The Quantum Path to Immortality-Chapter 193 - 192: Shocking Change

Chapter 193: Chapter 192: Shocking Change
Mira: 65% → 68% Infinity Law
Torin: 67% → 70% Infinity Law
Celeste: 64% → 67% Infinity Law
Marcus: 69% → 71% Infinity Law
Jin: 68% → 72% Infinity Law
The five students sat up simultaneously, staring at their hands in disbelief as they felt their restored—no,
enhanced
—cultivation bases.
"What..." Mira’s voice was barely a whisper. "How..."
"You protected my daughter," Elias said simply, as if that explained everything. Which, to him, it did. "That deserves proper thanks. Consider this a small token of my gratitude."
"
Small
?!" Marcus blurted out before he could stop himself. "You just—we were
dying
, and you—and then the comprehension—"
He couldn’t seem to form complete sentences.
Jin, more composed than the others despite his own shock, stood and bowed deeply. "Master Elias. Your kindness is... we don’t have words."
"Then don’t use words," Elias replied. "Just continue protecting Aria when I’m not available. That’s payment enough."
"We will," all five said in unison, the promise carrying weight of genuine oath.
Aria watched her father with a mixture of pride, affection, and slight exasperation. This was so typical—solving complex problems with overwhelming efficiency, treating reality manipulation like a casual favor, and being completely genuine about not expecting thanks.
Sarah chuckled softly. "Still haven’t learned subtlety, have you?"
"Subtlety is inefficient when direct solutions work better," Elias replied without missing a beat.
Kaelen just smiled, shaking her head.
Then Elias turned his attention to the one thousand Hierarchy Sovereigns, and his pleasant expression faded slightly.
The Sovereigns collectively flinched.
"You," Elias said, his voice still quiet but carrying an edge that made several cultivators physically tremble. "Came here to kidnap my daughter. To use her as leverage against me. To threaten my family."
One of the Sovereigns—braver or more foolish than the rest—tried to speak: "We were following orders, we didn’t—"
"I don’t care about your orders," Elias interrupted. "You made the choice to come here. You made the choice to threaten a child. Choices have consequences."
He gestured casually, and all one thousand Sovereigns suddenly found themselves stripped of their storage items, defensive treasures, and emergency escape talismans. The items appeared in a floating pile beside Elias.
"Here’s your consequence," Elias said. "You’re going back to whatever holes you crawled out of. And you’re going to deliver a message to The Hierarchy—assuming there’s still a Hierarchy to deliver to."
His smile turned cold. Sharp. The expression of someone who’d made certain decisions and was completely comfortable with them.
"The message is simple: Leave my family alone. Leave me alone. Disband your organization. Cease your experiments. If I detect even a whisper of Hierarchy activity targeting anyone I care about, I will erase every member of your organization from existence. Permanently. Across every timeline. Every dimension. Every possible state of being."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"Am I clear?"
One thousand Sovereigns nodded frantically.
"Good." Elias gestured, and the dimensional lockdown released. "Go."
They went.
One thousand Sovereigns fled through hastily-opened dimensional folds, scrambling over each other in their desperation to escape. Within a second, the battlefield was empty except for Elias’s group.
Aria watched them go, then looked at her father. "Will they actually deliver the message?"
"Doesn’t matter," Elias replied. "The Hierarchy’s three Infinite leaders are dead. Their main headquarters is destroyed. Their seventeen subsidiary bases are currently being dismantled by automated techniques I deployed. By the time those Sovereigns reach whatever’s left of their organization, there won’t be enough structure remaining to mount any kind of response."
He said it so casually. As if dismantling an organization that had existed for billions of years was just another item on his to-do list.
"Three Infinite leaders?" Sarah asked, her eyes widening. "You killed three Infinite cultivators in five seconds?"
"Four seconds, actually," Elias corrected. "The fifth second was travel time returning here."
Silence.
"A fucking monster," Torin breathed, then immediately looked mortified that he’d said that out loud.
But Elias just smiled. "Accurate assessment."
