Ancient texts recorded: "Above, below, and the four directions are called space; all that has passed and all that is to come are called time."
The mysteries of space and time lay within the universe.
After Ji Zhao fell asleep in the Void Heavenly Realm, his soul scattered into white points of light like a celestial maiden scattering flowers. The lights followed the Rule Chains he had already mastered into the underlying layers of the world.
If reality was a finished game, this place was its endless underlying code.
The sun, moon, and stars, mountains, rivers, plants, life and death, flourishing and withering-all were born and destroyed here.
In Ji Zhao's eyes, there were no towering mountains or surging rivers here. All that existed were Rule Chains shimmering with divine light in every color.
They crisscrossed, intricate but not chaotic, filled only with the beauty of harmonious order.
Halos swelled along the chains, changing color three times in an instant.
The surrounding chaotic power also began to follow trajectories. Fine, fragmented paths of light emerged along the halos, converging on a central point.
After Ji Zhao's soul appeared here, the system delivered a message he had not heard in a long time.
[The origin of the world, the mother of all things, the truth of the world has finally appeared before your eyes.]
It was a rare message, tinged with feeling.
Without form or substance, Ji Zhao extended his divine sense toward the surrounding Rule Chains, stirring ripples as though he had dropped a pebble into water.
His goal was to discover just what that strand of Mandate of Heaven Purple Qi that had appeared in the Grasslands represented.
His purpose was to discover just what role the strand of Mandate of Heaven Purple Qi he had canceled