Shi Yan and Xi Yun had often used World Authority to help the villagers. Over the past twenty years, life in Bauhinia Village had become increasingly comfortable, and the two had grown more and more respected by the villagers.
Because of this, their wedding was a lively affair. The villagers were all very enthusiastic, and many even volunteered to help with the various preparations.
As for the wedding clothes and bridal gown, plenty of the village's experienced seamstresses eagerly took on the work. Their skills might not have matched those of the finest seamstresses outside the village, but Shi Yan and Xi Yun were happier to have their neighbors help.
Of course, although the villagers repeatedly refused payment, Shi Yan still made sure to pay them what they were owed afterward.
"The ceremony's starting! The ceremony's starting!"
The villager officiating the wedding beamed.
Shi Yan and Xi Yun wore wedding clothes in keeping with Bauhinia Village's customs. Each held one end of a red sash as they slowly walked over.
"First, bow to Heaven and Earth!"
Together, the two bowed several times beneath the full moon.
"Second, bow to the elders."
The seats in the hall were empty. Only a portrait of Shi Yan's mother from this life had been placed there.
So the two simply bowed several times to the portrait of Shi Yan's mother.
"Now, bow to each other."
Neither of them bumped heads and made a joke of it. They followed the ceremony properly and completed every part of the ritual.
"All right, the feast is open!"
Weddings in Bauhinia Village didn't have many rules. Even the bride drank and laughed with the other women.
The children ran all over the banquet, playing and making a racket.
Of course, no one who'd come to the wedding tried to force the bride to drink. Shi Yan, however, received no such courtesy.
From the elders to his peers and even some of the grown younger generation, people lined up to toast him.
Fortunately, Shi Yan had solved so many of the Rhino Emperor Game's puzzles that alcohol could no longer affect his body.
To Shi Yan, aside from its taste, wine was no different from plain water.
In the end, he single-handedly knocked out a whole crowd of people who'd tried to get him drunk. The women and children watching nearby stared at him in amazement.
When no one was looking, Xi Yun secretly pointed at him and wagged her finger across her cheek, teasing him for picking on everyone.
Shi Yan pretended not to notice and kept dominating the drinking table.
The wedding feast continued until late at night. Many guests got thoroughly drunk, and Shi Yan used his authority to send the tipsy villagers home. He was about to tidy up the place when several aunties shooed the newlyweds toward their bridal chamber.
According to the aunties, "A moment of spring night is worth a thousand pieces of gold. We'll take care of the cleanup. You two hurry off and get down to business."
Their words made Xi Yun blush, while Shi Yan only chuckled. He didn't refuse their kind offer and returned to their wedding room with Xi Yun.
They didn't sleep a wink that night.
It was almost noon the next day before Shi Yan and Xi Yun finally dragged themselves out of bed.
Newly married, they weren't in any hurry to do anything else.
The couple had spent all these years in the little mountain village. Now that Shi Yan had laid all his secrets bare to his wife, he planned to travel the world with Xi Yun, as a honeymoon of sorts.
Xi Yun happily agreed.
As a native of Bauhinia Village, Xi Yun had never felt much longing for the outside world, but she was still a little curious about it.
Now she had the chance to see famous mountains and rivers beyond the village, and to do so with the person she loved. Naturally, she was more than willing.
After making a few preparations and bidding the villagers farewell, the couple left Bauhinia Village together to enjoy their honeymoon in the outside world.
They took in the view from Heaven-Reaching Mountain, rowed across Red Moon Lake beneath the clear moonlight, and occasionally righted wrongs, reporting the corrupt policies they encountered in different places to the Celestial Master Palace.
With Shi Yan, the palace master of the Celestial Master Palace, stepping in, the problems were naturally dealt with swiftly, and a string of corrupt officials were rooted out along the way.
Every now and then, the couple returned to Bauhinia Village to stay for a while.
The carefree life they led, almost like ordinary mortals, subtly changed Shi Yan's state of mind, though even he didn't notice it.
Of course, while they were traveling, Shi Yan also took on the task of setting up formations in various places. As for Past Self, he took the place of Main Self and began studying the Rhino Emperor Game.
A human life lasted a hundred years, and Shi Yan's current life soon reached the age of eighty-five.
Xi Yun was three years older than Shi Yan and was now eighty-eight.
Once she passed the age of eighty-five, Xi Yun began to age. In just three short years, she went from looking like a woman in her thirties to a white-haired old woman.
Shi Yan hadn't yet reached old age in this life, but he chose to grow old alongside his wife.
The two stopped traveling all over the world and returned to Bauhinia Village, planning to spend their final years together in their hometown.
Two years later, Xi Yun turned ninety.
That day, the villagers of Bauhinia Village received terrible news: Granny Xi Yun had passed away of old age.
By then, Shi Yan and his wife had long been the village's revered elders. The younger generations all came to mourn at Xi Yun's funeral.
Shi Yan silently and impassively presided over his wife's funeral.
After it ended, the villagers dispersed.
