Having just passed the Dao-Proving Tribulation, before making the Ultimate Leap and achieving Heavenly Heart Unification, he was at his weakest. Heavenly Venerable Xiaoyao reappeared, intending to seize his body!
Fortunately, he had long been on guard against the Human Tribulation after the Dao-Proving Tribulation and had prepared contingencies, so he was not caught off guard. Perhaps in Heavenly Venerable Xiaoyao's eyes, he was not the prey best suited to his tastes, so Xiaoyao had never gone all out with Ultimate Sublimation.
In the stalemate, he was unwilling to undergo Disintegration Reincarnation, fake his death, and begin another Lifetime just like that. After weighing his options, he ultimately consumed only some crimson light points as fuel and used the Soul Pearl's miraculous power to scare Heavenly Venerable Xiaoyao away...
Yet he had not expected that after the wolves left, tigers and leopards would come. The Undying Heavenly Emperor launched a sinister attack and pierced straight through the Origin of his vessel with a single slash...
Left with no choice, he could only activate the Soul Pearl once more, undergo Disintegration Reincarnation, and fake his death to escape. His vessel, vital blood, Origin, Dao Fruit, and fragments of his primordial spirit were all divided up by the Undying Heavenly Emperor and the others.
However, the Soul Pearl's energy had already been depleted before this. Being able to support his Disintegration Reincarnation and escape was already an immense stroke of fortune.
The crimson light points had nearly run dry. Though he could still reincarnate, the subsequent chain of processes, such as unraveling the mystery within the womb, could no longer be completed...
Moreover, the moment of Disintegration Reincarnation had been fraught with twists and turns. The Soul Pearl lacked energy, and its protection of his true soul was limited. Only a wisp of his true self's remnant soul, carrying the pearl and crucial memories, escaped.
The remaining portions of his true soul, together with that Lifetime's primordial spirit, had either been shattered on the spot by the Undying Heavenly Emperor's methods and vanished without a trace, or fallen into his hands...
With his true soul incomplete, reincarnating only brought even more unforeseen complications. Unable to unravel the mystery within the womb, he would no longer be himself. With his final thought, he activated the Soul Pearl and halted the reincarnation.
Within the void and coldness, Tan Lin, who had recalled most of his past, fell silent.
At its root, he had ended up in his current state because he had been too greedy and insufficiently decisive at critical moments.
But when Dao Attainment had been only a hair's breadth away, who could give it up so easily?
The Shrouding the Heavens of his "previous life" had only been a novel, but the world he now inhabited was real!
Anything could happen at any moment.
Logically speaking, although the Undying Heavenly Emperor had embarked upon a path to immortality by bathing in the Origins and vital blood of Ancient Emperors, constantly transforming and undergoing Nirvana, he had not yet been a true emperor when Tan Lin was attacked.
For the Undying Heavenly Emperor, ambushing him had not offered much value for the risk. It could even expose his purpose and make him a target for all!
That had also been one of the reasons Tan Lin had chosen to continue pursuing Dao Attainment at the time.
But the truth was that this undead bird really had made his move!
That left only two possibilities.
First, when Tan Lin had used the Soul Pearl's miraculous power to scare off that old bastard Xiaoyao, he had leaked a trace of the pearl's secret and been noticed.
Or perhaps, during the growth of his three Lifetimes of "Reincarnation," he had accidentally exposed something unusual at some point, causing the Undying Heavenly Emperor to ultimately set his sights on him...
Perhaps when I encountered that old bastard Xiaoyao, I should have decisively undergone Disintegration Reincarnation at once... But Dao Attainment was only one step away. How could I have accepted such a disintegration?!
No amount of money can buy hindsight...
To someone Dao-Attainment Imminent, the Ultimate Leap was no less coveted than immortality was by Heavenly Venerables and Ancient Emperors.
Hard. How unimaginably hard it was in the Primordial Era...
