The Primal God-Realm, Myriad-Law Sovereign, Origin Nine-Heavens, Hundred-Bones Royal Court collapsed.
The crimson-gold sky fell like pieces of faded glazed glass. The spiritual veins darkened one by one from the edge of the secret realm toward the center. Once the white light dissipated, that former territory of the Royal Court was left with nothing but a field of wreckage.
At the moment when the white and gold merged into one deep within his Sea of Consciousness, the voice of Hundred Bones Resonating rang out again.
【Hundred Bones Resonating: Emperor Gu, I'm back.】
Gu Chengming closed his eyes and smiled.
Welcome back, Emperor Bai.
Of course, before celebrating Emperor Bai finally expressing her feelings, there was one more thing that needed attention.
—The grudge with the Red Dust Immortal finally needed a conclusion.
...
As for how the Red Dust Immortal had been faring these past few days, it is necessary to go back a bit.
A few days ago, the Red Dust Immortal used karmic teleportation to appear before Gu Chengming, planning to put on a good show of "a Sixth Realm senior outsmarting a Third Realm junior."
As a result, the moment he entered, he saw that white-haired woman standing behind the junior. We all know what happened next.
The Red Dust Immortal completed his crash at maximum speed. Without even a chance to trade blows, he had already earned a spot in the prison tier.
From his perspective, of course, all of this was perfectly reasonable.
After all, if Gu Chengming and that white-haired monster were truly in league, and the two had collaborated to set a massive trap spanning timelines to lure him into using "Huichuan"—using the crack in the heavenly conservation to summon that white-haired monster out of karma—then things would have truly fallen apart.
To be honest, there were very few things in this world that could scare the Red Dust Immortal, but that day, he was truly afraid.
However, the Red Dust Immortal was not one to be easily dealt with.
Fear was fear, and fleeing was fleeing, but he had survived all these years not by being the strongest fighter, but by being the best at escaping, seeing clearly, and waiting things out.
So, from the second day onward, he hid himself, carefully peering at the movements within the secret realm through the remaining karma lines.
After these days of observation, his judgment of the situation underwent some subtle changes.
Gu Chengming and that being calling herself the Heavenly Emperor were most likely not in league. The relationship between the white-haired woman following Gu Chengming and the white-haired monster of the Royal Court was also quite subtle.
Their auras overlapped almost perfectly, like two sides of the same existence, yet they were indeed two independent individuals.
This also caused him to begin doubting his own deductions.
If his previous guesses were all wrong—if there was no such thing as an "ancient Heavenly Emperor descending to the mortal world via Huichuan," and if all of this was just an accident triggered by Huichuan.
Then, what could he do next?
Although the being calling herself the Heavenly Emperor was difficult to handle, her attention was almost entirely focused on finding Gu Chengming.
In other words, her control over the secret realm was not meticulous. At the very least, she hadn't discovered that thing he had left in the secret realm earlier.
That was his final arrangement before fleeing. At the time, he thought he was just placing an idle piece, out of the habit of "always leaving one more hand before leaving."
But looking back now, this idle piece might be the most crucial move in the entire game.
The trigger condition for the karmic parasitic seed was the transfer of control over the secret realm.
The white-haired monster currently held firm control over the secret realm, so the parasitic seed had remained in a dormant state.
His original plan was to find an opportunity to briefly sever the connection between that white-haired monster and the secret realm.
The possibility of failure was extremely high, and the difficulty was immense. He had planned for a long time, even preparing to activate Huichuan again if he failed while the monster hadn't fully controlled the realm. But he never expected... the enemies to have internal strife?
He saw that Wenjian Sect elder leading nearly a hundred cultivators to strike the Royal Court's defense line from three directions, keeping the projection army pinned down and unable to coordinate.
He saw that the sword scar from the Life-Defying Calamity-Slaying True Monarch could actually briefly sever the connection between the projections and the spiritual veins.
Then he saw Gu Chengming and that white-haired woman break through layers of blockades and charge straight into the Royal Court core.
Two white-haired figures confronted each other—one on the Imperial Seat, one below.
The battle that followed left the Red Dust Immortal completely baffled.
The combat power of the white-haired monster on the Imperial Seat was still incredibly strong, while the strength of the white-haired woman below didn't even amount to a fraction of hers.
Normally, a duel with such a disparity in strength wouldn't last long.
But the bizarre thing was that as the white-haired monster on the Imperial Seat fought, she actually started talking.
"You can do nothing. You can't even keep your own body."
