Chapter Forty-Three: Free Will Returns to All Living Beings

Who, then, should become the Heavenly Way?

With the death of the Heavenly Way, the entire world plunged into a state of ruin. The sun grew dim, the stars fell, the sky shattered, and all existence seemed to tumble into the abyss of nothingness.

Yet this scene went unseen by those beneath the heavens—at least, unseen by the weak.

Oblivion is often endlessly drawn out, while destruction happens in but an instant. Now, the world was only fading away, not yet destroyed. Even nothingness could not devour the world in a single moment.

There was still a chance.

And for this question, it seemed their answer had long been decided.

Xu Zhong felt himself separating from Gu Yue. He saw Gu Yue stepping out from the mud-pill palace of his mind.

“Heaven hears through my people’s ears, heaven sees through my people’s eyes.” Gu Yue’s mouth echoed the mandate of heaven, the gazes of all living things gathered upon him.

He walked toward the void; Jiang Xuanyi and the Old Mother of the Hu River stepped aside to let him pass.

Xu Zhong struggled to steady himself, riding a passing gust of wind as the power drained from him like the receding tide. In the blink of an eye, he fell back to the realm of Five Luminaries.

He watched as Gu Yue advanced into the emptiness.

Gu Yue’s body shimmered with divine light, rippling like water—an outward manifestation of his own laws of the Dao.

From the original Dragon Capital’s Celestial Grotto, undying spiritual radiance was drawn forth, flying toward Gu Yue—a river of stars flowing in reverse, surging from earth to sky.

“The will of heaven is the will of the people!” Gu Yue spoke his final words, and then his form dissolved, merging into the world itself.

In that instant, the heavens and earth changed.

Oblivion halted its advance and retreated back into nothingness. The void was replaced by reality, suppressing the decay.

The world began to return to its proper course.

Xu Zhong saw the fissure widening, eventually swallowing the bounds of the original Celestial Grotto.

“I will turn illusion into reality!” The new Heavenly Way appeared, his figure projected from every corner of the world.

One after another, his images merged into a colossal deity.

The Heavenly Way manifested.

Xu Zhong noticed the grave expressions on Jiang Xuanyi and the others. They, too, were uncertain what Gu Yue would do once he became the Heavenly Way.

Their choice of Gu Yue, strictly speaking, was based on their trust in the Emperor of Dragon Capital. They believed that even a new being born from the corpse of the Dragon Capital’s Emperor would hold to the same ideals.

Now, Gu Yue as the Heavenly Way wished to turn illusion into truth. As the name implied, it was to refine the inner world of all cultivators into a real world, through and through.

Jiang Xuanyi and the Old Mother of the Hu River watched Gu Yue intently, gripping their blades tightly.

“The Dao births One!”

As soon as Gu Yue’s words fell, streams of divine radiance flowed from his body.

Xu Zhong’s vision spun; the world turned upside down, and he could no longer see where Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way stood.

“Look down!” Bai Zhaoju appeared before Xu Zhong, at some point. With a gentle gesture, Xu Zhong felt himself lifted by a long river.

He looked down and saw Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way standing amid the void, with the world unfolding around him as its center.

“This is the Dao birthing the One,” Bai Zhaoju explained.

From nothing, something arises; from something, nothing returns. This is the Dao birthing the One—this is creation.

“He is reshaping the heavens and earth!” Bai Zhaoju said softly.

“Perhaps, long ago, the Dragon Capital’s Emperor had already prepared for failure.”

“He knew that even if he died, his new self would carry on his will, so before his ascension, he made two plans.”

“And this—this is his contingency.”

Bai Zhaoju reached out, parting the mist as if unveiling a mystery.

Then, Xu Zhong saw the past, present, and future of the Emperor of Dragon Capital.

This was an eight-thousand-year history.

From birth to death: the first five thousand years, and the following three thousand belonged to Gu Yue.

Birth belonged to the past, death to the present, and Gu Yue to the future.

In the past, present, and future of the Emperor of Dragon Capital—across these eight thousand years—all living beings seemed, in this moment, to be subtly blessed.

And as past, present, and future merged, this blessing grew stronger.

“Shift the stars, change the constellations!” Xu Zhong’s heart trembled.

He had seen Situ Nan perform this kind of art before.

Clearly, Situ Nan and Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way practiced the same spell, yet not entirely the same.

Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way altered the fates of every person and thing that appeared across eight thousand years of history.

This was the miracle of his own Dao—the Dao birthing the One.

But for what came before, he could not touch it.

Time is something that cannot be traced or altered.

“One births Two!”

Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way severed this segment of history and used it as the cornerstone to evolve the world.

The so-called “Two” is Yin and Yang, the two sides to every thing: cold and hot, life and death, existence and nonexistence…

Yet Xu Zhong could not see Fengdu.

“Because Fengdu is but a projection of the real Fengdu,” Bai Zhaoju replied.

“Whether true or false, wherever there is oblivion, Fengdu will exist.”