Shi Yan stood alone in silence before Xi Yun's grave.
If anyone had dug up the grave, they would have discovered that Xi Yun still had several years left to live. She was actually in a state of suspended animation, her life functions almost entirely halted, and her remaining lifespan was not being consumed.
In the Primal Universe, a life whose lifespan had run out could not be brought back by reversing time.
Although this world was Shi Yan's dream, even if he managed to turn it from illusion into reality one day, he couldn't guarantee that he could revive someone whose lifespan was exhausted.
Cultivation might bring limitless power, but reviving a being whose lifespan had run out and extending the life of someone nearing the end of theirs clearly required power on entirely different levels.
Shi Yan didn't want to risk his wife's life.
"Xi Yun, wait for me."
Through the soil and the coffin, Shi Yan saw his sleeping wife's peaceful face, as if he wanted to etch the sight into the depths of his memory.
The next day, the people of Bauhinia Village discovered that Shi Yan had also disappeared.
They searched everywhere but couldn't find a trace of him, so they had no choice but to erect an empty grave for Shi Yan beside Xi Yun's.
Meanwhile, after reinforcing the formations around Bauhinia Village, Shi Yan had quietly made his way to the far north of the continent, to a bitterly cold region even farther north than the Yan Kingdom.
This was where he had chosen to place the formation's core. If anything went wrong when he activated the formation here, it would affect as few ordinary mortals as possible.
He had spent more than thirty years traveling the world with Xi Yun, while Past Self had made arrangements for over twenty years before that.
By now, the formations in Shi Yan's plan were all in place. If he hadn't wanted to stay by his wife's side, he could have begun activating them to suppress Future Self years ago.
Now that he had personally sealed his wife in suspended animation, Shi Yan had few attachments left in this world. It was time to settle things with Future Self once and for all.
"Then let's begin."
Around Shi Yan, the eight fundamental elements—metal, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, light, and thunder—began to circle.
For a moment, dazzling colors spread through the area within a thousand meters, gradually gathering into a vortex.
Blinding beams of light began spreading across the snow, following the formation's intricate patterns. With every bit of ground they covered, another formation somewhere in the world connected and started to operate.
But compared to the grand, earth-shaking formations Future Self had once laid down, the formations Shi Yan had established across the land activated in silence, and almost no one noticed.
Only a few of the Celestial Master Palace's Grand Celestial Masters faintly sensed something unusual in the world's Origin.
Shi Yan had already warned them in advance. As for the reason, he told them he was eliminating the source of the Monster Catastrophe.
Quite a few of the new generation of Grand Celestial Masters had been children who survived the Monster Catastrophe. They revered Shi Yan deeply.
Though they were shocked to learn that the source of the Monster Catastrophe still existed, they didn't doubt Shi Yan's words.
When they sensed the disturbance in the world's Origin, the Grand Celestial Masters understood: Shi Yan had begun his decisive battle with the source of the monsters.
"Palace Master, you have to win."
The Grand Celestial Masters silently prayed.
These new Grand Celestial Masters had all suffered from a young age and received Shi Yan's guidance. They were considerably more capable than the older generation. Most had solved over two thousand puzzles in the Rhino Emperor Game, but Shi Yan had now solved 7,011.
The gap between them was too vast. There was nothing they could do to help him in this battle.
As the Grand Celestial Masters of the Celestial Master Palace prayed, the formations scattered throughout the world finally connected completely under Shi Yan's control.
At that moment, eight towering beams of light surrounded Shi Yan. They revolved along the patterns on the ground, whose center was Shi Yan himself.
Origin power surged endlessly through the grand formation. For a moment, Shi Yan felt as though the entire world's "weight" rested on his shoulders.
Even Shi Yan found the pressure nearly suffocating. His aged face flushed red, and without the grand formation linking him to the world and sharing the burden, along with the foundation of the World Authority he'd gained from solving 7,011 puzzles in the Rhino Emperor Game, the immense Origin power would have crushed him to dust in an instant.
"So this is the Origin of this world?"
After gradually growing accustomed to the crushing weight of the world's Origin, Shi Yan finally had enough focus to examine it.
For a moment, Shi Yan seemed to become the world itself. With a glance, he could see the entire world, just as he could observe his own Miniature Universe.
But compared to the Origin of his own Miniature Universe, this world's Origin carried a sense of illusion.
Though illusory, its mysteries were on par with those of a real world's Origin. It was like something in a mirror, reflecting reality.
Its nature was also utterly different from that of Shi Yan's Miniature Universe. Of course, in terms of intricacy, this world's Origin couldn't compare with his "Origin of One." After all, that was the form of the Primal Universe Origin.
Still, the contrast between the illusory and the real inspired Shi Yan greatly.
"The Origin of an illusory world..."
Shi Yan thought of Void True Demon God, who had attained godhood through illusion. Perhaps, in the future, his Miniature Universe would develop in the direction of an Illusory Universe.
But before Shi Yan could observe further, a massive source of foreign energy deep within the world's Origin suddenly began to tremble.
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