"You will only stand before him with arms spread, and then you will protect nothing."
"Is this all you can give him?"
Red Dust Immortal: "?"
To be honest, those didn't sound like words that should appear in such a setting.
This also caused the Red Dust Immortal to listen for a long time before finally realizing.
The meaning the two wanted to express was: I like you, you like me.
Just that one sentence, yet it had somehow birthed so many complications.
Sitting in the darkness, the Red Dust Immortal's expression went from dazed to shocked to silent to resigned.
All his fears over these past few days, all his deductions, all his shocking theories about an "ancient Heavenly Emperor returning in another's body," collapsed at this moment.
There was no conspiracy spanning timelines, no divine methods using karma as a chessboard.
From beginning to end, this was just a cultivation world romance comedy.
That white-haired monster who controlled the entire secret realm—building the Royal Court, issuing decrees, conquering all directions, and turning everything upside down—did it all just to make her other self say "I like you" to a man.
Truthfully, the Red Dust Immortal once suspected that Gu Chengming and that white-haired Heavenly Emperor were acting, with the goal of luring him out.
But there were many ways to lure him out; the other party had chosen such an absurd drama.
This made the Red Dust Immortal feel provoked.
He saw that white-haired woman covered in wounds, swaying as she stood before Gu Chengming.
Then, he couldn't hear what she said, but he saw the result.
The white-haired monster on the Imperial Seat stopped her attack.
A white light surged out from within the white-haired woman below the seat. The texture of that light was extremely pure, containing no spiritual energy, no karma, and none of the power attributes that could be categorized within the Red Dust Immortal's knowledge.
Then, the white light condensed into a fist and struck the white-haired monster on the seat.
The crimson-gold sky collapsed accordingly, the Royal Court's spiritual veins extinguished one by one, and control over the entire secret realm became masterless in that instant.
The Red Dust Immortal's pupils shrank violently. His body reacted before his brain could.
—Regardless of whether this was a trick to lure him out, the current situation was undoubtedly his best opportunity.
In a way, this was exactly what he had been waiting for.
In the depths of the secret realm, the karmic parasitic seed that had been sleeping for several days bloomed the moment the control over the realm was transferred.
The massive power released when the white-haired monster dissipated, the energy from those crimson-gold spiritual veins, and the terrifying aura that had suppressed the entire realm—all of it was like a flood pouring into a ravine, being crazily absorbed, devoured, and transformed by the parasitic seed.
The Dao Throne core of the Inverse Cause Lotus was rapidly being repaired under this influx of power.
The once riddled karmic network was rewoven, broken threads reconnected one by one, and the reversal power of "Huichuan" slowly condensed deep within the Dao Throne, growing from a trickle into a stream, then from a stream into a river.
The Red Dust Immortal closed his eyes, feeling the transformation of the Dao Throne within him, and finally couldn't help but laugh.
—Alright, you've acted enough. Now it's my turn.
...
The fragments of the crimson-gold sky were still slowly falling. Gu Chengming stood in the center of the ruins of the Royal Court core, feeling the warmth of Hundred Bones Resonating and Hundred Bones Resonating of Love merging once again deep within his Sea of Consciousness.
The white and crimson-gold lights intertwined and swirled, finally becoming one, and control over the secret realm completely changed hands at this moment.
The space, losing the support of the spiritual veins, began to grow turbulent. The projections from all directions dissipated like a receding tide, the points of light they turned into lingering in the void for a breath as if taking one last look before scattering like ashes.
The wind stopped, and the entire secret realm fell into a standstill, as if all the sounds between heaven and earth had been pressed down by a finger.
Then—
From the very bottom of the secret realm, an extremely faint pulse rang out.
Gu Chengming thought to himself that it was finally here.
The parasitic seed.
The moment the control was transferred, those karmic weavings buried at the deepest level of the spiritual veins, merged with the secret realm's foundation, were waking up.
The gaps left after the crimson-gold spiritual veins extinguished became the breeding ground for the parasitic seed's spread. Those dormant karmic threads were like roots awakened by spring rain, crazily climbing, absorbing, and expanding along the wreckage of the spiritual veins.
A spatial rift appeared directly above the ruins of the Royal Court.
This time, there was no light from karmic teleportation, no lingering aura of a Dao Throne.
The Red Dust Immortal simply walked out of the rift, his moon-white brocade robe stained with a bit of dust, his folding fan resting on his shoulder, the fan surface half-open.
