Ancient Web

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Origin and Confinement

Ancient Web identifies itself as an imprint left by Ancient Web Across Time, which it describes as timeless Causality spanning space and time. It claims to have been confined in the Heavenly Court Ruins since its creation. After nearly endless years there, it abandoned its identification with the original god and developed a desire to experience the outside world 226 351.

Its precise nature remains disputed. Li Shun questions whether an imprint should possess such extensive power and independent will. Ancient Web explicitly denies being the original Ancient Web Across Time, but says that a fuller explanation of its identity exceeds Li Shun’s ability to bear knowledge about gods 320.

Encounter with Li Shun

Li Shun discovers the pattern while exploring the Heavenly Court Ruins in the Primordial Illusion Realm. It abruptly springs from a ruin wall into him and becomes impossible to locate through internal inspection. Fearing contamination of his true body, he refuses to return that fragment of consciousness to himself 223.

During the long confinement that follows, the pattern intermittently enhances his comprehension. Li Shun connects it to his completion of the Emperor-Slaying Sword Technique’s final move, Mutual Return, and subsequently tests its assistance on Threefold Self-Reflection. He uses these periods of clarity while resisting the dependence they provoke 224 225.

When his thought-incarnation approaches death, the pattern leaves his body and negotiates through writing on a wall. It proposes becoming a Square Inch Puppet as a means of leaving the ruins. Li Shun eventually withdraws his consciousness into Square Inch, leaves an empty vessel for it to occupy, and successfully captures the inhabited vessel 226 228.

Adviser within Square Inch

Ancient Web becomes Li Shun’s source of explanations about Chaos, divine power, primordial inheritances, and Great Qian’s concealed foundations. Their cooperation is uneasy: Li Shun suspects that its proposal to capture the aging Left Chancellor, Gu Zhizhong, could deliberately push him into danger and dependence on the puppet method. He rejects the immediate plan 233 240.

Its advice also reveals hazards Li Shun had not anticipated. Knowledge of Chaos brings erosion upon him, while briefly carrying Ancient Web outside Square Inch attracts the attention of the Imperial Academy’s surviving Thunder Pool. Ancient Web warns that the former Thunder Jade Palace still classifies it as an Outer God and a priority target 234 266.

Mingxing Wangyu and Soul-Travel Research

Examining the Mind-Communicating Bead, Ancient Web identifies material from the fallen Outer God Mingxing Wangyu. The discovery disturbs its usual detachment. Unable to deduce how the god died, it bargains with Li Shun: it will help decipher interworld travel, and Li Shun will investigate the death once he has sufficient means of self-protection 317 318.

Its research establishes that the bead is an access terminal rather than a self-contained travel treasure. Great Qian’s Heavenly Dao supplies the underlying mechanism and protection. Ancient Web therefore proposes studying that mechanism and reproducing it through another world’s Heavenly Dao 319.

To approach Great Qian’s Heavenly Dao safely, it enters the mortal world through Fang Han and travels toward Mount Taibai. Rather than seize someone else’s body, it reshapes its own flesh and soul through local mountains and waters, making its native identity genuine in the Heavenly Dao’s judgment 330 349.

Rebirth and Experimental Worlds

After its rebirth, Ancient Web explains that Great Qian’s Heavenly Dao enables soul travel by acting as Mingxing Wangyu. It also reveals a personal objective: testing whether it can imitate the fallen god itself and thereby become stronger. Li Shun agrees to help find suitable experimental worlds 350 351.

Using Heaven-and-Earth Mystic Yellow Qi, Ancient Web locates the Disorderly Reincarnation World near the Primordial Ancient Domain. It guides Li Shun toward the world, interprets its hostile rules, and develops a strategy for seizing its authority and surviving divine power 353 360 363 366 377.

Appearance

Ancient Web changes between a web-like mark, a human puppet vessel, and a vast luminous net 223 228 350.

• Original mark: An eerie web pattern on a ruin wall, capable of moving independently and entering a host 223 226.
• First puppet vessel: Bears Li Shun’s face, but its cold, inhuman lucidity makes the resemblance unsettling 228.
• Portable pattern: Can peel away from Enlightenment Seeker like a tattoo and attach inconspicuously beneath Li Shun’s clothing 266.
• Reconstructed body: Emerges from river water and is clothed by green light drawn from the forest; Li Shun admires its perfected appearance 349.
• Expanded web: Contains countless nested nets. Even its finest apparent threads consist of hundreds or thousands of smaller webs, and prolonged inspection makes Li Shun dizzy 350.

