Aaron had failed in inscribing the fourth formation twice but realized the mistakes even as he drew them, before it could injure him. Now, as he was in the middle of the third attempt, he was confident of his success. Even as he opened his eyes to face the Timelady, he would continue investing some of his mind into it just so it might bring him some advantage in his future cultivation sessions if he survived. Most of his focus would be on how to escape the situation instead though.

He used a pulse of Arcane skill to break free from Bymor's floating skill and stood up. Aaron looked straight at the beautiful golden eyes of the Timelady. Her features were on par with the High Elf Priestess of Darkness he had killed. There was something weird where her beast core should be, a kind of distortion, but her power barred him away from feeling it. She looked at him with a weird mix of respect and pity.

"Aaron Ironblood, former Absolute Immortal. To think someone as weak as me would one day caught someone as powerful as you."

He was legitimately shocked. He had never expected to hear those words in this dimension. "How do you know?"

She laughed delightfully. "You're wise beyond measure, yet so ignorant in your arrogance. You have witnessed the Dao in all Its glory from birth, yet fail to accept it. I believe the saying in your homeworld would be 'to have eyes but not see Mount Tai.' Then again, I suppose you're not Chinese, are you?"

His shock became absolute astonishment. It was one thing to see his general past, but to see his conversations from way back? The only alternative would be for her to have peered into Earth, but its tight protections from the mysterious power guarding it prevented even divination from working on it.

He quickly reached a conclusion though. "You were there. The day I was summoned, you were in the palace and read a thread of Time coming to this dimension from my home universe."

The Timelady laughed again. "No, poor blind man, I wasn't. But you won't believe me, will you? You wouldn't even if I told you everything. I have seen it. Are you done with your little internal formation? Or will you keep talking to gain some time?"

Dealing with enemy diviners was annoying. He had hidden the way his Qi was working in his dantian, but she had already divined all this conversation and whatever happened later. She knew all his moves already.

Or at least she knew everything he would usually do. He wouldn't usually use his fists—

A Time skill locked his body in place without affecting his insides. The pity in her eyes increased. "Three hundred thousand variations of this moment, blind man. I have seen through it all. Didn't you think it weird I didn't prevent you from taking my man? Don't you think it weird I never attempted to attack and kill him to complete the ritual whenever I found you? Even now, he lives. The ritual was always meant to reach this point incomplete, to lure you to this very place and moment. Try to break free and fail, as you have failed three hundred thousand times before."

He laughed. "If you had seen as much into my past as you claim, you would know I always overcome the odds. Are you really going to tempt fate? You, an Entropomancer?"

She smiled. "Are you really advocating I kill you? From what I saw, I believed you smarter than this."

Aaron had to concede that she had a point. It was just too damn annoying to be looked at with the condescending gaze she now threw his way. How far had she seen into his past? How far ahead had she seen what he would do?

She had claimed to have seen three hundred thousand variations of this. Well, he was self-confident enough to believe he could find three hundred thousand different ways to try to deal with this situation, so there might be things she hadn't foreseen. And there was also one thing he would only consider if he were absolutely sure he was real. Yes, he might be just a simulation in her skill.

That was the issue with peering into the future, it wasn't real. And if his future self were always told that, or if he always checked, he had ways of checking if reality was really happening. That was a trick he had discovered himself and had only ever told his own disciples about, so she should be ignorant of it unless she had seen into very specific conversations.

To see into the possible variations of the future, one had to consider all kinds of variables and simulate them. You could make assumptions about people and find out almost everything about them. Even their essences could be divined, but not them all. And not everything about the world around either.

Unfortunately, a diviner might assume he would check himself and tweak the simulation so he would always find what he was looking for. They might also assume he would check the world and find the same. But there was one thing mostly every diviner overlooked, that someone might check if they would keep existing after death.

Most simulations ended right after the target of the divination died. There was no purpose in keeping going, especially when one was doing as many simulations as she had claimed to have done. So he only had to make sure he would come back to life afterward.

"Three hundred thousand, you say?" Her skill wasn't preventing him from talking. "Then you know I would rather die than to get captured by you."

She laughed again. "And I also know this is your way of checking if this is real or a simulation. Quite a clever trick. However, one wonders after seeing it thousands of times, especially from one so resourceful as you. How strange for you to give up so easily."

That was troublesome. He couldn't know if this was real or not, so he had to assume it was. He also had to assume she knew what he would do next.

But what if that were her plan all along? What if this ritual had been specifically built so he would take the next step? For the next step involved absorbing it.

He needed energy to level up. A lot of it. That's the reason his level-ups took longer each time. Despite his higher level meaning he could absorb more energy from a larger area faster, the energy requirements to level up grew more than his absorption capabilities.

The localized truth the ritual was creating was its own kind of energy though. Raw, concentrated, purposefully meaning that could change reality itself. He would need to twist its original meaning, but he could use it.

However, he couldn't completely cleanse it. To take the ritual into himself would be to get shackled by whatever it wanted him to do. It would be temporary, but that only meant the Timelady had to be creative about how to use that time when she had designed the ritual. She had proven herself to be insightful all the way to here.

