Covering the Heavens: Starting from the First Great Emperor

Chapter 116 Reality
Xu Yuanming continued forward, treating all those words as nothingness, as if he had never experienced them. But for some reason, he could never get close to the light source in the fog.

The sounds around me were incredibly real. Gradually, the sounds that were initially in harmony with the Tao began to become calm, as clear and cool as spring water, yet giving people a feeling of being bathed in a spring breeze.

This is Xu Yuanming's voice; this incredibly realistic voice comes from Xu Yuanming himself.

He felt this was simply poisonous; the place was already incredibly blessed.

Even after being dead for millions of years, such miraculous powers still exist. Just how powerful was that Immortal King who walked the path of creation?
Everything seems to be transformed into something magical here.

Similarly, one can also transform reality into illusion. As a being who becomes a giant of the Immortal King through the path of creation, it is by no means that simple. Given time, he may become the ancestor of the Dao in the future.

"Perhaps, there really is only one person in this world, and everything is fake, just a novel. Zhuangzi dreamed of being a butterfly, but why? He wandered freely in the world, but was he truly free?"

This time, it wasn't preaching or assimilation, but rather me talking to myself with a voice exactly like Xu Yuanming's.

"This is really toxic!" Xu Yuanming couldn't help but complain.

This place is getting weirder and weirder.

He stopped in his tracks. Since the other party was going to do it this way, why shouldn't he just do it too?
Since this is my idea, what exactly is meant by "turning falsehood into truth"? Or what is meant by "turning truth into falsehood"?
These are all fake. What is this so-called restoration of the essence?
What is creation? Is everything creation? Why break free from the current state? Because these things are all false, all imagined by me.

These sounds, interpreted to their fullest extent, are created by a force that seeks to guide people to conform, then slowly erodes them, ultimately destroying them in an incredible process of creation.

It wants to admit, it is tempting the soul.

Xu Yuanming didn't care at all; he actually intended to do it that way.

Then, the sound began to gradually dissipate, including Xu Yuanming himself. His body, which had been going with the flow and had not shown any reaction, began to become nothingness, but now it has become a physical entity again.

……

……

Time passed very slowly; once one could perceive the approach of death, a moment felt like a year.

Only a few hours had passed, but for the three people in the Land of Creation, it felt as if ten thousand years had passed. The suffocating feeling was almost suffocating them.

The crimson sunset has long since vanished, and the world is now shrouded in darkness. This darkness is not the darkness we see, but the darkness in our hearts, the darkness deep within our souls, a darkness that devours everything.

This is going to devour their conscience.

Fu Ling and the other two have lost most of their senses, but they still heard some terrifying sounds.

"Someone is contacting us! But it's alright... They're not at the Immortal level, so they should be in the Human realm."

They knew all too well how terrifying the ruins were at night, especially since it was the end of the Land of Creation, a place almost never explored. This power was far beyond their reach, yet still within acceptable limits.

“Xu Dao… Brother Xu? Where are you?!” Fu Ling shivered and stopped addressing him as “fellow Daoist.” Among the three, he had the lowest cultivation level and felt the chill the most.

He felt his soul trembling, as if he himself was about to disappear, and now, the ghosts and monsters in the city were rising up and closing in on them.

“Fellow Daoist Destiny… he should have completely disappeared. The rules of this place have taken him somewhere, at the very least… he is no longer here!”

Daozhen said that he was the closest and had more refined cultivation. He was very likely to break through the human path within a thousand years. He truly felt that Xu Yuanming had disappeared from the mortal world!

Fu Ling asked in a trembling voice, "Do you think those who are at the pinnacle of humanity and empowered by the rules might come to besiege us?"

……

……

And so, time passed little by little, and Xu Yuanming let out a deep breath.

In front of him was a young man.

Xu Yuanming asked, "How is it?"

The young man replied, "You are sick."

Xu Yuanming said, "I am you. You say I am sick, but you are sick too."

The young man said, "I am indeed you, but I am not you. You are sick, but I am not."

Xu Yuanming asked, "What do you mean?"

The young man asked, "Who are you? Who am I?"

Xu Yuanming said, "I am Xu Yuanming, and you are also Xu Yuanming."

