Beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens

Over the last three days, Taiyi had nearly worn sparks into the floor of the Sun Palace.

Jade slips were smashed and re-formed, formation diagrams overturned and redrawn. Sometimes, he stared at the dense web of Karma Threads and calculated until midnight, his eyes going unfocused. Once, he got stuck at a critical point and punched the wall—the wall forged from True Sun Fire was unharmed, but the back of his own hand went numb from the impact.

"Fuck." Taiyi shook his hand and muttered a curse only he understood.

Before dawn on the third day, he finally broke through the bottleneck that had frozen his deduction model. Staring at the slowly rotating simulated image of Zixiao Palace in midair, he let out a long breath and dropped onto the floor, his back against the cold white-jade wall.

Outside the window, the sky was shifting from inky black to indigo. The Sun Star had yet to rise, but a thread of gold-red light had already appeared along the horizon.

Taiyi looked at that sliver of light and suddenly found the scene familiar—like when he had stayed up all night revising code in his previous life, then looked up to see the first light of dawn outside the window. The same exhaustion, the same... uncertainty in his heart.

That was when the door was pushed open.

Di Jun stood in the doorway, morning light streaming in behind him and casting a long shadow across the floor. He said nothing, only looked at his younger brother sitting on the ground for a long while.

"It's time to go," he finally said.

Taiyi braced himself against the wall and stood, his knees slightly weak. He lowered his head and looked at himself—his everyday robes were wrinkled, and jade-slip fragments had somehow stuck to his cuffs. His whole body exuded the dejected air of someone who had gone three days and nights without sleep.

"Let me clean up first." His voice was a little hoarse.

By the time he emerged in a presentable robe, Fuxi and Nuwa had already arrived.

Fuxi was as calm as ever, holding an Eight Trigrams Disk in his hand as its yin-yang fish slowly rotated. Nuwa stood a little farther away in a plain moon-white dress, her hair simply pinned up without unnecessary ornaments. Morning light filtered through the window lattice onto her profile, outlining it with a soft golden edge.

Taiyi's gaze lingered on her for an extra moment.

Not because she was beautiful—though she certainly was. It was because he suddenly sensed that Nuwa's aura... was slightly off.

It was hard to describe. At first glance, she seemed no different from usual, her aura restrained and harmonious, the hem of her moon-white dress softly stirring in the faint currents of air within the hall. But Taiyi's perception of the laws of heaven had become far sharper than before. He could vaguely "see" tiny, almost imperceptible ripples in the void around Nuwa.

They were neither fluctuations of magical power nor deliberately released pressure. It was more like... Nuwa herself had begun to resonate with the surrounding laws of heaven and earth on a deeper level. The void adjusted and adapted around her of its own accord, as though making way for her—or perhaps welcoming something in advance.

Taiyi's heart skipped a beat.

An omen of sainthood?

He did not dare be certain. In the Great Wilderness stories from his previous life, Nuwa had attained sainthood through merit only after creating humanity. There was still a long way to go. But this was the real Great Wilderness, and anything was possible. Perhaps she had long since touched that threshold and merely lacked the final opportunity.

"Eastern Emperor Your Majesty." Nuwa suddenly turned and met his gaze with a faint smile. "Are your injuries any better?"

Taiyi composed himself and smiled politely. "Thank you for your concern, Fellow Daoist Nuwa. They are no longer serious."

He answered calmly, but inwardly, his guard rose. Nuwa's glance just now... had been far too sharp. He had merely looked at her for a little longer, and she had noticed. That spiritual awareness truly suited the stature of a future saint.

The four left the Sun Palace and rode the clouds toward the South Heaven Gate. The Heavenly Court was quiet in the early morning, clouds slowly flowing beneath their feet while distant palaces appeared and vanished amid the morning mist. The occasional early-rising member of the Demon Race spotted them from afar and hurriedly bowed in salute.

Outside the South Heaven Gate, Bai Ze was already waiting. The Demon Race's sage wore formal robes of a stellar official today and held a jade tablet. When the four arrived, he stepped forward and saluted them. "Your Majesty, Eastern Emperor Your Majesty, Fellow Daoist Fuxi, Fellow Daoist Nuwa. The chaotic currents will enter a stable phase in two hours. That will be the window to cross."

Di Jun nodded. "The affairs of the Heavenly Court are entrusted to you, sir."

"It is my duty." Bai Ze bowed, then looked at Taiyi. After a moment of silence, he said, "Eastern Emperor Your Majesty... take care."

Taiyi nodded. "Don't worry."

The five said no more and transformed into streaks of light, shooting into the sky.

