Chapter 1407: Creating a New World (IV)

Li Hao turned his head to look at Number Two, realizing something. “If the senior finds all of this boring, you can travel through my new world before we locate the Exalted Blood Emperor. You can journey to the past or future. Although they’re just illusions, they might provide some comfort!”

“I can journey to the past or future?” Number Two repeated with confusion.

“You can!” Li Hao nodded. “Yet, it’ll all be illusory. There is only one past and a multitude of futures. You can journey through all of them, but each moment will consume some of your energy and lifespan. Since the senior doesn’t care about either and has returned from death, why don’t you journey through the past for entertainment...”

“Don’t do anything rash, Li Hao!” Celestial Pole couldn’t help but say.

“We need to follow our hearts! The great dao is one’s heart!” Li Hao laughed. “If Senior Cat wishes to revisit the past, why don’t you swim through the river and reach the innermost depths of your memories?

“You can emerge whenever you wish, and if you don’t... You can use the depths of your memories to lie to yourself for a lifetime. So what of it? The heart knows that the past is dead... we’re all aware of that!”

The cat nodded at Li Hao’s words and plopped into the river of time. It started swimming against the current and said woefully, “You are so much like him... but you are not him. This cat knows that the past cannot be pursued, but I still wish to see him!”

It swam upward and slipped back in time!

The cat grew illusory, vanishing as a dumbfounded Celestial Pole watched with utter dismay. Number Two darted into the end of the river and did not come back!

“Li Hao!!” Celestial Pole nearly tore his hair out.

Fuck me! You... lured Number Two away!

“Senior, this august personage doesn’t seem to be that happy,” Li Hao sighed. “You and the Exalted Blood Emperor revived it, but it may not have been willing to come back to life. Life in Silver Moon is very boring at the moment, why not let it immerse itself in the past?

“Perhaps bygones will be bygones given enough time. Once it is willing to put down the past, Number Two will naturally come back to us!”

A clear and bright voice reading aloud seemed to travel from the end of the river of time. There was a shadowy figure there, wispy and intangible, wearing white robes that were unblemished by dust. A cat jumped around and cavorted near its feet, tears dripping down its cheeks like a curtain of pearls. They flowed into the river and traveled with the current, imparting unbounded sorrow and loneliness.

“Ai!” Li Hao sighed. “Who says that people and beings like us must live eternally?”

He said these words possibly for the cat’s benefit, or for Lin Hongyu, and maybe for himself.

If possible, I’d like to swim against the current and return to the past, losing myself in that fake world and just live in my memories.

Boom!

All of the dao stars had shattered, leaving only the star of time lit in the center of his forehead.

Li Hao stepped forward and closed his hand around a star of life and death. He raised his longsword. “There is no avenue of retreat possible for you if I smash it!”

Lin Hongyu looked at the end of the river of time and suddenly smiled. “I want the future, I don’t want to live in the past! I go wherever my husband goes, so it is what it is!”

Li Hao’s head suddenly felt two sizes bigger. All of the loneliness that he’d felt a second ago was swept away, leaving boundless worries behind.

Women are impossible to reason with!

He decisively swung his sword!

Two separate surges of life and death filled the river. Lin Hongyu flickered between black and white, filled with deathly qi one moment and brimming with vitality the next. She continuously swapped back and forth in a painful, arduous process.

After a long while, her death qi dissipated, as did her vitality. She was like a mundane with no signs of cultivation.

Li Hao took a deep breath after cutting through the star. He looked at the sky. “Today, I seal the river, shatter the dao stars, collect life and death, and enter ninth level Fused Dao!”

Bam!

A tree and a seal materialized. The tree entered the river and put down roots for thousands of kilometers into the distance. The seal transformed into a barrier around the river. In the blink of an eye, the river was as if a passageway that stretched without end in both directions!

Li Hao’s presence spontaneously turned tangible; it’d been wispy and indistinct before.

Ninth level Fused Dao! 350 dao stars!

The combination of corporeal and immaterial made him a peak ninth level Fused Dao. In reality, he was just peak half step emperor.

“Ninth level Fused Dao... Are you a real peak half step emperor?” Celestial Pole widened his eyes at the young man.

Li Hao tilted his head and nodded with a smile. “More or less!”

What was a real peak half step emperor?

That was one with core origin. The half step emperors before had lacked core origin and neither did Bone Eclipse have the benefit of the Red Moon universe. Those hadn’t been real half step emperors or an exalted emperor.

That was true only in Silver Moon, however.

Li Hao was peak half step emperor after setting foot into ninth level Fused Dao, but his strength wasn’t any less than a newly unsealed Bone Eclipse. The young man also matched a half step emperor Li Daoheng as well.

This was what was meant by true ninth level Fused Dao!

Celestial Pole regarded the situation wordlessly.

I’ve lost my cat!

Li Hao’s set foot into the real ninth level Fused Dao! Strictly speaking, he’s an exalted emperor in Silver Moon now! I can’t beat this guy, so how am I supposed to get Number Two back?

Woe is me!

I wouldn’t have stood guard over him if I’d known this would happen!

