Overdraw the future and become a peerless martial god

Chapter 183 The Wind Enters the Vast Sea
On the third day of the wind rising in the western border of the vast sea.

The yellow sand stretches for thousands of miles, boundless and desolate.

The sand dunes rolled like waves under the scorching sun, layer upon layer, like the back of a golden-scaled beast undulating gently in its sleep.

The sunlight hangs high, yet it seems unable to truly fall upon the world. Above the earth, a faintly distorted curtain of light floats, as thin as a cicada's wing, yet it clearly separates heaven and earth.

Chu Ning stood atop a broken hill, with barren, yellow rock walls beneath his feet, the rocks cracked and eroded by the wind.

His boots lightly touched the gravel, and the sand around his feet spun and hummed in the wind, as if something long dormant was awakening.

He squinted and looked into the distance. In the depths of the sand sea, a semi-transparent curtain of air rippled like water, emitting a strange halo under the blazing sun, like a crack torn open in the sky, silently opening its bloody maw.

That is the boundary of the eye of the storm.

This was also the first and most dangerous hurdle of the journey.

Chu Ning slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, his throat dry and his breath carrying a slight metallic taste of blood.

He unfolded the tattered silk in his palm; it was a fragment of an ancient map he had retrieved from the broken tower.

The silk surface was severely eroded by wind, with the edges and corners scorched and curled, as if it would turn to dust with the slightest force.

However, under Chu Ning's thunderous breath, the blurry wind vein patterns, which resembled sand marks, slowly lit up. The dark blue light moved across the silk surface like a living thing, eventually condensing into four characters: Wind Eye Corridor.

Chu Ning's brows furrowed slightly, his gaze fixed on the barrier of energy.

The translucent air curtain was not smooth as water; its surface was covered with countless fine, pale blue electric arcs, which seemed to devour and annihilate each other like living creatures.

Sunlight pierced through it, distorting into ghastly green beams that slanted across the scorched sand, shattering Chu Ning's shadow into fragments.

He knew that it was not an ordinary sandstorm barrier, but a "boundary barrier" formed by the convergence of the power of heaven and earth—most likely a sealing mechanism left by the Hunyuan Master, designed to target the soul.

The moment one's consciousness is touched, it becomes chaotic. Those whose spiritual energy is not stable will have their souls scattered and their bodies disintegrated even before they get close.

He involuntarily raised his hand, his fingertips tracing the words on the scroll. His palm was icy cold, as if he could touch the core of the unknown storm through the paper.

He closed his eyes, and the slight movement of the lightning energy within his body stirred up a violent wave deep within his soul sea.

Since the initial formation of the Soul Diagram, the Sea of ​​Consciousness has been reshaped into a deeper Sea of ​​Souls. Although its capacity is large, the cost of each use is also heavier.

Over the past month, in order to rescue Xie Mingli, he has been activating the Soul Diagram almost day and night, which has caused the edges of his Soul Sea to be covered with cracks, and his soul foundation to float up and down, as if walking on thin ice.

Meanwhile, Tun Yuan, residing deep within the Soul Sea, sensed the anomaly and quietly retreated into the Second Soul Gate, disappearing once more.

He knew that his body was like a candle flickering in the wind, and if he hesitated even slightly, it would be completely extinguished before reaching the edge of the eye of the storm.

But he had no choice.

The Primordial Chaos Inheritance within the Floating Pavilion was his only remaining hope.

If one can seize the inheritance, it may be possible to revive the broken life and reverse the path back home.

He put the map away, and with a slight movement of his fingers, a wisp of lightning flowed from his fingertips, slowly sliding down his meridians to his palm, eventually converging into a cold lightning mark that coiled between his palm bones.

Chu Ning slowly squatted down and pushed aside the bones half-buried in the wind at her feet.

Those white bones, exposed to the scorching sun and sandstorm, were already dry and weathered, but one could still vaguely discern that there were many remains of martial artists among them, their remains crushed to pieces by the force of the wind.

He lifted his foot and stepped toward that unseen boundary.

Before the eye of the storm moves, the wind has already seeped into your bones.

He took a deep breath, the air feeling as heavy as lead in his chest.

He lifted his right foot, as if a thousand pounds were dragging his ankle, and slowly extended it forward.

The moment the toe of his boot touched that invisible ripple, a tremendous suction force suddenly gripped his entire leg.

He groaned, his core muscles suddenly tensed, his muscles bulging like iron, resisting the force that threatened to tear his soul from his body, and with great difficulty, he managed to pull his entire body over.

Just as he stepped into this realm, a barely perceptible ray of light flashed silently deep between his brows.

