Infinite Evolution: My Idle Evolution System

The Forgotten Sky Basin was a place where logic dared not tread.

Up was sometimes down. East was sometimes yesterday. And the blood-red mist that veiled the basin like a mourning shroud whispered unintelligible things to those with weak hearts and wandering minds.

Necro stood calmly atop the cliff's edge, his arms at his sides, letting the chaotic winds brush past his robes. The shimmer trailing him moved closer—fast, yet cautious, barely disrupting the ambient spiritual pressure. But to Necro, it was like a glowing flare in the void.

'They sent someone this early?'

From the trees below, a glimmering bolt of sword light suddenly lashed out, aiming for his jugular.

FWOOOSH—!!

Necro tilted his head slightly. The blade light screamed past him, missing by a single strand of hair.

"Now, now," he muttered. "That wasn't polite."

Three figures emerged from the twisted bamboo growths below—draped in loose disguises and armed with weaponized intent. One held a chain-wrapped meteor hammer, another gripped twin sabers, and the last carried a jade flute between his fingers. Each was firmly in the mid-Golden Core Realm, and moved with the synergy of seasoned assassins.

The lead figure spat, "So you dodged that. Guess that means you're the real deal."

Necro didn't answer. He simply stepped forward—and dropped off the cliff.

The assassins blinked, confused—then realized he wasn't falling. He was gliding downward through the basin's corrupted winds, body unmoving, hands still clasped behind his back.

"Shit! After him!"

The three leapt down in pursuit, the one with the flute playing a haunting trill that turned into spectral blades of sound.

CLANG—!!

They struck something invisible.

A defensive aura had bloomed like a lotus around Necro mid-air, shielding him from the sound blades completely. His gaze hadn't even flickered.

And then—

FWIP.

He vanished.

"What!?"

Too late. One of the assassins—the hammer wielder—jerked violently midair, coughing blood before being hurled sideways by an invisible force.

His body crashed into the side of a floating boulder, unconscious before he even hit the stone.

Necro reappeared behind the flute player, whispering one word:

"Sleep."

A hand tapped the back of the man's neck.

SNAP—

He collapsed instantly, eyes rolling up, falling like a ragdoll into the rivers of mist below.

Only the twin-saber assassin remained now, panic beginning to take root in his expression.

"I-I'm not your enemy! I was hired! Hired to delay you, not kill you!"

Necro looked at him for a long moment. The assassin trembled.

And then Necro nodded.

"I know."

"R-Really…? T-Then you'll spare me?"

"No," Necro said, raising one hand. "But I'll give you the mercy of a clean break."

CRACK—!!

A shockwave burst out from his palm, invisible to the eye but impossible to ignore. The twin-saber assassin's spirit barrier shattered like glass, and his body flew backward like a doll kicked by a dragon.

He landed hard… but lived.

Necro landed moments later, his feet touching the shifting black stone like he belonged there. His eyes, glowing faintly with multicolored light, narrowed.

'That was just a probe. The Dragon Island Sect… They're quite unruly.'

He crouched, placing one hand on the terrain. Strange pulses moved through the earth beneath his fingertips. Something was warping the qi currents unnaturally… redirecting them.

A formation?

No. A domain.

His gaze swept the landscape again. Somewhere, a dark will was watching. Not just Bai Gong. Not even just Mo Yi.

Someone—something—else had entered the basin.

— Meanwhile —

High above, from within a tattered ruin floating upside-down in the sky, the cloaked Deacon Mo Yi stood beside a glowing sigil. His breath came out in white steam, even though no cold lingered in the basin's air.

"He killed the first wave without effort," Chan Xiu muttered behind him.

"He did not kill them," Mo Yi corrected.

"…W-what?"

"Two are alive. He went out of his way to keep them breathing, likely to lure us in."

Mo Yi's face remained blank. But his claws tightened slightly beneath his sleeve.

"He's not just powerful," Mo Yi whispered. "He's cunning."

That made him dangerous.

More dangerous than Bai Gong realized.

"Should I send another wave?" Chan Xiu asked.

"No. Let the Basin thin the numbers for us," Mo Yi said. "We wait until the halfway point. When only the top 30 remain… we strike."

His gaze flickered toward the horizon, where the Azure Eclipse Pagoda shimmered behind veils of spatial distortion.

"That's when I'll make my move."

—

Back with Necro…

The basin around him had begun to shift.

