Time Fisher Grotto
Old Time Fisher Immortal floated in the sky at the highest point of his grotto heaven.
His grey robes fluttered in the gentle wind as he comfortably sat on a cloud.
In front of him floated his mirror image. This was his will, looking at him with a contemplative gaze.
"You decided to talk to me. Is it loneliness?" The will broke the silence. "You already knew, you will be lonely if your plan succeeds."
"Not if, but when." Old Time Fisher Immortal smiled faintly.
"Hmph. You already are lonely. Or you wouldn't be talking to yourself." His will mocked lightheartedly.
Old Time Fisher Immortal nodded in acknowledgement. It was true, he has closed himself off from the outside world for a long while.
"This isolation was unavoidable." He added.
His will looked past him into the distance. "Rarely will you realize when you've done something for the last time. There will be an occurrence for all things that will never be followed by another like that."
"The last time you visited a place dear to you, or the last time you met a precious friend."
"All things come to and eventual end, and you will only realize in hindsight which these moments were."
"Have you had known that it was the last time you experienced that very thing, would you have acted differently?"
"What would you have done differently to have no regrets? What were the things you wanted to tell to someone, but can never do so anymore?"
His will ruminated with a lecturing tone.
This was a will Old Time Fisher Immortal created hundreds of years ago, it reflected a different version of himself from the past.
He liked these kinds of conversations, as if he could speak with his past selves and clash their understandings with his current one.
"There are a myriad paths to step on, yet we can walk but a single one. Thus the right thing one can do for themselves is walk as if there was no other path before them." Old Time Fisher Immortal rebuked. "There is no other way to live a truthful life, than to act as if every moment you live through was the last of its kind. The passing moment is never to be recovered, it can only live on in our fading memories, brightened by our sense of nostalgia, and distorted by our imperfect recollection."
His will's disposition changed. They were finally in agreement.
"Treasure the today, because the tomorrow still hangs in the air; treasure it because you have nothing else, but this, the present." The will folded its arm and concluded.
After a while of silence, Old Time Fisher Immortal's complexion darkened. "Is acceptance the best we can do? Is this all that the moments of my life amounts to?"
"No! Never!" His frame rose from the comfort of the cloud. "I refuse to accept a pitiful existence bound by this shackle that's the passage of time."
His will turned back to face his main body. It saw his eyes burning with the fires of obsession.
"If there is a way, I will find it."
"If there is no way, I will create one."
"If I cannot make a way, I will become the way."
His will listened thoughtfully. After a while it spoke again with resignation in its voice.
"You haven't changed at all, if anything, you just became even more stubborn." The will shook its head. "You really are getting old, I tried to ease your worry, yet you couldn't make peace with mortality. But maybe, just maybe this stubbornness is what could lead to success?"
Old Time Fisher Immortal laughed heartily. His old self was just like he recalled.
"Come!" Old Time Fisher Immortal stood next to his will. "I deliberately haven't shown you the current situation." He waved his hand in invitation.
The blanket of clouds parted below them, revealing an expanse of dull white sea.
"This..." The will surveyed, turning its head left and right, but it didn't see an end. "Where is this?"
"Not where, but what." Old Time Fisher Immortal corrected proudly.
Realization flashed on his will's face.
"Don't tell me... How is this possible? You confirmed there was no way to control the river water!" His will protested in disbelief. "You found a way in the end?"
"Yes and no."
Old Time Fisher Immortal, as countless others in the long history of the Gu world, wanted to overcome the limitations of mortality and lifespan, he wanted to attain eternal life!
He often visited the River of Time, he could feel the solution was there, waiting to be uncovered.
It became his obsession to grasp control over his own flow of time. He studied and experimented amidst the dangers of this quasi-rank nine secluded domain of heaven and earth; often suffering injuries or incurring great losses.
But no matter how he tried to refine or subdue a portion of the River of Time, this was impossible for Old Time Fisher Immortal.
He realized he can't achieve this grand ambition when even the venerables failed and died in the end. This approach was a dead end.
What could just a rank eight gu immortal accomplish then?
Not even Red Lotus Demon Venerable could refine the River of Time even as a rank nine time path venerable.
But Old Time Fisher Immortal did not give up looking for a solution.
It had to be noted, although venerables were invincible existences, many other geniuses had shone brightly in their own areas of expertise. One such example of outstanding talent was Proud Bone Demon Lord Shen Jie Ao the creator of White Bone Chariot. This gu house was formed from many rank five gu, such as the White Bone Wheel, and had power comparable to a rank six immortal gu!
In this particular achievement, none of the venerables could match him.
This was only one of the examples in Old Time Fisher Immortal's mind.
Nothing in this world was absolute, as long as there was a will, there would be a way.
Gu are the essence of heaven and earth, humans are the spirit of all living beings.
If he couldn't refine the River of Time, then he would try refining just a tributary that irrigated an area of the five regions.
He has failed again and again while trying different approaches for nearly three decades.
