Chen Kuang could never have imagined that the intense warnings from his Blood Premonition over the past few days...
Would be fulfilled by his newest passive skill:
"Celestial Five Decays".
Within five days, he would undergo:
Spiritual Decay, Divine Decay, Meridian Decay, Bodily Decay, Consciousness Decay..
And ultimately undergo a metamorphosis, ascending into a Celestial.
At the very moment this passive was unlocked, Chen Kuang also came to understand what a Celestial truly was.
Where the Dao converges, there lies the Celestial.
Celestial Vastness Realm merely meant unity between one's body and a single Grand Dao.
But Celestial, that was the full embodiment of a Grand Dao.
Put simply: Celestial is the realm beyond Celestial Vastness Realm.
A realm that should have been inaccessible,
After all, even Celestial Vastness had been deliberately sealed off through misdirection and manipulation.
Yet now, it had appeared, not through cultivation, but in the form of a passive skill granted by the system.
This was no coincidence.
Some unseen force had guided everything:
Giving him the right Grand Dao at the right moment, and raising him step by step to this point.
And now, as he stood on the brink of the world's truth, he was offered the chance to become a Celestial.
But seizing that opportunity...
Would not be easy.
The Celestial Five Decays were no mere labels.
They meant the decay of his Spiritual Energy, mind, meridians, body, and consciousness, one after another, driving him to the edge of death..
But without allowing him to die.
Only by surviving this full process
Could he be reborn as a Perfect Celestial, able to unite with the complete Dao of Five Tens.
If he died midway.. He would only unite with Forty-Nine Daos, becoming a Singularity Celestial.
Chen Kuang didn't know the full difference between the two, but his instincts told him:
He had to become the Perfect Celestial.
Now, however, he had to confront the immediate danger brought by the onset of the Five Decays.
Though the Earth's plane suppressed his Spiritual Energy to an extreme degree, it still existed, otherwise, he couldn't survive in outer space.
But now that Celestial Five Decays had taken effect, even that last trace of Spiritual Energy was vanishing.
Without hesitation, Chen Kuang activated Bound by Nothing, and instantly returned to his hospital room.
In the very next moment, his Spiritual Energy completely vanished.
Gone.
Empty.
....
In that moment, Chen Kuang couldn't help but feel grateful..
Thank the heavens he was on Earth.
If he'd still been in Cangyuan, the high-martial realm, just the Spiritual Decay alone would've been enough to kill him.
Of course, "enough to kill" didn't mean it would.
Though his enemies now far outnumbered those of his early days in the Heavenly Prison, he also had powerful allies now, and a treasure trove of passives to rely on.
Back then, as a mere mortal, he had still managed to escape a war between two nations even with Saints involved.
Now, with what he had..
Surviving was not impossible.
Still, if he could avoid going through that all over again:
That was more than welcome.
...
Standing across from him, Shen Xingzhu furrowed her brows.
She had been wearing headphones, focused intently on a game of Sky Solitaire, but now removed them and stood up.
"Where did you go?"
Chen Kuang took a deep breath.
"I don't know. I'm not sure what that place was."
Shen Xingzhu's eyes narrowed.
"What did you see there?"
Chen Kuang shook his head and didn't answer.
Instead, he said:
"I might die."
Shen Xingzhu was stunned.
Unable to sense Spiritual Energy now, to her, Chen Kuang didn't seem any different than before.
She frowned.
"This isn't the time for jokes."
Chen Kuang gave a faint smile.
"I've never joked about my own life.
When I act, it's always with purpose."
Shen Xingzhu had no rebuttal.
She fell silent for a while, then asked:
"Why?"
Chen Kuang's face grew solemn:
"When you first met me, I had no cultivation at all. Now, in just half a year, I've reached the Moon-Embracing Realm.
That's the price."
"I've long been running on fumes.
Now the fire's out, the oil is dry, this outcome is only natural."
Shen Xingzhu instinctively doubted him.
But the explanation was almost too convincing.
Could anyone truly grow this strong in just six months?
It was no longer a question of talent.
Some had speculated that Chen Kuang might've used some forbidden technique, but his cultivation had always seemed stable, his energy steady and his appearance unchanged.
So the rumors remained just that, rumors.
Now that he admitted it, though...
It felt almost unreal.
Chen Kuang chuckled:
"Shouldn't you be happy, Fairy Shen?"
