Spreading the Dao Across the World

Having just descended from the Liesu, Li Qi, who was in the void, was somewhat taken aback.

What happened?

He looked around.

Beneath my feet lies a spherical world, its World Barrier resembling a smooth glass dome. The world operates smoothly, and the Liesu are rooted in this world.

All around was an endless void, where numerous flying boats and large ships could be seen transporting a great deal of strategic resources.

Before him stood a rather large flying boat. The fifth-rank commander from before was standing at the bow, looking at Li Qi with curiosity. "Hmm? Young Master Li Qi, why are you lost in thought?"

"No... wait, let me think about it..." Li Qi reached out, stopping the other person from continuing.

What happened?

But at that moment, Li Qi discovered that his body had returned to its previous state.

The local fifth-rank commander then said for the third time, "Welcome, Young Master Li Qi."

He showed no signs of anything amiss.

But Li Qi took a deep breath.

What the hell?! Am I... stuck in a time loop?! Are you kidding me?! Is this even possible?

Li Qi was puzzled.

But he still responded. On the third time, he replied normally, "Commander Bai..."

However, after he said it several times, the world went back to the moment he had just emerged from the Liesu.

Li Qi frowned slightly, but... it's alright.

Although this world is trapped within these few seconds, and he can't even do anything, the constant repetition is enough to drive an ordinary person crazy, but Li Qi is, after all, a fifth-rank official. His mind is very resilient, and even if it happens hundreds of times, he will only become numb at most, and it is unlikely that he will collapse.

If this is what they call pain, then... it doesn't feel so bad?

Li Qi began to try other methods.

He immediately fled Liesu, leaving the war zone commander in a daze.

But after a while, Li Qi returned to the same spot.

This happened a total of 246 times, and Li Qi had become numb to it.

At first, he kept trying to break free, but later he found that he couldn't break free no matter what, so he simply gave up on this mess and stopped in the same place, thinking about why.

His mind raced, but... no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't figure it out.

What's going on? Am I being controlled by a powerful being? Has this part of the world been cut off by someone?

Li Qi secretly timed the event and discovered that the time reversal always occurred after about thirty seconds, but there was no exact time; it was always around thirty seconds before the reversal would occur.

After the 247th time, time finally moved forward.

Li Qi was standing still, lost in thought, ignoring the commander.

The other person seemed puzzled as to why Li Qi seemed lost in thought, so they stepped forward and patted Li Qi on the shoulder. "Young Master Li Qi, what's wrong? Are you injured?"

"Huh?" Li Qi looked up.

Thirty seconds passed, but the backtracking was not triggered again.

What happened? Did I break free on my own?

"Commander Bai..." Li Qi tried to speak again. He had realized that the fifth-rank commander in front of him did not realize that the time was a bit off.

"Hmm? What is it? Oh, sorry, I have some news to share, let me hear it first." The fifth-rank commander suddenly stopped, and then the patterns of the World Cluster Formation appeared around him.

Li Qi didn't disturb the other party. He also knew that as a commander, he needed to process a large amount of information anytime, anywhere.

But then Commander Bai's face lit up with joy, and he burst into laughter, pulling Li Qi along as he exclaimed, "Ah, we won!"

He seemed to have received some particularly good news, and clapped his hands happily. "Young Master Li Qi is really lucky. We won a great victory as soon as we arrived!"

A great victory? Li Qi was astonished.

Then he asked, "Where was that great victory?"

"Our joint operation with the neighboring war zone is intended to cut off the advance of Human Path aid. If successful, it will prevent the establishment of War Fortress and force Human Path back to at least three war zones."

"Now that we've won, and with Young Master Li Qi coming to help, it's truly a double celebration! Young Master Li Qi, please come with me, let's go see Junior Scribe together." After his exclamation, the other party immediately got to the point.

Li Qi smiled, bowed, and then boarded the other party's flying boat, leaving the place.

However, he was preoccupied when he left.

Li Qi was thinking.

There is indeed a connection between 'victory' and 'rewinding'.

A powerful player is constantly using save/load techniques, repeatedly resetting their save/load account in an attempt to gain victory.

