As his words fell, time within the hall seemed to stagnate for an instant.
All the flowing golden threads froze in midair, and even the flickering of the nine stellar cores paused briefly.
When the Great Dao Venerable spoke, his tone remained calm, yet it carried a weight buried in the deepest layers of time.
Before Xu Changqing, he recounted an old tale.
A very, very long time ago, in the era before the Northern Dipper Star Region became the Northern Dipper Star Region, the Four Mortal Domains did not yet look as they did today.
Back then, the Heavenly Origin Starfield was still the origin center where all worlds came to pay homage, while the Big Dipper was merely seven ordinary stars.
At the Great Dao Venerable's side stood another person, equally dazzling.
The Lord of Creation Dao.
Creation Dao had once been one of the oldest inheritances in the Four Mortal Domains.
It differed from the Northern Dipper Immortal Mansion's Dao of Order and from the Azure Emperor's Dao of wood-element vitality. It was an independent Great Dao that pushed "Creation" itself to the utmost extreme.
The core principle of Creation Dao was only one sentence:
Creation was neither birth nor death; it was the beginning of all things, and also the end of all things.
Within the system of Creation Dao, Creation Force was not an appendage of the Wood-Element Law, nor an extension of life force. It was the primordial state before all laws were born.
All things were born from Creation and would ultimately return to Creation.
Unfortunately, this philosophy was utterly incompatible with the Great Dao Venerable's pursuit of "absolute order."
What the Great Dao Venerable wanted was orderly time, controllable causality, and all things operating beneath the watch of the River of Time.