He walked along a shattered stone bridge hovering above a spiraling canyon, where waterfalls flowed upward instead of down. All around him, disciples clashed in brutal skirmishes. He spotted one candidate being dragged into the mists by a snake-wolf hybrid, another bursting with qi before self-destructing in a final attempt to take an enemy with him.

It was chaos.

It was beautiful.

Then he felt it—again. A presence.

But this one… wasn't hostile.

"Yo," came a voice to his left.

Necro turned.

Lan Ziwei had returned, standing barefoot on a floating piece of stone beside him. Her silver hair blew lightly in the wind, eyes sharp, lips curved in a knowing smile.

"You make a habit of drawing attention," she said, hopping down beside him.

"You followed me," Necro replied flatly.

"I did. Figured your path would be the safest," she winked.

Necro didn't respond, but he didn't tell her to leave either.

They walked together in silence for a few minutes.

Then she said, more softly, "You know… you're not the only one with people after you."

He glanced at her.

Her face had turned serious. "There's a woman from the Violet Crystal Hall. She's been eliminating targets silently. Already killed six. All of them people I had sparred with during the Dueling Arena."

Necro didn't ask why she was telling him this. He simply nodded.

"…If it helps," she added, "I have information on Bai Gong."

That made him stop.

Her smile returned. "I thought that'd catch your interest."

She reached into her sleeve, pulling out a small black slip of paper with glowing characters. "His Dragon Qi is unstable. He's using an external artifact to stabilize it, but it drains him. You break the artifact, you break him. However, in doing so, you'll surely make an enemy out of the Dragon Island Sect."

Necro took the slip without a word.

She waved a hand. "Don't say I never gave you anything."

"…Thank you," he said at last.

Her brows lifted. "Wow. Look at that. A thank-you. I should've recorded that moment."

Before he could fire back with a dry remark, the skies above them twisted.

A loud, ancient gong rang through the basin.

Necro looked up.

Floating in the sky—massive beams of golden light marked ten different paths toward the Azure Eclipse Pagoda.

The final phase had begun.

Ten tokens. One per path.

Lan Ziwei chuckled. "Guess this is where we part ways."

Necro gave a faint nod. "Until next time."

Then, with no more words, they both shot off in different directions—vanishing into the light of their chosen roads.

From here on out, only the strongest… or the most cunning… would survive.

The Forgotten Sky Basin warped again.

The sky above bled strange colors. Patches of inverted stars flickered in and out of view, and even time itself felt like it was unraveling around the edges. But Necro, still standing calmly at the edge of the bridge, did not react.

His eyes tracked the ten golden beams of light piercing the sky, anchoring the basin's chaotic fabric like divine spears.

'One per path. One token per beam.'

The rules were simple.

The execution would be anything but.

Spiritual pressure surged from across the basin as countless cultivators erupted into motion. Some flew without hesitation toward the nearest pillar of light. Others vanished into the mist, preferring stealth and subterfuge to brute force.

Necro stood motionless for a moment longer. Then his gaze flickered, and he moved.

Not up. Not toward any beam.

But down—leaping from the shattered bridge into a ravine of spiraling gravity currents. His body rotated mid-air, adjusting to the constantly shifting orientation, and landed smoothly on a stone ledge protruding from the canyon wall.

He crouched low, brushing his fingers along the ledge.

'That girl, Lan Ziwei… she's useful.'

More than that—she wasn't afraid. Not of him, not of this place. There was something steady in her presence, even when surrounded by death.

He filed that observation away for later.

For now, his goal was singular: reach the Azure Eclipse Pagoda. But unlike others, he didn't intend to charge blindly into one of the marked routes.

No, he had no need to compete in a game someone else had designed.

Instead, he followed the qi.

Not the corrupted flows twisting through the basin's natural ley lines—but the hidden current, faint and buried, like a secret whispered beneath the roar of a storm.

His footsteps barely made a sound as he moved along the canyon's underlayers, bypassing skirmishes and bloodshed above. Here, even the mist thinned, as if wary of something deeper.

Strange symbols occasionally pulsed along the stone walls—vestiges of an ancient formation long dormant.

But it was not dead.

'Someone has repurposed this place,' he thought, pausing before a series of ridged steps carved into the stone, spiraling down into a tunnel of black light.

The basin wasn't just a proving ground.

It was a filter. A sieve built to refine cultivators not by talent alone, but by madness, cunning, and resolve.

He stepped into the dark, unafraid.

Above him, distant roars echoed—some human, some not. The token war had begun.

But Necro moved away from the noise, deeper into the basin's forgotten arteries.

Because if everyone else was running toward the light…

Then he would find what was hiding in the dark.