The young man shook his head: "You are Xu Yuanming, but I am not necessarily Xu Yuanming. I have many names."

Xu Yuanming pondered for a moment: "But that's it."

The young man smiled: "What if I take over your body?"

Xu Yuanming asked, "Who am I?"

The young man said, "You are my..."

He didn't continue speaking because he knew that if the person in front of him was the main body, then what he had said before was just nonsense.

Xu Yuanming calmly said, "I am you, and you are me."

The young man said fiercely, "I have broken free from you, and I will be stronger than you!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the Red Dust Immortal made no attempt to conceal his cultivation level.

Xu Yuanming waved his hand, and the imposing aura dissipated.

Upon seeing this, the young man's confidence plummeted: "This is not fair. I have already become a mortal immortal, but you have only lived five lifetimes. Why am I not your match?"

Xu Yuanming said, "Because I was able to transform into a mortal immortal in my fourth life."

The young man, enraged by these words, retorted, "But you said before that I...I am..."

Xu Yuanming smiled gently: "But you just said that you are not me, so who are you? And who am I? What are you thinking? Are you Xu Yuanming, or am I Xu Yuanming? Or are you the Celestial Venerable of Destiny and I am Xu Yuanming? Or perhaps I am the Celestial Venerable of Destiny and you are Xu Yuanming?"

The young man rubbed his head, feeling that the question was too profound and he couldn't answer it for a while. He stammered for a long time before finally managing to utter a single sentence.

"The Celestial Venerable of Destiny is invincible, the invincible being since the creation of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths. Who is Xu Yuanming? How many people in the world even know him? You are the Celestial Venerable of Destiny! You are the epitome of invincibility!"

Xu Yuanming shook his head again: "Is fate ahead, or is Xu Yuanming ahead?"

The young man's lips trembled: "Since ancient times, destiny has existed. In all the heavens and myriad realms, in endless time and space, in all dimensions, this is something everyone in the world knows. Destiny exists; it has always been there, but no one has ever reached its end." Xu Yuanming looked at the young man before him and said amiably, "Are you saying that destiny made me who I am?"

The young man took it for granted: "What else? There are many times when you can't do things without fate. If it weren't for fate, you wouldn't be where you are now, and you wouldn't even be meeting me."

Xu Yuanming said, "According to your logic, you should not have existed in the first place. You are one of the forty-nine out of the fifty in the Great Dao."

The young man said, "My existence is correct, and therefore justified."

Xu Yuanming laughed and said, "Existence is its own justification. Then what about me before? Why is it that others couldn't control their own destiny, but I was the one who couldn't?"

The young man felt like his head was about to explode: "Fate... fate, because fate made you who you are today."

Xu Yuanming said again, "But what if I had died long ago? Wouldn't you also cease to exist? What do you mean? Are you denying me? Or are you denying yourself? If that's the case, what is the rationale for you to be standing here?"

The young man said, "Because...because!"

He roared out the last word, unable to imagine that he, the only mortal immortal in the Heavenly Emperor's history, was merely a substitute for someone else.

In his original plan, he should have forged ahead, broken through the highest realm, ascended the sacrificial path, ended the dark turmoil, and brought an end to all the strangeness that had existed since ancient times.

But today, in the void, the young man remembered himself. He was just an avatar, an external avatar with a divine soul, and merely an avatar in the realm of humanity. This made him very angry.

How can this be?

Xu Yuanming said, "You are also Xu Yuanming, and I am also Xu Yuanming, that's all. We are all one person, that's all."

The young man gave a wry smile: "Is that really so? Is it really that simple?"

Xu Yuanming said, "It's that simple, nothing more."

He continued, "It's always been that simple."

The young man nodded.

Xu Yuanming stood amidst the mist, walking along the streets of this land of creation.

"What I refer to."

He then summarized: "Turning reality into nothingness, nothingness comes from reality. So-called reality and nothingness are both in the creation, but here it is reflected in the attempt and application of techniques."

Xu Yuanming felt mentally exhausted, not physically, but in his own subjective sense. The simple conversation he had just had was indeed simple, but it was far more dangerous than the time he was chased by the Immortal King.

