"Did I say anything wrong?"

Willy Rivera roared, "If I hadn’t sold you out back then and gotten you killed... would you, Wyatt Barnes, have what you have today?"

"Sophistry!"

Wyatt Barnes sneered coldly. "Or are you trying to say that when you planned to sell me out and have me killed, you already knew my soul would cross over to another world and achieve what I’ve achieved today?"

Right now, Wyatt Barnes only felt that what Willy Rivera said was laughable.

Selling him out, getting him killed...

and that somehow counted as a favor to him?

Ridiculous!

"Whether I knew it or not, it’s still a fact!"

Willy Rivera kept roaring, "So you can’t kill me... If you kill me, that’s repaying kindness with hatred! That’s not the kind of person you, Wyatt, are, and it’s not your style!"

At this point, with life and death hanging by a thread, Willy Rivera went all in, trying to morally blackmail Wyatt Barnes.

In his mind:

The Wyatt from decades ago was someone who repaid kindness and hated those who repaid kindness with hatred.

Now, he arrogantly believed:

He, though he had sold Wyatt out and gotten him killed, had also allowed Wyatt to gain what he had today...

The benefits he’d brought Wyatt were enough to make up for the wrongs he’d committed back then!

"What kind of person I am, what my style is... you seem to know very well?"

Wyatt Barnes kept sneering.

Right after that, with just a thought, Wyatt also withdrew the force that was supporting Willy Rivera on his knees out in space, letting Willy’s whole body be directly exposed to the void.

"No—"

In an instant, the biting cold of outer space surged in, and as Willy Rivera let out a miserable scream, he was frozen, frozen to death!

Willy Rivera, though a Superpowered Soldier whose soul was comparable to that of a half-step immortal, still had nothing more than an ordinary human body.

As an ordinary person, it was impossible for him to survive in outer space.

Bam!!

Seeing Willy Rivera frozen to death, his body encased in ice, Wyatt Barnes’s face stayed calm, neither happy nor sad, as his palm howled out and directly smashed Willy’s frozen body.

The reason it was "smashed" was because:

At this moment, Willy Rivera from head to toe, inside and out, had completely turned into ice.

Wyatt’s palm howled out and struck him as if hitting a solid block of ice.

The block shattered on impact, turning into countless shards of ice that scattered through space and, under the light of that nearby star, glittered brilliantly.

Willy Rivera, the agent who had sold out Wyatt’s previous life and caused his death, fell here and now!

"Hm?"

And just as he personally watched Willy Rivera’s frozen body explode into pieces, Wyatt Barnes’s brows twitched, as if sensing something. At once, he closed his eyes.

He stood ramrod straight where he was, like a spear planted in the void.

Almost the moment Wyatt Barnes closed his eyes and stood unmoving—

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

...

Waves of surging power swept out from his body.

As soon as these powers surged forth and wrapped around him, they condensed into the shape of ’swords’.

One sword-shaped stream of power after another rose from Wyatt’s body, stacking on top of each other, as if they would never stop...

Those sword-shaped powers rising from Wyatt’s body were like sword-shaped flames burning around him.

As they burned, they finally fused together, causing that merged sword-flame to swell more and more violently, and grow ever deeper and more profound.

And at this moment, Wyatt Barnes had wholly immersed himself in comprehending the Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’.

In the past, he had only managed to comprehend up to the sixth sword of this Divine Ability, the ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’.

After that, there had been no progress at all. He always felt something was blocking him, yet it wasn’t a ’bottleneck’—it was an ’obsession’...

As for that ’obsession’, it had arisen precisely because of his agent from his previous life, Willy Rivera.

Now that Willy Rivera was dead, that obsession naturally collapsed on its own!

Watching Willy die, in the depths of Wyatt Barnes’s mind, the memories of the Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’ suddenly surfaced.

However, facing this Divine Ability that suddenly emerged in his mind, though Wyatt Barnes could have chosen to ignore it, he did not.

Because he knew:

Since the Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’ surfaced at this moment, it definitely had a reason. If he rashly ignored it, he might miss something.

"This... this is..."

Very soon, Wyatt discovered:

That Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’ which, in the past, had refused to budge no matter how hard he tried to comprehend it, was now making explosive progress as he casually focused his mind on it.

The speed of his progress was terrifying!

"Could this... be an ’epiphany’?"

As this thought flashed through Wyatt Barnes’s mind, he no longer dared let his attention wander, throwing himself wholly into the Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’, ignoring everything around him.

Wyatt Barnes stood in the emptiness of space, like an old monk entering meditation standing upright...

On his body, the sword-shaped flames formed one after another from that surging power also rose higher still, causing the sword-shaped flame hovering over Wyatt Barnes’s head—like a towering mountain enshrouding him—to swell and surge even more violently!

