Overdraw the future and become a peerless martial god

Chapter 184 Shadow Chaos and Soul Division
It was already noon.

However, the light above this desert seemed to be trapped behind the clouds by something—neither falling to the ground nor dissipating.

The entire world seemed to be shrouded in a very thin yet opaque veil, its color somewhere between grayish-white and silvery-blue, devoid of warmth and realism, like a rain of light suspended in mid-air, reluctant to fall.

Chu Ning stepped onto it and walked for a long time, but still couldn't feel any change in "direction".

The wind remained silent, and the sea of ​​sand was still.

He stopped and looked down at his feet.

The shadow disappeared.

To be precise, it did not completely disappear, but rather a very faint gray mist, like a remnant of his soul's breath, slowly moving with his steps, yet unable to merge with his body.

Just as the light source is disconnected from him, the shadow follows him but can no longer stick to his back.

He frowned, raised his hand and gathered a wisp of lightning, carving a shallow mark at his feet.

He had only taken three steps when he suddenly turned around—the lightning mark had vanished silently, as if gently wiped away by an invisible rule, even the most basic remnants of his soul had been "swallowed".

“…This isn’t just the eye of the storm,” he murmured.

Thunder Soul trembled in his sea of ​​consciousness, and his soul consciousness surged like a tide.

He suddenly recalled that when he was secretly reading the "Secret Strategies of the Former Dynasty" in the Imperial Archives in the capital, a term with a very short description and heavy annotations had caught his eye: "constant daytime belt".

That refers to the deliberate distortion of the appearance of heaven and earth in certain spacetime boundaries or pseudo-boundary areas, forming a false field of "perpetual daylight without light".

However, the real terror lies not only in the "shadowlessness".

He began to notice something unusual: the sound of the wind in his ears was delayed by half a breath and seemed to be stretched out infinitely, like an echo coming from a very distant place; with each step he took, the echo seemed to take effect only several feet away, which was extremely discordant.

In the zone of constant daylight, light is illusory, direction is false, and time is chaotic.

Therefore, you cannot distinguish between east, west, south, north, or north, nor can you determine whether it is morning or evening, or sunny or cloudy, or even whether you are still within the specified time.

Chu Ning gazed at the distant, shadowless sand dunes, his heart growing heavier.

He finally realized that Yipin Pavilion had never been hidden in this sea of ​​sand.

It lies hidden beneath layers where light and shadow cannot coexist stably.

In other words, only when the "shadow" returns to the body, night truly falls, and the concealment of time and space dissipates will the Star Platform Path reveal itself from the void.

The daytime we are in is a disguise of a boundary.

This is not a "door" leading to the floating pavilion, but a barrier that prevents you from seeing the "door".

He stood in the sand, his eyes lowered in thought. The lightning in his palm had not yet dissipated, yet he was still unable to stabilize the shadow beneath him.

It was as if the whole world was telling him:
"You haven't found your footing yet."

The wind was so still it had no warmth, and the world seemed to be sealed inside an invisible piece of amber.

Yet, in this deathly silence, Chu Ning's soul sea continued to sink, as if falling into a bottomless well.

He walked to the center of the desert and paused slightly.

A familiar figure suddenly appeared on the sand ahead.

It's him.

The man had his back to him, and slowly frowned, turned around, and pulled out the tattered map... Every move was exactly the same, as if his memory was being "replicated".

Chu Ning's heart skipped a beat, and before he could move, a second figure quietly appeared on his left.

The man was half a step faster than him, his eyes were sharp, his brows held a hint of anger, and his whole body exuded a restless and agitated aura, as if he might make a move at any moment.

On the right, a third figure stood slowly, looking down at the sand beneath his feet with an indifferent expression. Lightning flashed between his fingers, but he remained motionless, as if waiting for a predetermined moment to erupt.

Chu Ning stopped in his tracks, a flicker of lightning in his eyes.

This is neither a mirror image nor a remnant of soul consciousness.

This is an extremely dangerous phenomenon of soul disorder.

A line of annotation he had read in the tattered scrolls of Yipin Pavilion flashed through his mind:
“Those whose soul light is unstable will reflect the ‘Path of the Unchosen’ in the realm; this phenomenon is called—Shadow Disorder and Soul Division.”

In this place where the light source and the soul consciousness are misaligned, if a cultivator's obsession is not settled and his mind is restless, different "possible selves" will be forcibly extracted and materialized in reality.

At this moment, what he sees is neither an echo of the past nor a harbinger of the future.

—These are three "possible versions" of himself at different times and under different choices.

Each of them possesses a complete soul and a genuine will.

They can all live on in his place.

Or kill him.

Chu Ning murmured, "...the soul consciousness collapse zone."