After passing through the nine heavens and crossing the sea of stars, the scenery around them began to grow unfamiliar. The firmament was like rice paper soaked in water, gradually bleeding outward and blurring as the stars' light was swallowed by a gray mist. Space itself changed from solid to viscous, and flying required additional magical power to resist the invisible drag.

This was not Taiyi's first time traveling this path, but each experience felt different. The previous two times, he had been high-spirited, daring to charge in with the Chaos Bell in hand. This time... he touched his chest. His injuries had healed, but his origin had ultimately suffered some damage.

"Focus." Di Jun's voice sounded by his ear.

Taiyi's expression sharpened, and he immediately steadied his mind. He noticed that Nuwa had already unfolded a phantom projection of the Mountain and River Diagram beside him—not the complete supreme treasure, merely a wisp of its projection, which became a faintly glowing barrier around the five. Chaotic qi struck the barrier with soft hissing sounds.

But what concerned him most was Nuwa's state as she cast the spell.

She neither chanted nor formed hand seals. With merely a thought, the barrier formed naturally. That effortless, seamless quality had already faintly surpassed the realm of technique and approached the level of the Dao. Moreover, Taiyi could sense that the barrier interacted with the surrounding chaos in a unique way—not through forceful resistance, but through a kind of... guiding compliance.

When the chaotic currents struck, the barrier naturally diverted and dissolved them. The entire process was as smooth as a stream flowing around a rounded stone.

Fuxi acted as well. Clear light surged from the Eight Trigrams Disk in his hand, and the yin-yang fish spun rapidly, projecting a trail of spiritual light ahead to guide their path. That trail was not straight, but adjusted in real time according to shifts in the chaotic currents, winding like a serpent.

Di Jun led the way, True Sun Fire blazing around him like a moving miniature sun. Yet he did not simply force his way through. The rhythm of the flames shifted subtly as well—at times fierce as an exploding inferno, at times gentle as dawn—as though he too was following something.

Watching the three of them, Taiyi suddenly gained an insight.

This was the path to a higher realm—not to oppose heaven and earth, but to understand them, follow them, and even... become one with them.

He began adjusting himself as well. The phantom of the Chaos Bell in his sea of consciousness trembled faintly, drawing upon a trace of the Dao rhythm of space and time to protect his body. At the same time, he tried using the method recorded in that ancient secret art to sense the "rhythm" of the surrounding chaos.

The moment he sensed it, he saw a deeper scene.

Chaos was not completely disorderly. Beneath those seemingly violent and chaotic currents lay extraordinarily complex structures—some areas had spacetime structures as dense as iron plates, while others were as fragile as spiderwebs; in some regions, fragments of laws poured down like torrential rain, while others were as still as a vacuum.

He even "saw" floating fragments of space and time.

Those fragments varied in size. Some were as large as a palm, while others resembled small mountains. They floated quietly in the depths of chaos, their surfaces reflecting shattered scenes—sometimes fragments of an unfamiliar world, sometimes an ancient battlefield long since destroyed, and sometimes even his own blurred reflection.

One fragment drifted past his side, and he caught sight of a familiar scene reflected within: Buzhou Mountain, a Witch Race tribe, Di Jiang standing high above and looking down... The image vanished in an instant.

Taiyi's heart tightened slightly.

Were these fragments the past? The future? Or something else entirely?

He looked toward Nuwa, wanting to see her reaction. Yet he found that Nuwa was not looking at those fragments at all—her gaze had fallen deeper within, upon the regions of chaos that seemed the most disordered and violent. Her expression was intent, as though she were... reading.

Reading chaos?

Taiyi followed her gaze, but at first he could see nothing. Yet when he immersed his mind in that peculiar state of perception, he gradually noticed something.

Deep within those violent chaotic currents lay an extremely ancient kind of "information." They were remnants from the creation of heaven and earth, traces left behind by the evolution of the Great Dao, the most primordial embryonic forms of the laws of heaven and earth. Nuwa was observing those things. From the violence of chaos, she was interpreting the most fundamental mysteries of heaven and earth.

Is this her path to sainthood? Taiyi thought.

Just then, an especially violent current suddenly surged toward them from ahead.

It differed from every current they had encountered before—it was dark gold, its surface flowing with fine patterns of lightning. Wherever it passed, even chaos itself twisted and wailed. More strangely, a deep roar could faintly be heard from within it, like the lingering echo of some ancient existence.

Di Jun's expression changed slightly, and he raised his hand, about to strike with full force.

"Wait." Nuwa suddenly spoke.

She stepped forward half a pace, and the phantom of the Mountain and River Diagram rippled softly. Rather than meeting it head-on, the faint flowing-light barrier moved toward the dark-gold current like a wave of water.