"Seventh Sword of Green Lotus!"

In the blink of an eye, Wyatt had smoothly comprehended the Seventh Sword of the Divine Ability "Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus."

And this was still not the end.

"Eighth Sword of Green Lotus!"

"Ninth Sword of Green Lotus!"

"Tenth Sword of Green Lotus!"

...

It was as if only an instant had passed, yet also as if countless years had gone by.

When Wyatt finally came back to himself, he had already, within that sudden "epiphany," smoothly comprehended the Thirteenth Sword of the Divine Ability "Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus."

From this moment on, he had completely mastered the Divine Ability "Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus"!

"I didn’t expect... didn’t expect my luck to be this good, to actually enter a state of ’enlightenment’ at the exact moment Willy Rivera died, and successfully grasp all the profundities of the Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’!"

As he came back to his senses, that sword-shaped flame that had shrouded Wyatt like a lofty mountain also rapidly shrank in the instant he opened his eyes.

In the end, it merged back into Wyatt’s body and vanished without a trace.

As if it had never appeared at all.

At the same time, cold light flickered between Wyatt’s opened eyes.

Swish! Swish!

Two streaks of sword qi, without the slightest warning, howled out from his eyes. By the time they startled him into a brief daze, they had already dissipated into the empty air in front of him.

"Gaze becoming swords... this is indeed the mark of fully mastering the Divine Ability ’Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus’!"

Although, in that "epiphany," Wyatt had already known that he had successfully grasped all the profundities of the Divine Ability "Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus," comprehending the later swords behind the thirteenth, including the final sword...

That had, after all, only been a feeling.

So even he, before completely confirming it, didn’t dare claim that he had definitely mastered all the profundities of the Divine Ability "Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus."

Now, with "gaze becoming swords" appearing, it allowed him to further confirm that he had mastered all the profundities of the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus.

"Sword, out!"

However, even with the sign of "gaze becoming swords," Wyatt still raised his hand, forming a sword-finger. He pointed out, sword light howling forth, using this to test all the profundities of the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus he had just comprehended.

Swish!

The first streak of sword light roared out.

And almost at the exact same time that this first streak howled forth, more streaks of sword light followed in its wake, like shadows trailing the body.

In the end, they all merged into that first streak of sword light, causing it to explode in size and power.

From the number of those subsequent howling streaks of sword light, one could also see:

Wyatt had indeed already mastered all the profundities of the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus, and had unleashed the seven subsequent swords after the Sixth Sword, including the final, Thirteenth Sword of the Green Lotus!

"Looks like the way I made such a big show of taking Willy Rivera away from Earth, step by step driving him into despair, then killing him... though it was a bit troublesome, it was the right thing to do."

"It seems precisely because I did that, I was able to vent my anger completely, to fully let go of the ’obsession’ from my previous life that was born because of him."

"And thus... I somehow sank into that state of epiphany over the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus, and smoothly comprehended all its profundities, completely mastering the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus!"

Wyatt had never imagined:

That, on a mere impulse, taking Willy Rivera away from Earth, only killing him after driving him to despair, would end up bringing him such a benefit.

"Good thing I took him out... If I had just killed him directly back on that luxury cruise ship, maybe I wouldn’t have felt as satisfied as I do now."

"And if I couldn’t vent my anger completely, I obviously wouldn’t have inexplicably sunk into that state of epiphany over the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus."

Thinking of this, Wyatt couldn’t help feeling somewhat fortunate.

In this way, all that fanfare had indeed been worth it.

"You’ve finally woken up."

Just as Wyatt had only barely recovered a bit, a familiar voice sounded by his ear...

He turned his head and saw Lainey Don sitting cross-legged not far away, looking at him.

"Why are you here?"

Seeing Lainey Don, Wyatt couldn’t help being stunned. "You... weren’t you on Ear... on Yanhuang Star?"

"You’ve been standing here for five years... you tell me, why would I be here?"

Lainey Don shook her head, then asked, "Judging from your earlier state, you seemed to be comprehending some kind of Divine Ability... So? How did the comprehension go?"

"What?!"

"Fi... five years?!"

As for the latter half of Lainey Don’s sentence, Wyatt didn’t catch a single word of it, because all his attention was locked on her first sentence.

Five years?

He had spent five years in enlightenment to master that Divine Ability "Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus"?

"This is bad!"

"A month after Willy Rivera’s death, his people were supposed to detonate the super nukes hidden all over Earth... and now, five years have already passed!"

"Earth... has it already been destroyed?"

Wyatt’s face changed dramatically. As he muttered under his breath, regret filled his expression; he hated himself for not having broken off his epiphany over the Thirteen Swords of the Green Lotus earlier.