He stood in mid-air, looking down at the now unrecognizable Royal Court core beneath his feet. His gaze swept over the shattered remains of the Imperial Seat, over the dissipating spiritual runes, and finally landed on Gu Chengming, who stood in the center of the ruins.
Gu Chengming was also looking at him, the two staring at each other across dozens of zhang.
The last time they met, the Red Dust Immortal had fled in panic the moment he saw Hundred Bones Resonating.
But this time was different. The massive energy left after the collapse of the Royal Court's spiritual veins was continuously flowing into his Dao Throne along the pre-buried karmic channels.
The Inverse Cause Lotus was being repaired.
The Red Dust Immortal slowly closed his folding fan and tucked it into his sleeve.
"You won a round," he spoke, his voice flat, as if evaluating a chess game that had already been turned over. "Using the variable birthed by Huichuan to take over the secret realm in turn, forcing me to cut off my karmic retreat, and then having you personally defeat her to retake control—"
He smiled slightly. "Quite the 'luring the tiger from the mountain'."
Gu Chengming's expression was quite subtle after hearing this.
—So, just what exactly did you misunderstand?
But he did not speak to refute, because at the same moment the Red Dust Immortal appeared, that Dad Coin that had been lying quietly on the system panel suddenly began to flash violently.
【Dad Coin: Inverse Cause Lotus (Completed)】
At the same time, Gu Chengming also felt it—something was being restored.
The Red Dust Immortal stood calmly before him, not because he had the confidence to win a head-on battle, but because he only needed to stall until the Inverse Cause Lotus was repaired.
Once Huichuan was activated again, everything would return to zero.
This time, he would not make the same mistake.
Gu Chengming took a deep breath.
He knew what the Red Dust Immortal was waiting for.
...
The Red Dust Immortal did not move immediately.
He just stood there. After tucking his fan into his sleeve, he held his hands behind his back in a relaxed posture, like a leisurely person taking a stroll in a garden.
But his gaze never left Gu Chengming.
To be precise, he was observing.
Observing how much energy the previous grand battle had drained from Gu Chengming, observing how much of that power merged from white and crimson-gold remained, and observing what trump cards this Third Realm cultivator still had left after experiencing such a tragic battle.
"You should have noticed by now," the Red Dust Immortal's voice was neither hurried nor slow. "The thing beneath your feet was left by me."
His honesty was surprising, but not unexpected.
Because in his view, everything was already settled.
Gu Chengming had won the battle of the Royal Court, but it was precisely because he won that he personally triggered the activation condition for the parasitic seed; this was his backup plan from the start.
Whether the Royal Court was destroyed by external force or collapsed from within, as long as control was transferred, the parasitic seed would activate. This was a move Gu Chengming would step on no matter how he played.
The Red Dust Immortal slowly raised his hand, palm facing up.
A phantom of a lotus flower emerged from his palm.
The Inverse Cause Lotus.
The petals hung downward, and the lotus core faced down, as if it were an inverted lotus growing above the sky with its roots digging into the void.
Although it wasn't fully repaired—with several gaps remaining on the edges of the petals, revealing faint flickering light—it was already enough.
Enough to activate Huichuan once more.
"This time—" the Red Dust Immortal's voice sank a bit, "I will not repeat the same mistake."
The power of karma surged from around him, spreading in all directions like a tide.
The sky changed color, and the void trembled.
The omen of Huichuan had appeared—the flow of time began to grow turbulent within a hundred zhang of him. Dust nearby hung in the air, no longer falling, while distant gravel floated upward at an extremely slow speed, as if gravity itself had its direction scrambled by the power of karma.
Once Huichuan succeeded, everything that happened on this timeline would be overwritten.
Hundred Bones Resonating's manifestation, the rise and fall of the Royal Court, the blooming of Love Infinite, and that sentence "I love you"—
All of it would be crushed into powder by the petals of the Inverse Cause Lotus and, along with this piece of karma, be forever erased from the world.
But at the same time, Gu Chengming also moved, raising his hand with the palm facing up.
The exact same posture as the Red Dust Immortal.
Then, a phantom of a lotus flower emerged from his palm.
—The Inverse Cause Lotus.
The petals hung downward, the lotus core faced down, and its texture was almost perfectly symmetrical to the one in the Red Dust Immortal's hand, like a mirror image reflected on the water's surface.
The Red Dust Immortal's pupils shrank sharply, his hand freezing in mid-air.
That Inverse Cause Lotus, which was condensing the power of Huichuan, underwent a violent resonance the moment the source power appeared, and the progress of Huichuan stalled.
