My Xianxia Harem Life

Chapter 302: Chapter 302 Context

Each opportunity taken brought him closer to understanding the true scale of the threat, the identity of those behind it, and the perfect method to confront and defeat Sunny.

Riley exhaled slowly, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the battlefield.

”This... will not end quickly,” he murmured to himself. ”But I have all the time in the world to wait also.”

He allowed himself one small moment of grim satisfaction.

Riley summoned another clone nearby, the new form shimmering into existence with a faint hum of energy.

He gave it precise instructions: continue the journey, explore the void beyond, and seek any signs of the forces behind the siege, while the original clone remained in place, observing the current battlefield.

”There won’t be much to gain here,” Riley muttered to himself, eyes fixed on the chaos below.

The realm under attack bore striking resemblance to his own—vast, populated, and rife with conflict.

In his own domain, countless monstrous forces had once assaulted him, testing his defenses, but the key difference here was the sophistication of the attackers.

Instead of hordes of mindless beasts, this world faced an armada of high-technology warships, each capable of mass destruction on a scale few mortals—or even immortals—could comprehend.

Riley studied the clash in silence, noting the advanced tactics, energy shields, and devastating weaponry of the invading fleet.

While instructive, he realized this battlefield offered little in the way of actionable insight for him.

It was a mirror of his own experiences, yet it lacked the deeper clues he needed to locate the true source of the assault.

He needed to expand his search.

Another realm, another battlefield, another thread in the vast tapestry of cosmic conflict could hold the answers he sought.

With methodical precision, Riley prepared his clone for a longer journey, one that would take it far beyond the current skirmish, into unknown regions where the origins of the attackers—or perhaps even the Ancient One itself—might finally be revealed.

”Explore everything. Leave nothing unchecked,” Riley commanded, his voice steady, filled with the calm certainty of one who had faced countless dangers before.

The clone’s form rippled with energy in acknowledgment, then shot forward into the void, faster than the eye could follow.

Riley allowed himself a brief moment to reflect. Every step, every experiment, every sacrifice of his immortal blood brought him closer to his goal.

Patience and vigilance were paramount—he would track every lead, follow every clue, and ultimately unravel the network of forces that threatened not just one realm, but countless worlds across the void.

Riley continued to expend his precious immortal blood on the journey, each drop a heavy price paid for survival in the boundless void.

The path he tread was not one of rest but of relentless motion, and with every passing siege he stumbled across, he saw the same patterns repeat—attackers driven by greed or vengeance, defenders struggling desperately to hold on to crumbling realms.

It was a cycle of endless struggle, yet in all these scenes of carnage, he found nothing that could grant him the decisive edge he sought.

”If only I could stumble upon an empty shell of an endless realm,” Riley muttered under his breath, his voice weighed with longing and frustration.

”To assimilate such a place would be simple—one breath, one will, and it would bend to me. Then strength would flow like a river into my veins. But alas... nothing.”

His search had taken him further than most dared to wander, yet bore no fruit.

Still, he pressed on, unwilling to yield, until the drain became undeniable.

More than half of his immortal essence was consumed, burning away like a candle left in the storm.

At last, he was forced to halt, his chest rising and falling with restrained anger.

To continue recklessly would mean courting true ruin.

Yet Riley was not careless. Even in retreat, his hands moved with precision.

He wove countless clones and scattered them across the endless void, each one a watchful sentinel, marking and cataloging every site he had traversed.

With these seeds left behind, he could instantly summon reinforcements to those points, or exploit any shift in the tides of battle.

It was not victory, but it was preparation, and preparation was often the sharpest blade.

When his work was complete, Riley withdrew into silence.

He sat cross-legged within the drifting currents of the void, closing his eyes as though in meditation.

In truth, his mind was anything but still.

He plunged into the labyrinth of his thoughts, weighing possibilities, balancing risks against gains.

”Direct conquest is inefficient,” he murmured to himself, fingers tapping lightly against his knee.

”Even if I win, the cost will hollow me out. What I need... is leverage. Deception. Perhaps even the illusion of weakness.”

Visions unfolded in his mind: forging alliances with lesser powers to use them as pawns, spreading false rumors to lure his enemies into traps, creating facades of abandoned realms to bait ambitious cultivators.

He considered disguising his essence to infiltrate as a mercenary, to learn from within and strike when least expected.

He even pondered experimenting with forbidden techniques—ways to hollow out conquered realms and wear them like armor, moving hidden within their shells until the right moment to emerge.

But the problem was finding an empty realm in the first place.

The thoughts multiplied, branching endlessly, and he let them come, weighing each one.

Some were reckless, others ingenious, but all were worth the consideration of a man unwilling to surrender.

Riley’s eyes finally opened, and within them burned not despair but clarity.

Though his immortal essence had been halved, his will had only sharpened.

”If no realm will yield itself to me, then I will carve one from nothing. If fortune denies me, I will make my own fortune.”

The void around him rippled faintly at those words, as though reality itself trembled in response to the depth of his resolve.

”I guess there’s one thing I could try.” Riley’s voice was low, more a whisper to himself than a declaration.

His eyes glimmered with a dangerous light, a mix of desperation and unyielding ambition.

The path he considered now was not just a gamble—it was madness to most.

Yet the heavens favored neither the cautious nor the timid.

To date, he had uncovered only twenty-one active sieges in the endless void, each found at great cost.

Every glimpse had consumed a portion of his immortal blood essence, draining him of power that would take millennia to replenish.

He clenched his fists, feeling the faint hollowness in his veins. Twenty-one chances.

Twenty-one threads of fate tugging at him.

Now came the impossible task of choosing.

His consciousness replayed each fragmented vision: fortresses wreathed in divine flames, citadels of steel and shadow, armies stretching farther than the eye could see.

None of them had been simple, none of them vulnerable in any obvious sense.

And therein lay the problem.

The defenders were rarely the realm lords themselves.

Instead, they were proxies—champions, generals, cultivators bound by oath or contract.

How was one to know which realm was brittle beneath the surface and which one hid a tiger’s maw?

”Anyone could be the weakest...” Riley muttered darkly. ”And anyone could be the strongest. All it takes is one wrong step, and what I plan to do would be even harder to implement.”

But indecision was a poison, and hesitation was death.

He closed his eyes, sifting through the twenty-one one final time.

At last, one realm stood out—its defensive currents seemed thinner, its champions a little less sharp than the others.

Whether that weakness was truth or carefully crafted illusion, he could not know.

But a choice had to be made, and so he marked it in his heart.

”Then it will be you.”

Now, the plan.

Direct force was suicide.

He would never breach the realm’s gates with his current reserves.

No—he needed something subtler, insidious. He would infiltrate, not invade.

He would become a shadow within its people, rise from the inside, and find a way to pierce the realm’s heart when the moment came.

To do so, he required a vessel. A host. A body to wear like a cloak.

Riley raised his hand, and strands of immortal essence swirled between his fingers, weaving into intricate seals.

He was preparing the Soul Severing Technique—a forbidden art that tore a wisp of one’s soul free to send it drifting across the void.

Many who attempted it were never whole again, their essence scattered, their minds fractured into madness.

But for him, the risk was trivial.

He steadied his breath, suppressing the sharp ache in his chest as the first layer of the technique carved into his very soul.

Veins of golden light crackled along his body as if lightning had been trapped beneath his skin.

His hands trembled, not from fear but from the sheer agony of separation.

A piece of himself—his memories, instincts, and will—was being peeled away.

”Hold... steady...” he growled through clenched teeth, sweat dripping down his brow.