Death qi dispersed through the sky, but the chaos tribulation that Lin Hongyu and the others were highly wary of didn’t arrive.

“It’s fine,” Li Hao smiled. “The new world is sealed away. So long as I don’t set foot outside of Silver Moon, not even the chaos will discover anything in the short term.”

He’d want to cry himself if another tribulation arrived.

“Are you still the heavenly will?” Lin Hongyu suddenly asked.

“No,” Li Hao shook his head. “The heavenly will is dead. I’ve created a new world, so how can I still be the heavenly will?”

“Then... are you human?”

“......” Li Hao blinked. “I should be!”

“That’s good!” Lin Hongyu heaved a sigh of relief. “I thought you weren’t even human anymore.”

“......” Why did this sound so strange?

“It seems easier than I thought,” Lin Hongyu continued. “You just needed to smash a few stars to succeed...”

“If you think surviving two chaos tribulations and a human tribulation of an exalted emperor and half step emperors... is easy...” Li Hao laughed ruefully. “And if there’s no danger involved in coming back to life, then I have nothing to say. It is indeed easy!

“All things in due time when it comes to the great dao!”

“Can you... come back down a bit?” Lin Hongyu couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “You’re not that old, but you sound like an old geezer! You’re even less approachable than Senior Celestial Pole!”

Celestial Pole pursed his lips upon hearing that he was being dragged into the conversation.

“You... make sense.” Li Hao blinked. “I do sound a bit out of touch. Perhaps... I need a certain opportunity to be my old self again.”

Lin Hongyu said nothing else. She knew what opportunity it was that Li Hao spoke of—the return of those who’d died.

Once people like Yuan Shuo and Hou Xiaochen returned, there might be a lot more life and cheer to the young man.

“You’ll be much more approachable when you two have children!” Celestial Pole burst out in laughter.

He suddenly felt a vicious sword intent lock onto him!

How dare you threaten me, brat!

The man cursed to himself.

You absolutely suck! I haven’t taken you to account for stealing my cat yet!

But forget it, I can’t fight him at the moment. I’ll let him off the hook for now.

......

𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Li Hao’s resurrection was a logical outcome from everything falling into place. Although the chaos tribulation and might from an exalted emperor had been upon him when he died, he still had the peace of mind to set up his plans. No wonder he’d been coolly composed and focused on opening his dao meridians.

He’d turned the danger from suddenly losing his strength into a revival for Lin Hongyu. The young man had easily resolved everything threatening him.

Death qi faded away in the sky, but the chaos tribulation was not forthcoming. There would be no issue so long as Li Hao did not set foot outside Silver Moon. But once he did... there was a high likelihood that he would be discovered and draw the tribulation’s attention once more.

He’d succeeded in creating his own world. While it was far beneath Silver Moon, it was his own.

Li Hao would be a premier exalted emperor if he could establish a world like Silver Moon. The limits of those who were able to create their own worlds were vastly different from those nurtured by a world.

World creators were in a class of their own and surpassed those nurtured by the world.

If life appeared in Li Hao’s small world, they would reach Sun and Moon at the most. Ninth level Fused Dao was impossible as the river wouldn’t be able to support the appearance of such powerhouses.

Li Hao was in an easy mood, but Celestial Pole was far from it. After joking around, he asked with resignation, “Number Two’s going to be okay in your world, right?”

Screw this, honestly. I stood guard for seventeen years and finally completed my mission. But now this??

“It’s fine, the cat is... very special... and we share a bit of a destiny...” Li Hao replied softly.

Screw you!

Celestial Pole was immediately on edge. “You won’t easily get away with taking it, not unless you can challenge the Exalted Blood Emperor, Human King, and Ash Emperor.”

The shared destiny bit raised his hackles!

“You misunderstand me!” Li Hao smiled. “I mean that the cat is very special. It’s not made of time, but it’s related to time. Being able to journey to the past and live in that unstable projection... actually touches upon a lot of complicated things.

“...is the War Sovereign... truly dead?” The young man couldn’t help but ask.

“He is!” Celestial Pole nodded emphatically. “He’s dead! There’s no need for him to hide anything, dead is dead, alive is alive.

“If he was willing to come back to life... he could’ve survived the events of that year, to be honest, but he probably felt that there was nothing worth staying for in this world.”

“What a pity!” Li Hao sighed. “According to what you guys say, that space was the living quarters of Number Two and the War Sovereign. It might have had something to do with time! Selecting a fragment of the past is sufficient to bring it to the present. That’s terrifying!

“Take me, for example. To pull my past self out of the river of time and have it continue to exist in reality... I can’t accomplish that, not now, not when I’m much stronger than now.”

It was a daunting thought!

He hadn’t understood it before, but he knew now that the projected world they spoke of was an illusory space. And after coming to know time, he realized how terrifying the proposition was!

I may be dead, but I can take ahold of my past and battle through the world again.

It was such a pity that someone like this had died.

The Human King and others were strong, perhaps even stronger than that one, but in this moment, Li Hao felt that when it comes to the great dao, it was the War Sovereign who was more interesting. His grasp of the great dao was unparalleled. He was a true cultivator!