His contemporaries mocked Old Time Fisher Immortal for his pointless failures and the lack of his real world goals.
"Eccentric without anything to justify it."
"Stubborn and hard to deal with."
"Tian Nan gone mad."
Old Eccentric Tian Nan, one of the three refinement path supreme grandmasters, tried and failed to refine the Gu world into his aperture.
But Old Time Fisher Immortal laughed in his heart, to his ears these were akin to praises and encouragements:
"How persevering and resolute!"
"So painstaking and fiercely independent!"
"Just like the legendary supreme grandmaster of refinement path, Tian Nan!"
Due to his selfish and single-minded focus, eventually his own descendants turned a cold shoulder to him as well. This was unprecedented for a rank eight ancestor of a clan.
The other rank eight gu immortals saw him as a disgrace to the collective reputation of how a grand rank eight expert should conduct themselves.
The title of Old Time Fisher Immortal was also given to him mockingly after his clan's headquarters encountered a serious calamity while he was in the River of Time:
"Old Time Fisher Immortal, the one who does nothing but escape his responsibility. An unreliable old fool who can only sit and fish."
There was no change to Old Time Fisher Immortal's attitude. He wore this title as a badge of honor and secluded himself even more.
Without a true rank eight at the lead, his clan faced decline and eventual extinction due to the collusion of competing forces.
Old Time Fisher Immortal became a lone force as he continued his days in the River of Time, he had no reason to show his face.
People only knew of his continued existence because he occasionally sold some time path resources in Treasure Yellow Heaven.
One hundred seventy years later, Central Continent's Heavenly Court tried to recruit him to become their time path expert, but Old Time Fisher Immortal refused them.
Heavenly Court has clearly misjudged his character, believing he was miserable and downtrodden.
After two refusals, at their third attempt, Old Time Fisher Immortal nearly killed Heavenly Court's envoy to make his standing clear.
"Never disturb me again."
There was no fourth attempt. It became clear there was nothing to be gained by associating with Old Time Fisher Immortal.
He truly became the outcast of gu immortal society but his research continued in solitude.
At one point, finally a minor breakthrough presented itself!
"Yes! It changed. I induced this change!"
He managed to evaporate a small portion of water from the River of Time.
He studied the result of his unexpected discovery.
"I will call this mist Fog of Time."
Thanks to his great grandmaster attainment in time path, he soon discovered another application thanks to his earlier breakthrough.
"The river water's mist form still has most of its properties, except the directionality of flow."
"Flowing water, lingering mist... What if I try crystallizing the river water to stop its movement?"
His second breakthrough in the manipulation of river water became its freezing, creating a new resource, Crystalline Time.
Fog of Time proved useful to disorient those who entered it, while Crystalline Time could be used to capture them. While the ice lasted, their time flow would be greatly slowed, akin to a bug trapped in ember.
But neither of these innovations was what he was looking for.
One day when he was managing his aperture's time flow, the idea struck him like lightning. The solution was right before him all along.
"There is a tributary I can control. My own one."
Throughout the history of gu cultivation, it became a convention to slow down aperture time to let the gu immortal prepare for their tribulation. This was in effect narrowing their tributary from the river of time inside their immortal aperture.
Doing this was a well studied and researched area of time path. Old Time Fisher Immortal already had relevant methods to do this.
"The problem is, even if I widen my tributary to its limit, it doesn't draw in enough river water for my need. I would need thousands of years worth of flow."
"But if one tributary is not enough, I will have to gather many more."
Thus an idea was born.
"Success! I refined the rank six Divert Flow immortal gu!"
It took another seven years for Old Time Fisher to elevate Diver Flow immortal gu to rank seven.
Old Time Fisher Immortal opened his eyes and exhaled deeply.
Far below them on the surface of the water the silhouettes of the boats and gu immortals became visible.
"Oh, another time path gu immortal?" He noted Shi Ji's presence. "Hui Hui, go play with them for a while."
From the sleeves of his robes a snake year beast poke its head out and flicked its forked tongue.
Its body was covered with golden scales that formed intricate patterns. It looked once more at Old Time Fisher Immortal, then sprung into action.
"What is this ancient desolate beast for?" The will didn't understand.
"Just a precaution. Nothing much."
Next, Old Time Fisher Immortal's aura begun to fluctuate as he concentrated his focus.
Divert Flow immortal gu floated in front of him, fully activated by his rank eight white litchi immortal essence; it formed a killer move with many other gu.
"What method is this?" His will observed curiously.
The will's abilities could not match the main body's, but it quickly understood the killer move's main effect.
"You are stealing the tributaries of other people!" It exclaimed. "But why? If you do that then your own time flow will increase drastically!"
The will turned to the main body with wide eyes. "This is akin to committing suicide!"
Old Time Fisher Immortal smiled mysteriously.
"Who said I diverted the river water into my own tributary? Look closer!"
"What you are witnessing is the creation of an artificial secluded domain of heaven and earth!" He proclaimed with open arms.
"!!!"
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