Tan Lin's remnant soul sighed deeply. Only someone who had truly experienced a Dao-Proving Tribulation, without companions of the same level standing watch and helping them, could understand how difficult things had been for the Lunar Holy Emperor and Solar Holy Emperor back then!
As his thoughts drifted, he slowly calmed himself.
Fortunately, unlike other cultivators, all his crucial memories were carried within the Soul Pearl rather than his Sea of Consciousness or primordial spirit.
Otherwise, if the Undying Heavenly Emperor, Heavenly Venerable Xiaoyao, and the others had glimpsed more great secrets through the gaps created when his Sea of Consciousness, primordial spirit, and true soul shattered, then even if he had reincarnated, he likely would not have survived until the day of his birth...
His regret gradually faded, settling into calmness.
After living through three Lifetimes here and enduring so much tempering, Tan Lin's Dao Heart was not weak.
The loneliness of being alone in the void through endless years, unable to sense the outside world, would have driven him mad from suffocation by now if he had been the person he was when he had first crossed over.
Facing the current situation calmly was the proper course.
As for the past?
Once the conditions ripened, there would naturally come a day of reckoning.
Having settled his thoughts for the time being, he began devoting his awareness and energy to studying his current circumstances.
And the first thing he naturally focused on was the All-Causes Soul Pearl, which had protected this wisp of his remnant soul from perishing!
His intuition told him that the fundamental reason his remnant soul's consciousness had awakened while he still could not sense the outside environment was most likely this pearl.
"The Causal Points are full... These light points seem to be a little darker in color..."
Tan Lin carefully observed the differences between the Soul Pearl now and before he had lost consciousness, frowning slightly.
"After I died, could it be that the Human Emperor Hall was neither suppressed nor destroyed by those enemies, and is still continuously generating large numbers of Causal Points?"
When a person died, their karmic ties naturally vanished.
Based on his previous experience with Disintegration Reincarnation, after disintegration, the Causal Lines from a past Lifetime would turn from bright to dim. They would still produce crimson light points, but at less than a tenth of the efficiency they had while he was alive...
But he also had a guess. If, in his new Lifetime, he were to light a lantern in a latrine and openly reveal his identity to the entire universe, those hidden Causal Lines would probably light up again.
"So, just how long have I been asleep?"
Tan Lin sank into contemplation.
But in the next instant, his remnant soul's expression changed slightly!
Whoosh!
Inside the All-Causes Soul Pearl, the crimson light points suddenly seemed to come alive, like fireflies flashing with strange crimson radiance.
Buzz...
Then the Soul Pearl trembled lightly. Those densely packed light points gathered toward its core, merging one by one before continuously compressing, and then...
Boom!!!
Crimson filled all of Tan Lin's consciousness.
Light and shadow shifted.
When the crimson that had shrouded Tan Lin's sensory vision faded, the sounds of the outside world swept over him like a tidal wave.
Rustle... rustle...
Rumble, rumble...
"Move aside!!"
"Hurry! Hurry..."
"Get out of the way..."
"People from the Feathered Immortal Dynasty are here..."
The long-lost sound of wind stirring vegetation, dust motes drifting through the air, cartwheels rolling over bluestone pavement, and the panicked voices of common folk all around him.
The Feathered Immortal Dynasty?
Could this already be the Ancient Era?
Why was he attached to a ring?
Wait... bronze material... Could it really be that much of a coincidence?
This girl was...
Light and shadow shifted outside.
The feeling of being separated by an entire Lifetime left Tan Lin still adjusting for the moment.
Of course, he was multitasking. Part of his attention remained fixed on the changes in the All-Causes Soul Pearl.
The Soul Pearl was the supreme treasure upon which he relied to survive in this world. Nothing could go wrong with it!
He could not do without it for his future reincarnation and rebirth!
As for living another Lifetime on his own?
Sorry, setting aside whether he even had the ability and opportunity.
His primordial spirit from his previous Lifetime and part of his true soul had scattered. His Dao Fruit and cultivation had long since been dismantled, while his vital blood and Origin had been thoroughly divided up. By now, they had probably all been digested.