He felt a chill run down his spine.

The next moment, the figure to the right suddenly turned his head, his gaze as cold as still water, without a trace of emotion.

“You’ve taken the step I never dared to take.” He spoke in a low voice, his tone exactly the same as Chu Ning’s, but with an eerie emptiness. “But I’ve wanted to kill you for a long time.”

He brought his five fingers together, and the thunderous intent instantly condensed, forming the "Oath Thunder".

Chu Ning took a sudden step and forcefully dodged to the side, but his right shoulder was still grazed by the lightning, and a burning pain instantly exploded.

The lightning energy entered his body, causing a violent tremor in his consciousness, nearly shattering his soul.

"I swear to myself," Chu Ning said through gritted teeth.

He had just regained his footing when "Wrath of Me" charged towards him from the left.

As they attacked, they sneered and growled:
"You think your forbearance is strength? I'm only alive to fight back! You should have given up everything and taken her away long ago!"

The thunderous breath was like a flame, bordering on madness.

Chu Ning blocked three palm strikes, but was forced back half a step by the fourth, his finger bones going numb.

The "anger" part of him is the part of himself that suppresses his emotions, avoids talking about feelings, and abandons any way out.

On the right, the figure of "Silence" finally looked up, and spoke softly as it walked over:
"You never let go, and you never truly chose. We are all just shells you use to buy time."

The lightning in his hand didn't take long to build up, but it was incredibly precise. He struck Chu Ning's knee with a palm strike, almost causing him to kneel down.

The three approached simultaneously.

Chu Ning's aura was extremely chaotic, his internal thunder soul was disordered and unstable, and his soul consciousness was almost misaligned.

—They didn't just come to kill him.

They came to "replace him".

If he were to be defeated, any of these three "him"s could potentially absorb his original soul imprint, take over his consciousness, continue down this destined path, and become the kind of person he never wanted to be.

"We can't retreat any further," he growled.

He suddenly raised his hand, his fingertips piercing his left palm, and his soul blood flashed forth.

"None of you are me!"

Using his blood as a catalyst, he deeply carved a lightning seal on his chest. The lightning energy penetrated his soul sea, and within his consciousness, it was like a pillar of lightning piercing straight to the top of the sky.

"This is all I am."

At that moment, his sea of ​​consciousness trembled violently, the Reverse Thunder Seal roared, and a thunderbolt struck his soul sea, knocking down the three "external souls".

"You can't get that vow back!" "Oath - Me" transformed into a dark blue soul mark in the lightning, carrying the seal of cause and effect, spinning rapidly from the edge of the sea of ​​consciousness, and was finally swallowed by the lightning soul.

The "Anger of Me" exploded forth like a raging fire, its flames scorching the walls of his consciousness, leaving a charred mark that lingered for a long time. It was the anger and regret he had suppressed countless times.

"Silent Me" made no sound, but instantly transformed into countless ice crystal fragments, falling onto the sandy plains at the bottom of the Soul Realm. It seeped into the invisible without missing a single detail, like water entering dust, leaving no trace, yet it gave him an indescribable chill—as if whispering: "You will eventually become us."

Light collection.

The wind stopped.

The sea of ​​consciousness, like thunder, is empty after the initial silence.

The desert returned to silence.

Chu Ning slowly straightened his body, his chest heaving violently, his back soaked with sweat that trickled down his spine.

The lightning wound on his right shoulder was still burning, and the blood on his palm had not stopped flowing. The blood dripped into the sand and was instantly evaporated by the night wind.

But what truly made it difficult for him to stand was not the physical pain.

Rather, it is the emptiness left deep within the soul after it has been torn apart, stitched up, and cleared away.

It was as if a piece of his soul had been ripped out, and certain "possibilities" that he had never acknowledged but which truly existed were killed by his own hands.

Those "selves" are not enemies, but the paths he might have taken that are now blocked.

The Thunder Soul continued to pulsate slowly, like the echo after a war drum, carrying aftershocks and an irreversible silence.

He lowered his head, closed his eyes, and slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

This battle was not a victory.

It's about decluttering.

He gasped for breath and looked up at the distant horizon.

At that moment, the sky finally changed.

A ray of starlight quietly emerged from the high sky, like a needle illuminating destiny in the deep night.

The oppressive, leaden sky overhead slowly sank.

The first star appeared in the sky above the desert, its light trembling slightly, like an ancient lamp.

Chu Ning looked up, her eyes shimmering with light and shadow.

He spoke softly, as if responding to the soul-wrenching tale of his solitary journey:

Night has come.

His voice faded with the wind, sinking into the silence of the desert.

There was no response, only a barely perceptible tremor deep within the soul's sea, like a lingering wound in the soul, slowly radiating pain under the starlight.

