Xu Xian pondered for a moment before asking, "Does the story hold the answers I seek?"
"Perhaps," Li Taibai replied ambiguously.
Xu Xian understood and sat cross-legged, taking a deep breath before speaking a single word.
"Fine."
Over the past few days, he had heard many stories.
The candor of the Nether Tortoise and the rise of the Twilight Emperor.
The confession of Chi Ji and the grievances of her youth.
And then...
The hidden past between Li Taibai and Tu Sisi that she had spoken of.
Today,
Li Taibai was going to tell a story of his own.
Xu Xian could not help but feel a sense of anticipation.
This Sword Ancestor, who hailed from Above the Heavens and called himself a Sword Protector,
He was one of the most legendary figures in Fanzhou.
What kind of grand tapestry would the story he told weave?
What kind of past would be revealed, and what truths would be restored?
Li Taibai fell silent for a moment, as if lost in memory.
After gathering his thoughts, he finally spoke slowly, "Where should I begin?"
He looked up, but his gaze did not fall upon Xu Xian.
Instead, he looked toward that half-opened Sky Gate, his vision seemingly piercing through layers of iron chains and the endless Netherworld to see what lay Above the Heavens.
He spoke softly, "Then let us start from the very beginning..."
He said,
Legend has it that a long, long time ago, the universe was born from the unknown.
Stars first formed, and consciousness emerged.
Thus began the first era of the universe.
The Primordial Era.
In those days, there were no living beings or plants between heaven and earth.
There were only wisps of consciousness possessing the most primitive of thoughts.
Those consciousnesses traveled freely through the universe, ignoring planes, star systems, time, and space, born from the void and wandering for their entire lives...
Gradually,
some of those consciousnesses developed emotions during their long wanderings.
For example, they would feel bored, uninspired, or lonely...
Perhaps some consciousnesses that possessed emotions grew weary, so they attached themselves to stars and stayed there.
After a long, long time, the consciousnesses that stayed behind learned how to think.
More and more consciousnesses awakened.
Different voices began to emerge in the universe.
They repelled and devoured one another.
In the same star system, different intents began to fight for control over the stars.
The War of the First Spirits broke out.
In this competition of consciousness, small consciousnesses devoured each other to become large ones.
Groups of stars appeared, and they confronted and encroached upon one another.
Old consciousnesses fell, and new ones were born.
Great consciousnesses continued to rise, claiming kingship and dominance.
Small consciousnesses lay in wait, slowly eroding the strong.
That period was the Primordial Era, the oldest and most distant era of the known universe.
That age
was a collision between consciousnesses.
Until at one point, the most powerful consciousness among them seized control of the entire universe.
He evolved a great power that stood above all other intents.
He could control every consciousness in the universe.
He became the Supreme King.
He also gave his world a name.
【Universe】
Yu: representing space, encompassing the vast range of the four directions and all that is above and below.
Zhou: representing time, encompassing the endless continuation from the past into the present.
With that,
the concept of the universe was born.
Standing above all consciousnesses, He called himself the Will of the Universe, the highest law.
He no longer participated in the struggles between consciousnesses or the devouring of intents.
Instead, He stood above the universe, ruling over everything.
He allowed the newly born wills to fight and collide with each other.
At one point, He even found amusement in it...
Xu Xian listened, his expression shifting between light and shadow.
This was an era that even the Little Book Spirit had never mentioned to him, the Primordial Era.
How long ago was it?
No one could say for sure.
Was Li Taibai correct?
There was likely no one left to verify it.
The story began by mentioning that it was a legend...
This was similar to how humans on Earth speculated about the universe and deduced the evolution of life.
It was like the theory that after the Big Bang, the sun formed, and the collision of meteorites in the galaxy created the Earth.
Over long ages, life was born and began to evolve...
Or perhaps it was like Pangu creating the world, where the turbid became the earth and the clear became the sky, and after his death, one eye became the sun and the other the moon, his bones became mountains, his blood became rivers, and his hair became forests...
There was no real difference between these three.
They were all attempts by later generations to trace their origins.
It was just that the first two were based on science or mythology.
However,
the version Li Taibai spoke of was different.
It contained both factual considerations and mythological flourishes.
If he had to choose one to believe, Xu Xian, living in a world of cultivation, would likely lean toward Li Taibai’s version.
The most primitive law of the universe was plunder.
Whether between stars or living beings, all things were born with the instinct to plunder.
Plants plundered sunlight,
and the earth plundered nutrients.
Living beings plundered food,
and even those who cultivated were plundering the spirit qi of heaven and earth.
At the beginning of the universe and the start of the Primordial Era, the birth of consciousness was also about plunder.
The large ate the small, and the small ate the even smaller.
The large grew larger and larger.
Until finally,
when the strongest emerged, only one voice remained in the world.
It shared the same origin as the life and death of stars and living beings.
At least,
this explanation was more reasonable and expansive for a transmigrator like Xu Xian.
Because of his status as a transmigrator, it was also easier for him to understand and accept.
Because a king was born,
eras would change and dynasties would be replaced.
Just like the world he came from,
the Human Emperor ended the tribal conflicts.
Kings began the feudal system.
Emperors unified the world.
And the people became the masters of their own lives...
Xu Xian thought he could understand the consciousness Li Taibai spoke of as the Heavenly Dao of the entire universe.
His mind continued to churn as he visualized the scenes, Li Taibai’s voice still echoing in his ears...
After a long, long time, during that endless stretch of time, He gradually began to feel bored,
uninterested,
and dull.
He returned to the state He was in at the birth of consciousness.
He began to think and explore in his aimless idleness...
He developed other emotions.
He thought He should do something...
He thought that this universe should not continue like this forever.
And so,
with a single thought, He erased all the consciousnesses in the universe, ending the noise that had lasted for endless ages.
He divided the universe into galaxies and nebulae, letting the new consciousnesses compete within each galaxy.
Until a new master was born.
That master would rule over a galaxy.
With that,
Realms were born.
Cangming was one such Realm.
And to prevent the Realms from repeating the past and devouring each other endlessly,
He used his supreme divine power to refine a substance, a gas that could block consciousness from drifting and running rampant.
He named it: [Chaos.]
And so, vast Seas of Chaos isolated the galaxies from one another.
They became independent entities within the universe.
Li Taibai’s tone was heavy and his voice slow, "The end of the wars between consciousnesses and the appearance of Chaos signaled the end of the Primordial Era, and thus, the Chaos Era began..."
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