Chapter 60, End of Main Text (Part 2): A Lifetime of Heartfelt Thoughts...
60
The chaotic behemoth within the folded space swooped down, roaring angrily.
Dongfang Qianye's mortal face faintly appeared on the top of the Kun, both panicked and ferocious—
His century-old legacy, his ascent to the top, how could it vanish into thin air?
How can a mere mortal turn back the clock of a hundred years?
Yet the girl stood atop the giant tree, born from the dense network of roots that permeated the earth, and all of this truly happened.
The chaotic, corroded soil differentiated and disintegrated before my eyes, and the dark and ignorant human world and the oppressive and distorted sky all disappeared, like a madly receding tide.
"This...this is...?"
The burned-out stone began to glow again.
The ancestral land, now scorched earth, has shed its black ash to reveal its original form.
The mournful roar of the dragon and the terrified howl of the tiger gradually faded into the distance, leaving only a distant echo.
In the eye of the storm, at the center of the vortex, the green dress and white robe billowed in the wind, tangled and intertwined.
The mysterious bones within Miaojue's body were so hot they felt like a universe was being born. When the light from the thousands of roots completely illuminated the world, it was as if the Milky Way was flowing and countless stars were pouring down.
Throughout the vast expanse of time, only that person's heartbeat resounded, always present.
It took root in your heart and grew... back to the beginning of everything.
Thus, a century of sorrow and suffering was reversed in the passage of time, soothed, and forgotten. The shattered bones of the fallen, the severed tail feathers, the drained blood vessels—it all seemed as if it had never happened.
...
...
When I opened my eyes again, the world was vast and boundless.
The sun shines brightly, casting a gentle and clear glow over the lush green world.
On this secluded island in that year, there were only rolling waves, wildflowers covering the mountains, and the soft chirping of insects.
With a gentle lift of her eyes, she revealed the secret.
Her eyes seemed to clear away like morning mist, revealing a clear and bright look washed by the long river of time—that was her true appearance.
She touched her lower abdomen, where the lingering heat of her inner abdomen was still present.
The Mysterious Bone Tree used almost all its power to set the world back a century, and now only a faint shadow remains, but it still exists.
Miaojue raised his eyes and looked at this former ancestral land.
She didn't deliberately choose a specific date, but instead, at the moment when the Xuan Gu unleashed its power, she followed that thread of cause and effect from a hundred years ago, letting time take them back to the day when all evil was quietly sown.
That was the day Dongfang Qianye unexpectedly crossed the sea and was rescued by Wei Yi.
Miaojue looked down at his palm, which was also semi-transparent like a faint tree shadow, as if it were some kind of countdown under the secrets of heaven.
Because at this point in time, she does not yet exist.
The bird in question does not exist.
The immense power of the Time Bone sent them to the beginning of cause and effect. When cause and effect dissipated, they would return to their own timeline.
This is the power that time bestows upon the vanquished to rewrite their destiny...
The grass behind her rustled, and Miaojue ducked to the side.
A moment later, a chubby tiger tail appeared, flapping and thumping, but it was grabbed by a hand and rolled up.
A golden-eyed man carrying a bamboo basket emerged from the bushes and bent down to save a small mouse that was nearly killed by a red tiger's tail.
The mouse scurried into the ground, chattering away.
Fuji lowered the tiger's tail, his gaze gentle: "Don't frighten the other small creatures outside."
In the eyes of the tyrannical red tiger and the fire qilin, the little creature Miaojue was as small as an ant. Even if they sensed that something was hiding there, they would not deliberately catch it to scare it.
So Miaojue hid behind a tree and looked at his brothers from over a hundred years ago.
Feng Si, with his broad shoulders and thick waist, transformed into a clumsy human, while Bu Er wore a gentle, helpless expression, constantly trying to hide the overly intimidating tail and facial hair of the king of beasts.
The two talked about how the sea had been turbulent lately, and how the Changming Ancestral Stone had been silent for a long time. Their voices, sometimes rough and sometimes high and sometimes low, drifted leisurely into the mountains.
Miaojue instinctively emerged from behind the tree and followed them forward.
It was an ordinary mountain afternoon, and nothing happened.