What happened next made Taiyi's pupils contract.

The instant the dark-gold current struck the barrier, there was no explosion and no collision. Instead... it melted. Like ice and snow under a warm sun, the violent current gradually dissolved and broke apart, eventually turning into the purest chaos origin, which the barrier absorbed and transformed.

The entire process was eerily quiet.

Nuwa withdrew her hand, and the barrier returned to normal. Her face showed little emotion as she merely said softly, "This region of chaos... contains the lingering resonance of axe marks from when Great God Pangu created heaven and earth."

Fuxi nodded. "Indeed. The rhythm of that current just now resembled certain Dao traces deep within Buzhou Mountain."

Di Jun gave Nuwa a long look but said nothing.

But waves churned within Taiyi's heart. The lingering resonance of Pangu's axe marks? Nuwa could sense even that, and neutralize it? This affinity and understanding of the origins of heaven and earth had already surpassed the scope of an ordinary Grand Unity Golden Immortal.

He suddenly recalled the accounts from his previous life describing Nuwa "molding earth to create humans." It was not merely making little clay figures. It was granting life to lifeless matter, creating an entirely new race, touching upon the authority over the origin of life itself. And the understanding and guidance of chaos origin she displayed now might well be the embryonic form of that authority.

The five continued onward.

The deeper they traveled, the stranger the sights of chaos became. At times, they encountered vast regions of crystallized laws—those crystals floated like icicles, each reflecting a different fragment of a law. At other times, they entered zones of distorted spacetime, where scenes of the past, present, and future flashed together and left them dizzy.

Nuwa remained the most composed among them. No matter what anomaly they encountered, she could find the most "appropriate" response—not the harshest, nor the cleverest, but the one most in harmony with the rhythm of heaven and earth, consuming the least while achieving the best result.

Taiyi observed and learned in silence. At the same time, the deduction model in his mind concerning "how to act in Zixiao Palace" was quietly adjusting as well—incorporating Nuwa's way of "following the Heavenly Dao." Certain steps he had originally considered risky now seemed to have safer solutions.

After flying for an unknown length of time, the chaos ahead suddenly calmed.

It was not complete stillness, but rather... an ordered calm. Chaotic qi still flowed, yet its paths began to display a certain regularity, as though some invisible force were channeling and regulating it.

The guiding spiritual light from Fuxi's Eight Trigrams Disk suddenly brightened at that moment.

"We're here," he said.

The five looked ahead at the same time.

The chaos there seemed to be parted by an invisible hand. Amid rippling layers of waves, the outline of an ancient, unadorned palace gradually emerged.

Its bricks were blue-gray, its eaves simple, without a single unnecessary decoration. Yet this seemingly ordinary palace emitted a majesty that made every heart tremble—it was the manifestation of the Heavenly Dao itself in this place.

Zixiao Palace.

The palace gates remained shut, but many figures had already gathered before them. The Three Pure Ones stood together, their auras as deep as the sea; Jieyin and Zhunti stood off to one side, one wearing a bitter expression while the other's eyes flickered; Hongyun and Zhen Yuanzi conversed quietly; Styx stood alone in a corner, his blood-red Daoist robe utterly unmoving amid the chaotic currents...

When Di Jun's group of five landed, many gazes turned toward them.

Taiyi's expression remained calm, and he even nodded to several acquaintances in greeting. Yet from the corner of his eye, he continued watching Nuwa.

He saw that, the instant she stepped into this "ordered chaos" before Zixiao Palace, the ripples of resonance between Nuwa and heaven and earth suddenly became clear for a moment—though they quickly withdrew again. But in that instant, Taiyi truly "saw" it: the void around her arranged and combined itself of its own accord, forming an extraordinarily profound formation.

The formation vanished in a flash, but Taiyi remembered it.

It was neither an attack nor a defense. It was more like... a kind of "recognition." As though this domain belonging to the Heavenly Dao were confirming her qualifications.

Nuwa seemed to sense something and glanced sideways at Taiyi. Her gaze remained calm, but Taiyi could feel that beneath that calmness was a trace of understanding.

She knew he had seen it.

Yet she said nothing. She merely gave a slight nod, then looked away toward the tightly shut palace gates.

Taiyi silently drew a breath.

He had seen much along this journey. The dangers of chaos, the strangeness of spacetime, and... the embryonic form of a future saint before she took that final step.

And what he had to do was complete an act of "defiance" against the Heavenly Dao within this palace where the Heavenly Dao manifested.

How ironic.

He raised his head toward the tightly shut gates of Zixiao Palace. Deep in his golden eyes flashed a calmness bordering on madness.

The gates were about to open.