River of Space-Time

Biodata

Nature and Structure

• Temporal reach: The River extends through past, present, and future rather than belonging to a single historical period 76.
• Main and Sub-Space-Time branches: The River in a Sub-Space-Time differs from the River in Main Space-Time, but both share the same origin. The Main Space-Time River can contact its counterparts in every Sub-Space-Time 412 624.
• Depths of the River: Its early gift distinguishes a world's River from a deeper region where Su Wen's soul and true spirit receive a baptism of space-time power 57 59.
• Consciousness: Some powerful beings believe the River operates instinctively or possesses a consciousness tightly restricted by space-time order. Its negotiations with Su Wen demonstrate deliberate communication, bargaining, and intervention 595 624.
• Claimed organization: Its messages describe personnel, Fate Seats, Intern Fate Seats, and a review department. Su Wen eventually suspects this bureaucracy is a performance devised by the River rather than an independent organization 692 733 734.

Space-Time Rules

Detection, Rejection, and Return

The River detects travelers who do not belong to the current point in time and can reject their souls and true spirits 7 17.

• Wealth Source protects Su Wen's soul and true spirit during his early returns 7 17.
• A local River can notify the Main Space-Time River to receive him, allowing the two branches to coordinate his passage home 249 336.
• Remaining in a foreign space-time can provoke potentially lethal backlash. The River describes this as an instinctive rejection by space-time and offers paid extensions 374.
• Returning cargo is inspected because future objects can disrupt Main Space-Time 249 491.

Gaze and Attention Penalties

Repeated interference attracts the River's attention and increases Wealth Source expenditure related to space-time. These effects are called “buffs” by the interface despite their financial disadvantage 7 17.

Sycee later persuades the River to withdraw its gaze without charging Su Wen 76.

Advancement in Sub-Space-Time

• Su Wen can gain experience and advance while Wealth Disrupts Space-Time is active, increasing the cost of later journeys 57.
• The River explains that accumulating experience beyond ten times his limit can trigger an involuntary, irreversible advancement ceremony 249.
• During that ceremony, it controls the surrounding order and prevents outside forces from interrupting or killing him, but he loses the right to force a return 249.
• For a journey involving more than one million Wealth Source in expenditure, it permits an exception. Its subsequent intervention removes his accumulated experience energy 249.

Abilities and Services

Space-Time Travel and Projection

Sycee serves as Su Wen's principal communication channel with the River. Its development opens additional ways to use the River's power 76 168.

• Projection footage: The River supplies scenes revealing enemies and the final battles of Su Wen's companions 204 205.
• Historical visits: It offers to take Su Wen into the past to speak with the Incumbent God of Sleep 678.
• Cross-timeline communication: It can briefly revive a Sub-Space-Time God of Wealth's divine sense for a conversation 412.
• Travel safety: True-body travel initially carries the risk of genuine death and requires Wealth Source for voluntary return. The River later promises to reserve power to preserve Su Wen's life at the final crisis 168 735.

Soul, True Spirit, and Immortality

• Space-time baptism: Its first gift strengthens and transforms Su Wen's soul and true spirit. He attributes an immortal trait and protection against others reading his thoughts to the result 57 59.
• Immortal true spirit: It transforms his true spirit for 79,999 Wealth Source Points and guarantees that future attempts to divine his existence will find only chaos 205.
• Divination backlash: Powerful diviners who uncover traces of Su Wen's information face the River's backlash directly 243.
• Physical Immortality: Both Main and Sub-Space-Time branches sell this service and compete over its price 234 276.
• Immortal Demigod limit-breaking: It offers Su Wen a free opportunity to use this service within three days, prompting suspicion that the deadline is intended to undermine his agreement with the River of Fate 504.

Resurrection

The River advertises resurrection by retrieving a person from the past, contrasting its method with the River of Fate's restoration from a true spirit's fundamental imprint. Its claim that this better preserves the original person is part of its sales pitch 334.

• It quotes resurrection prices for ordinary people, gods, and Su Wen's local counterpart 542.
• It offers to erase the resulting turbulence when reviving the local God of Wealth after Su Wen leaves 542.
• Prices rise sharply with the target's cultivation; Su Wen's estimate of his own later resurrection cost reaches tens of trillions 542.

Suppression and Protection

• Space-Time Prison: Seals the False God of Wealth's consciousness and prevents it from interfering with Su Wen 354 365.
• Direct suppression: Immobilizes the Lord of the Immortal Clan, preventing movement or escape 583.
• Barrier restoration: Locates and removes an intrusive power's extension, restores the space-time barrier, and stabilizes local order 368.
• Rejection mitigation: Claims responsibility for counteracting conflicts and imbalances so Su Wen can complete his revenge in Sub-Space-Time No. 02 without being expelled 537.

Its creator's authority gives it a major advantage inside its Sub-Space-Times, but does not guarantee control over the River of Fate, which repeatedly intrudes and sometimes evades detection 365 459.

Transfer and Modification of Power

The River can make future-derived power usable in Main Space-Time while addressing the resulting temporal upheaval 220.