As for oneself, having 'reality', one will not be affected.

What is reality? It means that something exists and has properties that do not depend on the perception of other things and are independent of all existing knowledge.

In other words, even if everyone... no, I should say, all the paths disappear, you will still not disappear, you will not die.

The physical rules disappear, the four fundamental forces disappear, and the high-level observer is gone, yet it can still exist on its own and be independent of itself. This is 'reality'.

Reality means that your 'Tao' can exist independently, perfectly self-consistent, and can still support your own existence even after all the external 'Great Taos' have disappeared.

For ordinary life forms, they are far from reaching this level.

For them, if the external 'Tao' disappears, their existence also disappears.

For example, if the physical rules of a region were eliminated, mortals would immediately disappear, the matter that makes up their bodies would collapse, and they would be unable to maintain their existence.

For a fifth-rank individual, this is not a problem. No matter how the external physical rules change, a fifth-rank individual can rely on itself to stabilize its own physical rules and ensure its long-term survival.

So, we've reached a higher level, above the fifth rank...

It's like time and space...

The time and space he had just experienced kept rewinding.

Even at the fifth rank, one still cannot exist independently of time and space.

Their existence follows a timeline, and they also rely on space to provide themselves with a place.

Therefore, once spacetime is extracted, even a fifth-rank being will dissipate. Even if time is simply manipulated, a fifth-rank being will not be able to detect it at all.

Because, in order to perceive changes in spacetime, you can only observe from outside spacetime.

Taking spatial dimensions as an example, a one-dimensional line has only one spatial dimension.

Now, there is a one-dimensional person walking on this one-dimensional line, and it appears to him that he is walking in a straight line.

However, if a two-dimensional object exists, it can be wound into a circle, becoming a loop.

The one-dimensional figure is unaware of this; he keeps going in circles, but he doesn't know it. In his eyes, he is always walking in a straight line. To know that he is going in circles, he must jump out of one dimension and come to two dimensions.

Only in two dimensions can you see that the line he walked on was actually a circle.

Similarly, at this point, a three-dimensional being transforms the two-dimensional world into a sphere, and two-dimensional people can only move on the plane; they cannot perceive that they are walking in circles.

Because in their world, in their dimension, this is a straight line, this is a plane. They are distorted in a higher dimension, but in their dimension, nothing changes.

This applies to space, and it also applies to time.

To perceive changes in spacetime itself, one must observe from outside of spacetime.

But how can one travel outside of space and time?

The answer naturally popped into Li Qi's mind.

The answer is that your own Tao is sufficient to support you in obtaining 'reality,' sufficient for your self-sustaining, and sufficient for you to be completely independent under any circumstances.

In this way, you can detach yourself from space and time itself, yet remain unaffected by anything.

It's the same now.

Li Qi... his thoughts have transcended time and space.

No, it's not that he's detached from time and space, but rather that he's detached from the external time and space. The time and space he's experiencing right now is the time and space of the inner world of the Witch God.

He understood.

This is what the sorcerer meant by 'pain'.

Li Qi's perspective has acquired 'reality'. This is not his own, but rather... he and the Witch God share the same perspective. He is observing this ever-changing space-time from the Witch God's point of view.

At this moment, Li Qi suddenly realized what the Demon Prince's expression and his repeated mention of "ruins" really meant.

The entire universe is a wasteland of the struggle for supremacy!

Ordinary civilizations are like cockroaches in ruins; they are too weak to even notice that this war has escalated to the point of altering the fundamental rules of the universe. They cannot realize that their own universe, this endless outer realm, is itself a wasteland.

So many worlds are merely barely safe corners in the ruins, moss and debris hidden beneath rubble.

None of them knew they were living in ruins, not even Li Qi.

Only now does he understand what 'ruins' means.

Such fragile spacetime, such a universe constantly rippling...

To a truly powerful being, such a world is like a piece of porcelain on the verge of breaking, as if it would shatter completely with just one more push.

Therefore... Human Path desires to Man replacing Heaven.

That's why Shinto people are so timid and hesitant.