"You—"
The Red Dust Immortal's voice was rarely tinged with alarm.
He stared fixedly at the Inverse Cause Lotus in Gu Chengming's palm. That was not a projection that any low-level method could replicate; that was a genuine Inverse Cause Lotus Dao Throne authority.
"Why do you also have the authority of the Inverse Cause Lotus?!"
—I have you to thank for that.
Gu Chengming laughed in his heart but did not answer.
The Red Dust Immortal's face turned ugly in an instant. The conspiracy theory he had firmly believed in was now self-validating every detail in his mind.
The last karmic teleportation—he had intentionally appeared before Gu Chengming and then fled in panic.
He thought he had escaped by luck, but in reality?
In reality, that was exactly what the other party needed!
Karmic teleportation was built upon the karmic connection between two people, and the establishment of a connection was necessarily two-way.
He had teleported to Gu Chengming along the karma, but he had also exposed the information of his own Inverse Cause Lotus Dao Throne to the other party's perception range.
That karma line was not just his escape route, but the channel for the other party to "steal" the Dao Throne authority!
He had personally severed the karma line, true, but before severing it, the other party had already intercepted a wisp of the Inverse Cause Lotus's origin along that line.
So, from the moment of the karmic teleportation, he had already lost?
From the moment he was forced to activate Huichuan in the previous timeline, or even earlier, from the first moment he noticed Gu Chengming, everything had already been on that "Heavenly Emperor's" chessboard.
"Good, quite the Heavenly Emperor."
To be honest, the Red Dust Immortal was already a bit afraid, but at this moment, it had undoubtedly reached the stage where a desperate struggle was needed.
The authority of the Inverse Cause Lotus was being interfered with, true, but that effect would ultimately only last for a "short time."
"Since it is a game—"
The Red Dust Immortal bit the tip of his tongue, turning it into a blood bead that dripped onto the lotus in his palm.
The petals of the Inverse Cause Lotus bloomed violently. The gaps were filled by the essence blood, the flickering light dissipated, and the lotus was restored to its complete state in an instant.
"Then let's see who runs out of trump cards first!"
The power of karma surged out again with a roar. Although the condensation of Huichuan was being interfered with and suppressed, it was forced forward in a violent manner by burning its origin.
The Dad Coin Inverse Cause Lotus in Gu Chengming's palm began to crack under the other party's brute force, its light flickering unsteadily.
Huichuan activated amidst the struggle. Because of the resonance between the two Inverse Cause Lotuses, the karmic direction of Huichuan shifted.
It did not go back to this morning, nor did it go back to the day Gu Chengming stepped into Floating Islet City; it fell toward a deeper direction.
It fell into the moment of its birth.
...
The world spun.
Gu Chengming's consciousness was swept into an undercurrent far more violent than the previous Huichuan.
Everything in his vision was rapidly regressing—
—The ruins were restored, the spiritual veins reignited, the crimson-gold sky was reassembled from fragments, the projection army flowed back to their respective posts, and then the Royal Court itself began to dissolve. The crimson-gold spiritual runes faded from the ground, receding toward the center like a tide, the bone throne fell apart, and the high platform sank into the earth.
The speed grew faster and faster.
So fast that the images were no longer images, but afterimages of light.
He saw the Red Dust Immortal appear and disappear for the first time; he saw the figure in the moon-white brocade robe crushing an artifact at the opening ceremony; he saw the lights of Floating Islet City go from prosperity to silence; he saw a floating city fall from the sea of clouds.
Then, even Floating Islet City disappeared.
The sea of clouds receded, the ocean receded, the land receded.
Only chaos remained before his eyes.
And within that chaos, a celestial mountain was emerging from the void.
The moment the celestial mountain appeared, Gu Chengming knew he was no longer on any timeline belonging to the "present world."
The celestial mountain spanned across a jade sea, shrouded in clouds and mist. Several large characters on the mountain gate entered his sight under the sunlight.
—Land of Nowhere.
The images continued to flow.
Gu Chengming's consciousness was like a fallen leaf floating on the river of time, wrapped by the turbulent flow and drifting forward involuntarily. He saw the Land of Nowhere in its prime.
That was a sect branch of a scale far beyond his imagination.
In the training ground below the tower, disciples were practicing a set of sword techniques he had never seen, yet felt strangely familiar.
The sword intent was like flowing clouds, and the sword momentum was like the moon.
The Flowing Cloud Following Moon Sword Art?!
Gu Chengming was slightly surprised in his heart.
The images pushed forward. The disciples of the Land of Nowhere came and went, and years passed like a white horse through a gap.
