Master of Strange Dao

Chapter 1556 - 415: Stalemate, Beyond Alteration

Old Emperor Qian opened his eyes, one hand forming a Seal, pressing against his forehead. His entire life seemed to flash by like scenes from a lantern."Ha, this is the eighty-nine thousand nine hundredth time. Truly, you just won't give up. It was already unchangeable long ago."

The Yang-Keeping Devil floated around, having already given up struggling. No one could find him here, nor could he call for help. This was the Forbidden Land of All Gods. Even if someone guessed he was here, they couldn't find him.

Just like someone once speculated whether the Seven Yin were hidden in a Forbidden Land of the gods, hence no one could ever find them. But this has always been speculation, never confirmed to the slightest degree.

The Yang-Keeping Devil glanced at the current Old Emperor Qian, sensing the aura around him, feeling a surge of powerlessness and despair.

"Who on earth created such a monster..."

Old Emperor Qian floated silently there, counting once more.

The eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and first time.

The scenes from the lantern reappeared, showing his life once again. In Old Emperor Qian's own view, the greatest turning point was when he was young and traveled to the East Sea, mistakenly entering the deep sea.

Back then, he had once been eroded.

It was at that time that Old Emperor Qian gained massive amounts of information.

Indeed, from then on, he underwent a great change, just that the direction of change wasn't quite what the entity in the deep sea had hoped for.

Old Emperor Qian finished viewing the scenes from the lantern, frowning slightly.

"Hmm? What is that guy trying to alter again? It's not aimed at me? Then why does it relate to me?"

...

In the deepest part of the deep sea, amidst endless distortions and chaos, the Ancient God, without a True Body or True Form, was wielding its authority.

Or rather, it had always been doing this.

The last pit Miao Jun dug had trapped it within, leaving it to accumulate in the smallest and most inconspicuous way, bit by bit.

It was indeed altering things, just that its method of information manipulation might be different from what everyone imagines.

The notion that time is always on the side of the gods, everyone misunderstood the meaning of this sentence.

Actually, it's not just that the gods have enough time to waste, to correct errors, and start again, but that mortals have limited lifespans.

This sentence was referring to it.

From an unknown perspective, it saw frames, one of which was from thirty thousand years ago.

A young Historian was recording what seemed like a trivial event at the time.

The Historian, in a moment of distraction, merely wrote a word incorrectly.

And as ages passed, generation after generation aged and died, with each time the water rose and each time copies were made, the occasional errors accumulated.

The original records were already beyond recognition, and the causality of that trivial event changed completely.

The descendants of those involved in the trivial matter also, due to errors, reversed black and white in the facts; the once-guilty ancestors were turned into victims unjustly accused and died as they claimed, thus entering the court's system went from doubtful to feasible.

When everything developed to this point, it became a fact of life when the small official newly entered into the court system, the moment he truly entered the ranks, unseen tides started to surge in reverse.

Errors made during past copying became correct, with each time the water rose burning the correct records into wrong ones.

The errors that remained also became correct, with the images reversing to the original scene where the Historian's negligence recorded the wrong word, turning it into the right one.

The accumulated strength surged back, fully exploding, and the once-guilty really seemed to turn into exemplars of moral integrity through time.

A corner of time changed.

And this was one of the slightly larger waves.

Following was a smaller wave, where a mortal fortunately found a Cultivator's tomb, the tomb long-lost protection through the ages, wherein the mortal found many things.

Among them was a tattered old book with words illegible, recounting a figure named Yuan Lord.

With a simple flip, the book became even more tattered, and it could be deduced as unrelated to cultivation.

In a trance, the mortal spotted a few Jade Scrolls, knowing they were recording tools used by Cultivators. He picked them up like a treasure and quietly left.

That ancient book mentioning Yuan Lord, abandoned in the tomb, in the next rain got soaked and with the collapsing tomb, was thoroughly buried and disappeared.

With this image, the following extended series of images vanished, and the slight chance for the name Yuan Lord to surface again was gone.

Then, another scene emerged.

It was the Wilderness, shortly after surviving the disaster of the Great Sun Dominating the Sky.

Among them, a person hidden in a pit waiting to die heard sounds outside, and suddenly his thoughts altered a bit. He felt the sounds outside resembled those of a relative, and with all his might extended a hand out of the pit.

Then, it attracted some red-eyed fellows.

Those red-eyed ones dragged him out, resembling mad dogs starved to derangement, yowling about the certainty of more white flesh in that direction.

A notion emerged in the minds of these mad dogs, pushing them to pursue, thinking perhaps it was not far.

But already, the overwhelming hunger tormenting every shred of their consciousness shredded apart those fleeting thoughts.

Pursue what? Those guys couldn't run anymore, they were about to starve to death, turning into starving ghosts and continuing to suffer the torment. Better to fill their bellies first, then pursue.

The group of mad dogs abandoned the notion of setting off immediately.

Just two mountain ridges away from them.

Gathered were a large group of people weakened to the extreme, unable even to lift a hand, or even speak.

Among them, some had long since abandoned their principles, just too weak, driven to frenzy, hallucinating, even seeing everything as edible, yet unable to do anything.

In the crowd, every moment someone else breathed their last, death seemed like an epidemic.

At some unknown point, in an unremarkable corner, Yu Ziqing, as emaciated and vacant-eyed as the others, also breathed his last.

He starved to death.

At the same time, in that unknown perspective, the pictures seen by the Ancient God dissipated, and the alteration failed.

It had tried countless times, all to no avail.

Because as soon as the Great Sun Dominating the Sky appeared, the grand situation was already set.

And after the Great Sun appeared, the time of radical change was too short; any tiny alteration couldn't accumulate into a grand situation.

To change things, there was only one way: amass such forces to roll back the tides, preventing even the appearance of the Great Sun.

And this was related to Old Emperor Qian.

Unfortunately, the current Old Emperor Qian had become an unchangeable existence.

Even though it had captured the key point from time, knowing the Wilderness and the Great Sun Dominating the Sky were key nodes.

But it had become a deadlock, no matter how many tries, no matter how many times, the result was the same.