Therefore, the Shaman Path will do its best to stop, or even maintain, the current balance, even if it requires the sacrifice of many great sorcerers.

The entire universe is a vast ruin, and the Dao Lineage are the contenders on that ruin.

This reminded Li Qi of something...

'To spread the Way throughout the world'.

This was something Shen Shuibi and Li Qi had said before. (See Chapter 58)

The Dao Lineage of the world have joined forces, aiming to spread these Dao Lineage widely so that everyone can follow them.

The result...

It is this shattered universe.

What kind of chaotic world was that?

Li Qi didn't even dare to think about it.

If all worlds, all natives, and countless races possessed the selfless propagation of the Dao Lineage, and the most outstanding lineages, and everyone could directly hear the teachings of the Witch God, Sage, True Immortal, and Buddha...

What a magnificent universe that must be!

What kind of scene must this struggle between the Dao that has been stirred up in the universe be?

The Human-Shaman War was the most brutal war Li Qi had ever seen, but thinking about it... compared to that war back then, the Human-Shaman War was just a very restrained small-scale skirmish.

That is the true struggle for the Dao. Everyone, whether for personal gain, for the Dao Path, or for the ultimate goal of the Dao... in any case, must prove their strength through their own actions.

The universe is nothing but ruins.

Perhaps even the world itself is just a fragment of what it was.

Just as we said at the beginning.

Earth has rainforests, oceans, glaciers, deserts, hot springs, grasslands...

So, is all of this something that was meant to be?

No, none of this was ever born; in fact, it was 'teetering on the brink.' Its existence is merely a 'current coincidence.'

The world is not naturally like this.

Therefore, Li Qi understood.

But he was not in pain, even though Li Qi knew he would be forced to experience things from a perspective that was not his own.

From this moment on, Li Qi could realize that he had been rewound and reassembled, but he could not control it. He only had the perspective of the Witch God, but could not truly 'escape from time and space'.

In Li Qi's own opinion, it was like... The Matrix.

A person who lacks 'reality' is like someone with a tube inserted into their head, someone who can only exist in the virtual world and can be modified or reset at any time.

Those who possess 'reality' are the awakened beings who exist in the real world.

Li Qi will be stuck among them, becoming someone who is aware of his own emptiness and is constantly being manipulated by retrospection.

He will possess the perspective of a witch god, but like the other fifth-rank beings, he will be manipulated by the ever-rewinding time and space.

This is the 'pain' the sorcerer had told him about.

But it's alright, Li Qi thought... it doesn't seem like much, just consider it a bit of an illusion.

Thinking about it that way, he didn't really think there was anything wrong with it.

This so-called 'nothingness' does not mean that the universe is not realistic. In fact, the universe is very realistic, and the existence of people like Li Qi is also very realistic.

But... beings that possess reality can transcend reality; they themselves can achieve the same level of reality.

Humans depend on reality to exist, because reality itself is real.

Yes, the first thing in the world to possess reality is reality itself, something that can exist independently without depending on anything else.

Those who cultivate with substance transcend the reality that gave birth to them, becoming equal to it; they themselves are another reality.

For the powerful beings who are equivalent to reality and possess tangible existence, ordinary mortals... are probably just like the fantasies in their minds, vanishing in an instant and being born in an instant. Here, birth and death do not refer to life and death, but rather to 'existence' itself.

Thinking of this, Li Qi shuddered.

This trait reminded him of a powerful figure he knew.

The sum total of all reality, all things are existence in themselves.

Heavenly Demon.

For the Heavenly Demon, this reality is his illusion; everything else is nothingness, a custom game that can be arbitrarily altered.

Therefore, he also created another illusion, which is the well-known 'Desire Realm', or 'He-Who-Transforms-Himself-at-Will Heaven'.

Li Qi raised his head.

By simply possessing the perspective of the sorcerer god and sharing the sorcerer god's 'reality', he gained a deeper understanding of this universe.

But perhaps only he had this kind of fortuitous opportunity.

After all, it's about sharing the reality of the sorcerer god...

Thinking this, Commander Bai suddenly patted Li Qi on the shoulder. "Young Master Li Qi? Guanghan has set off."