Gang, Dong, and Ji's Trio

Grievances that had accumulated in Ah Yin's heart over many long years were dredged up completely by Gu Yue's question.

Looking at the puzzled Gu Yue before her, Ah Yin bit her lower lip and finally couldn't resist pouring out all her grievances.

"You only built that one solitary tower! At first, I really did rely on it to get through. But the years dragged on, and I depended on it for every tribulation. Eventually, the lightning rod tower couldn't bear the strain anymore and broke down. When the next heavenly tribulation drew near, I really couldn't withstand it, so I was forced to start over."

"Before starting over, I figured it was better to benefit one of our own than an outsider, so before the tribulation, I simply sacrificed all my cultivation to you while you slept."

At this point, the resentment in Ah Yin's eyes was practically spilling over, and her voice grew even quieter:

"Yet my cultivation was like a little cup of water poured into the sea. It didn't even cause a ripple in you, and you were fast asleep without the slightest reaction... Afterward, I became the Seed of Life and was only able to be reborn thanks to Xiao Lu's care. Now, even though I've done everything I could to suppress my cultivation, I've still struggled my way back to four hundred thousand years. If you hadn't woken up, I'm afraid the heavenly tribulation would have forced me to start over again..."

After listening to Ah Yin's tearful complaint, Gu Yue raised a hand to touch the tip of her nose, her face warming slightly.

Good grief. Before using the Time-Reversal Trajectory, I left so many instructions, but forgot to prepare a few extra lightning rod towers.

Fortunately, Soul Beasts could still retain their original bodies after sacrificing themselves. But he was also somewhat puzzled. Why didn't those Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts or Ferocious Beasts that struggled with tribulations choose to disperse their cultivation to avoid the heavenly tribulation?

On second thought, even if Soul Beasts dispersed all their cultivation, heavenly tribulations would still arrive on schedule according to their age. Without their strength, their fate would probably be even more miserable.

As things stood, sacrificing herself and then cultivating anew had instead become Ah Yin's path to survival.

Gu Yue cleared her throat and guiltily looked away.

"Ahem... Ah Yin, well... thank you for all your hard work. Don't worry, the organization will never forget your contributions. When the day comes that my grand plan succeeds, you'll be the foremost general under my command."

After Gu Yue's spiel, Ah Yin, a blade of grass whose cultivation had grown for hundreds of thousands of years while her brains hadn't, was left dizzy from the KFC she'd been fed, moved beyond words.

Gu Yue struck while the iron was hot and asked, "Do they still remember you over in the Blue Silver Forest?"

Ah Yin calmed herself and shook her head.

"They don't remember me. Thanks to you, my lord, all the Blue Silver Grass across the continent now respectfully calls me the Blue Silver Ancestor."

Gu Yue managed to suppress her laughter, offered a few words of comfort, and sent her away.

Gu Yue sank her consciousness into the Sea of Consciousness.

Within the Sea of Consciousness, a sleeping silver-haired girl stood tall and graceful, her former childishness long gone.

"Nana."

At the sound of her name, the girl Gu Yuena's long lashes trembled, and she slowly opened her lively purple eyes.

Gu Yue asked seriously, "Before I fell asleep back then, I told you and Xiao Lu to open up a small plane and move the beast races that had awakened intelligence into it to study the textbooks. How has that progressed?"

Gu Yuena tilted her head and studied him, puzzlement in her purple eyes.

"What do you mean, open up a space? Daddy, are you still muddled from sleeping?"

"Before you fell asleep, all you left me was a huge pile of textbooks to study by myself. From nine years of compulsory education to all kinds of practice exams, then calculus and advanced elemental theory... I haven't been slacking off all these years. I've worked my way through every course. How are you going to reward me?"

As she spoke, the girl Gu Yuena held her slender, pale hands behind her back and leaned forward slightly, drawing out the last syllable in a sweet, soft voice.

"Daddy Gu Yue~"

The call was cloyingly sweet, with something odd about it, as though it concealed some little thought.

But Gu Yue's mind was entirely occupied with sorting through the clues, and she paid no attention to the subtle tone of the girl's call.

The fragments in her mind rapidly fell into place, and the answer was ready to emerge.

