"Thousand years have passed."
Great Emperor Fuxi stood upon the land of the Eastern Wasteland, his voice hoarse.
The commotion from the opening of the Path to Immortality had completely subsided. The rift spanning the cosmos closed, the spatial barrier reformed, leaving not the slightest trace behind.
Great Emperor Fuxi raised a hand.
The earth split apart. The Fuxi Dragon Stele burst from the ground, sending dust flying across the sky before falling into his palm.
The stele was smooth and warm, but his hand was withered.
A thousand years had slipped away.
He had grown old again.
Gray-white spread from the roots of his hair.
His blood and qi no longer boiled. His skin had lost its luster.
The lifespan he had recovered by absorbing the substance of the Longevity Realm was inevitably approaching its end.
The Great Emperor's twilight years.
Cruel reality lay before him.
Great Emperor Fuxi sat down cross-legged. His hands formed seals, and Eight Trigrams runes revolved before him as he deduced the vitality within himself.
Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen, Dui. Eight imperial characters arranged and combined in the void, evolving the birth and extinction of all things.
"Two paths," he murmured.
Either live out a second life, or slash himself with a single stroke.
To live out a second life, one had to break free of the shackles of one's own Great Dao, create a method for reaching the Longevity Realm, nurture a divine fetus, and shed one's old body.
The difficulty was equivalent to proving the Dao and becoming an emperor anew.
Great Emperor Fuxi waved his hand, dispersing the trigrams.
He could not do it.
His Dao had already reached its limit. There was no road ahead. Forcing a transformation would only end in death and the dissipation of