"The extraordinary powers in the world had already disappeared, and the lifespan of ordinary people had reached its limit at one hundred years."
"Yet, the eternal pursuit of the Dao by people remained unchanged."
"Through research, analysis, and utilization of laws, even Mortals could burst forth with astonishing and unconventional power."
...
In the blank world before Sun Erlang, a sphere suddenly appeared.
The sphere spun on its own, with countless black spots representing humanity moving at a very high speed.
Initially, the buildings on the ground were just over ten feet tall, but as time rapidly passed, more and higher buildings sprouted from the ground.
Soon after, even flying machines appeared among the clouds.
Sun Erlang, while weaving the world he envisioned in his Spirit Consciousness, recalled the teachings of his Master at that time.
"The quandary of the Xuanhuang World is fundamentally the same as these worlds without extraordinary powers. The ancient scriptures often say, 'The Immortal Way is eternal.' This statement might indeed be true."
"The so-called [Immortal] is that group of beings who exhaust the rationale of the Dao and utilize it to its utmost limits. They stand on the other side of all Living Beings, on the same level as the Dao, overlooking the masses, undying and indestructible."
"But what if the [Dao] itself changes?"
"The Dao would still be the Dao. However, those who can't adapt to the changes in the Dao would inevitably head towards Annihilation."
"Unable to harmonize with the Dao, one does not deserve to be called an Immortal. They would perish."
You Won't Believe It! You Can Afford These PlacesOpen
"Among the common masses, there will always arise new [Practitioners of the Dao]. The powers they master will also grow increasingly strong."
"Becoming the new [Immortals]."
...
At that moment, the words of the Faceless Saint Emperor were profoundly mysterious, not just to Sun Erlang, but also to the few direct disciples Under the Holy Emperor; none could grasp the principles within.
However, at this moment, with the power of the Real Fruit, he luckily tasted the flavor of a creator.
Sun Erlang, looking at the world he had created before him, suddenly felt inspired.
In that spherical world, after countless years of natural evolution, a race aligned with the Dao of his created world would always emerge.
They could discover the ultimate secrets of the world, imperceptible to other Living Beings, and thereby become the so-called [Practitioners of the Dao] of this world.
Boom!
Sun Erlang's vision rapidly traversed, descending onto the sphere he had created.
In one ordinary building, a young scholar was frowning and pondering under the light.
The blackboard in front of him was filled with complex formulas and drawings.
"No, no, no..."
"Where exactly is the mistake? Why are my calculations so significantly offset from the actual trajectories?"
"It's as if there's a force binding us, preventing us from leaving this planet."
The scholar painfully pulled at his hair, then suddenly looked up towards the window.
In the pitch-black night, it seemed to confront Sun Erlang's gaze directly.
...
Sun Erlang's vision blurred momentarily, and the image suddenly shattered.
When he regained his senses, he was astonished to find some spaceships on the sphere, already trying to fly out of 'the boundaries of the world.'
Yet beyond the world, Sun Erlang had not yet created anything; it was still completely void.
They naturally couldn't succeed.
Sun Erlang's thoughts quickly shifted, and he began to expand new maps.
The white space slowly turned dark. In the Starry Sky, in addition to the original planet, thousands of other planets also began to appear.
The scope of the map suddenly expanded more than a hundred thousand times, and Sun Erlang's Stone of Transformation also began to feel the strain.
To reduce the workload, Sun Erlang set most of these planets as barren places filled with Death Silence, devoid of life.
And to prevent the original inhabitants of the primal planet from expanding too rapidly, he set a very long distance between each planet.
A distance so vast that without the power of Longevity, it was nearly impossible for Mortals to traverse from one planet to another in their lifetime.
...
After a Herculean effort, Sun Erlang barely managed to save the original world from collapse.
But soon, before he had the chance to perfect and expand the Star Sea map, the world again became dangerously unstable.
Upon investigation, Sun Erlang realized that the original inhabitants had begun to doubt the reality of their world.
This doubt arose not only because they couldn't fly out of the world but also because they had observed numerous planets in the Star Sea that they hadn't observed before.
These planets appeared suddenly, shattering their previous understanding.
"The principles must not be crudely set but deeply rooted in the fundamental principles of the world with all its myriad appearances."
This thought suddenly surfaced in Sun Erlang's Spirit Consciousness.