That was the lock left in his sea of ​​consciousness by the Grandmaster Hunyuan—an ancient rune, like ink stains on paper, winding and looping, slowly lit up in the depths of his soul sea.

Within the runes, a mark resembling neither a wheel nor an eye quietly opened half its eye, as if peering into this world, or perhaps awaiting the response of destiny.

Chu Ning was startled, realizing that it was the master's inheritance's perception of the "destined situation." It wasn't activated intentionally, but it spontaneously responded to a certain "threshold" of this wind domain at this moment.

And the wind—

The wind was like millions of needles, as thin as hair yet as cold as steel, silently piercing his skull, instantly penetrating his spine and spreading throughout his limbs and bones.

A tingling, aching sensation slowly seeped from the depths of his bone marrow, and his teeth chattered uncontrollably, not from the cold, but from an instinctive shiver originating from his very soul.

Chu Ning paused, and the yellow sand beneath his feet creaked and sank half an inch, as if the entire desert trembled slightly.

He immediately activated the Soul Wheel Technique, and his soul sea suddenly contracted, like tightening a broken bowstring, firmly guarding his soul consciousness on a single line.

But the wind is still blowing.

Beyond the wind corridor lies a nearly desolate sandy plain.

The wind was still there, but it seemed to be separated by a layer of time and space, becoming distant and blurry, as if the storm that had just pierced through the soul and shattered consciousness was just an illusion.

The sand grains were not the usual golden yellow, but a sickly, faded grayish-white, covered with a layer of extremely fine dust that shimmered with a cold metallic sheen.

Looking out, there were no undulations, so flat it was unsettling, like a huge, frosted gray steel plate.

Chu Ning steadied himself and was about to continue forward when suddenly, his mind was stirred.

He suddenly turned his head and saw a figure in the wind, standing at the edge of the corridor, as if it had never left.

The figure was mostly swallowed up by the sandstorm, and only the outline could be vaguely discerned.

He was tall and slender, his robes were tattered, and a deep purple lightning mark was clearly visible on his left shoulder, as if some kind of lightning technique had struck him and penetrated deep into his bones.

Chu Ning raised an eyebrow, a flash of lightning appearing in his eyes.

"That is……?"

He stared at the figure, his fingers slowly tightening, and lightning intent gathered in his palm again, as if instinctively preparing to fight.

But the shadow just stood there quietly, neither advancing nor retreating, as if... it was also observing him.

Chu Ning's gaze sharpened, his pupils suddenly contracted, and a barely perceptible dull pain shot through his chest.

Deep in his mind, a name that had been buried for a long time suddenly seemed to have a corner blown open by the wind and sand, revealing its rusty edges.

"Yipin Pavilion... an envoy?"

The shadow standing in the wind seemed to hear his inner whispers and slowly raised its head.

His face was expressionless, his eyes were empty, and his lips moved slightly, but no sound came out.

Chu Ning's throat tightened slightly, and his fingers unconsciously clenched his palms. It was an indescribable sense of desolation, as if the wind was passing through his memories, reopening wounds that had long been sealed away.

The next moment, the shadow disintegrated like dust and cotton in the silent wind.

Without a struggle, without a groan, not even a ripple from the scattered dust, it simply vanished.

It's as if it never existed.

Chu Ning stood there for a long time before whispering a sentence:

"You died here because you didn't make it to night."

Her voice was very soft, yet it seemed to leave a mark on his heart.

He looked up at the horizon, where the blazing sun still hung high, pale and lifeless, casting not even a shadow. No shadow... meant no direction, no passage of time, no confirmation of "reality."

He understood that he had only reached the edge of the eye of the storm.

The true floating pavilion does not appear in the daytime—it is hidden in the night, and only after that false star platform rises will it truly emerge from the cracks in spacetime.

He continued walking.

Beyond the wind wall lay a desolate desert.

The deathly silence here is not the quiet brought by emptiness, but a kind of eerie stillness that is almost "absolute"—there is no wind, no heat wave, and even the "temperature" of the sun shining on you seems to have been stripped away.

He walked on the sand, his footsteps landing solidly, yet leaving no trace.

The footprints were completely swallowed up by the sand before the next step could land.

There was no echo, no trace, as if the entire world was resisting his "existence".

He seemed not to be a newcomer, but an intruder.

Chu Ning frowned slightly, stopped in her tracks, and suddenly turned around to look.

But behind him remained empty, not even a speck of dust could be seen. The entire desert was as smooth as a mirror, just like the world beneath his feet, which did not allow for the existence of "once".

It's not that the wind is too strong, nor that the sand is too heavy.

Rather, it is time that does not flow here at all.

