"Qingyuan, did you think you were contending with me for the Primordial Wilderness?"
His voice emerged from the five rules, every word carrying the resonance of laws, as though five rivers were changing course at once behind Space-Time.
The five rules closed like five fingers. Every knuckle marked the collapse of a time branch, every crease the severing of a reincarnation.
"You have no idea what you are fighting against."
He clenched his five fingers, and the five rules tightened at once.
Qingyuan's body let out a crisp crack, as though something fundamental had broken. The sound did not travel through the air, but shook within Space-Time's skeleton.
"This Chaos, this heaven and earth, this Space-Time..."
Hongjun's voice lowered until only Qingyuan could hear it, so low that it seemed like an echo from beyond Reincarnation, above Karma, and at the very end of Space-Time.
"Did you think Pangu truly created it?"
Qingyuan's pupils suddenly contracted.
Half of what he had heard was blocked by the rules, leaving only several fragmented words. Yet those few words were enough to make him understand one thing.
Pangu had not been the first to open heaven and earth.
This Chaos, this heaven and earth, this Space-Time, had already existed before Pangu.
Pangu's Heaven-Opening had merely been one cycle among countless cycles.
Others had done the same before him, and others would do the same after him.
In every cycle, someone tried to devour the Primordial Wilderness. Someone tried to descend upon New Heaven and Earth. Someone believed they could break free of fate.
But they had all failed.
Because Chaos itself did not permit it.
Because this heaven and earth possessed its own will, a will higher, older, and more primordial than the Primordial Wilderness Will.
That will did not allow anyone to