Shen Xingzhu shook her head and replied coldly:
"If you die, I die too.
Since you've tied me to your rope, you must've known this day would come."
Chen Kuang smiled.
"Wise as always."
Shen Xingzhu asked:
"How long do you have?"
"Four days."
Spiritual Decay, Divine Decay, and Meridian Decay, he could still conceal those.
But Bodily Decay, that could not be hidden.
Once that started, the other "Heavenly Demons" would surely notice.
Shen Xingzhu nodded:
"When the time comes, I'll help you.
I'll take you back to Cangyuan."
Chen Kuang raised an eyebrow, surprised:
"That decisive?
I thought you'd wait a day or two,
Watch me break down piece by piece, until I begged you on my knees."
Shen Xingzhu glanced up at him.
"The last one who made you kneel was Li Hongling."
"I've learned from others' mistakes."
"Besides, I've no reason to let you die now...
But I'll trade you a condition, tell me where you went, and what you saw."
Chen Kuang laughed.
Shen Xingzhu was still Shen Xingzhu.
He took a breath:
"I'll tell you, but you'd better be mentally prepared."
Shen Xingzhu nodded.
Chen Kuang said:
"I reached the very edge of this world... and saw a moon."
Shen Xingzhu's expression shifted.
"A moon?"
Chen Kuang nodded.
"Yes. A moon."
"This world already has a moon, but I saw another."
"And that moon... wasn't from this world."
...
"I can hardly describe the place I arrived at," Chen Kuang said slowly. "But if I had to put it into words... it felt like a layer of water's surface."
"It was as though we all live underwater, and I briefly surfaced, and saw that moon in the sky."
Shen Xingzhu narrowed her eyes.
"So what you're saying is... everything we see is merely a reflection on the water's surface?"
Chen Kuang paused, then said:
"By now, you're already half a step into the Saint Realm. Then let me ask you, what do you think the sun, moon, and stars really are?"
It wasn't a difficult question. Shen Xingzhu answered without hesitation:
"The universe is the Supreme Ultimate. When gathered, it becomes chaos; when dispersed, it forms stars. They move with the heavens and earth, marking time and season."
The people of Cangyuan never held primitive views of the cosmos.
They had long understood its structure.
To them, stars were nothing more than scattered stones in the vast universe.
Yet among these stones, some, like spiritual treasures, naturally held immense power, capable of resonating with Spiritual Energy.
And chief among them were the Sun and Moon.
Chen Kuang asked:
"I once saw the Eastern Sovereign and the Ancestor of the Liang Kingdom use the heavens as a board, the stars as chess pieces, to battle one another... Tell me, how far do you think a Saint's will can extend?"
Shen Xingzhu was silent for a moment. Then her expression shifted.
Chen Kuang looked up at the sky outside the window and said:
"You've realized it?
The distance between stars in Cangyuan is drastically smaller than in this world, not just by a factor of two or three, but by tens of millions."
"Compared to that, Cangyuan is like a child's toy."
Shen Xingzhu took a deep breath:
"Indeed... Cangyuan's stars are too small, too close, as if they've been compressed together."
"If one were to use the heavens as a chessboard, it would be impossible in this world."
Chen Kuang continued:
"I once used the Grand Dao of Time and Space to tear open a rift in Cangyuan's sky."
"Now I've realized... the aura that leaked through that rift is identical to this so-called 'Realm of Desire'."
"And so, I have a theory."
He turned to look at Shen Xingzhu, and enunciated every word:
"The heavens are murky, the earth is round; the sun and moon are false."
"These words describe a world shaped like a layered sphere, Cangyuan lies at the very center, the innermost part of the sphere."
"The 'Realm of Desire' wraps around it."
"Beyond the Realm of Desire, there may exist yet another world, the true world."
"Both the Realm of Desire and Cangyuan are but reflections, mirages on the water's surface, just like the sun and moon we perceive."
...
For Shen Xingzhu, Chen Kuang's theory was shocking enough that it took her an entire day to barely come to terms with it.
But when Chen Kuang returned from another outing, he presented an even more difficult truth:
"Cangyuan does not have a complete reincarnation cycle of souls."
Shen Xingzhu's face was expressionless.
"It's common knowledge that only Saints escape reincarnation. If even that is false, wouldn't that mean you're denying the very existence of Saints?"