He stood at the edge of the eye of the storm, silent for a moment, as if waiting for the breath to calm down, or as if waiting for some kind of hint from heaven and earth. Heaven and earth seemed to be waiting as well.

The wind was so still it made no sound, and the night was like an unfinished painting, slowly unfolding, yet the final stroke of the brush was never made.

Until deep into the sky, a faint ray of light quietly pierced the darkness.

A faint yet clear streak of starlight slowly slid down from the horizon.

The light trail slanted downwards, traversing the silent sky, seemingly about to disappear below the horizon, but just before vanishing—it paused slightly, as if merging into the earth.

Chu Ning stood at the edge of the eye of the storm, quietly gazing at that single point of starlight, his gaze as deep as the night.

“It doesn’t fall to the ends of the earth,” he whispered, “it… points to the ground.”

He took out the tattered "Illustrated Gazetteer of the Vast Sea" from his sleeve. Under the starlight, a section of sand dunes that was originally blurry on the map began to tremble quietly, as if activated by some kind of spiritual energy. The outline emerged, and a slightly reddish dot was marked in the center.

He immediately followed the map, bypassing three wind-eroded sand dunes, and on a seemingly ordinary eastern slope, his footing suddenly sank.

"Click."

The sand collapsed, revealing a section of steps that had been buried by yellow sand.

The stone steps are broken, seven or eight tenths buried in the sand. Only on one corner of the steps is a worn-out engraving that faintly emits a bluish light, as if responding to some kind of power.

Chu Ning focused his mind and regulated his breathing to ensure his soul consciousness was stable before slowly stepping onto the sand.

The sound of the wind vanished in an instant, leaving only the sand falling silently from above, as if time were flowing backward.

Below is the remains of an ancient dwelling that is partially buried.

The roof had collapsed and the beams and pillars were broken, but the central circular stone slab remained intact. It was engraved with five runes in different directions, forming a ring structure that was connected end to end. The depth of the engravings clearly indicated that it carried an extremely ancient restriction.

Chu Ning slowly approached, squatted down, and lightly touched one of the runes on it with his finger.

—The soul trembled.

A cold, long-dormant thought quietly seeped into his soul, like some residual program being triggered, causing vague sentences to surface in his mind:

"It will not fall except in the sky, nor open except at night; the gate of the floating pavilion is sealed beneath the sand."

He frowned.

The sentence structure is strange, like some kind of mental dying words, not actually written for a person.

It's more like the array itself is feeding back instructions to the operator, rather than responding to a call.

He stood up, his gaze sweeping across the ruins, when he suddenly noticed a tilted stone tablet half-buried in the sand in a corner.

He lifted the sand covering it; although the surface of the monument was cracked, the inscription was still faintly discernible.

"When day and night coincide, the eye of the storm opens. Only by recognizing its shadow can one enter the floating abyss."

Behind the monument, a shallow soul array was broken, with a slight indentation in the center, resembling a palm print. He raised his palm and covered it, lightly touching it with his thunder soul.

It felt as if an old spirit was awakening beneath the formation. The monument trembled slightly, and the dust in the stone house was shaken off. A light pattern, as if rising from the ground, slowly unfolded, outlining the structure of an ancient "star platform" in the air, as if it had been projected.

Meanwhile, beyond the sea of ​​sand, a true starlight quietly shone from the depths of the dunes, like a drop of water falling into the night, slowly spreading out.

Chu Ning slowly rose to his feet, standing atop the ancient dwelling, gazing at the gradually clearing starlight.

He murmured softly, as if talking to himself, or perhaps confirming the secret realm that was about to be revealed:

"The Floating Pavilion... is indeed hidden 'below the boundary'."

After he finished speaking, he remained motionless for a long time.

The starlight shone on his face, cold as a knife's edge.

He could sense something deep within his soul sea, something that did not belong to this world, slowly awakening—like an ancient beast in the sand exhaling its first breath.

The surrounding sea of ​​sand had stopped flowing, and even the sound of the wind seemed to be blocked out, leaving only his own breathing echoing between the ruins and the starlight.

He lowered his eyes to look at the stone tablet and the remnants of the soul array at his feet. The broken patterns glowed slightly under the starlight, as if responding to some kind of confirmation.

An unprecedented illusion washed over him—he wasn't waking it up, but rather it was waiting for him to return to its rightful place.

He suddenly realized that the so-called "below the boundary" was not only a spatial burial, but more of a closed loop stripped away from the order of time.

The Floating Pavilion is not waiting for a specific time to open.

It is the variable "him" that has finally led us to this point.

My heart skipped a beat in an instant.

