Far beyond the sealed realm.
Far beyond the trembling formation.
Within a tiline that had been severed from the Greater Heavens.
A slightly older Yu Xuan sat alone at the center of Highest Heavens.
He no longer looked like a mortal youth.
His presence was calm, restrained, imasurable.
In his hands floated an ethereal orb – intangible, translucent, containing within it shifting constellations of consciousness.
It was a soul-aggregate.
An experintal Heaven.
He looked toward a distant coordinate, toward a ripple that had just faded.
"...It failed?" he murmured.
He had felt the connection.
A pull from his past self in this tiline being directed to the [Origin of Ti]
He had attempted to follow that thread.
To observe.
But the access had been severed.
"Well... that was expected," he said softly.
"I cannot reach that place from here."
Then he paused.
"...But I did not expect myself to be there."
In this tiline.
The mont Yu Xuan was born, the balance of the Heavens shattered.
His birth was not accompanied by auspicious signs.
It was accompanied by slight disappearance of fate.
Ten years later, during his awakening ceremony.
He awakened the [Minor Soul Origin].
A fragntary authority over the essence of soul itself.
On the tenth year and first day of his life after being awakened.
He ascended to Immortality.
It was absurd.
It should not have been possible.
But it occurred.
Ten thousand years later.
He controlled the entire Eight Heaven.
One million years later.
The entirety of Nine Heavens.
One trillion years later.
The entire tiline.
He beca the pinnacle of the Soul Path within his tiline.
Then.
He isolated the tiline completely.
Severed from the Greater Heavens.
Not out of fear.
But for experintation.
This Yu Xuan sought sothing greater.
He sought to create his own Heaven.
He cut off the Underworld.
Sealed the Spirit World.
And established the One Soul Existential Plane.
A realm where beings existed not as flesh, not as energy.
But as pure soul-entities.
He governed every soul within his isolated tiline.
He refined their evolution and experience.
He observed karma without external interference.
He iterated models of transcendence over soul multiple tis.
He had accomplished everything.
And yet.
He found it insufficient.
His focus had been almost entirely on the soul.
The structural aspect of Heaven itself still eluded perfection.
He was currently attempting to design entities that existed purely within the One Soul Existential Plane as their true and only state of being.
No reincarnation.
No physical anchor.
It was then he felt it.
A faint tug from his past self.
Brushing against the Origin of Ti.
He traced it instantly to enter that place but it was severed.
Severed by chaos.
His gaze sharpened.
As he sensed sothing else.
Two unpleasant gazes.
They had been watching his tiline for a long ti.
Waiting.
Probing.
Ever since he isolated it from the Greater Heavens.
But, they did not dare enter directly.
They circled it like predators.
Yu Xuan’s expression darkened slightly.
"These bastards never learn, do they?"
His aura did not flare.
But the entire isolated tiline darkened faintly in response to his irritation.
"The mont I beco Absolute..."
His voice lowered.
"I will kill them and plunge the Heavens into Chaos."
A faint smile appeared.
"I suppose Hundun would find that amusing."
The ethereal orb in his hand rotated slowly, as the tiline’s sovereign returned to his experint.
But sowhere deep within his consciousness.
A fragnt of attention remained fixed on that past.
***
Unknown Location.
The Eternal–Impermanent Battlefield.
There was no sky.
No ground.
No void.
The place resembled a blank white canvas stretched infinitely in every direction.
No depth. No shadow. No dinsion.
And yet.
Within that featureless expanse, two beings clashed.
They had been fighting for a long ti.
Not centuries.
Not eras.
But long enough that "ti" itself had lost conventional aning.
The duration they perceived could not be asured by mortal or immortal minds. Each exchange between them altered histories, futures, and rewrote probabilities across the Heavens.
They were not rely combatants.
They were principles.
Then.
Both paused simultaneously.
Their attention shifted toward a distant direction beyond the canvas.
Eternity spoke first.
"How about we stop for a mont?" it suggested lightly.
Impermanence sneered, its presence flickering.
"Hmph. You really are pathetic, trying to distract at a mont like this."
"But aren’t you curious as well? About that being." Eternity replied calmly.
Impermanence hesitated.
Just slightly.
And that hesitation cost it a lot of things.
Its authority over several developing tilines slipped for a fraction.
Impermanence’s expression darkened.
"You bastard, dare!"
Within that pause, Eternity had quietly erased Impermanence’s dominance from multiple erging branches of existence.
A subtle theft just occurred.
Impermanence burned with fury.
’How could I fall for such a lowly trick?’ it thought, enraged at itself.
Trusting Eternity was like entrusting a thief with your treasure, how could it not vanish the mont you blinked?
And how could sothing Eternal ever change disposition, even briefly?
That brief curiosity had been enough.
Eternity smiled faintly feeling greatly refreshed in a long ti.
"I was saving that move for my vacation." Impermanence’s aura flared violently, the blank canvas cracking as if strained by unknown weight.
"But now, Impermanence you!" it growled giving Eternity a strange curse.
A dangerous pressure radiated outward, destabilizing countless unseen things.
Eternity’s expression shifted, genuinely surprised for once.
The battlefield warped as their clash resud.
As it always had.
Since ti immorial.
Their struggle was not about victory.
It was about influence.
Every exchange subtly altered the trajectory of all that would ever exist within the Heavens.
And sowhere far away.
Though almost no one could perceive this clash.
Its consequences rippled outward.
Knowingly or unknowingly, countless beings were affected.
Perhaps it was a supre emperor delaying a decision.
Perhaps it was a cultivator surviving a tribulation by a hair’s breadth.
Or perhaps.
It was just a normal mortal.
Sitting quietly.
Reading sothing.
Unaware that even that small mont existed because sothing or soone wished for it.
Or maybe they themselves did?
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