Chapter 764 – The Sea of False Peaks and Twisted Paths, Cause from Effect, Truth Unseen - Part 2

Hundreds of years passed in a single dream.

Li Yuan thought his consciousness would vanish completely.

But suddenly, his eyes snapped open.

The egg was gone. Its light, its warmth, had all faded. In its place, an immense, almost unbearable power surged through him.

He instinctively glanced at his status.

There, in crisp characters, was a shocking change.

「 Name: Li Yuan

Realm: Rank 1 (1/1) 」

The words

Rank 1

burned into his vision like stars.

And then he realized something.

Panicked, he looked down at the woman in his arms.

Yan Yu, or rather her soul fragment, was gazing up at him with endless tenderness.

She smiled, and said softly, “All this time, you thought I was destined to become the Heavenly Dao. But the truth is...

you

were.”

“Yan—”

The word

Yu

never made it out.

Their embrace was already dissolving into starlight, into nothing, like a long dream.

And in the end, his arms held nothing but empty space.

Yan Yu’s final act was not to fuse with him, but to complete him.

A heart that had long been still, like an ancient, undisturbed well, suddenly ignited with roaring flame. His blood surged like a beacon fire rising to the heavens. He had seen countless joys and sorrows, reunions and partings, but nothing had ever cut this deep.

The pain etched itself into the flesh-and-blood heart of a mortal.

Li Yuan drew in a long breath and lifted his head.

In that instant, his vision began to change.

He no longer saw just endless space. He could now see

time

itself.

The world moved forward through time like a carriage on a road. And he...he could see both what lay ahead and what was left behind.

Up front was chaos, then doom, and inevitable destruction.

Behind him, everything was frozen at the moment of the Great Shattering.

Beyond that was a wall of dense, impenetrable fog.

Li Yuan’s eyes reddened as he stared into that fog.

If the Great Shattering had never happened...everything could have been rewritten.

He was now the Heavenly Dao.

He could not only

see

the past and the future, but he could return to the past.

As the Heavenly Dao within this universe,

nothing

was beyond his grasp.

He looked upon the world rolling forward in time...and raised his hand.

All around him, divine powers roared to life. In an instant, the Sun and Moon reversed, rivers and mountains flowed backward, the cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death rewound.

A hundred years. A thousand. Ten thousand. A hundred thousand. A million years.

The cosmic clock spun in reverse.

Dynasties passed in reverse, the Great Tang, Great Zhou, Great Shang, Great Xia, Great Yu...

But still it did not stop.

The world kept rewinding, deeper into a past Li Yuan had never even known.

Finally, one and a half million years back. The world stopped.

Dead leaves blew over a barren mountain range. The Heavenly Dao sat atop a withered peak like a spent soul.

He looked like a young man, but his eyes held lifetimes of sorrow and starlight, drifting without focus over the world below.

It was the mortal world again, bustling and lively. But he did not see a single familiar face, not even Yan Yu.

Li Yuan, now Heaven’s will, rested briefly on the mountain, then rose to his feet.

With a single thought, his mind swept across ten million kilometers. The earth, the seas, the sky...everything was now within his awareness.

There was no Evernight in the Western Extremes. No Immortals or Gods in the mortal world. Not even the shadow of a cultivator.

It was just ordinary folks in back-alley martial sects, none of whom had even stepped into the ninth rank.

The stars shimmered above. Chaos beings curled up inside the blazing, compressed cores of stars, while starkin danced through the miniature worlds orbiting each celestial body.

Li Yuan’s gaze swept toward the Northern Dipper and Polaris.

The Northern Dipper was just a young girl, newborn, wide-eyed, and blending into the human world as she eagerly learned about everything.

Polaris was a little boy, also recently born, his aura still raw and unformed.

“So I really did come back. The Great Shattering hasn’t happened yet.”

Li Yuan took a deep breath.

He examined his own power.

Aside from the heavy toll exacted by reversing time...everything was intact.

“In that case, no matter

who

is destined to bring about the Great Shattering, this world now has me in it. I won’t let it happen.”

With that, Li Yuan soared into the stars.

His voidship still floated silently, but the little red dot was gone.

He stepped aboard the voidship, only to suddenly discover something new. His voidship could now slip directly into the voidveil.

It likely had something to do with the disappearance of the red dot...and with him becoming the Heavenly Dao.

𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Li Yuan cautiously tried entering the voidveil, stepping beyond the boundaries of his own universe.

And just like that, he succeeded.

But even as he slipped outside, he remained tightly tethered to the world he came from.

“That means...I can now explore the voidveil freely.”

With that realization, Li Yuan guided the voidship across the edge of his universe. There, in the flowing void, he saw the Sun and Moon. They were brilliant, blinding forces that radiated boundless power. And yet, they cast their light evenly in all directions. When they entered his universe, they took form as the Sun and Moon as well.

The voidveil was like a vast river, and time was the current that carried everything along.

Li Yuan watched as his universe drifted forward along that river’s flow.