Gu Chengming saw a person.
On the top floor of the Octagonal Exquisite Tower, a woman stood leaning against the railing.
She wore a moon-white Daoist robe, her long hair unbound and fluttering in the wind. Her expression was cold and detached, with an air of transcendence between her brows, as if the rise and fall of all things in the world were but flowing clouds passing before her eyes.
—True Monarch Liuyun Suyu.
The name surfaced from the depths of time. Without needing anyone to tell him, it naturally fell into Gu Chengming's cognition.
Then, the image suddenly darkened.
The jade sea surged, black clouds pressed against the border, and something above the Land of Nowhere seemed to seep in from the cracks of heaven and earth, turning the originally clear world into a mess of muddy water.
The Longevity Sect had arrived.
Gu Chengming couldn't see the specific battle process. Those images were cut into fragments by the turbulence of time, leaving only frame after frame of afterimages.
He saw the Land of Nowhere's arrays being breached one after another, saw the disciples falling in the chaos, and saw the silver light patterns on the Octagonal Exquisite Tower flashing violently like a dying star.
The time fragments suddenly became clear at this node.
True Monarch Liuyun Suyu stood at the top of the octagonal tower, and the Red Dust Immortal stood below. The space between them had completely collapsed—there was no ground, no sky, only a chaotic domain woven from time fragments and karmic threads.
The Daos they each specialized in were pushed to the limit in this battle.
The Red Dust Immortal's Xiaoyaoyou used karma as a boat to navigate the connections between all things in heaven and earth.
Everything in the world had karma—between a fallen leaf and a gust of autumn wind, there was karma; between a grain of sand and a mountain, there was karma; and between a thought and a war, there was also karma.
He could travel freely along these karma lines, like a fish in water or a bird on the wind.
He was so powerful that as long as someone spoke his true name—even just a whisper—he could project his consciousness and descend in his true body along that newly born karma line.
The world called it Xiaoyaoyou because there was no place without karma in heaven and earth, and no place in karma that could not be reached.
And what True Monarch Liuyun Suyu practiced was the path of time.
Time cannot be touched, observed, or reversed. It is the scale of heaven and earth's operation, the container for the birth and death of all things, and a fundamental law that even the Heavenly Dao itself must follow.
A cultivator who wields the path of time is not fighting an enemy, but simultaneously playing a game against "everything that has happened" and "everything that is about to happen."
But in this earth-shattering battle, the Daos of the two produced the most fatal collision.
Karma distorted the direction of time, and time crushed the veins of karma.
Whenever the Red Dust Immortal tried to anchor True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's position with the power of karma, she would use the power of time to erase herself from that moment, leaving behind a shell-like afterimage.
And whenever True Monarch Liuyun Suyu tried to use the power of time to rewind the battle to a node favorable to her, the Red Dust Immortal would flow upstream along that rewinding karma line, taking the lead to set a killing move in the new time node.
Time and karma tangled into an unresolvable knot in their clash.
This knot tightened more and more, eventually pulling the entire Land of Nowhere into it.
The jade sea dried up, and the celestial mountain collapsed.
The Octagonal Exquisite Tower was sometimes as new as before and sometimes old and decayed in the turbulence of time. The left half of a single pillar was decayed wood from a thousand years later, while the right half was fresh timber from a thousand years ago; space itself was torn into countless overlapping time slices.
The turbulence of karma was even more bizarre. The flowers and grass beneath the tower experienced a complete cycle of sowing, sprouting, blooming, withering, decaying, turning to soil, and being sown again within a single breath, only to reverse in the next breath, returning to the state of a seed and then growing in a completely different direction.
Karma was in chaos, and time was in chaos as well.
The Land of Nowhere, in this clash that surpassed mortal imagination, was completely distorted into an alien domain where time and karma no longer followed normal order.
—This was the origin of this secret realm.
It wasn't the result of some ancient ruins being naturally sealed, but rather two supreme cultivators who, in their life-and-death struggle, had literally churned a complete world into wreckage.
...
Gu Chengming stood in the flood of time fragments, witnessing the final scene of that battle with his own eyes.
The Red Dust Immortal won by half a move.
The gap of that half-move was so small it could almost be ignored.
But it was this half-move that decided everything. True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's sword was off by a hair, failing to completely sever the Red Dust Immortal's karmic foundation, only heavily wounding him.