Deep in the desert, the newly emerging starlight slowly elongated, like a crack being opened, gently separating the boundary between the upper realm and the "sinking realm".

At that moment, he felt a causal thread deep within his soul being quietly connected.

The next instant, the night deepened to ashes, and the once calm and still eye of the storm suddenly rippled on the sandy sea.

It wasn't the wind that rose, but rather extremely fine rings of light, like star trails in the night sky being quietly pulled down, dripping down from the heavens with some invisible gravitational pull, sprinkling onto the sand surface.

Each falling star streak precisely overlapped with the buried remnants of the soul array on the ground, as if completing an ancient scroll.

Before long, a complete star orbit formation slowly took shape in front of him—no one set up the formation, no one presided over it, yet it seemed to have been waiting for him for a long time.

Chu Ning stood before the ruins of the ancient residence, gazing silently at this scene.

On the monument array, the five remaining patterns slowly glowed under the stimulation of the Thunder Soul, intersecting and rotating with each other, like five tracks slowly embedding into a ring.

At the same time, the Five Elements Thunder Soul deep within the sea of ​​consciousness also began to respond violently.

The five elements of thunder spirits—wood, metal, fire, earth, and water—intertwine, but instead of the familiar mutual restraint or mutual generation, they subtly resonate with each other on a deeper frequency.

Like the light reflected from five mirrors, gradually forming a closed loop.

He suddenly realized that this was not the resonance he experienced during cultivation, but rather a kind of rewriting of the rules of heaven and earth here.

It does not depend on magic or willpower, but is a state of being accepted.

This formation is not designed for ordinary martial artists.

Rather, it is a reconnection prepared for those souls that have been stripped away.

He approached step by step.

With each step he took, a star quietly extinguished beneath his feet, as if what he had walked was not a path of stars, but a confirmation.

He didn't step into the soul array; it was more like he was acknowledged by it.

Just as he was about to approach the center of the formation, a figure slowly emerged from the night and blocked his path.

She walked from the edge of the star trails, standing there in the night wind, wearing the robes of an envoy, the hem of which fluttered in the wind, her steps silent yet resolute.

He was an extremely quiet person.

Starlight fell on her, outlining her cool and aloof features.

It wasn't so much that she was obstructing us, but rather that she was a fortress already standing at the crossroads of fate.

On that unfamiliar yet strangely familiar face, there was no anger, no attempt to dissuade, only a sharpness that was almost calm.

She looked at him but didn't say anything.

They stood facing each other for a long time in the night, as if neither wanted to break the silence.

In the end, she spoke first.

"You came too fast." Her voice was low and steady, as if stating a predetermined outcome, rather than blaming.

Chu Ning glanced at her and said calmly, "You always knew I would come."

Lei Jingjing did not deny it, but remained silent for a moment before saying, "Then you should also know... the Star Platform is not a road, it's a sieve."

She paused, a glint of light flashing in her eyes: "If you step in, you may retain your soul, but you may not be able to retain your life."

Chu Ning shook his head, his tone low but exceptionally firm.

"I'm not here to gamble with my life."

"I've come to take back my life, to retrieve that piece of 'future' that was stripped away from me."

He took another step forward.

Lei Jingjing shifted slightly, as if to stop him, but ultimately held back. She simply gazed at his retreating figure, her eyes swirling with emotion, and finally, in the wind, she slowly uttered a single sentence:

"In the mirror... no one has walked the complete path."

In that instant, the area around the star array seemed to fall silent.

Chu Ning paused slightly.

A breeze swept between the two, gently lifting the hem of her envoy's robe.

The wind carried a barely perceptible tremor, causing him to momentarily lose his senses—as if this wasn't hostility blocking his way, but rather an emotion suppressed and unspoken.

He turned and glanced at her.

That was the first time I saw her face clearly.

That wasn't a cold, heartless face; rather, it seemed like... a deep sense of restraint.

Her gaze was extremely calm, as if she already knew he would take this step and knew that she ultimately could not stop him.

She stood upright, but it didn't seem like she was guarding a position; it seemed more like she was waiting for an ending.

He suddenly had a strange feeling: she wasn't trying to discourage a stranger, but rather watching an unspeakable fate unfold.

He had absolutely no idea who she was.

He didn't have time to ask.

As the star trails slowly rotated, deep within the soul array, a wall of light, resembling the surface of water, rose gently, rippled slightly in the night, like both an invitation and a test.

He muttered something under his breath, whether in response to her or to himself, it was unclear:
"Completeness is not important."

"What I want has never been in the mirror."

As the footsteps landed, the wall of light surged like a tide, and the star marks sank.

When the wind rises again, the soul's breath murmurs softly, and the star trails fall silent.

Night completely enveloped him.

(End of this chapter)