Warm liquid enveloped his Dharma body and consciousness. Xu Xuan slowly opened his eyes to a sea of white light.
Gradually, he could hear sounds: people moving about, men and women laughing and talking, their voices indistinct.
"It's a boy."
After that voice rang out, everything dissolved. His consciousness returned, and he was still sinking through the lake.
It was a past life.
Xu Xuan sensed it in his heart. He was still himself, but the endlessly changing waters of reincarnation enveloped him, dragging him farther down, into greater depths. His mind sank once more and arrived somewhere else.
Before him lay a boundless, freezing sea. Glowing glaciers stood in the far distance beneath a dim sky. Purple shock thunder arose over the sea, surged into the heavens, then returned, cycling without change.
Xu Xuan wore purple-crimson immortal robes, his Seven Luminaries Crown glittering. He stood at the ultimate point of shock thunder's cycle, with the manifestations of the Great Marsh Thunder Dragon, the Chaos Divine Being, the Rainbow Horse Thunder Chariot, the Heavenly Drum, and the Kui Sound beside him.
Countless gazes turned toward him. His expression was composed as he silently surveyed this world. When he spoke, his voice was a man's, clear and resonant.
"Today, [Upper Successive Union] seeks metal in the Northern Sea and invites all paths to witness the ceremony."
A spirit sword wreathed in revolving black and white Qi was summoned. Yin and yang stirred against each other, a strand of dark azure Qi transformed within them, and shock thunder emerged.
Vast, inexhaustible memories and history swept over Xu Xuan. His brief lifetime could not possibly resist them. Everything seemed predetermined, erasing his own existence bit by bit.
Xu Xuan gradually began to accept that he was merely a reincarnated body, his ignorance now