Xiao Ning stood in silence, his formless soul drifting within the radiant aura cast by the hovering jade book.
Yet even as the voice echoed its cryptic answers, a memory stirred from deep within the well of his consciousness—dormant, dust-covered, and long buried beneath layers of pain and cultivation. A moment from the distant past, from the darker years of his life.
A memory that began with defeat.
It was many decades ago, in the middle stages of his cultivation ascent.
At the time, he had just broken through the Nascent Soul Realm, daring to challenge a powerful elder of the Heaven Sound Sect, a mid stage faction famed for their soul cultivation techniques. That elder's cultivation was also like him at the Nascent Soul Realm, but the man had long stood as one of the thirteen Grand Protectors of the the Heaven Sound Sect.
What madness had driven Xiao Ning to provoke such a being?
He couldn't even remember anymore—perhaps it was revenge, or perhaps something else.
He lost.
Not merely defeated, but hunted. The Grand Protector's soul-mark was placed upon him, and the chase lasted a full ten years.
Xiao Ning fled to the one place even that old monster would not follow—
The No Dao Territory.
A cursed land on the edge of the known cultivation world.
In the ancient records, it was called the Grave of Heaven's Laws. A realm where no karmic threads could be traced, where fate and fortune alike dissolved into ash.
Inside this place, spatial and temporal principles frayed like rotting cloth. Mortal laws collapsed, and many of the cultivators who entered were never seen again.
But he had no choice.
He wandered for months through that decaying landscape. Day and night blurred. Until he lost all sense of direction and time.
Eventually, he found himself before an ancient forest—an impossible forest.
It was at that moment he realised that he has entered the Timeless Forest.
The Timeless Forest was not a forest in the normal sense.
There were no leaves on those twisted black trees, only skeletal branches that reached like grasping fingers toward a sky that didn't move.
Time itself seemed stagnant inside. His wounds no longer bled, not because they had healed, but because decay, growth, aging—all had halted.
Even his spiritual sense began to falter, as if his soul were being unraveled one thread at a time.
Days, or perhaps centuries, passed. His soul began to flicker. His body aged in a terrifying speed.
And then—just as the final thread of soul force began to dim—
A light appeared.
It came not from the heavens, but from within the forest. A soft radiance, pale like moonlight, neither spiritual nor demonic, pulsing steadily like a heartbeat.
Drawn to it like a moth to flame, he followed. His mind lost all sense of time, but his steps remained true.
And then, just before his consciousness failed him completely, the light halted.
It shimmered once—and vanished.
In its place, lying half-buried under ancient roots, was a book.
A jade book.
Its cover was pristine, untouched by the rot of the forest. Crystalline patterns adorned its surface, and delicate silver chains wound tightly around its edge, as if restraining something within. He reached out. His fingers trembled as they brushed it.
And then—
The forest began to shift, time stuttered back into motion, and Xiao Ning, somehow, found his way out.
To this day, he could not remember how. One moment he was near death beneath those trees, and the next he was lying in the outskirts of the No Dao Territory, clutching the book to his chest. From that moment on, the jade book had remained with him, ever silent.
Years passed. He tried everything—spiritual sense probes, soul brand imprints, blood sacrifices. Not once did the book stir.
Until today.
Until his death.
Now, suspended between life and nothingness, he finally understood.
Xiao Ning's gaze fell upon the floating book once more.
Its light was calm.
As if it had always known this moment would come.
"...So I was chosen from the moment I touched it," he murmured.
His soul trembled, yet not with fear. For the first time in many years, Xiao Ning felt something stir deep within him— freedom. The kind that came from stepping beyond all known paths.
From severing even the cycle of rebirth.
"…Then I choose to walk the path beyond,"
The jade book flared—its silver chains shattered like illusion.
Symbols erupted across its surface, forming complex equations and ancient runes that swirled around Xiao Ning's consciousness.
A surge of power coursed through him, erasing every trace of his former self from the Great Dao records.
And the world changed.