The voidveil, once meaningless and empty to him, now appeared as a great cosmic stream.

He tried to sail further, to explore the far reaches of that river.

But the further he pushed...the more it pushed back. He couldn’t go any farther.

So he settled his heart and stayed.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Day after day, Li Yuan watched over his world.

In his memory, perhaps just a few hundred years from now, the Great Shattering would come.

He focused on recovery, gathering his strength, healing fully for what was to come.

Then, one day, he snapped his eyes open and saw something.

Upstream on the long river of the voidveil, a foul current had appeared. It was a mass of indescribable chaos, a turbid stream composed of tangled, polluted souls, corrupted time, warped space, and twisted lunar and solar forces. Everything it touched became diseased, impure, and wrong.

From that putrid torrent, a single thread-like tributary was drifting toward his world.

Li Yuan’s pupils shrank.

Even as the Heavenly Dao, even as one of unfathomable power, he felt a cold chill of fear rise in him.

Compared to this filth, beings like Li Ping’an, born of chaosborn and starkin, or even the twisted Outer Region, or the soul-and-flesh-corrupting Torch Dragon...were less than water droplets not even worth comparing.

“That’s the Deformed Sea.”

A little girl suddenly appeared beside him.

Li Yuan glanced at her.

And in that moment, all his memories of her came rushing back.

“Ah Ting?” He called her name, but there was coldness in his voice, and wariness...

Now he remembered

everything

about her. Everything he had once forgotten had returned.

Had she shown even a hint of malice, he would have struck her down on the spot.

Ah Ting, however, simply sat beside him on the voidship, gazing into the distance at the swirling chaos. Her voice was calm, distant.

“I finally understand why you’ve always felt a little...off.”

“Oh?” Li Yuan asked.

“Because the world you came from was already the

past

. You had already traveled back,” Ah Ting explained.

She seemed entirely unaffected by the reversal of time. She continued, almost absentmindedly, “In other words, very soon, you’re going to destroy this world all over again. You’ll tear another hole in the universe. Because that voidship of yours is about to crash into the Deformed Sea.

“And once it enters that sea, your voidship will be finished. No saving it. No going back. Nothing you do will stop it from being lost forever. You’ll have to go all out. Only by unleashing your full power can you kick up enough of a splash in this long river of

voidveil time

to steer your little boat away from the Deformed Sea.”

Li Yuan narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

Ah Ting replied, “A Seeker of the Dao.”

“Only Seekers can move freely through the voidveil. We’re the ones chasing after the Dao Fruits of various universes, hoping to take that next step and become

Attainers

of the Dao. Unfortunately, we can only enter other universes as projections. Within them, we have no real power...but we

can

freely tug at the threads of karma and fate.

“When we arrive, karma arrives with us. When we leave, karma disappears...because we never belonged to that universe’s karmic chain in the first place. Anyone below first rank can’t even perceive us.”

Perhaps she found Li Yuan likable or amusing because she continued explaining.

“The first rank of the Human Soul is a Seeker of the Dao. We’re free, unbound, and untouched by cause and effect. The first rank of the Earth Soul is a Lesser Heavenly Dao. The first rank of the Heaven Soul...is a Lesser Myriad Worlds.”

She paused, then said, “But beyond that, there are higher realms still. After a Seeker comes an

Attainer

. After a Lesser Heavenly Dao comes a

Grand

Heavenly Dao. And beyond a Lesser Myriad Worlds lies a

Grand

Myriad Worlds.”

She added, “To be honest...you should have become a Seeker, not the Heavenly Dao. Only by becoming a Seeker, can you truly solve the crisis in your universe.”

“And how would I do that?” Li Yuan asked.

Ah Ting tilted her head. “Li Yuan...haven’t you figured it out? Your universe...it’s a world where effect

precedes

cause. You traveled back in time to save your universe, but it was

that

act that created the Great Shattering in the first place. And then, in an effort to prevent the Great Shattering, you went back

again

.

“The effect came first. Then came the cause. That’s what we call

inverted causality.

As long as you’re trapped inside the web of karma, you’ll never see the truth. And only when you see the truth...will you have the chance to change everything.”

Li Yuan looked at her and asked quietly, “Then what

is

the truth?”

“You’re the Heavenly Dao of this universe,” Ah Ting said. “You should be the one who knows best. But if you can’t see it clearly...then go through it again. One more loop.”

She paused. “Just a warning, don’t reverse too much time. Your universe is already fragile. Push it too far...and it won’t survive.”

Li Yuan asked, “Why are you helping me?”

Ah Ting stared off into the distance, her expression oddly blank. “I want to see the Grand World. To witness a greater Sun and Moon. But I don’t want to go alone. There are so few Seekers left in the

voidveil

...and it’s rare to find a newly awakened one. I figured, why not make a friend?”

Clapping her hands, she smiled. “Alright then. Off you go, find the truth behind your universe. Even in a world of inverted causality, there’s always a beginning, right? There has to be...a

first

truth.”