but utterly failing to grasp the intricate energy physics and cosmic Laws behind the ’magic.’ Their attempts were slow, inefficient, and often distorted. These misinterpreted practices, passed down through generations, became the foundation of all cultivation on Xianwu – the "broken system" Elias had been optimizing. The initial cultivators, these simple farmers, became the revered "founding ancestors" of Xianwu’s great sects, passing down their incomplete and fundamentally misunderstood knowledge.

The projection flickered to its final moment, showing the farmer couple taking the texts they could carry, then leaving the site. As the years turned into centuries, the initial atmospheric anomaly faded, and the earth slowly settled. Natural sedimentation, overgrowing spiritual vegetation, and the subtle reassertion of the ship’s residual spatial distortions gradually re-obscured the crash site. Any memory of its specific location, beyond vague folklore, faded into legend, ensuring the ship’s secret remained for millennia, waiting for someone with a QDS on Elias’s scale to peel back the layers of reality.

As the temporal echo faded, leaving them once more in the silent, musty confines of the actual crashed ship, Elias’s gaze landed on the skeletal pilot’s hand. In the projection, it had clutched the unassuming "rag." Elias understood the immense risk the alien had taken, the cosmic-level pursuit, and the critical importance of that final object.

He reached down, his gauntleted hand gently touching the desiccated fingers. There, clutched within the golden bones, was an ordinary-looking, humble, faded rag. It was utterly unremarkable, a piece of worn fabric that looked like it belonged in a trash heap.

Kaelen peered at it. "That’s it? That’s what he risked his life for?"

Elias nodded slowly, his expression serious. "He stole it from the Immortal Cave of a Reality Realm Expert, then was struck down by a Multiversal Expert. He spent his entire life savings on this ship just to get it. Whatever this is, Kaelen, it’s worth more than galaxies." His QDS, however, vibrated with an intensity that only he could fully perceive as he held the rag. It radiated immense, concealed power, a cosmic signature disguised by its mundane appearance. It wasn’t merely a "cultivation manual"; it was the Cosmic Divine Sense Cultivation Technique itself, compressed and encoded within this unassuming object. Its true complexity, when fully processed by his Divine Processor, confirmed it to be a genuine cosmic technique, designed for ascending to higher realms, far beyond this Universe current understanding.

Kaelen, seeing Elias’s utterly serious expression, gasped as the profound implications dawned on her. "So... all of Xianwu’s cultivation... it came from this? From a misunderstanding?"

"Indeed," Elias confirmed, his gaze fixed on the humble rag in his hand. "Every sect, every technique, every ’ancient secret’ on this planet. All born from incomplete data. A truly broken system, waiting to be optimized. And this," he looked at the rag, a spark of immense challenge in his eyes, "this is the key to truly understanding the universe, and perhaps, the Reality Law itself. The challenge I’ve been seeking has finally arrived."