Personality

Ancient Web usually speaks with cold, mechanical rationality. It treats information, cultivation, and survival as problems to analyze, but its detachment includes considerable arrogance: it distinguishes its cosmic perspective from that of powerful mortals confined to individual worlds 228 360.

It is helpful without being disinterested. Its assistance with soul travel serves its own wish to imitate Mingxing Wangyu, and it sometimes withholds warnings because it believes Li Shun would otherwise refuse a useful experience. Li Shun repeatedly challenges this approach and demands advance notice of risks 350 361.

Its emotional reserve is not absolute. Primordial witch inheritances produce unusual ripples in its voice, while Mingxing Wangyu’s corpse provokes a marked personal response. Over time, it also becomes concerned about the consequences of Li Shun’s ambitions and hopes that Great Qian will remain stable enough not to drive him toward extreme measures 278 318 351.

Abilities & Skills

Causal Deduction

Ancient Web describes its specialty as deducing past causality rather than reliably foreseeing the future 228.

• Reconstructs hidden mechanisms: Analyzes the Mind-Communicating Bead and identifies its dependence on Great Qian’s Heavenly Dao 319.
• Recognizes primordial traces: Identifies the Imperial Academy site as likely part of the Thunder Jade Palace from its lingering wind-and-thunder aura 266.
• Interprets apparent prophecy: Argues that Shang Qingqiu’s foresight is likely highly informed deduction supported by the Imperial Academy, not an immutable view of the future 360.
• Limits: Cannot explain Mingxing Wangyu’s death, how Emperor Gan acquired god-comparable strength, or Shang Qingqiu’s apparent retention of memories through a rewind 312 318 356.
• Unpredictable variables: Even an Outer God cannot perfectly predict a world’s development, because influences from Chaos can overturn its course 360.

Enlightenment Enhancement

Before its capture, the pattern grants Li Shun temporary clarity far beyond his ordinary cultivation perspective 225.

• Helps him deduce Mutual Return, improving a Heaven and Earth Realm sword ability 224.
• Makes the structure and law-manipulation of Threefold Self-Reflection briefly comprehensible 225.
• Enables him to consolidate his theoretical understanding toward the limits of the Spiritual Resonance Realm 225.
• Limits: Its assistance is intermittent and quickly expires when examining profound Sage abilities. Li Shun considers depletion of the pattern’s power a possible explanation 225.
• Risk: Losing the enhanced clarity provokes intense craving; Li Shun uses meditation and discipline to resist dependence 225.

Divine-Power Techniques

Ancient Web teaches methods based on the laws and divine power of the former Primordial Continent 267 268.

• Divine-power sensing: Supplies a soul-resonance art, with detailed diagrams, that allows Li Shun to perceive and gather faint divine-power remnants invisible to ordinary methods 267.
• Through the Present to the Ancient: Teaches Li Shun to merge divine sense with divine power, shape it into a web, and use a beacon to open a Primordial Illusion Realm 269.
• Temporal targeting: A fixed historical coordinate or suitable object restricts the illusion to events from that time, reducing the uncertainty associated with recreating all history together 268.
• Limits: The ritual imitates Ancient Web Across Time’s innate connection between antiquity and the present; it does not directly borrow the original god’s power. Understanding its principles is more demanding than following its steps 268.
• Learning difficulty: Even with instruction, Li Shun fails to master the initial divine-sense fusion after more than a month 269.

Body and Soul Reconstruction

Ancient Web uses Great Qian’s landscape to remake its body and soul with the world’s native aura, avoiding the crude substitution of body-snatching 330.

• Gives vitality to Mount Taibai before dissolving its body into a stream and undergoing rebirth 349.
• Uses its exceptional affinity with Heaven and Earth to obtain an extraordinary lifespan-borrowing concession 349 351.
• Explains that reproducing the perfected body would require White Mountain Black Water to generate spiritual essence again, taking at least a century 349.
• Remains connected to Li Shun’s Square Inch imprint despite gaining a new body 349.

Heavenly Dao Analysis and Imitation

Ancient Web can study a Heavenly Dao’s operating structure and propose ways to reproduce specific functions 319 350.

• Research access: Uses Lifespan Borrowing to examine Great Qian’s Heavenly Dao and uncover its imitation of Mingxing Wangyu 350 352.
• Alternative systems: Proposes either constructing a private Dao web or copying Great Qian’s soul-travel function into another world’s Dao web 319.
• Corrosion safeguards: Recommends testing through a separate world rather than risking the Martial World directly 350.
• Personal advancement: Hopes that acting as Mingxing Wangyu will deepen its comprehension of that Dao and strengthen its remnant existence; it does not expect to become the true Mingxing Wangyu 351.
• Limits: Li Shun cannot comprehend the full mechanism even when Ancient Web demonstrates it through hundreds of millions of flashing points 350.