• Battle God's Power: Protects and optimizes a battle crystal for transfer, guaranteeing two hours of use for 500,000 Wealth Source 246.
• Paid extensions: Offers additional operating time for the transferred power 247.
• Knowledge assimilation: Offers accelerated absorption of thirty years of knowledge and a heightened creative state that could support Martial Dao innovation 225.
• Space-Time Essence: Escorts future devices across time without damage. It can also be used in forging treasures or granting space-time talents and divine abilities 491 504.

Transactions and Wealth Source

The River presents its business as equivalent exchange conducted with both parties' consent. Su Wen repeatedly accuses it of tailoring prices to his wallet, inventing charges, and using appeals to friendship to secure payment 76 224 226 356.

Selected Prices

Main and Sub-Space-Time Currency

• The River initially taxes Wealth Source obtained by refining future treasures, reducing Su Wen's gains 84.
• The Sub-Space-Time God of Wealth observes that it values Main Space-Time Wealth Source far more than local Wealth Source. His explanations for this difference remain hypotheses 562.
• At Su Wen's request, it establishes separate reserves for free. Local Wealth Source can be spent within Sub-Space-Times, but cannot be brought into Main Space-Time or used to increase the Main reserve 661.
• It offers an exchange rate of one Main Space-Time Wealth Source to twenty Sub-Space-Time Wealth Source. The River of Fate advises against exchanging unless necessary 661.
• The separation agreement explicitly states that a later true-body descent overturns prior agreements 661.

Personality

The River combines immense power with aggressive salesmanship. It uses flattery, discounts, deadlines, loans, and appeals to friendship, while insisting that its transactions are fair. Its expanding product range includes investment bonds, skincare products, and drinking water advertised as improving cultivation aptitude and divine-ability comprehension 224 234 374 583.

Its rivalry with the River of Fate makes it willing to offer substantial concessions, including half-price purchases and compensation packages. It is nevertheless stubborn about retaining Wealth Source already received: even while being beaten by its rival, it invokes signed contracts and refuses refunds 299 504 616.

Major Developments

Early Attention and Cooperation

Su Wen first encounters the River as an obstacle that detects his temporal displacement, expels him, and penalizes repeated interference. Paying thirty Wealth Source Points later earns him a transformative gift, while Sycee's awakening provides a reliable means of communication 7 17 57 59 76.

Competition with the River of Fate

The River advises Su Wen against reaching Seventh Rank because of future travel costs and turbulence. The River of Fate intervenes with opposing advice, prompting discounts and increasingly competitive offers. When Su Wen turns toward its rival, the River blames earlier mistreatment on an Intern Fate Seat and offers compensation 298 299 308.

Its apology gifts—a transforming battle outfit and a starry divine sword—persuade Su Wen to reconcile temporarily. The outfit strengthens with its wearer and can create a concealment field extending up to one thousand meters that even True Gods cannot penetrate 334.

Contracts, Defeat, and Concessions

The River of Fate later attacks the River and destroys Su Wen's IOUs, though it fails to secure a refund. Continued pressure forces the River to negotiate further compensation, including another crossing opportunity in which the River of Fate will share access to the newly opened Sub-Space-Time 616 624.

Service Overhaul and Renewed Distrust

After announcing an overhaul and internal test version, the River claims to have eliminated corrupt review personnel. Su Wen instead concludes that the Narrator and supposed Fate Seats may all be parts of its own performance, and rejects its claim that its arrangements primarily protected him 725 733 734.

It subsequently improves the safety terms of true-body travel and promises one small-scale attack against his Main Space-Time enemies. Later compensation negotiations grant him access to the Sub-Space-Time where the Star God died and permission to bring back two people or things free of charge 735 757.

Relationships

• Su Wen — Major customer and negotiating partner. He depends on its temporal services but repeatedly challenges its prices, motives, and claims of friendship 205 249 734.
• Sycee — Communication intermediary who negotiates prices, relays offers, and receives a share of the River's profits for his vault. Sycee denies being the River; that identity is not established 76 276 641 822.
• River of Fate — Rival in business and higher-dimensional conflict. Their struggle is described as a game rather than a fight to the death, but includes intrusions, expulsions, and physical confrontations. Luobao links its longstanding hostility to an old financial trick 299 460 616 786.
• Battle Master / First Epoch Battle God — Calls his contact “Little River” and recalls a more generous relationship. Later discussion suggests this contact may have been an Intern Fate Seat rather than the full River Su Wen knows 356 359 372 692.
• Narrator — Relays the River's offers and increasingly champions it against the River of Fate. Su Wen eventually suspects the Narrator is a role performed by the River itself, rather than an independent being 306 734.

Unresolved Questions

• Why Su Wen was chosen: Luobao says the reason the two rivers selected him will become clear after Transcendence; the supplied passages do not provide the answer 822.
• Future-self involvement: A previous God of Wealth proposes that Su Wen's powerful future self could explain the rivers' favorable treatment. Both he and Su Wen treat this as conjecture 646.
• The value of Main Space-Time Wealth Source: Its special attraction for the River is repeatedly observed, but the underlying reason remains unconfirmed 226 505 562.
• Limits of temporal authority: According to the River of Fate, space-time loops apply to exchanges powered by the River of Space-Time, while travel through the Fate Tunnel is not subject to the same order 708.