If none of the subsequent events had occurred, what kind of lives would they have led?
The secret is like a little insect, secretly watching them through the cracks of time.
On the road, Silver Fox suddenly emerged from the bushes, holding a bamboo pole in its mouth, and poked its head out to ask, "Where's Weiyi? Did she go swimming again? Zushi seemed to move a little today, but then stopped."
Miao Jue immediately perked up her ears; the only place she could find was the information she needed most, and also…
The Changming Clan, whose ancestral stone is about to be born.
Fuji shook his head, then looked worriedly at the distant mountain peak. "The only one should be by the Ancestral Stone now."
Feng Si complained in a muffled voice, but his tone betrayed his anticipation: "I wonder what kind of person this Tenth Brother is. He's been holding back for so many years. I really don't know what kind of temper he'll have when he finally comes out!"
Miaojue's eyes couldn't help but crinkle into a smile.
By this time, all the older brothers and sisters of the Changming clan had been born for many years.
Zu Shi's final work, a small bird that emerges from ashes and destroys heaven and earth, is still in the works.
Standing a century in the past, Miaojue gained a deeper understanding of this place she had once considered an impoverished mountain village. From the stories of her older siblings, she pieced together the various aspects of the Changming tribe—
It was a sacred mountain overseas, named Culai, meaning a mountain where great timber grows. But there were no giant trees in the mountain, only a huge stone core that had existed since ancient times and whose age was unknown.
The stone has natural engravings, which the local indigenous people call the "Eternal Ancestral Stone".
In its early days, this stone was not like the white jade of today; it was an ordinary, dusty, weed-covered gray-brown rock with an extremely complex texture, as if it contained a variety of colors.
Its first tremor was about a thousand years ago, when a stream of icy air from ancient times was released. The cold spiritual energy froze the boulder. Then one day, the ice layer slowly cracked open, turning into naturally beautiful ice crack patterns. The icy white color in the stone disappeared, as if it had undergone a cleansing and purification process, revealing a vast and ethereal spiritual essence of ice and snow.
From then on, the world possessed ice-attribute spiritual energy.
The tremors of this stone core are irregular, sometimes occurring every few centuries, sometimes only every few days. With each tremor, a layer of color is washed away from the stone core, and then a new spiritual attribute is added to the world.
After nine times, only black remained in the Everlasting Stone.
Dark, jet black, an endless expanse of black, so black that it almost glows with a hint of red.
What could this be?
Ice, fire, thunder, flame, earth, water, wind, metal, and wood—these nine spiritual elements have filled the entire mortal world with a misty atmosphere, with various attributes interacting and restraining each other, all naturally formed.
Will a new spiritual entity be born? What kind of being would it be?
"Will we have a younger brother or a younger sister?" Silver Fox sharpened his claws, unable to resist daydreaming, as if the future before him was a distant and wonderful one.
Miaojue followed behind them, speaking several times, wanting so much to tell them that everything would be alright.
You will have a younger brother and a younger sister.
They will take you back to moments of happiness.
Fuji returned to Mount Sulai and transformed into a colossal Qilin, carefully settling his scales and tail before lying on his side beside the dark ancestral stone, as if incubating an egg.
He sighed gently in a voice completely out of character for his appearance: "There are no birds or beasts for dozens of miles around the mountain. They must have been driven away by our power. After we leave the mountain, we should live as humans and leave a place for other creatures to live..."
Silver Fox and the Winfish Panda that came out upon hearing the noise both responded with perfunctory "uh-huh" and "ah-ah," carefully stroking the Ancestral Stone with their hands.
Meanwhile, Miaojue lay prone at the mountain pass, watching the breathtaking scene unfold before him.
On the familiar hillside, a Qilin stretched across the entire valley, its tail flame rising freely like an ever-burning lamp. In the distance, on the majestic mountain ridge, a verdant thunder dragon slowly coiled, its layers of scales like mirrors, reflecting the cunning deer darting through the forest.
It's like a mythical creation story...
This is how they should live their lives.
"Sister Wei Yi? You really are here." A figure in ice white appeared from behind Qilin.
The phoenix-feathered, serpentine creature swam gracefully towards them.
