In a quiet chamber of Jade Void Palace, the Haotian Mirror Shard glimmered faintly, deep and dim as an endless starry sky, its patterns constantly shifting with obscure mystery.
Taking advantage of those shifts, Meng Qi either created Myriad Realms Universal Talismans and sent them out, or split off his Spiritual Sense to descend from afar. His true body never entered. He had to simultaneously guide the formation of thousands upon thousands of Other Self Marks. If he had entered each universe in person to try, it might have taken five or ten years—or even five hundred or five thousand—just to build up enough changes for a qualitative leap.
Time slipped by, night after night. The quiet chamber remained dim and still, steeped in an emptiness that seemed eternal. One by one, the phantom images of "Other Selves" slowly took shape and returned. Among them was a projection from the Transformer Universe, which replaced and assimilated the legend of Yuanshi Tianzun's Other Self. Another was an unknown Saint Seiya before a colossal stone Buddha, balancing Yuan Shi against Demon Buddha. But there were still too few of these Other Self Marks, nowhere near enough to reach a qualitative leap. Meng Qi continued to roam the myriad worlds, playing different roles, casting out Myriad Realms Universal Talismans, and forging one extraordinary encounter after another into legend.
Autumn gave way to winter. One day, Great Green Root arrived at the quiet chamber and reported:
"Master, Chuiyizi sent word. He's already made contact with the Demon Saintess's successor, Little Fox."
Meng Qi slowly opened his eyes. Within his pupils, phantom figures shifted: a sphere of light stained red and black coalesced, while Creation Brahma sat cross-legged upon a lotus dais. The layers of images overlapped, strange and beyond the ordinary. "What did the