That was right. Where had the Dao Venerable come from? Chu Tiange and the others, living inside the book, did not know, but of course the novel had actually covered it. Chu Ge had to lay out the structure of the Heavenly Realm for his readers.
In theory, it made sense for the Dao Venerable to reside beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens.
But when Qiu Wuji opened the Heavenly Realm Arc of Boundless Chu Tian and read the description of the Heaven Beyond Heaven where the Dao Venerable lived, something felt wrong.
First, she knew Chu Ge had never intended to write nested layers of worlds, piling one Heaven Beyond Heaven atop another. The Heavenly Realm simply did not have that structure. So why had this thing appeared?
She did know Chu Ge had plans for a Netherworld. The Buddha Ancestor's reincarnation, the Vermilion Bird's guidance of souls, and the Green Lamp and Karmic Fire he had assigned to Little Flame and his wife were clearly all conceived with that in mind. Yet neither a Netherworld nor a hell had appeared anywhere in the book. Where were they?
The exceptionally clever Qiu Qiu soon realized that the Heaven Beyond Heaven that should not exist-whether it had nine levels, thirty-three, or thirty-six-might very well actually be the Netherworld, the eighteen levels of hell.
The Dao Venerable had occupied an undeveloped Netherworld, believed it to be a heaven beyond the heavens, and had been helping Chu Ge develop it for years...
After all, there was no distinction between "up" and "down" between plane boundaries. Passing through the void brought one into another plane. Where was heaven, and where was earth?
Then there were the "Thirty-Three Heavens" of both Buddhism and Daoism, which both included the "six heavens of the desire realm and eighteen