He closed his eyes, slowly circulated his soul consciousness, and gently sent a wisp of lightning energy into his sea of ​​consciousness, attempting to establish a perceptual connection with the surrounding world.

But as soon as that wisp of lightning soul touched the outside world, it was as if it had fallen into a bottomless lake—a few extremely fine ripples had just appeared when they were torn apart and swallowed up by an invisible vortex, without a sound.

The connection between the soul and consciousness is severed.

At that moment, his heart suddenly turned cold, as if an invisible blunt blade was slowly cutting open his sternum, revealing the softest part he didn't want to touch.

"Is it a misalignment of soul consciousness... or an imbalance of the sense of boundaries?" he murmured, his voice like a gentle breeze brushing across dry, cracked sand, creating a faint echo in the deathly silence, but it was quickly swallowed up by the sea of ​​sand.

He instinctively stopped in his tracks, his shoulders tensing slightly.

A voice suddenly drifted on the wind, extremely soft, yet so familiar it sent a chill down one's spine:
"Brother Ning..."

He trembled slightly, turned around abruptly, but saw nothing.

The voice, like the wind, lingered behind her ear, seemingly drifting from the sand, yet also from the distant streets of the capital. In a fleeting moment before the moonlight faded, it was softly uttered from Xie Mingli's lips: "If you return... I will be right here."

A gentle ripple spread across his heart, his throat tightened slightly, and the lightning in his eyes dimmed for a moment.

But the next moment, he suddenly turned around, his gaze sharp as a knife.

A figure stood on the sand not far away.

The figure stood with its back to him, hands hanging down, without making any movement, like a silent projection "growing" from the sand.

A flicker of lightning flashed in Chu Ning's eyes, and a strand of lightning unconsciously condensed at his fingertips. He didn't attack immediately, but instead slowly took a step to the left, his movements as swift as the wind.

The shadow remained still.

He took two more steps to the side, the dust beneath his feet making no sound, yet still failing to disturb even the slightest outline of the shadow.

It remained motionless, as if time and space were frozen around it, and even the wind avoided its presence.

—Until it slowly turned its head.

Chu Ning's heart skipped a beat.

Not her.

That was neither a projection of her soul nor an echo of her consciousness.

It was an unfamiliar "existence," bearing her form and imitating her former posture, yet without a trace of her soul. It was more like an annotation "placed" here, a hollowed-out past, waiting to be repositioned in the wind.

His eyes turned cold, and lightning surged through his meridians, almost instantly forming the complete starting stance of "World Annihilation." In his soul sea, the lightning soul pulsed like a star, ready to unleash the purest strike at any moment and shatter all illusions before him.

But before he could make a move...

The shadow suddenly shattered silently.

Like a mirror weathered by time, it crumbled in silence. It made no struggle, no lament, leaving only a few wisps of light swirling and dissipating in the sky above the sea of ​​sand, as if it had never existed.

Deathly silence descended once more.

The world seemed to have shut down all echoes, leaving only the muffled beating of his own heart, as if confirming that he was still alive, or as if reminding him: what is truly vulnerable is never the soul.

Rather, it was the tenderness in his heart that he had never truly said goodbye to.

He stood there for a long time before slowly opening his palm, which was filled with the power of lightning, and the lightning in his palm returned to his heart meridian bit by bit.

"...This is not an illusion," he said softly, his eyes as deep as the night.

"It is the soul that has overwhelmed the boundary—the eye of the storm is recognizing the soul."

He slowly raised his head, looking at the silent sandy plain, his tone as sharp as striking iron.

This desert is not simply a spatial illusion, but rather an area constructed on the outer edge of the eye of the storm.

Here, time no longer progresses linearly, and space is folded and twisted.

Where the soul touches, there is the past, the future, and the echoes of obsessions hidden deep within the soul.

“...It’s not the wind,” he whispered, as if denying or confirming.

He stood there silently, the silence around him so profound it seemed as if the entire world was holding its breath. In that instant, he felt his shadow grow lighter, as if something was being drawn away from the cracks of his soul.

On the sand, a faint footprint appeared, but it was not his.

It's as if someone took his place.

Or perhaps, that was the step he never took.

The wind is invisible, yet it gently stirs up a wisp of dust in the air. The dust particles swirl in the air without falling, faintly forming a pattern—seemingly chaotic, yet clearly carrying a certain "meaning," calling out, and measuring.

Chu Ning lowered her eyes, a dull ache in her chest.

He made no further attempt to explain.

In this sea of ​​sand, language itself seems to have been stripped of its meaning. Who you are is not up to you. How far you go is not up to your feet.

