This destructive force was not a power that existed in this era. It had come from a distant age, carried here by karmic ties.
This phenomenon gave Zhao Cheng much to ponder.
At that moment, as he looked at Zi Cheng still swaddled in his cradle, he felt as though he were looking into a mirror.
Even in the instant their four eyes met, their gazes seemed to touch for a moment.
Zhao Cheng's gaze was as profound as a multiverse, filled with endless lights and shadows flickering into existence and extinction. Zi Cheng's, meanwhile, was pure and bright, like a pool of clear spring water.
Yet what Zhao Cheng was looking at was not Zi Cheng himself.
It was the cause that had given birth to Zi Cheng.
Zi Cheng was him, yet not entirely him.
Their relationship resembled that between the original self and an other self.
The Sword Seed was merely a vessel, carrying a thread of cause from the distant past. Then, relying on the Sword Seed, that cause crossed the long years and became fruit, thus giving rise to Zi Cheng.
This process was very similar to the one by which Zhao Cheng had once fashioned an other-self body out of nothing, only far subtler and more mysterious.
But Zhao Cheng could be certain that Zi Cheng's cause had not been created by "himself."
Because it came from an incomparably distant era, one in which he had not yet even been born.
Still, Zhao Cheng had long had his suspicions.
From the "other self" in the murals he had seen before, as well as the transcendent qualities displayed by his Panel, time might not necessarily be a river. It might also be a ring.
Just as he himself relied on the Panel's mechanisms to return