Kaelen moved to his side, taking his hand. "Are you alright? Using that much power, even for you—"
"I’m fine," Elias assured her. "Tired, perhaps. Depleted to about sixty percent. But fine."
Sixty percent. After killing three Infinite cultivators, destroying multiple headquarters, deploying automated dismantling techniques across seventeen locations, reversing causality for five people, and maintaining a realm-wide dimensional lockdown.
Aria’s teammates exchanged glances that clearly communicated:
Aria’s father operates on a completely different scale than normal cultivators.
"We should head back to the academy," Sarah suggested. "This much commotion will have attracted attention. The Dean might have questions."
"Let him ask," Elias said. "I have nothing to hide."
He opened a dimensional portal—much larger than necessary, easily accommodating all nine people comfortably. The fold opened directly into the academy grounds, bypassing standard entry protocols with administrative override that suggested Elias had permissions normal cultivators didn’t.
"After you," he gestured politely.
Aria’s five teammates went through first, still somewhat dazed by everything that had happened. Sarah and Kaelen followed.
Aria paused beside her father. "Thank you. For coming when I needed you."
"Always," Elias replied, his expression softening. "You’re my daughter. I’ll always come when you need me. That’s non-negotiable."
She hugged him briefly, then stepped through the portal.
Elias followed, and the fold sealed behind them.
[Across the Infinity Realm]
The effects of what had happened rippled outward at speeds that defied normal causality.
In Sector Seven, a Hierarchy base suddenly experienced catastrophic dimensional collapse as automated techniques Elias had deployed activated. Three hundred Sovereigns barely escaped before the entire structure folded into a singularity point and vanished.
In Sector Twelve, another base found all its research subjects—captured cultivators being experimented on—suddenly freed and teleported to safety by techniques that shouldn’t be able to penetrate their defenses.
In Sector Four, a third base’s leadership tried to activate emergency protocols and found that someone had rewritten their control arrays from the inside. Their own defenses turned against them.
Seventeen bases. All experiencing simultaneous catastrophic failures.
The Hierarchy—an organization that had operated in shadows for billions of years, that had captured and experimented on countless cultivators, that had pursued the insane goal of artificially creating Infinite-level beings—was collapsing.
And every major power in the Infinity Realm felt it happening.
In the City of Infinite Horizons, Sovereign-level cultivators gathered in public squares, watching spatial distortions in the sky that suggested massive Law techniques being deployed across continental distances.
"What’s happening?"
"Someone’s dismantling the Hierarchy bases."
"All of them? Simultaneously?"
"Who has that kind of power?"
"Elias Vance."
"How do you know?"
"Because I was passing by that sector and saw the three Infinite-level auras vanished. Just... stopped existing. I saw him make Infinite cultivators disappear like its light work."
At the Epochal Ascendance Academy, the Dean—The Timeless Scholar himself, an Infinite cultivator who’d achieved 100% comprehension fifty million epochs ago—stood in his private chamber and stared into the distance with ancient eyes.
He’d felt the battle. Sensed Aria’s desperate fight. Detected the three Hierarchy Infinite cultivators deploying.
He’d been preparing to intervene when Elias Vance arrived and made intervention unnecessary.
What happened in those four seconds, the Dean couldn’t fully parse. Elias had taken all three enemies somewhere outside normal space-time, done
something
, and returned alone.
Three Infinite cultivators. Dead. In four seconds.
"The Anomaly indeed," the Dean murmured. "That boy is approaching something... unprecedented."
He’d need to have a conversation with Elias soon. But for now, he simply noted the event and returned to his meditation.
In seventeen different locations, former Hierarchy prisoners found themselves suddenly free, standing in safe locations with supplies and resources Elias had left for them. Many collapsed, weeping with relief. Others stood in shock, not believing their ordeal was finally over.
The Hierarchy was broken.
And the Infinity Realm shook—not from destruction, but from the sudden absence of an organization that had operated in its shadows for eons.
Change was coming.
Whether anyone was ready for it or not.