BXBX NOVEL Chapter 396: 395: Return to the River of Time
“Mortals who come here will lose their memories due to their unfamiliarity with the way of time, leaving their minds unoccupied and void in this place.”
Jiang Li stood on the bank of the Time River, watching the rushing river flow past, murmuring quietly to himself.
He had visited the Time River once before, where the Past and Present Sword transformed into a white fish said it had seen him downstream in the future. That meant he was destined to return here, so he specifically learned much about the Time River from Ji Zhi.
“But this time it’s probably not the visit the Past and Present Sword was referring to.”
Jiang Li bent down to observe the Time River. The place he was in was the Time River of the Wei Gu World whereas the Past and Present Sword had met an him from the future in the Time River of the Jiuzhou world.
Different worlds have different time flows and are separated by boundaries and voids, resulting in different Time Rivers.
There are heavy walls on both banks of the river, feeling like cotton candy to the touch. The other side of the wall is the Time River of another world.
For the people of the Great Zhou Dynasty Family, this wall seems like an invincible Immortal Artifact, hard to shake. But Jiang Li felt he could overturn it.
However, he was warned by Ji Kongkong and Ji Zhi, that the Time River reflects reality and can also influence reality. Knocking down the wall means two worlds will become interconnected, and no one knows what will happen. There is uncertainty in both fortune and disaster.
“Follow the advice of the professionals,” Jiang Li stopped paying attention to the wall issue.
The Time River was still shrouded in chaotic fog, obscuring the past and the future. Jiang Li could only see as far as he walked.
If it was Ji Zhi here, he could only travel two hundred years upstream along the Time River. After that, he would meet with enormous resistance and could not proceed any further.
If Bai Hongtu was here, he would have been unable to move even an inch. Only those who comprehend the way of time can move through the Time River.
Jiang Li, however, was an exception. The limitations of the Time River were not applicable to him. He could wander freely between the past and the future.
Jiang Li went upstream of the Time River, which is the past of Wei Gu World.
He walked with his hands behind his back, intermittently looking down to observe the history of the Wei Gu World, finding it much more vivid than the cold words recorded in history books.
As he walked further into the past, the conflict between ordinary people and those with special abilities intensified. When special powers first appeared, they created a clear division between ordinary people and the powerful.
As he walked, Jiang Li pondered. Actually, the gap between special ability users and ordinary people was not so great. The widest chasm existed in the cultivation world.
A first-order special ability individual could possibly kill a fourth-order one, but could one at the Qi Cultivation Stage ever kill a Nascent Soul-stage practitioner? Of course not.
The Qi Cultivation, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Divinity Transformation, Soul Melding, and Transcendence Tribulation stages, these seven stages of cultivation were like seven insurmountable chasms.
“Cultivation… The power resides within oneself…”
Jiang Li remembered the Ancient World, a place filled with intense struggles in the cultivation world.
Jiang Li had been to many worlds, but most of them were technological. The only genuine cultivation world was the Ancient World.
The Ring Universe, where martial arts are practiced, had powerful martial artists, but the pinnacle of power was limited. Even swarming tactics could pose threats, hardly a true world where power resides within oneself.
Only worlds like Jiuzhou World and Ancient World could be considered true realms where the power resides within oneself.
“The biggest problem with the cultivation world lies in the fact that the top cultivators are too powerful, and they have a direct influence on the trajectory of the world.”
“When the gap between people becomes too large, it signifies that everyone’s value is no longer equal. Human life becomes cheap, and high-level cultivators may look down on their lower-level counterparts as if looking at pigs and dogs.”
Jiang Li tutted in disapproval. The more he thought about it, the more he felt Jiuzhou was extremely unique.”
Jiang Li stopped in his tracks, no longer dwelling on the issue.
Because he had arrived almost six thousand years in the past, the time when the Heavenly Demons from the outer realm had instigated the humans to unlock the wielding of special abilities.
A heavenly demon, whose appearance was unclear, descended, scanning the world with his divine sense. Humans were not the supreme species of this era. They were threatened by floods and ferocious beasts, yet their intelligence and capacity for reproduction made them prevalent across Wei Gu World.
“Tch, there are too many of them to eradicate all at once. They will have to die slowly.”
The heavenly demon was quite vexed with the census results. The population of Wei Gu World barely met the criteria for a slow mass extinction. If it was two or three ten percent more negligible, he could kill them directly without worrying about them collectively visualizing and creating something he would fear before they die.
“Consider yourselves lucky.”
The heavenly demon roamed around the Wei Gu World for half a month, finally deriving a plan to cause the human race to die off slowly.
“In a world with scarce spiritual energy, cultivation will not reach substantial heights. The Demon race of the Immortal Realm had offspring here, but after generations, their bloodline has diluted to the verge of non-existence, transforming demon beasts back into ordinary wild beasts.”
“The five elements birth and subdue each other, creating all things, and most humans have Five Elements Spiritual Roots. Since this is the case, I will select a select few lucky ones, cause a reaction inside their Five Elements Spiritual Roots, and give birth to an unusual energy.”
“Although they will not become too strong, it will provide enough differentiation. When differences appear between people, it means contrast and conflict emerges. Human desire will amplify this contrast and contradiction until it eventually evolves into uncontrollable chaos.”
“Well, I’ve made up my mind.”
Jiang Li stood up to head to an earlier time node—the time when the Steps to Immortality in Wei Gu World had broken.
Jiang Li traveled about two hundred years distance to find his goal.
“I’m curious to see how the Steps to Immortality disappeared.”
Jiang Li squatted down, his expression solemn.
Six thousand years ago, Wei Gu World was in the tribal age. Their language was barely matured, and they had just abandoned rope knot recording. Cultivation and special abilities were still unknown in this era.
Humans were not the rulers of the world then, so it’s not surprising that Wei Gu World’s history books did not concretely record how the heavenly demons opened their special abilities, let alone how the Steps to Immortality broke. In such a scene.
The verbal stories passed down to six thousand years later have already morphed into indistinguishable legends that vastly differ from what actually happened.
People back then were still struggling for survival. They had no idea that the Immortal Realm had built Steps to Immortality to give them the opportunity to become immortals. Even less did they think that on the Time River, there was a pair of eyes watching them.
The golden Steps to Immortality were hidden in the sky, existing between reality and illusion, one end connected to Wei Gu World, the other to the Immortal Realm.
When cultivators reached the Transcendence Tribulation Stage, they would faintly sense the existence of the Steps to Immortality. The sensing was not clear, and only those who had become immortals could see and move freely through them.
There was no one in Wei Gu World at that time who noticed the existence of the Steps to Immortality.
Although Jiang Li wasn’t at the Transcendence Tribulation Stage and had not yet become an Immortal, he could see everything clearly.
This was the first time he had seen the complete Steps to Immortality.
Soon, an abrupt change occurred.