The modified version of God's Guidance that Yun Yi created had a smaller blast radius, but the influence it exerted was much greater compared to normal ones. Additionally, there was no such thing as a backdoor anymore, anyone who remained within the range of the explosion would have no choice but to endure the full extent of the blast.
In the instant of the explosion, everything seemed to have ground to a halt, and the world fell into a frozen state.
Or rather, for Negary, this world's operation could no longer interfere with his flow of time.
In Negary's vision, his own entire existence became clear to him, his form of life had finished evolving, and the Seed of Truth that was created from nothing but knowledge had thoroughly bloomed into a gigantic tree whose branches and roots extended throughout every bit of his existence.
Negary's eyes could now see the movement of the universe. In a place that living beings couldn't possibly observe, there was an indiscernible river, a humongous system that stretched across infinite worlds.
The river seemed to be constantly flowing. With its every movement, numerous sprites of light would emerge from the river and flow into the numerous surrounding worlds.
At the same time, a similarly large number of sprites of light would emerge from those worlds and flow back into the river.
〖 Those are [Origins] 〗
Negary had such an epiphany.
And this river could be called the River of Beginning, the End of Origin, the Cycle of Reincarnation, or the String of Truth. It was the basic frame of this multiverse, the extension of all blueprints, and the basis for all life to form.
After that, Negary could faintly sense numerous ineffable existences within that indiscernible river, but Negary could only see a short part of the river that had resonated with him.
With Manipulation at the core and other knowledge supplementing it, a structure that surpassed the imagination of living beings that was connected through numerous aspects of Reality formed into a branch of the river - a tributary.
At the very moment that the tributary's structure was complete, Negary felt a sense of sublimation. He could tell that while he remained in a lesser Sand Realm, no matter how this world's matter moved, it would still be unable to pull him along and cause changes to him.
In other words, the concept of Time within any lesser realms was now ineffective to him. He could easily achieve literal eternal life in any lesser realm. If he so wished, he could reveal a tiny bit of his essence and cause any life forms affected by it to also be unaffected by Time in a lesser realm.
It was no wonder Pathway Entities were largely unwilling to remain in lesser realms, as their growth would become stunted to a horrifying degree.
Negary could also sense the river tributary of his Pathway constantly creating new [Origins], which seemed to be a function of the String of Truth.
At the same time, although these [Origins] were created in his tributary, their creation encompassed the entire corresponding Truths of the universe, at most, Negary's Pathway tributary had only affected them a bit greater compared to normal.
If Negary wanted to, he would be able to mark each and every [Origin] that was created within this tributary. By following them, Negary would be able to find new world coordinates.
Of course, since there were [Origins] created here, there were naturally also [Origins] that returned.
Negary could easily discern these returning [Origins] to be from the same group that had just been created earlier. These [Origins] that had traveled to other worlds and remained there for a year, or just a few months in his vision, had actually lived for an entire life thanks to the difference in time flow of each world.
Glancing at these [Origins], Negary found that they did not bring back anything useful at all, and even if more of them returned, it would still be similarly meaningless.
〖 Then how about this? 〗Negary placed a small portion of his power into a newly created [Origin] and let it freely reincarnate.
His attention also followed the new life of this [Origin] thanks to the power he imbued within it.
That [Origin] proceeded to enter a world with a feudalistic society. Because it carried a portion of Negary's power, he was born extraordinary, being hailed as a genius since birth. By the time he was 21 years old, he discovered a certain fact: he seemed to have stopped aging.
His physique, his body state, everything seemed to have been solidified at 21 years of age, time seemed almost helpless to affect him. In order to not expose this truth, he initially had his family members cover this up and only ever left the house with a fake beard.
Eventually, when concealment was no longer possible, he faked his death and changed into another identity to continue living.
In the beginning, he was silently delighted, but after his peers began to grow to 70-80 years old; after the love of his life had committed suicide due to being unable to accept her aging; and after his comrades and friends eventually died of diseases or of old age, this delight disappeared without a trace.
His descendants continued to grow in number, from one generation to the next, but his familial attachment to them became gradually thinner. Eventually, all of them seemed like strangers who took advantage of one another for profit, even though all of them called him their ancestor.
Of course, he had also felt despair and tried to commit suicide, but regardless of how he died, he would only remain dormant for a period of time. Once that time had gone by, his body would simply recover.