If this wisp of remnant soul left the Soul Pearl now, it might disperse between heaven and earth the very next moment.
Wait... where were his Causal Points?
Within the void, Tan Lin stared at the All-Causes Soul Pearl, now empty of crimson light points, his remnant soul's brows tightly furrowed.
No, it was not completely empty.
More accurately, there was still one light point flickering within the Soul Pearl.
But compared to the densely packed splendor from before, that single light point was practically negligible in Tan Lin's eyes.
What caught his attention, however, was that if the Soul Pearl Barrier and Causal Points had previously been light crimson, they were now a nearly somber deep crimson!
"This is..."
After studying it for a moment, Tan Lin suddenly had a thought.
Whoosh...
The next moment.
That Deep Crimson Light Point actually ignored the barrier, drifting out from the Soul Pearl and landing in the palm of his transparent remnant soul.
Immediately after.
Splash!
It seemed that he had triggered the Soul Pearl's transformed ability—[All-Cause Vision]!
Through Tan Lin's "eyes," the level of his vision rose and rose and rose...
In the end, his remnant soul became the center, from which countless gray, dim Causal Lines extended, each carrying a faint crimson sheen.
Formless crimson mist curled around his remnant soul. One end of every one of those lines seemed faintly connected to the All-Causes Soul Pearl.
To him, these lines were like Anchor Points, allowing him to determine his current location.
Combined with his observations of the outside environment, he inferred that he was currently in the Southern Region of Eastern Wasteland on the Big Dipper.
As his thoughts shifted, Tan Lin did not leave the state of [All-Cause Vision].
At that moment, an incomparably illusory deep-crimson dial was clearly visible upon the Soul Pearl's surface. It emitted a faint, gentle glow that made his remnant soul feel warm.
Its current mark was—One.
The entire dial had a total of three hundred and sixty-five tick marks, while the remaining three hundred and sixty-four were all unlit.
Swish...
Tan Lin shifted his vision slightly and looked outward along those Causal Lines.
Several thick, dim lines among them drew his attention the most.
One extended westward, with Branch Lines from all directions linked to it.
Through his perception, Tan Lin knew that this line most likely pointed toward the Human Emperor Hall he had established in his previous Lifetime. It was located in the Central Plains and had somehow remained standing for hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years after his death?
Even today, it was indirectly providing him with heavily diminished Causal Points.
However, the tangled and murky nature of this Causal Line sounded a warning bell in Tan Lin's mind.
"Sure enough, although the Human Emperor Hall's lineage still remains, something has likely changed..."
As his thoughts surged, Tan Lin looked toward the other ends of the remaining thickest Causal Lines.
These lines emitted deep malice. They were black lines of evil karma: one connected to the Sea of Reincarnation in a Restricted Area, one led to the Outer Domain, and two others extended into other Restricted Areas.
It was worth noting that whether it was the tangled Causal Line or the black lines of evil karma, as long as they could be maintained, they could generate Causal Points.
It was simply that such Causal Points were incredibly dim and tangled. To become usable crimson points, they needed to settle over time and diminish in quantity. Roughly five light points had to merge into one Light Crimson Point.
As for these current Deep Crimson Points, he had no idea how many were needed for the moment.
"What a pity. If the Soul Pearl had possessed this ability in my previous Lifetime, seeking fortune and avoiding disaster would have been effortless. I would not have fallen to this state..."
"The urgent matter is to find a way to repair this remnant soul, then reincarnate. Of course, during that time, I need to accumulate more Causal Points..."
Within the void, Tan Lin slowly withdrew from the state of [All-Cause Vision].
He had already discovered that activating [All-Cause Vision] consumed crimson light points.
In that brief moment, the radiance of the Deep Crimson Light Point had dimmed by an almost imperceptible trace.
Though it was very slow, that was only in comparison to the level of this Deep Crimson Causal Point.
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