When your obsession is too strong, it transforms into an illusion before your eyes.

If your obsession is too light, it will be buried in the sand beneath your feet, waiting for you to fall.

The wind is silent, yet it listens constantly.

It doesn't judge, but it never overlooks any crack.

He slowly clenched his fist, a resolute, almost cold light appearing in his eyes:

"The Floating Pavilion is not in the sky... it is hidden beneath this Soul Domain."

"Time is sealed off below the boundary, and the stars are upside down; that is the true entrance."

He took a deep breath, his gaze sharp as a sword:
"This is the first test that Fuge gave us before nightfall."

He knew that things would get even harder from here on out.

The real storm was yet to come after nightfall.

This desert is not just a spatial illusion, but also seems to be the edge of a soul realm abandoned between heaven and earth.

The true eye of the storm has yet to appear.

Chu Ning strode forward, each step as cautious as if he were venturing into an unknown minefield. His figure was unremarkable, but his unwavering gaze, like a sharp sword, pointed directly at the desolate void ahead.

The wind. It was silent, yet it constantly swirled within his consciousness.

Like some invisible thread, it silently entangled his soul, as if an ancient force was trying to pull him toward some predetermined fate—the destined end.

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through his dantian, threatening his will.

His soul wheel trembled once more, and the shadow of his lifespan depletion crept inch by inch onto his brow, like an abyss formed in the darkness of night, from which there was no escape.

"It's not time yet..." He frowned, his voice low, but he couldn't stop the feeling of being torn apart from spreading.

Consciousness was stripped away, the world before my eyes suddenly tilted, and my vision became distorted.

The next moment, he saw himself.

That was another "him"—his robes tattered, stained with blood, his appearance withered, lying in the endless sandstorm.

His chest was caved in, his eyes were glazed and lifeless. A broken snow knife lay diagonally beside him, its spine shattered, and even his breathing had completely stopped.

In the distance of the desert, small fires blazed, their flames licking the yellow sand like harbingers of impending doom. His body remained unburied, leaving only endless emptiness and the silent roar of the wind.

"Did you see that?"

A deep, hoarse voice rang out, as if it came from the depths of the sand, or from the bottom of his heart.

"This is the path you must take."

"You will die here, before the flames of calamity arrive, from your own obsession."

Chu Ning remained silent for a long time, his gaze fixed on his "future self," as if he were watching a predetermined ending.

Finally, he chuckled, his laughter tinged with disdain and provocation.

"That's it?"

He raised his left hand, fingers together, palm slightly closed, and thunderous energy erupted from his heart like a tide, rapidly impacting his soul sea.

—Oath of Thunder.

"boom."

A deafening roar shattered the illusion within his soul, instantly reducing it to countless fragments. Those futures, laden with death prophecies, were brutally crushed by his will.

Chu Ning remained standing on the sand, his chest heaving, his breathing somewhat rapid, and a trace of dark red blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.

He gently wiped away the blood, his voice low but firm:
"My fate is not to be consumed by the flames of calamity."

This statement is not a declaration of war against destiny, nor a roar against the void, but a declaration of his own deepest will.

He slowly stood up, his feet landing steadily on the sand.

At that moment, the sand sank slightly, as if he had stepped out a passage; his gaze was fixed on the depression, where a corpse was half-buried—the shoulder bone was crooked, and a string of mottled iron chains was hanging from the wrist.

The shroud was weathered and worn by time, but a trace of embroidery on the cuff was strikingly a thunder pattern.

Chu Ning stopped, squatted down, and lightly touched the remaining fabric of the corpse with her fingertips.

As his soul circulated, he sensed a faint lingering resentment—not a complete memory, but rather a "warning" that had not yet been extinguished.

He closed his eyes and listened, as if he could hear the final echoes of that lingering soul, intermittent yet distinctly orderly:

"...Upside down...stars...unreal...the entrance is...the hourglass..."

Before he could finish speaking, the remnant soul was ultimately unable to continue.

It trembled in the air for a moment, then completely disintegrated, vanishing into nothingness in the sea of ​​sand.

Chu Ning stood up, a deep thought flashing in his eyes. He cut off the embroidered sleeve, carefully folded it, and tucked it into his sleeve.

"Below the boundary?" he murmured to himself, his voice as low as an echo in a valley.

He looked up at the boundless sea of ​​sand, a premonition rising in his chest—the place where the Floating Pavilion was located might not have been a building from the real world from the very beginning.

At this time, the sky was still clear, the sun was high in the sky, and there was no darkness yet.

The Star Platform has not yet appeared.

The real journey, the real test, has only just begun.

(End of this chapter)