Chaos Observation and Guidance

Ancient Web can consume Mystic Yellow Qi to observe beyond Square Inch and search for worlds within Chaos 353.

• Detects Outer God traces and uses their distribution to search for disordered worlds that such beings generally avoid 352 353.
• Locates the Disorderly Reincarnation World after a prolonged search 355 360.
• Creates a disorienting imitation of Chaos to indicate the destination and guide Li Shun’s divine intent 360 361.
• Advises sending only a fragment of divine soul, protecting the main body and Square Inch from exposure 360.
• Risk: Even simulated Chaos erodes Li Shun’s sense of identity and purpose. Knowledge of real Chaos can likewise cause corruption 360 364.

Primordial Knowledge and Strategy

Ancient Web interprets ancient inheritances, divine defenses, and the surviving power of fallen gods 277 278 364.

• Shamanic inheritances: Knows the Primordial Ten Blessings, but refuses to transmit them as a substitute for proper inheritance. Instead, it deduces a Source-Tracing Secret Art to detect related inheritances through same-world bloodline resonance 277 278.
• Outer God defenses: Explains that black Annihilation Mystic Thunder is a pure destructive countermeasure against Outer God invasion, unlike ordinary tribulations that retain a chance of survival 277.
• Ancient treasures: Connects Turtle Treasure’s membrane to the Myriad Treasures Furnace and identifies it as a weakened experimental Heaven and Earth Membrane 293 294.
• Fallen gods: Explains the persistence of divine imprints, possible revival, and the distinction between rebirth through living beings and return from Chaos 364 382.
• Reincarnation conquest: Recommends combining a life-harvesting Agricultural School method with adapted Sage abilities. Estimates an 80% chance of ruling the world within a century, while warning about three exceptionally experienced survivors 366.
• Information concealment: Suggests rewriting a detached thought’s understanding of Square Inch as an ordinary powerful world, misleading anyone who probes it 369.
• Reincarnation authority: Explains that awakening the creator god’s power within an inhabitant’s soul is the first step toward claiming authority. Absorbing that power from others would permanently end their reincarnation 377.

Restrictions and Vulnerabilities

• Bound to Square Inch: Its puppet status prevents it from refusing Li Shun’s questions; their exchanges also establish limits concerning survival-endangering information 234 240.
• Restricted awareness: While confined within Square Inch, it cannot observe Great Qian without Li Shun’s permission or an authorized external manifestation 266.
• No direct puppet-mediated influence: Li Shun’s attempt to observe the Great Dao through Enlightenment Seeker yields no insight because Square Inch blocks the transmission, confirming its control over the puppet 242.
• Heavenly detection: Before reconstruction, its foreign thought-born body risks classification as an Outworld Heavenly Demon. Its Outer God imprint also draws the Thunder Jade Palace’s destructive attention 266 330.
• Dangerous explanations: Accurate answers are not necessarily safe; hearing truths beyond Li Shun’s capacity can expose him to Chaos erosion 234 364 382.
• Incomplete historical knowledge: It did not witness the final catastrophe that shattered the Primordial Continent 233.

Relationships

• Li Shun — Master, host, and research partner. Their relationship develops from containment and suspicion into familiar cooperation, but Li Shun continues to question its motives and risk disclosures 228 240 350 361.
• Ancient Web Across Time — Original Outer God from which the imprint arose. Ancient Web denies being that god’s true body and says it has relinquished its former identification with it 320 351.
• Fang Han — Fellow Square Inch Puppet controlled by Li Shun’s will; summons Enlightenment Seeker into Great Qian for its native-body reconstruction 330.
• Mingxing Wangyu — Fallen Outer God whose death Ancient Web wishes to investigate and whose Dao it hopes to approach through imitation 318 351.
• Great Qian Heavenly Dao — Research subject and lifespan lender. Ancient Web negotiates an exceptional borrowing allowance and uses the contact to study its hidden soul-travel mechanism 349 350 352.

Notable Quotes

“Although I can exhaust all manner of past causality through deduction, it is difficult to fathom the unpredictable variables of the future. Just call me [Ancient Web].” 228

“To hold a seat within Square Inch is worth more than a god of Chaos who has endured a hundred million years.” 320

“Strength and vision are not entirely equivalent.” 360