In this year, her only feature was still clear and lively, far from the endless worries that had been buried for a hundred years. Her light-colored pupils looked up and down at the ancestral stone, and she crossed her arms.
“I’ve been swimming in the open sea recently and I’ve discovered a strange rock deep in the ocean – every time I get close to it, my power is suppressed.”
Wei Yi patted the quiet boulder, vaguely sensing that some cause and effect were intertwined. "I'll go see if the power of that stone is affecting the Everlasting Stone."
The secret, revealed in the blink of an eye, was the Immortal-Trapping Stone...
"There's a very deep trench to the north, and there are a lot of these raw stones there. It's really strange..."
Miao Jue's eyes suddenly welled up with tears; she had guessed where it was.
Years ago, no one could have imagined that these stones would be twisted into thousands of chains, and that the trench would be the place where the Fire Qilin was imprisoned for a hundred years.
She couldn't listen to the ingenious trick any longer. She followed the only figure closely, found her direction, and then, taking advantage of the passage of time, reached the sea even faster than her.
The voices of the crowd behind him gradually faded into the distance.
"Ancestral Stone, oh Ancestral Stone, this birth was so difficult, what kind of little devil will emerge from it?"
"Sigh, we're all so grown up now, who will play with him in the future?"...
It was like a peaceful and warm afternoon, as if time would be kind and lenient towards their future.
...
Miaojue pursed her lips and swiftly appeared on the sea.
The only thing she would do was go to the bottom of the sea to check the Immortal-Trapping Stone. When she came out, she would meet Dongfang Qianye, who had been stranded at sea. Or perhaps, his name wasn't Dongfang Qianye at all.
He was just an ordinary person who couldn't survive the famine on the mainland.
In the century of reversal, the secret has already foreseen everything that is about to happen.
That year, Wang Jiaye, a young man who rowed out to sea with only a ladle of driftwood, had no idea that he would one day become the wise ruler of the Celestial Court. He was just too hungry, so he clung to the driftwood and drifted out to sea so that his parents at home wouldn't eat him.
During the famine in mainland China, he was the second son in his family, and he became emaciated and unable to lift anything.
On the night before he crossed the sea, he overheard his father and mother discussing where to start eating.
Wang Jiaye was terrified. He grabbed a piece of wood and plunged into the boundless sea, praying that a fish would jump onto the plank.
No one helped him in his entire life; he only suffered countless beatings. His short life, like that of a mayfly, was filled with hunger and nothing good ever came his way.
But on that day, he encountered a cracked ice flower and received the mercy of the gods.
He later spent a century repaying this act of kindness.
The magic trick swept across the sea at lightning speed. There was no sea fog on the endless sea this year, only a vast expanse of blue.
Even before the piece of driftwood appeared, there was a white-clad figure from behind.
The young man in white stood upright, one foot on a corner of the driftwood, the other end not raised at all.
He lowered his eyes quietly, his peach blossom eyes revealing no emotion, and simply looked at the withered farmer whose cheeks were still sunken and eyes were still sunken from being soaked in seawater.
Miao Jue's figure suddenly stopped and came to a halt.
Wang Jiaye barely opened his eyes amidst the burning hunger and dizziness, thinking that food had fallen on his wooden plank. After looking closely, his unfocused eyes suddenly revealed wild joy.
To be able to cross the sea and stand on driftwood like this, one must be an immortal, an immortal indeed!
"Immortal, save me, save me!" With his last bit of strength, he reached out to grab the dust-covered hem of his clothes, tears mingling with the seawater as they streamed down his face.
"My parents want to eat me! My parents want to eat me!"
Chen Jinshi looked down at him for a long time before finally smiling slowly.
He stood firmly with his back straight and slowly squatted down on the driftwood.
Her peach-blossom eyes shimmered, and a sinister smile slowly crept across her lips. "Oh, then you should eat your father and mother—"
"Why do you want to eat us?"
Wang Jiaye was stunned. His rough fingers gripped the wooden board tightly, and he asked in a choked voice, his throat swollen, "How could this be? How could I possibly eat an immortal?"
Chen Jinshi closed his eyes and felt the wind from behind him.
She reached out and grabbed his neck.