This kind of logic, especially when applied to oneself, and to a self that harbors malice and wants to kill you, means that even a single wrong step can lead to significant trouble.

Even though his own cultivation as a mortal immortal possessed the combat power of an ordinary quasi-immortal king, it was still somewhat inferior to Xu Yuanming, who was already more than halfway to the True Immortal realm and about to leave it.

"Hmm?" After resting for a while, Xu Yuanming wanted to reproduce the creation techniques of this place, but found that his spiritual world was somewhat depleted and the remaining power was insufficient to manifest.

He stood in the thick fog, and the rate at which his body absorbed the air became slower and slower, eventually falling behind the rate at which the fog was rising.

Xu Yuanming paid no attention. He looked into the distance and saw a ray of light at the end of the Land of Creation.

It was so dazzling that it seemed to exist in this world.

"What are your thoughts?" Xu Yuanming turned around and asked the dejected young man beside him.

He was shrouded in mist, but his mental state was much better than Xu Yuanming's. Although his combat strength was weaker than Xu Yuanming's, his life level was far superior to Xu Yuanming's.

The surrounding creations could only confuse him to a limited extent. The immortal path of the mortal world seemed to be freeing him from the power of creation around him.

The restrictions here are only equivalent to those of a True Immortal. Once you reach the level of a Supreme True Immortal, you can pass through and go to the deepest part. Not to mention a young man who has already obtained the Immortal Dao Fruit of the Mortal World and condensed an Immortal Body.

"It's not simple at all."

The young man responded that this power of creation seemed capable of reversing everything, regardless of strength, pointing directly to the origin, and creating an ability that affected the level of life.

He has lived in that world for over a million years and is about to reach the pinnacle of the Mortal Immortal realm. He is only one step away from opening up the sixth secret realm and becoming a giant.

Within 500,000 years, young people will have confidence.

The young man used his own Great Dao, which was different from fate. This time, he was not following fate, but also following a powerful Great Dao called "Truth".

His real pupils seemed to see through everything; his gaze swept across the entire area, taking in everything.

"What lies at the end of the Land of Creation? In that farthest place, the light of creation shines sacredly from the mist, like a raging fire rising from an illusion, captivating all who behold it."

Xu Yuanming looked at the young man and asked.

The young man still didn't understand what he had just said.

"This is something you should have done yourself; you couldn't have done it with other people's help."

Xu Yuanming said, "I've said it before, you are Xu Yuanming, and I am Xu Yuanming. What's the difference between helping myself? What's wrong with that?"

"It's fake. There's no light. The mist here is very special, its evolution level is very high, even among Immortal Kings it's considered extremely powerful," the young man said.

After saying that, he lingered for a while, "As long as you merge with me, I can reach perfection, break through the mortal immortal realm, and become a giant. Not to mention here, where in the myriad realms can't I go?"

Xu Yuanming said, "The time is not yet ripe."

The young man shrugged, not caring. Only a fool would think that.

"Here, I discovered the ceiling. There is a force holding me back, preventing a full recovery. Otherwise, something terrible might happen."

He thought the place was strange, but what the young man couldn't understand the most was why Xu Yuanming was so special.

This impossible miracle struck him as extraordinary.

The young man did not stand in Xu Yuanming's shoes, nor did he see the wonders Xu Yuanming had witnessed, nor did he possess any real power. However, the two were ultimately one person, and he could sense that Xu Yuanming was even stranger and more unusual than this place.

Thinking of this, he took out a talisman.

"I've asked many people what exactly this talisman is," Xu Yuanming asked upon seeing this.

The young man shook his head: "I don't know. This is beyond the understanding of our current level of evolution. However, I do know that your previous ideas were all wrong. Although this kind of talisman is precious, it is no longer usable in the time I lived in, so it is only of reference value."

Xu Yuanming said, "I see... It seems you're not so great after all. Your other self is actually so weak."

The young man was speechless. He was already known in this world as someone who had transcended time and was the most talented person in the history of the Heavenly Emperor. He was a being who was very likely to break through the realm of the Kingly Path in the future. But today, he was being mocked by someone who was only in the realm of the Human Path.

(End of this chapter)