Meanwhile, the Red Dust Immortal's Inverse Cause Lotus accurately hit True Monarch Liuyun Suyu, and the True Monarch's figure began to reverse under the power of the lotus—
—Not being killed, but being "wound back." Her existence itself was pushed forward frame by frame by the power of karma, from the "present" toward the "past," and from the "past" toward an "even more distant past."
If not stopped, she would eventually be pushed back to the point in time "before she was born" by the Inverse Cause Lotus—meaning she would be completely erased from this world.
But as True Monarch Liuyun Suyu was about to pass away, she "stripped" this Flowing Cloud Following Moon Sword Art from the flood of time.
The sword technique left her body, left the timeline of this secret realm, and turned into a wisp of a lonely soul-like remnant thought, drifting for an unknown number of years in the ruins of the collapsed Land of Nowhere.
And the True Monarch herself gradually dissipated in the reversal of the Inverse Cause Lotus.
She took one last look at the Land of Nowhere she had protected all her life.
The celestial mountain was destroyed, the jade sea was dry, and the figures of the disciples had dissipated in the river of time.
With the afterglow of the path of time, she saw that this sword technique she had stripped away would drift through the long years, being picked up, misunderstood, and forcibly changed from a rhythm cultivation technique into a sword technique, to be inherited by a deformed thing with a twisted heart and a belly full of resentment.
She saw that it would meet a person.
True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's figure turned into a final wisp of silver light, merging into the remains of the collapsed Octagonal Exquisite Tower.
...
The Red Dust Immortal had won.
But it was not an easy victory.
Although True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's final sword was off by a hair, it had heavily wounded his karmic foundation. Most of the petals of the Inverse Cause Lotus were shattered, and the core ability of Xiaoyaoyou was also eroded into pieces by the power of time.
Even more fatal was that this secret realm, which had already been churned into wreckage, had now become a cage where time and karma were completely disordered.
The turbulence of time made it impossible for him to judge when "now" was, and the disorder of karma made it impossible for him to find any connection with the outside world.
He was trapped here, trapped in this world he had personally destroyed.
...
A trapped beast still fights.
In the early years, he tried to repair the Inverse Cause Lotus and then use the power of karma to open a channel to the outside world.
He failed.
Karma was in chaos here; every karma line he wove would be scattered by the turbulence of time.
Then he changed his approach. Since karma wouldn't work, he would start with time.
He began to study the remnants of the time domain left by True Monarch Liuyun Suyu.
Day after day, year after year.
From a pure karma Dao cultivator, he was forced to step into the domain of time.
The path of time was vast and boundless. With his talent and accumulation, he actually slowly grasped a few scraps—at least enough to allow him to understand the operating patterns of the time turbulence within this secret realm.
So he had a new plan.
Go upstream against time and have his followers from back then call his true name before the great battle broke out. As long as someone called that name, he could use the remaining divine abilities of Xiaoyaoyou to slip back into the past along that wisp of karma.
And then rewrite everything.
But this plan also failed. Across such a vast span of time, the precision of karma could not be guaranteed at all.
The Red Dust Immortal sat in these ruins for an unknown amount of time—so long that he began to doubt whether the concept of "time" still had meaning for him, trapped in the turbulence.
Until one day—
A group of cultivators broke in.
Young, weak cultivators who knew nothing of this secret realm's origin. They treated this place as an ordinary ancient ruin, rushing in to hunt for treasures, gain experience, and spar.
The Red Dust Immortal awoke from his silence. Watching these tiny figures like ants traveling through his cage, a new thought rose in his heart.
—Bring his true name out.
Have a qualified person call his name in the outside world.
As long as there was a stable karma line in the outside world to anchor to, he could use Xiaoyaoyou to escape.
Then he would recuperate in the outside world, repair the Dao Throne, and finally travel upstream along the river of time to rewrite the outcome of that battle from years ago.
But how hard was it to find someone who could call his true name and bear his karma? Batch after batch of cultivators came and went, but not a single one was qualified.
Until Gu Chengming stepped into the secret realm.
...
The image broke off here.
Gu Chengming already knew the rest of the story.
In the first timeline, he saw through the Red Dust Immortal's intentions and planned to completely seal the secret realm, cutting off all possibilities for the other party to escape.
The Red Dust Immortal, unwilling to accept defeat, used the Inverse Cause Lotus to activate Huichuan.
In the second timeline, Hundred Bones Resonating manifested, the Royal Court was established, and everything was turned upside down.
And now—
Huichuan went out of control in the resonance of the two Inverse Cause Lotuses, sweeping them together back to this original starting point.
The source of all karma, the place where all stories began.