In this year, Dongfang Qianye finally fell into the right hands. He didn't know what he had done wrong, but his neck was snapped by the opponent's seemingly effortless strength.
His face turned purple, his eyes bulged out, and he convulsed in extreme pain: "W-uh-why—"
In the final moments of his life, which was as insignificant as grass, he only saw this young man, whose face was as handsome as a god, smile slightly.
"For no reason."
Dongfang Qianye is dead.
At a turning point in his life a century ago, he was crushed in Jin Shi's hands. His flesh and bones attracted schools of fish of all sizes, feasting on the sea he had sealed off for a hundred years.
Two days later, Xiao Jin, the girl next door who wanted to cross the sea to find her, had her head smashed open and collapsed on the boat. She never had the chance to be swept away by the waves while starving and fainting, to be washed ashore on the shore of the ancestral land of Changming, and to use all the luck in her life to meet a kind-hearted man with golden eyes.
The Celestial Court of Langhuan will never exist again.
In the next hundred years, it will all vanish like smoke.
This grand cause and effect was finally completely rewritten after a tree grew up.
Chen Jinshi slowly took a deep breath, the air sweet and hot. He turned around and saw that he and Miaojue were beginning to disappear transparently.
Miaojue finally smiled, like a spring from her memories.
Believe me.
You have to believe me.
As Chen Jinshi's eyes were filled with the girl's current appearance, for the first time in his life he felt an urge to thank the heavens.
But the impulse came and went, and all I wanted to do was worship her.
This little sapling... has grown in my heart.
Dust settled, and with eyes closed, he felt the immense force of time giving them a final push. They should be heading towards the day when cause and effect have been rewritten—
The Changming Clan's space will no longer be broken by foreign races, the Immortal-Binding Stones will no longer form countless chains that fall from the sky and catch them off guard, and they will no longer be displaced and scattered on that day.
That day should have been a beautiful day.
…
…
It was all just a dream.
Dust settled, and he opened his eyes.
Mount Culai, Changming Village.
All the clansmen were present, and the sky was indeed clear and bright that day.
On this day when their clan was wiped out, Cang San and Yang Wu were building a new thatched house together, Feng Si was still frantically plowing the fields, and he and Zhu Jiu, two big guys, were secretly competing. Gui Liu and Ling Qi were chasing each other and making a ruckus, one in the sky and one on the ground, and finally Xian Ba punched them.
As the dust settled, a slight smile curved her lips.
Let it be. Let's forget everything, forget all the torment and suffering, and live peacefully.
This was her wish. The little saplings... didn't need them to remember what she had done for them.
However, the moment they opened their eyes after the dust had settled and everything was back in its place, everyone seemed to sense something.
They were momentarily bewildered and stopped what they were doing.
Something enormous seemed to flow past them in mid-air, but it left no trace.
In a fleeting moment, countless images flashed through the minds of everyone in the clan, rushing past haphazardly and too fast to grasp, yet bringing with them a strong sense of lingering fear and palpitations.
Amidst this unease, they vaguely felt... there should be a little girl here.
Who is it?
The leisurely steps of Chen Jinshi suddenly stopped.
He suddenly realized something.
If the difficulties no longer exist, then who is the one who solved the suffering?
He suddenly looked up, his eyes shifting from astonishment to madness.
"Xiao Shi, Xiao Shi? What's wrong—"
The golden crow instantly transformed and spread its wings, frantically searching every inch of the ancestral land, up and down, but still could not find that figure.
He suddenly felt a strong, bone-chilling panic.
After the cause and effect dissipate, the tenth Golden Crow engraved in the ancestral stone sequence will still be born as scheduled, but what about her?
She appeared at Mount Culaishan by chance, as if by divine intervention, after the birth of the Golden Crow.
If her arrival from the heavens was a divine salvation for the Changming Clan, if the growth of this tree was meant to rewrite the unknown century-long calamity, then when cause and effect disappear, origins change, and sins no longer require a desperate attempt to avert disaster…
Will she appear as scheduled, descending from the heavens to this mountain range?
Dust settled as he frantically searched for Wei Yi, his lips trembling.
He knew, he knew perfectly well, that when the past changes, the future will no longer be the same.
Do you know the secret?
