Yu Xuan floated above the pagoda.
Below him, the ancient structure had beco the heart of a vast array, its foundation lines spreading through the entire realm like veins of light.
Near him stood Hundun and Sheng Mu.
They did not chant loudly nor did they not perform dramatic gestures.
They rely spoke a few profound words.
And that was enough.
The entire realm trembled.
The great Tree shimred violently.
From distant leaves and sealed places, dangerous auras began rising one by one.
Observers took position.
Several of them turned part of their senses outward, toward the other side, where faint disturbances had been sensed.
Sothing was watching back.
A mysterious aura spread through the realm.
The grand formation activated completely.
Trillions of spatial nodes were generated every second, each one searching for sothing.
Searching for a tiline, for an anchor point.
This was not simply a blessing.
And Yu Xuan was the axis.
He stood at the center of the formation, golden threads of energy intersecting through him from every direction.
"Try not to lose your mind," Hundun’s voice sounded within his consciousness.
The next instant.
Everything around him vanished.
Not visually.
Conceptually.
He felt cut off from literally everything.
Then.
He felt sothing bend.
The space between him and sothing imasurable warped inward like a folding mirror.
Direction lost aning.
His body began to spiral.
Not physically alone.
But across layers.
He felt himself being stretched infinitely, as his body began to disobey him.
Without thinking, Yu Xuan raised his hand.
And then.
"AHHHHHHHHH—!"
A scream tore from him.
Not a scream of fear.
But of overwhelming overload.
His mind was being pulled toward infinite tilines.
Each one brushing against him.
Each one whispering.
Each one offering.
A different future.
The pressure did not rely press on his body.
It pressed on his identity.
On who he was.
On who he could beco.
"AHHHHHHHHH—!"
Yu Xuan scread again, his throat was already dry, his voice tearing as if scraped by sand.
Within his mind.
Trillions of versions of himself flickered into existence.
Infants.
Newborns.
Cradled in different worlds.
In so tilines, he was born into a Yu Clan that ruled the entire realm with unquestioned dominance.
In others, the Yu Clan stood at the brink of extinction.
The scenes overlapped violently.
Cribs.
Battlefields.
Funeral halls.
Coronation ceremonies.
Each one real.
Each one possible.
And amid the chaos, one pattern surfaced.
No matter the variation, the fate of his Clan was always entangled with six others.
Six ruling clans of the Eternal Star Heavenly World.
Their rise.
Their fall.
Together.
Their threads of fate inseparable.
But Yu Xuan had no capacity to analyze it.
The pain intensified.
"AHHHHHHHHH—!"
His pupils trembled.
His eyes rolled upward.
Thought fragnted.
’What the hell is this?!’ he scread inwardly between waves of agony.
It felt as though infinity itself was being forced into his skull, but infinity could not be contained within a mortal mind, could it?
It tore at the boundaries of his consciousness.
Yet.
Amid the overload.
He sensed sothing else.
A purge.
As if an unseen chanism was selecting only fragnts.
Discarding most.
Allowing only a few threads to imprint upon him.
He did not know from where they originated.
Past?
Future?
Parallel Worlds?
Not even a full minute had passed in the external world.
Then.
Sothing shifted.
Within the grand formation, one of the countless spatial nodes flickered.
Then darkened.
Its light did not extinguish.
It inverted.
A suffocating aura seeped out.
It was not chaotic nor divine.
But forbidden.
The air above the pagoda grew heavy.
Several ancient beings snapped their attention toward it simultaneously.
The node pulsed again.
And released a cold ripple that did not belong to this place.
Hundun multiplied instantly.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Each identical, each facing a different direction.
All speaking the sa words in unison.
"...Forbidden Tiline."
The trillions of spatial nodes trembled violently.
This was not rely a distant coordinate.
A Forbidden Tiline was not simply a hidden branch of possibility.
It was a tiline that should not be allowed to coexist with the Heavens at all.
Because in such places, the Laws of Heaven did not apply.
These places exist without Dao.
So Forbidden Tilines had been constructed by ancient monsters who had vanished from the Heavens long ago.
So were carved out by unknown transcendental existences.
A few, by the invaders from beyond.
But all of them shared one defining trait:
None contained an Absolute.
It was precisely because of that absence that they were tolerated.
But not erased.
Why the Heavens permitted their existence still remained unknown as they were like a sour spot.
And now, one had responded.
When the formation bridged toward the [Origin of Ti], a resonance had occurred.
And that resonance had reached into a Forbidden Tiline.
Which ant only one thing.
In one of the infinite tilines.
Yu Xuan, currently was not a mortal.
But a peak existence.
One capable of interfering across tilines.
And that existence.
Had felt the connection.
And it was reaching back.
Hundun felt it instantly.
An impulse surged through it, to kill Yu Xuan where he stood.
To sever the anchor.
To collapse the ritual.
Consequences be damned.
But Hundun restrained itself.
So matters, were greater than a single forbidden branch of reality.
Even one that defied Heaven.
The darkened spatial node pulsed again.
Then, it tore.
From within the inverted node, a colossal hand began to manifest.
Not taphorical.
Not symbolic.
A real projection.
It pushed outward striking the grand formation.
The entire realm shuddered as the colossal hand pressed further against the grand formation, cracks spreading outward from the impact.
But before it could tear through completely.
Thousands of massive chaotic hands manifested from nothingness.
Each one ford from compressed primordial chaos.
They surged forward simultaneously, colliding with the darkened hand and forcing it back.
The clash did not produce sound.
It produced distortion.
Space folded inward.
Concepts trembled.
Hundun’s wings shimred with an unfamiliar radiance as the region surrounding the darkened spatial node began to dissolve.
Erased not by destruction but by exclusion.
That fragnt of contact was forcibly cut away from the ceremony.
The colossal hand from the Forbidden Tiline struggled once more.
Then vanished as the severed node collapsed into nothing.
Silence followed.
But the damage had already been done.
The Future Blessing Ceremony destabilized violently.
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