Gu Chengming's consciousness broke free from the flood of time fragments.
He opened his eyes, and what was before him were no longer those flying historical afterimages.
He stood in a vast void. Beneath his feet was shattered earth—or rather, earth where countless different timelines were overlapping.
—On the left were blue stone slabs from a thousand years ago, on the right was scorched earth from a thousand years later, and in the middle was a piece of transparent crystal that didn't belong to any known era.
There was no sky overhead.
Only a dome woven from karmic threads and time fragments, like a giant spider web. Every thread flowed with silver or gold light; that was the source power of time and karma colliding, tangling, and annihilating in a disordered fashion.
This was the deepest level of the secret realm, the intersection of the turbulence of time and karma, the core of all chaos.
The Red Dust Immortal stood ten zhang away.
The loss of control over Huichuan had clearly also exceeded his expectations.
His moon-white brocade robe was no longer neat, the hem torn by time fragments in several places, and his face was pale—forcibly driving the damaged Inverse Cause Lotus, combined with the backlash from Huichuan's loss of control, had left his state far worse than before.
But the Inverse Cause Lotus in his palm was still operating.
The petals hung downward, the lotus core faced down, and though the lotus was swaying as if it would fall at any moment, it never extinguished.
"So we've come here,"?the Red Dust Immortal looked around, a trace of bitterness in his tone that even he didn't realize.
He had been trapped in this place for too long—so long that he had lost the concept of the "present world."
"Good."?The Red Dust Immortal turned his head to look at Gu Chengming, his voice turning cold. "Since we've returned to the starting point, then let's end it at the starting point."?He spoke no more. The Inverse Cause Lotus bloomed, and the power of karma poured out.
This time, he did not try to activate Huichuan.
Because as long as Gu Chengming died here, in this chaos where both time and karma were disordered, then all karma related to him would be devoured by the turbulence.
Hundred Bones Resonating, the Royal Court, Love Infinite—all variables would cease to exist.
...
Meanwhile, before Gu Chengming's eyes, images flickered past like a revolving lantern.
Flowing clouds and the bright moon intersected; that was the True Monarch's path of time.
True Monarch Liuyun Suyu fell among the ruins of the mountain gate, her white clothes soaked in blood.
Won by half a move.
True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's path of time had reached the pinnacle; flowing clouds followed the moon, and time was like water. Her understanding of time was nearly identical to the Dao itself.
But in the two characters of Cloud and Moon, the cloud is the flow, and the moon is the companionship. In Flowing Cloud Following Moon, what is being followed is not time itself, but the moonlight.
The clouds chase the moon, the moon reflects the clouds; cloud and moon depend on each other, never parting for a moment.
This was supposed to be a Dao rooted in emotion.
But in that battle, True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's sword lacked the tenderness of mutual dependence.
Her cloud could not catch the moon because she was fighting alone.
【Hundred Bones Resonating clenched her fist and said: Emperor Gu, we are not fighting alone!】
Gu Chengming did not speak, but his hand slowly clenched into a fist, and white light emerged on its surface.
"Emperor Bai, can we do one more Love Infinite?"
—No words were needed.
【Hundred Bones Resonating huffed: How could just once be enough? Even I would find that embarrassing to say!】
【My love for Emperor Gu will never be exhausted in a lifetime!】
Gu Chengming smiled. "I love you too."
【Hearing this, Hundred Bones Resonating's voice came from the white light, full of energy and arrogant beyond belief.】
【But if you listened closely, the end of her voice was tilted up, carrying all the things she once dared not admit.】
【Hundred Bones Resonating: Emperor Gu—!!!】
【Hundred Bones Resonating: I'll aid you!!!】
But this time, the light of Love Infinite did not point at anyone.
It pointed at the ground.
At the same time, the Red Dust Immortal seemed to realize what Gu Chengming was about to do.
He noticed the direction of that light and sensed Gu Chengming's ambition.
Because the other party's fist was not aimed at him, but at the river of history—
—He wanted to change karma.
The Red Dust Immortal, who had intended to end the matter here, was instantly terrified. Then he heard Gu Chengming's "I love you."
Obviously, it wasn't said to him, but to some existence.
And then, the other party's momentum surged dramatically.
The Red Dust Immortal's legs were even shaking a bit.
—Dammit, he had never seen such a bizarre opponent in his life!
The white and gold light on the surface of the fist suddenly bloomed.
Hundred Bones Resonating of Love had not gone all out, so that punch had not been fully satisfying. But now—the Red Dust Immortal was right in front of him.