Chen Kuang shook his head:
"Saints indeed do not enter mortal reincarnation."
"But that's because a Saint's reincarnation exists only within Cangyuan, whereas mortals reincarnate between the Realm of Desire and Cangyuan."
The truth had emerged.
While still only experiencing Spiritual Decay, Chen Kuang took advantage of his rapport with the "Heavenly Demons" to subtly probe for answers.
And finally, he learned the secret:
The so-called Heavenly Demons were none other than Saints of the Realm of Desire.
Yes, Heavenly Demons were those who reincarnated exclusively in the Realm of Desire.
And the mortals of both worlds?
They do reincarnate.
They don't return to the natural elements.
Instead, they are reborn into each other's world, switching between Cangyuan and the Realm of Desire.
As for the Night Barbarians?
They are fragments of souls that failed to reincarnate.
They accumulate in the space between the two worlds, unable to move on.
One day, however, the Demon King opened the path between the two worlds.
And these lost fragments found their way back, by attaching to the flesh of human corpses.
But that flesh is unstable.
Especially because their souls are incomplete.
Once their physical bodies are damaged, their souls immediately scatter again.
This is why they must devour humans to survive.
If they stop eating, their bodies collapse, and they revert into soul fragments.
So why do wars spawn more Night Barbarians?
Simple.
Because they are born from the souls of the dead.
By contrast, the Heavenly Demons can reincarnate freely and stably within the Realm of Desire, taking on new identities again and again.
This answered Chen Kuang's long-standing question:
"What happens when a Heavenly Demon dies?"
They reincarnate again.
And again.
Until one day, they discovered Cangyuan.
Imagine their reaction.
They had spent lifetimes reborn as frail mortals, though retaining their memories.
Now they found a world of cultivation, of power beyond imagination.
What kind of ambition would that awaken?
Yet the act of possession, displacing a soul, is temporary.
The possessed bodies soon die.
What they needed was permanence.
A place to settle.
And so, the invasion of Cangyuan began.
The plan was simple:
Tear down the barrier between the two worlds.
That barrier's instability came from the existence of the Night Barbarians.
The more of them there were, the more the barrier wavered.
And how does one create more Night Barbarians?
War.
But there was a problem:
The mighty Xunmi Mountain, tens of thousands of meters high, was sealed by Human Emperor Shuo.
It could only be broken from within.
And the seal would identify any Heavenly Demon that approached.
Only a Human Emperor could undo it.
Somehow, the Demon King of the Son of Heaven discovered this loophole.
He entered Cangyuan and succeeded in breaking the seal.
Xunmi Mountain collapsed.
War erupted between cultivators and Night Barbarians.
Casualties soared and the front lines spread farther and farther.
But possession was never the end goal.
Their goal was to escalate the war.
Whether it was cultivators versus Night Barbarians, or cultivators against each other:
The more bloodshed, the weaker the barrier.
And now, according to Chen Kuang's estimation:
In just four more days, the two worlds will be completely connected.
That means..
Stopping it is no longer possible.
Unless they could, somehow halt all wars in Cangyuan immediately.
Shen Xingzhu took a sharp breath.
"Then... whether we return or not, it's meaningless?"
Chen Kuang's voice was low and grim:
"On the surface, the number of 'Heavenly Demons' doesn't seem like much.
They seem harmless under Earth's suppression.
But don't forget, they do not reincarnate."
"By Cangyuan's rules, they are Saints in every sense."
"If they cross over, Cangyuan will be facing hundreds of Saints."
"That entire world will be turned upside down."
"So now, no, we don't need to go back, on the contrary, it's good that we're here on Earth."
Chen Kuang took a deep breath and said slowly:
"Right here, on Earth, we'll destroy the Heavenly Demons, body and soul."
Shen Xingzhu's pupils contracted.
This idea was too bold..
Terrifying, even.
But also... painfully simple.
Compared to fighting hundreds of Saints,
Fighting hundreds of mortals was, of course, easier.
The problem was:
Right now, they were just mortals too.
And Chen Kuang, was even on the verge of death.
She still couldn't see any changes in him.
But she knew, if he said he only had four days left, then there wouldn't be a fifth.
Chen Kuang's gaze turned sharp:
"Four days from now, they will gather together,
Open a new portal,
Occupy the Pure Land,
And attack from behind,
Spreading the war in Cangyuan even further."
"That moment will be our chance, our last and only chance."