He still felt confident in protecting his mind from external control. But what if her goal was to have him do something before the shackles dissipated? What if she made him kill someone he cared for. What if she made him kill Lana?

Could he risk it? Would he risk it? He knew he could withstand the pain of killing her — despite placing her in his heart, it was in a well-guarded area. He always knew she might die at any moment. Neither he nor she were powerful enough yet to guarantee her immortality.

But was it worth it?

The fate of the universe was at stake. He would rather die than willingly sacrifice someone for power, as he had refused to use Bymor, but would it be the same if he was forced to kill someone against his will? What if he knew his actions would force him to do it? Wouldn't it be the same as doing it himself?

He sighed.

Who was he trying to deceive? The issue was never of balancing Lana's life against the universe. The issue was balancing her life against his.

His mind would be free to make decisions. He could just kill himself by willing it hard enough at any moment — that's the reason the Timelord had to be kept frozen. Would he kill himself to protect Lana?

Yes.

Yes, he would.

Not because he wanted to. No, his whole heart told him to protect himself. But he had been taught better. Patriarch Ironblood, the original one, had shown with his own life the path forward for a true man, and that was of self-sacrifice when the lives of those that you cared about were at stake. The universe could find someone else to save it later, but only he would be able to save his girlfriend in such a situation.

The only question was whether to do it now or after he was done with inscribing his formation. Quick thinking led him to the conclusion it was better to do it now rather than chancing the Timelady getting impatient and killing him before he had could do anything. She was mocking him arrogant in her knowledge that she knew everything he might do, but you never knew how a diviner would act.

So he looked at the Timelady in the eyes and sucked all the ritual energy into his damaged dantian.

She had to use all her willpower to hide her exhilaration. It had worked. She had almost driven herself to death to divine it, but it had worked. Instead of killing her creatively, as he had done in over twenty thousand simulations, he had chosen to take the ritual power in.

From the moment he had come to this world, every single step, every single gesture, every single word of hers had been precisely taken just for that to happen. Even the timing between breaking through the portals had to be precise. One second earlier or later and everything changed. He was that unpredictable.

But she was determined, and everything she did had brought her to this single moment, the most important one of her life.

As the energies inside him went crazy and he leveled up in ways this world hadn't seen for a long time, she couldn't hold a smile in anymore.

Her destiny would be fulfilled.

The ritual entered his dantian, and Aaron immediately regretted doing it. He couldn't control it. Its meaning was too powerful, too focused. The layered deception he had detected ran deeper than he had thought, and it refused to let him, the target of the ritual, to use it.

He fought the ritual. He took it by the guts and forced it still. His ten points of willpower and the extra protection of his soul should've been enough to stop it in place.

They weren't.

That's when he felt it. A second focus. In the Timelady's distorted beast core that he had noticed previously. She was controlling the ritual directly, and her willpower was also at the limit of that world. Moreover, the very same Time skill keeping him locked in place was now penetrating his body and soul, weakening him.

He had been had.

The ritual filled his entire dantian, and when the invading Master Time Energy met it, they morphed together into some strange new energy. That energy broke through space and time and pulled something from the other side.

Aaron felt his skin crawl as he recognized pure, unadulterated Spiritual Energy.

Just like his being had been starving for Divine Energy, so it was starving for Spiritual Energy. It started absorbing it on its own accord. He wanted to prevent it, for it was taking the energy too quickly in a way it would hurt him, but of course, he could do nothing but watch.

To his surprise — the Timelady was very skilled in surprising him, it seemed — she took hold of the Spiritual Energy and focused it all into his dantian. Once there, she started drawing where he had stopped inscribing his fourth formation. That required skill or a lot of experience. She hadn't been lying when she had said she had divined things hundreds of thousands of times. Only that much practice would allow one to know exactly how to hijack a formation design like that.

Soon after, he recognized in fright the main aim of the formation: absolute slavery. As he had feared, his mind would be his, but everything else would belong to her. Much beyond his guesses though, that formation would make it permanent. His very energies would obey her will, forever preventing him from breaking free. Unless he killed himself, he would never be free ever again.

And there was something else there. He would become a Spiritual Energy cultivator too. That would be great if it weren't for the one doing it to him. Why could she do that but had not an ounce of Spiritual Energy within herself? Why wasn't she cultivating it if she had access to it? And that was a world where he had found more Divine Energy than Spiritual Energy.

Something was terribly wrong in all of it. He guessed that to cultivate Spiritual Energy was a sure-way ticket to hell. After she finished, he would either be hunted down or become an eternal slave.

No.

No! He refused to accept that! He refused to become a puppet forever!

He would die fighting with his everything!

Aaron expanded his death aura beyond the limits of what his soul could withstand. His soul was immediately injured, and the pain was terrible, but he withstood it. Despite the Timelady's great willpower and probably even having expected it in her simulations, she flinched once and her control over the strange energy decreased a little.

That was enough.