Quickly, he made the necessary adjustments.
Next, in another undying attempt by the original inhabitants, a spaceship actually managed to escape the planet's constraints and entered the Star Sea.
The humans on the spaceship discovered a blue ring surrounding their planet, outside in space.
It was this ring that had distorted internal observations of the outside world and had prevented their earlier attempts to escape the planet.
This was a groundbreaking discovery, a monumental breakthrough!
After surviving a life-and-death crisis, the spaceship finally returned to the ground and shared this discovery publicly.
And when scholars on the planet incorporated the Star Ring variable into their calculations, theory and reality finally reached a temporary alignment.
People cheered, welcoming the arrival of a new era, and regarded all the crew members of the first spaceship to fly into space as heroes.
With this successful experience, the suppressed original inhabitants of the planet saw their development peak swiftly.
Luckily, by this point, Sun Erlang had almost finished depicting the desolate scenery of the Star Sea.
Moreover, the vastness of the Star Sea he created stabilized the indigenous people temporarily with space and time.
But Sun Erlang knew this was only a temporary solution.
One day, they would notice the abnormalities in this Star Sea.
"If I don't want to be discovered, I must continue to expand this Star Sea."
"And the expansion speed must surpass the exploration speed of these little people."
The macroscopic view elevated tens of thousands of times again.
Endless nebulas and Star Rivers were born beyond the dark.
The Stone of Transformation was also faintly operating at its limit.
"As the saying goes, pulling one hair moves the whole body. Every object in the Star Sea is connected to each other."
"It isn't simply about adding them afterwards; the impact of their emergence on the original planets must also be considered."
"..."
After reflecting, Sun Erlang felt that the Stone of Transformation was on the verge of collapsing, so he steeled his heart and crudely minimized these impacts with the expanse of space.
"By the time these little people realize something is wrong, it should be a long time from now."
Proven Benefits of Iodine! Why Do You Need to Smear Your Heels?Open
The natives were still making rapid progress.
They studied the Star Ring and invented the Retrograde Boat, which could borrow the restraining force of the Star Ring in reverse.
With a slingshot, they hurled the spacecraft at high speed.
Although unable to return, this greatly accelerated the natives' exploration speed of the Star Sea.
"Is this too fast?"
Sun Erlang watched dumbfounded as the first Retrograde Boat continuously accelerated by using the Star Ring force of passing planets.
Heading towards the fringes of the Star Sea.
"No..."
After pondering for a moment, Sun Erlang steered a meteor, altering its original trajectory, sending it crashing down towards the Retrograde Boat.
However, he didn't expect the people on the Flying Boat to narrowly avoid it.
The scene aboard the Retrograde Boat flashed before Sun Erlang's eyes.
"Sir, thank you so much! Otherwise, we really would have been turned to Bones this time!"
A stern-faced, bearded middle-aged man remained tense: "This shattered stone came in an odd way. The Starry Sky is so vast, yet it happened to encounter us..."
"Stay on guard! Don't be careless!"
...
Hearing the little person's words, Sun Erlang couldn't help but feel embarrassed; indeed, he had been a bit crude in his actions.
But he quickly thought of a way to compensate.
Sun Erlang pointed lightly at a planet nearest to the Retrograde Boat.
Soon, it disintegrated thunderously.
Turning into myriad fragments, like a torrential downpour, they smashed towards the Retrograde Boat.
Fortune only strikes once.
With such a dense cluster of fragments, guided with precision.
The Retrograde Boat naturally had no chance of survival.
In the collision, it turned into a ball of flames and vanished from the Star Sea.
However, a single accident could not curb the natives' curiosity about the Star Sea.
Subsequently, more and more enormous and advanced Retrograde Boats flew out from the primal planet.
Starting to explore in all directions.
Although Sun Erlang really wished to use the old method to destroy all these spacecraft, he knew that his previous actions had already shaken the rules of this creation game.
If he continued to intervene so directly, this world would collapse even faster.
So Sun Erlang had to think of another way.
Watching countless Flying Boats catapulted by the Star Ring, he soon had an idea.
With a single thought, the Star Ring on the primal planet underwent an undetected, silent change.
It was only a year later that the native little people realized something was wrong.
The planet began to experience record-breaking Extreme Weather.
