That year.
Deep within the cosmos, a figure forgotten by time slowly approached.
He was a human man.
Yet he no longer seemed "human."
His features remained handsome and refined, his contours gentle, but beneath that gentleness seemed to lie the rise and fall, the succession and transformation of an entire ancient cosmos-a stillness that could settle only after countless epochs.
Between his brows, an exceedingly faint mark had appeared.
It resembled neither an innate rune nor a great Dao imprint, but rather a great Dao river compressed to its utmost limit.
The mark flickered in and out of sight, as though endless starlight flowed slowly within it. Upon closer inspection, faint images of myriad worlds being born and perishing, of epochs succeeding one another, appeared within it, as though his brow bore the very engraving of time itself.
Rumble-
Deep in the Void, Dao shadows long since extinguished in history manifested one after another, as though paying homage, or confirming this homeward journey spanning two hundred billion years.
At that moment, the disordered energies of Heaven and Earth faintly began arranging themselves anew.
As though even the great Dao was slowly returning to its rightful place.
But more chilling still were his pupils.
They were no longer ordinary black pupils, but depths approaching utter emptiness, as though they swallowed even light.
Occasionally, a faint divine gleam passed through them, revealing hints of interwoven cause and effect, as though a single glance from him would settle any existence's past and future in their entirety.
Yet something even more wondrous lay around his neck.
An exceedingly ancient, ring-shaped mark had appeared there.
The mark seemed pale gold, yet also chaos gray, like an unclosed path of reincarnation, with faint Dao resonances slowly echoing within it.
It was unobtrusive.
Yet one glance