The first time she used the Time-Reversal Trajectory, Little Gu Yuena had actually worked out the restriction in ancient times, so the results had remained;

He had personally absorbed the Goddess of Life's divine power, so his cultivation had been restored in later generations;

The Holy Spirit Hall had endured to the present because he had personally given explicit instructions back then, and Ah Yin had actually acted on them;

As for the Soul Tool plan, he had merely mentioned it in passing. At the time, even the Soul Master system had still been in its infancy, and Soul Tools were even further out of the question;

The same was true of opening up a small plane. It had been no more than an idea voiced before his departure, never put into practice.

This meant that only actions he or those at his side had actually carried out in the past, turning them into established facts, could pass through the long years and tangibly influence later generations.

Any ideas that had remained mere words, never acted upon, would all be corrected.

In the end, Gu Yuena was the only one who had worked through those textbooks from beginning to end.

Gu Yue rubbed the space between her brows. Privately amused, she also felt that her reputation as a blackhearted capitalist was thoroughly deserved.

After carefully reflecting on his blackhearted conduct, Gu Yue decided that he wasn't wrong; the world was.

Under Gu Yuena's gaze as she puffed out her cheeks in displeasure, he withdrew his consciousness and left the Sea of Consciousness.

Now that the rules were clear, would the arrangements she had made during her last descent into Douluo I also appear when the timelines converged?

She pondered in silence. She had originally been more interested in visiting a later era with Soul Tools, Soul Spirits, and Battle Armor, but instead she was going backward.

The technology of this era was almost useless to her, and the Asura God was even still active.

But since she was already here, she couldn't very well return empty-handed.

The immediate priority was to see whether she could take some local specialties from this era back with her.

With that in mind, Gu Yue spread her divine sense once more.

After a brief investigation,

"Hm? Something's wrong. Even more wrong than before..."

Gangzi, the young man with a crew cut who had just been driven out of the clan, was hurrying along, cursing incessantly.

"Without my, Yu Xiaogang's, wisdom, let's see how your Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan rises to greatness! Just wait for the Clear Sky Sect, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, and the Spirit Hall to beat you into fucking idiots!"

Just as he was getting worked up, his foot caught on a protruding tree root, and he pitched forward without warning.

Yu Xiaogang lay there, the anger on his face gradually freezing.

After a long while, he pushed himself slowly upright, lowered his head, and stared at his palms in disbelief. With a trembling voice, he forced out a sentence.

"I... I've actually been reborn?"

Gu Yue: ???

Elsewhere, at the Spirit Hall.

A young Bibi Dong rested her cheek on one hand, her slender fingertips tapping absentmindedly on the table. Her eyes were unfocused, and every so often she mumbled something.

"Xiao Gang..."

A few more question marks appeared over Gu Yue's forehead.

Yu Xiaogang was only just expelled from his clan, and the two of you had never even met before that. You're already calling him Xiao Gang from afar? What are you Ganging about?

Meanwhile, before the Angel God Statue, a man with a head of golden hair was kneeling devoutly.

Gu Yue heard him pray in a sorrowful whisper:

"Merciful Lord Angel God, the grand plan I painstakingly devised was so perfect. Why did it still end in ruin? Is the Spirit Hall destined to have no future?"

Countless question marks popped up in Gu Yue's mind once again.

What the hell is all this? Where have I ended up? Is this still the Douluo Continent?

Having finally sorted things out, she reconsidered her objective and discovered in despair that all three of these people were sick in the head. Not one of them was normal.

"This time... could I really have come for nothing?"

Gu Yue felt utterly helpless.

Taking them back to the past would be of no benefit. She would probably have to watch out for their bizarre antics at all times, and besides, human lifespans were limited; they simply couldn't live long through the ages.

The only thing she could be certain of now was that the broad course of the future would be corrected.

But the convergence wasn't forced. It operated within reason, caring nothing for the process as long as the original timeline's outcome was reached.

Otherwise, would normal people like that bunch in the Holy Spirit Hall have stubbornly shut themselves away from the world for hundreds of thousands of years? Not even the slightest melodramatic incident had happened. It was too bizarre.

It was like insisting that the Dragon King give a crooked smile, with the exact same curve every time, not a millimeter off. Even the Dragon King would want to slap you to death and ask, "How about you do it instead?"

"Sigh..."

Since the outcome of the broad course possessed a corrective force, wouldn't it be an excellent test to tamper with these three crouching dragons and fledgling phoenixes while this spacetime had yet to overlap with the timeline of her last descent?