Before Xu Zhong’s eyes, all beings were split in two; life and death became distinct. Each living thing was like a serpent, shedding its skin with the passage of time.

Every action, every breath, every fleeting moment of life was cast off as a separate “skin.”

The world, too, was so.

On the scale of time, it shed a great skin, representing the past.

Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way granted all beings two faces, making them more real, more complete.

But these two faces remained separate, creating a strange kind of chaos.

“Two births Three!”

Two births Three: Yin and Yang unite.

The two sides were no longer torn apart, but fused as one.

Time, as it passed through people, no longer created the shedding of skins.

“Three births all things!”

All things bear Yin and embrace Yang, blending their energies in harmony.

Yin and Yang fused; opposites collided; being and non-being generated each other.

Thus, there were mountains and rivers, grasses and trees, sun and moon and stars, the changing of four seasons, wind, flowers, snow, and the moon…

It was Yin and Yang that brought them into being.

Xu Zhong was awed by this vision.

He saw all things born from the clash of Yin and Yang; he saw life arise from the void and return to it; he watched being and nothingness endlessly alternate…

He saw the source of all.

He saw the origin of everything.

In this instant, the entire world was transformed.

And at this moment, Qi was born.

The Dao births the One.

Qi is what the Dao births as One.

Innate Qi and Acquired Qi are the One birthing Two.

The Five Elements, and the wind and thunder born of their changes, are the Two birthing Three.

With the appearance of Qi, the world emerged from chaos into order.

And around the world, there was no longer only the void.

The starry sky above now felt less illusory, more real.

He sensed a vast world surrounding him.

“The Great Seal of the Myriad Realms’ Void.” Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way turned the entire world from illusion into reality.

At this moment, he stood tall, and, stretching out his hand, the whole world lay in his palm.

Thus, he lifted the world and soared upward.

At the same time, Bai Zhaoju carried Xu Zhong upward as well.

“Where are we going?” Xu Zhong asked.

“To the world where the former Heavenly Way resided—a world whose reality is uncertain,” Bai Zhaoju replied with a gentle smile.

Xu Zhong shuddered.

Her words were terrifying.

They revealed a cruel truth: that they, too, did not know if the world they ascended to was real.

Just as Xu Zhong had once asked the Old Mother of the Hu River:

How can you be certain what you see is the real world, and not the inner realm of an even greater cultivator?

The Old Mother of the Hu River’s answer then had been: “If I hear the Dao in the morning, I am content to die by evening!”

Xu Zhong now repeated the question.

But Bai Zhaoju gave a very different answer: “Cultivation is a journey of seeking and striving.”

“Truth and falsehood do not matter—what matters is the answer itself!”

Xu Zhong fell into deep thought.

“When you truly understand this question, you will have attained the Dao,” Bai Zhaoju said, smiling.

They followed in the footsteps of that world, venturing toward a new realm.

At last, Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way halted, and Bai Zhaoju did as well.

The world unfolded before them, like a vast painting, filling a boundless sea.

On the shore, a fisherman gathered his tackle and vanished before the great ocean.

Bai Zhaoju led Xu Zhong into the land of Yu.

They looked up and saw Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way struggling.

“Does this world also have a Heavenly Way?” Xu Zhong wondered.

“The Heavenly Way here is devouring, or rather assimilating, Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way.”

Heaven hears through my people’s ears, heaven sees through my people’s eyes.

The Heavenly Way is the collective consciousness of all living beings.

When the first sentient being gave birth to its first thought, the Heavenly Way was born.

But Gu Yue’s Heavenly Way did not wish to be assimilated by this world’s Heavenly Way.

He saw something, heard something, and opened his mouth above the land of Yu—though what he said was unclear.

His struggle finally faded into calm, then transformed into wild laughter, loud and clear, which Xu Zhong and Bai Zhaoju heard distinctly.

Then, the laughter was suppressed, growing fainter and fainter.

“Free will, to all beings!” Gu Yue’s will began to dissipate.

Like dandelion seeds blown by the wind, it drifted and finally landed in Xu Zhong’s hands.

It was a handful of flame.

The fire burned briefly, then went out, but its glow shone into Xu Zhong’s flesh and blood.

“This is his will, and his legacy—he seems to be saying, he hopes you will inherit it,” Bai Zhaoju said, brow furrowed, watching the fading fire.

“But I don’t know what he wants me to inherit,” Xu Zhong asked after a pause. “And how does he know I’d be willing?”

“That’s not important,” Bai Zhaoju shook her head.

“The seed has already been sown.”

“When the wind blows, when the rain falls, the seed will grow.”

She looked at Xu Zhong. “Even if this seed can never sprout, new seeds will always grow.”

“As long as it is a seed, what it finally becomes does not matter.”

Xu Zhong fell silent.

He closed his hand around the flame.

And at that moment, countless mighty beings began to rush toward them from the old world.

The first to arrive before Bai Zhaoju and the others was the fisherman.

His cultivation was profound, but still inferior to Bai Zhaoju’s.

“Remarkable—someone has actually forged a world from the cast-off shell of the Thunder Ancestor.”