A Dao Throne-level existence, the holder of Xiaoyaoyou, the perpetrator behind this entire secret realm—this was the opponent that punch deserved. That punch that hadn't been fully thrown at Hundred Bones Resonating of Love—
You've delivered yourself to the door.
...
Gu Chengming's punch fell.
The light merging white and crimson-gold pierced through history, arriving at that distant, already concluded past.
Penglai Immortal Sect, the mountain gate shattered, heaven and earth overturned.
True Monarch Liuyun Suyu stood alone upon the ruins, her white clothes stained with blood, the sword in her hand having reached its limit.
Her intent of Cloud and Moon had reached its end. The flowing clouds had nowhere to go, and the bright moon had no companion.
A one-person Cloud and Moon could never reach the end after all.
A light merging white and crimson-gold surged in from a time rift twenty-seven thousand years later, like a river flowing upstream, crossing the frozen layers of time, crossing the wreckage of the Land of Nowhere, and crossing the layers of obstruction from karma and fate—
Arriving at that lonely dusk, True Monarch Liuyun Suyu felt that light at the final moment of the battle. She didn't know where it came from or why it came.
But she felt something in that light that had always been missing from her sword intent.
Even across twenty-seven thousand years, even if they had never met, and even if it was just an afterglow sent from the future.
But it truly told her—
You are not alone.
True Monarch Liuyun Suyu's eyes reflected that light.
And then she smiled.
The sword rose.
...
The Red Dust Immortal's eyes nearly split from their sockets. At the bottom of the river of time, a certain karmic node that had been sealed for countless years was being rewritten.
He charged forward, the Dao Throne of the Inverse Cause Lotus exploding with full power. He had to stop this.
He could not allow the outcome of that battle to be rewritten—
—If it was rewritten, then all his years of struggle, planning, and waiting would all turn into nothing.
No, not just nothing. If the outcome back then became a mutual destruction rather than his tragic victory—then he, trapped in the secret realm, would cease to exist.
The Red Dust Immortal would be completely erased from karma; nothing would be left of him.
The power of the Inverse Cause Lotus struck toward Gu Chengming. Karmic threads turned into countless chains trying to strangle that white-gold light, but the chains shattered inch by inch the moment they touched the edge of the light.
"This isn't fair—!"
He roared, his voice carrying unwillingness.
"I've been trapped here for twenty-seven thousand years! I gave everything! I deduced every route, exhausted every possibility!"
"What right do you have, with one punch, with one 'I love you'—!"
Gu Chengming did not answer the Red Dust Immortal's questioning.
He just retracted his fist and then threw a second punch.
Unlike the first punch, this one was not downward, but forward.
It struck directly at the Red Dust Immortal. The white-gold light carried the roar of the river of time, the sword intent that had been completed by True Monarch Liuyun Suyu at the final moment, and the warmth of a white-haired girl hugging him before she dissipated—
One punch.
Completely striking him dead!
...
In the final breath before the punch wind arrived, the Red Dust Immortal saw some things.
At the bottom of the river of time, that rewritten karmic node—
All the karma accumulated over twenty-seven thousand years—the planning, waiting, struggle, Huichuan, and Xiaoyaoyou—dissolved one by one as the root was rewritten, like a high tower that had lost its foundation, collapsing silently from the top.
The secret realm returned to silence.
In the grayish-white sky, those rifts that had appeared due to the awakening of the Inverse Cause Lotus were slowly healing.
【Hundred Bones Resonating's voice came from the depths of her Sea of Consciousness. Her aura was a bit weak, but she still huffed: Emperor Gu, how was my performance just now? Wasn't it peerlessly handsome?】
"Of course. I love you to death, Emperor Bai,"?Gu Chengming said with a smile.
【Steam began to rise from Hundred Bones Resonating's head, and she laughed dizzily: Ehehe~】
【Hundred Bones Resonating Affection: 510/Until Death Do Us Part】
【The Huiyuan Sword Manual was quite resentful.】
【The Qingxin Art complained: It seems Little Huiyuan's exclusive skill has decreased by one again.】
Gu Chengming retracted his gaze, the corners of his mouth unconsciously curling up.
The Primal God-Realm, Myriad-Law Sovereign, Origin Nine-Heavens, Hundred-Bones Royal Court, Xiaoyaoyou, Inverse Cause Lotus, Huichuan, Red Dust Immortal—and that dream named Land of Nowhere that had slept for countless years.
Everything concluded under Love Infinite.
Rate on N.U.