Cold fronts, droughts, raged and ravaged.
Food production dropped, and even the natives' birth rate began to fall slightly.
The little people noticed something was amiss and gathered the planet's most elite scholars to research the causes of these disasters.
Ultimately, they reached a conclusion.
Although the Star Ring bound them and prevented them from venturing into the Star Sea,
it also served as a protective umbrella.
It insulated the planet from the Extreme Environments of the Star Sea.
However, in recent years, the misuse of the Star Ring's elasticity had caused it to shrink slightly.
Even if such a reduction was negligible to the Star Ring itself,
the fragile ecology of the planet could not withstand the impact it caused.
After intense discussions, the native little people ultimately decided to temporarily abandon their plans to explore the Star Sea.
The Retrograde Boat was sealed away from that point on.
"It can hold on for a while longer," Sun Erlang couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
"I wonder how much time has really passed in the outside world," he mused, looking at the Star River he had sculpted with his own hands, his expression becoming somewhat distant.
Time flew by.
In the blink of an eye, a hundred years passed on the primordial planet.
From the third decade onward, the Flying Boats began to approach the Star Ring, sampling and studying.
In the fifth decade, through the tireless efforts of the entire group of little people, they finally found a way to repair the damage to the Star Ring.
Sun Erlang saw with his own eyes how these little people recreated the force of the Star Ring in the laboratory.
He was deeply moved, with countless thoughts emerging in his Spirit Consciousness.
"The power of the Star Ring originates from the fundamental rules of the world I created."
"But these little people are also a manifestation of the laws of this world. As part of the world, they have the capability to explore its very essence..."
"Because it truly exists, it can be studied and utilized."
...
Changes on the primordial planet continued.
After numerous trials, the little people established the effectiveness of repairing the Star Ring. Long confined, they could no longer endure.
An unprecedented Age of Exploration arrived.
The Retrograde Boats departed the primordial planet once more, venturing into the endless Star Sea.
In the seventh decade, the little people invented a method to navigate the seas without relying on the elasticity of the Star Ring, but solely on the Star Ring power furnace.
From then on, the natives formally achieved round-trip exploration of the Star Sea.
From the eighth decade to the one hundredth year, the little people ushered in a new era of pioneering and colonizing the Star Sea.
By this point, Sun Erlang knew it was only a matter of time before his fabricated world was exposed.
Watching the countless little people still making sacrifices, Sun Erlang didn't know why, but he felt a strange emotion within.
He no longer tried to expand the boundaries of the Star Sea.
Instead, he silently watched the little people's footsteps reach the edge of the world.
Five hundred years later.
When a strangely shaped Reverse Boat finally reached the outskirts of the Star Sea.
The world before Sun Erlang's eyes shook violently.
Boom!
It was like a burst of stars, exploding with brilliant light.
Gone without a trace.
But Sun Erlang did not return to the Real World.
Before him was still an expanse of whiteness.
"Hm?"
Sun Erlang was somewhat surprised, looking around, not knowing what had happened.
"Do you think there was anything wrong with the world just now?"
A voice suddenly came from behind Sun Erlang.
Sun Erlang's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately turned his head.
He saw a Taoist with long eyebrows and white hair, holding a horsetail whisk, smiling as he sized him up.
"This is..."
Sun Erlang had a hunch about the identity of the person and mustered his courage to probe, "I've seen the Heavenly Sovereign."
The Taoist did not respond, still smiling amiably at Sun Erlang.
Sun Erlang pondered for a moment, recalling the civilization of the little people on that primordial planet.
After a while, he suddenly realized, "Something is not quite right. The little people on that planet..."
"Too united."
"There were no major wars or infighting. Even when the planet was in crisis, they could always set aside disputes and join hands to solve it."
"..."
"Compared to the current state of the Xuanhuang World, it really is quite unbelievable."
Sun Erlang shook his head.
The Taoist nodded, then asked, "That's one thing. What else?"
"What else?"
Sun Erlang frowned slightly.
"The little people's obsession with exploring the Star Sea was a bit too profound."
"Even after encountering numerous dangers, they never gave up."
"Even the entire planet," Sun Erlang furrowed his brow.
"Their obsession with exploring the Star Sea was a bit too deep."
"Despite the many hardships, they always persisted without giving up."
"Even the entire planet"