Following his death at the hands of Taiyang Yuan's Solar Flames and manifestation above the River of Time, Qiu Meng was full of indignation, resentment and seething with the thirst to make all Divine Spirits pay for the injustice that the Celestial Hall suffered.
He thanked fate for giving him an opportunity to escape death and swore to use the knowledge gleaned from the River of Time to plan his comeback. However, the time above the River was like a journey through eternal limbo. After 10,000 years of going through myriad variations of the future, yet still finding events that replayed regardless of the road taken, Qiu Meng despaired.
'The son is terrible, but the mother even worse. How to save the world, how to save your own, when with one wrong move, you risk triggering the savage retaliation of irresistible beings? Why is there no variation to their future? Billions of alternate futures, and yet Bazun will still be born. How can I stop it? I can't...' What good was knowing the future if you couldn't alter and bring it to the ending you desired? After watching a myriad of futures end in the same catastrophe, this was Qiu Meng's frame of mind.
But thanks to his absorption of Qiu Chen, of the all-consuming rage and hatred that made even logic irrelevant, Qiu Meng regained his fighting spirit. None of these futures included him. He could become the variable that tipped the scales and prevented the coronation of Bazun.
But for that, as insane as it sounded, he either had to kill Hengye Zhen before others could profit from his fall, or save him from his future. If he couldn't accomplish either one of those, then on the day that the Great Desolation World faced its last calamity, Bazun would take control of the ancient relic hidden in the Endless Sea, lay claim to his throne and start the Last Era.
'Bazun...the Overlord of the Ends of Time. In this timeline, only the Golden Lotus and that Xiao Hu girl are somewhat cognizant of his existence. The former will not try to stop his birth, while the latter has already forgotten about her vision, and even if she didn't, she wouldn't understand the full magnitude of what she saw.
But thankfully, before we can talk about the coronation, Bazun first needs to be born. And that...still requires a bunch of elements. I only need to prevent one of them — one — and then I only have the Thousand-Faced God to worry about...ah.' When his thoughts reached this point, Qiu Meng couldn't help but stifle a laugh.
For the Thousand-Faced God to be the least of his worries went to show how much of a mess the future was destined to be. Still, Qiu Meng didn't lose hope. If at first, he only cared for Xue Lin, the more time he spent in the Nameless Sword Mountain, the more attached he became to the land and people that welcomed him back into this world.
Zuixian, Haoyue, Moxie, the Infernal Nuns, and all the others, if only for them, he had to change the future.
'Poor Zhenwu Shenquan doesn't know that, by sealing off the Yellow Spring Undead Kingdom, he was actually doing Hengye Zhen a favor. The Evil Blood Tree and Yellow Spring Formation are progressing at an astonishing pace, with a network of underground tunnels connecting the Bloodstone Cult to all provinces of the Eastern Continent. The undead kingdom is, as we speak, one of Hengye Zhen's biggest wealth generators, and will later become the core of his Yellow Spring Formation.
That Yellow Spring Formation is the first of the many building blocks of Bazun's creation...and the first event I have to prevent. It's also the only one of Hengye Zhen's moves that could potentially force the Golden Lotus Temple out of seclusion.' In the future, when the Golden Lotus Temple realized that Hengye Zhen was about to become the master of the Reincarnation Cycle, they broke their vow of eternal seclusion to crusade against the Hengye clan.
But by then, Hengye Zhen had already subjugated the Black Lotus Temple, using them as the buffer that enabled him to smoothly exterminate the Golden Lotus Temple's monks.
This time, Qiu Meng had to make sure that both ancient Lianist temples realized early what Hengye Zhen planned, set aside their ancestral grudges, and joined forces to prevent the completion of the Yellow Spring Formation.
"Second brother! Second brother! Qiu Chen!" As Qiu Meng's thoughts trailed off, Zi Zuixian's voice boomed on the side — pulling the reincarnated immortal out of his swirling thoughts.
"Oh, sorry, I spaced out," he said, glancing left and right as if trying to make sense of the situation.
"You spaced out? Look at the line before us! No wonder you can't stay focused! Qiu Chen, why did I let you bring me...to this god-forsaken place?!" Zi Zuixian snapped, waving his right index at an impossibly long line that stretched across over 200 meters. At the end of that line, one extravagant building stood, seven stories high and topped by a "Silkshifter God's Abode" sign.
"Ouch..."
"Don't ouch me! At this rate, we will still be here by the end of the week!" Zuixian rattled off.
'The Godshifter is the supreme bloodline of the Silkshifter Evolution path, achievable only by the mightiest of Demon Nobles after an astronomical accumulation of Blood Energy, Evil Qi and sins. To think that Hengye Zhen would dare to name his shop "Silkshifter God's Abode." Is he really that confident, or just counting on the ignorance of the East's people?' Qiu Meng marveled at his enemy's audacity.
After all, should a Sun Spirit walk by, they'd instantly recognize the hidden meaning behind this shop's name. But then again, this was the Great Desolation World, and following his acquisition of the Heavenly Dao, Hengye Zhen became fearless, lawless, and completely unpredictable.
"Sorry...sorry, let's just try to get through it. I promise you, this is the investment of a lifetime." Trying to placate his bro, Qiu Meng rubbed Zi Zuixian's sore shoulders, and the two made a slow trek through the waiting line leading to the Silkshifter God's Abode's doors. Needless to say, they stood out.
95% of the people in line were women, the majority of which came from the Spiritual Aristocracy. The rest were either wealthy male cultivators trying to please their ladies or female cultivators of the human aristocracy. All wore splendid jewelry and luxurious clothes. Qiu Meng and Zi Zuixian, on the other hand, respectively wore traditional black swordsman clothes and a white Daoist robe.
In a row of ostentatious wealth, these simple clothes drew a flurry of scornful gazes. Qiu Meng and Zuixian ignored them. And after hours of waiting in line, finally reached the building's gate. There, five crystal puppets guarded the door, checking credentials before letting people in.
Seeing those spirit and human noble ladies deposit shining papers and storage bags in the puppets' hands, Zuixian frowned, feeling a sense of foreboding creep up his back.
"Greetings, gentlemen. Please present your reservations and 100,000 spirit stones fees each," the tallest of the five puppets said, making Zi Zuixian's eyes stretch and his jaw drop in disbelief.