She is the one who bears the Xuan Bone, so she must know that too.
So she wants to exchange her own disappearance for the happiness and ignorance of his entire clan? Don't be ridiculous.
Dust suddenly split around him, and he grasped time, which was nowhere to be seen and everywhere, in his palm. As the Golden Crow, he almost fell from the sky.
Are you going to kill me?
Are you going to kill me?
I just found you.
Dust settled and rushed to the summit of Mount Culai, where Wei Yi and Bu Er were sitting facing each other, staring blankly at one another.
Just now, they had a... very long dream.
In their dream, they nearly destroyed their entire tribe because of their good intentions. Even in their dream, they couldn't forgive themselves.
Fortunately, none of that happened, because in the dream, a little girl did something very, very important for their entire tribe.
The dream should end, but upon waking, the person is nowhere to be found.
The only thing I saw when I looked up was the golden crow flying in hastily.
Jin Shi was about to come of age that year, but this was the first time she had ever seen him with such an expression.
"You said—you said cause and effect are inevitable, that what has happened will inevitably happen again," the golden crow landed and transformed into a young man, his eyes reddening, "you already knew that the Bone of Time existed in the world, right? The Bone of Time is absolutely free, isn't it?"
The trajectory of time has been altered, causing events to occur out of order, but she is a free agent within time.
He can trust her.
This series of questions had no cause or effect; they were all spoken in human language, but when put together, they sounded like gibberish.
Fuji didn't understand at all. He carefully helped him up and asked, "Xiao Shi, what's wrong?"
Dust settled, but her eyes were filled with despair. She almost pleaded with her sister, "Time is the most absolute thing in the world, isn't it?"
She stared blankly into his eyes.
In those peach blossom eyes they had watched grow up, there was something... something that definitely didn't belong to someone his age. The heavy despair and the almost collapsed ruins were as if he had walked alone for countless years.
Suddenly, a thought struck Wei Yi, and at that moment, he had an unbelievable realization.
She nodded solemnly and slowly: "There is indeed a last and most special kind of Time Bone in the world. If anyone in this world has ever forged it, please rest assured that the burden of this spiritual bone will never disappear."
"Because no one can make time disappear, no matter when she is... she will always find the direction she wants to go."
Dust settled heavily on his heart, cold sweat dripping down his forehead, as if he had survived a catastrophe.
...
From that day on.
He started by planting a tree.
Except for one person, when the entire clan took turns asking him how he wanted to live his adult life, he did not answer.
When the Everlasting Clan reaches adulthood, their hearts will also be fully developed, becoming the most important organ. As long as the heart keeps burning, they will live forever.
He will receive the most powerful heartbeat.
The tree of time that grows in his heart has direction.
On the day it truly matured, the sun still hung in the sky, and the ashes of the golden crow filled the entire Mount Culai.
After seeing everyone off, Chen Jinshi gradually stopped smiling and finally sat expressionlessly in front of the saplings he had planted, counting each of the spring branches he had grown.
Yes, spring has arrived.
Spring has arrived.
A single branch.
Two branches. ...
With each branch he counted, his heart pounded and blood flowed.
Dust settles, eyes closed, hand pressed to heart.
Seven branches.
Ten branches...
—"The eleventh branch!"
I am coming.
A girl's soft, clear voice came from behind.
Before she could even finish speaking, the trembling, dark figure had already spun and landed.
Dust settled down and he pulled her into his arms, his ears ringing for a long time.
He knew that the worries of his life had finally come to an end.
He urgently and frantically found the corner of her lips, and kissed her passionately and forcefully along the lip line, as if he wanted to engrave all her body temperature and touch on his body, and melt her body into the blood of his heart.
His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to jump out of his chest, and his ears were ringing. It took him a long time to finally hear what she was saying from the soft, warm side of her neck. He looked up, panting, and his deep, almond-shaped eyes met Miaojue's bright eyes as she looked up at him.
She was speaking; she was crossing time to come to him, to fall in love with him—
She said that a hundred years ago.
Then let's become a tree.
He always flies to my branch.
Years later, with a smile in her eyes, she called his name clearly.
"Eternal Flame Ten".
"You can fly to me now."
(End of main text)
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