The very first time he died, he slept for over 30 years before he climbed out of his grave, almost scaring his great-great-great-grandchild to death.
As the years went by, he discovered that the better his body was preserved, the shorter he had to sleep, and vice-versa.
In this manner, he lived from feudal society all the way to the modern age.
He had lived in insanity, as a hero, as a tyrant, as a great monk, as a free spirit, as a vigilante, as a renowned merchant. In the end, the only thing he had left was indifference.
After a thousand years of longevity, he could finally feel the power that supported his immortality disappearing, followed by his consciousness being pulled somewhere unknown.
Is this heaven? Or hell?
While he was thinking this, he was gently received by a hand, who seemed to be judging him.
〖 Garbage 〗
Without waiting for him to react, his consciousness was thoroughly erased.
Looking down at the [Origin] in his hand, Negary shook his head. Having been imbued with a part of his power, other than a slightly stronger will than normal and relatively eventful life, this individual didn't manage to achieve anything of note. What else was he but garbage?
Even if that was a no-magic world, following Negary's thought process, if Negary was given the same conditions, he would have already released his [Origin] and researched a method to transmigrate to another world.
Negary had even left a set of world coordinates within that bit of power, if that individual had been able to utilize the power to a certain degree, he would have been able to notice those coordinates.
This was the same rule he adhered to for all his experimental subjects by leaving one path of survival. If he had been able to follow those world coordinates and travelled to that world, members of the Impure Hermit Order would be waiting to happily receive him.
But in the end, he got immersed in his sense of superiority as an immortal, unkillable person, wasting his entire life in a single world being sorry for himself.
He should have been able to sense the power that maintained his immortality the first time he committed suicide, but never tried to seriously dig deeper into it later on. While he claimed to hate immortality, he had never tried to actually explore that power to change it. The arrogance of being immortal had clouded his eyes.
…
While Negary was researching how to use [Origins] to earn himself more power, part of his attention was also dealing with the aftermath of the Desolate Sacrifice world.
Yun Yi had sacrificed his life to ensure the serpent's death, but before his soul was destroyed, Negary had fished it out and put him back into the Ancestral Wild's cycle of reincarnation to incubate once again.
By the time he was resurrected, the Desolate Sacrifice world's name had been changed to the Totem world. The natural shortcomings of the Celestials who had been living here had also been remedied.
The name 'Celestial' that had originally been used to distinguish themselves from the Desolates due to their differences was no longer necessary, as they could now simply be called 'Humans' without any distinguishing features, the only difference was that those who had begun to walk the path of eternal peace would automatically join the Celestial Department.
…
While Yun Yi was walking on the sidewalk of a neat and clean street, watching the vehicles that traveled back and forth, smiling as he saw two other people standing next to a nearby car.
While juggling a pair of bright red daggers in his hand, Yun Rong noticed Yun Yi and patted the top of the vehicle, after which a person with a half-withered appearance peeked his head out from inside, Po Nan.
Their previous battle had left him with a permanent change in the essence of his life form, which couldn't be said to be either a good thing or a bad thing.
"How's the current situation?" Yun Yi quickly approached and received the pair of glasses in Po Nan's hand and asked.
"Everything is well. The Totem world has completely stabilized, our population grows by the day. Most menial tasks can be done through the AI machines, so we're all a bit free right now" Yun Rong's speaking grew increasingly faster. While he didn't mean to retort or complain, everything that left his mouth felt like a complaint.
"And that's why the three of us have some special orders" Po Nan took out three bags of documents and handed them to each of them.
"This is? From what I know, hadn't the Desolate… the Totem world already suppressed the few resistance forces it had remaining?" Yun Yi received the bag of documents and asked.
"That's why our orders aren't within the Totem world… This is a job from a certain wealthy individual in the Impure Hermit Order. They found a new world suitable for their organization, but the natives are a bit difficult, so they hoped that our Celestial Department would be able to cooperate with them" Po Nan replied.
After reading everything, Yun Yi entered the vehicle and smiled: "Then what are we waiting for? My bones have practically gone stiff during the entire time I was in the hospital"
Some nuances were lost in translation here. Both the Desolates and Celestials originally had the suffix "human" in their Chinese names, but that suffix was removed for the sake of better reading. As mentioned a few chapters ago, both the Desolates and Celestials were still only slightly better than regular humans, unlike elves or other long-lived races
