Frame 110: Reversal of Time and Space

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Sang Sang placed her hand against the skeleton’s brow and closed her eyes, sensing its condition. Her expression grew increasingly grave. It was extremely troublesome; the soul had been shattered far too badly.

It was like a jar smashed to pieces, with the largest fragment no bigger than a sesame seed. Even the most skilled restoration master would leave the cracks and missing pieces glaringly obvious after reassembling it.

More importantly, the soul’s vitality was already terrifyingly weak. At its current rate of decline, it would be completely extinguished in no more than a dozen years. No wonder the Lord of Danxia was so desperate and had pinned his hopes on her. He was treating a lost cause as though it might yet be saved.

Sang Sang opened her eyes.

The Lord of Danxia hurriedly asked, “How is it?”

Sang Sang did not answer. She simply instructed, “I need energy—an immense amount of energy. I have never tried reversing tens of thousands of years in a soul’s history. The energy must be sufficient.”

A light flared in the Lord of Danxia’s eyes. “No problem. Whatever kind of energy you need, and however much, I can obtain it.”

“I have no preference regarding its attributes. Anything will do. Then I can begin now.”

Sang Sang was a woman of decisive action. She immediately sat down cross-legged and prepared to cast a temporal reversal upon the single soul. Then she raised her head again. “Before I finish, I want to see you unlock the little one’s genetic lock.”

“Certainly.” The Lord of Danxia agreed without hesitation, then added, “You are too calm. It unsettles me. He was created only as a precaution against unforeseen circumstances. If you wish, I can extract the genes of yours that are present in his body.”

Sang Sang refused. “There is no need. Now that he exists, it must be fate. Let us treat him as a souvenir of this period of study.”

The Lord of Danxia felt compelled to explain further. “In truth, beings of his kind are accepted in advanced civilizations only as pets. Unless you exercise special privileges or submit sufficient contributions, you cannot obtain an identity chip for them.”

Sang Sang paused, but said nothing. She merely closed her eyes and began to focus on casting the temporal reversal.

A mirrored spacetime appeared above the Life-Birth Pool. Within it, time began to run rapidly backward: one year, ten years, a hundred years. In the span of a few breaths, it had already reached a thousand years, then gradually slowed.

The Lord of Danxia hurriedly condensed spiritual energy and poured it into Sang Sang. A tidal surge of spiritual energy rose atop the Sacred Palace.

A temporal reversal inevitably revealed fragments of the target’s memories. Yet the soul was so severely damaged that nothing appeared during the first several thousand years. There was only the occasional sight of the Lord of Danxia leaving the poolside; each time he returned, he brought new laws or an enormous reserve of vitality, but he was never able to halt the soul’s decline.

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No, there was one exception. Approximately two or three thousand years ago, the energy on the island fluctuated violently. Someone seemed to have been ambushed and cried out in fury, “How despicable!”

From the voice, the person was unmistakably the elder who had left Sang Sang the chip.

Sang Sang felt a chill in her heart. She recalled that, before the elder was attacked, the Lord of Danxia had injected an enormous mass of vitality into the Life-Birth Pool. Since the images in the mirrored spacetime were displayed in reverse, what came before and after had to be inverted. Thus, the source of that vitality was obvious.

The Lord of Danxia had used the Origin of Creation as bait. The so-called person who had forgotten all honor in the face of profit had been ambushed, killed, and stripped of his vitality.

Moreover, laws could be used as disposable tools even without a master. Had the many laws the Lord of Danxia poured into the Life-Birth Pool all been purchased?

Not necessarily.

That was why her spiritual instinct had warned her to be careful.

Sang Sang divided her attention and had the Black Butterfly send a message to Little Gold.

The Lord of Danxia would certainly notice an ordinary voice-transmission pill. But the isolation from the Star Network in this place could not sever the connection that synchronized information between the Black Butterfly and Little Gold. Little Gold’s uniqueness was just as strange as the Origin of Time and Space within her.

The temporal reversal had reached more than ten thousand years in the past, and Sang Sang’s speed had become very slow. Memories occasionally flickered within the mirrored spacetime. The hope on the Lord of Danxia’s face grew steadily stronger. He did not even become angry when the Celestial Emperor entered the forbidden ground.

“If one person is going to do this, who knows how long it will take? I will help as well.”

The Celestial Emperor sat down beside Sang Sang. Almost in the blink of an eye, their auras merged. The flow of time within the mirrored spacetime accelerated, far exceeding the result of merely adding their efforts together. However, the rate at which it devoured energy increased as well.

The Lord of Danxia’s attitude toward the Celestial Emperor changed instantly. The Celestial Emperor rose from being dispensable to becoming the person he valued most after Sang Sang.

The spiritual energy stored within the Sacred Palace rapidly thinned. Energy began to be drawn from the entire Danxia Painted Realm. Fearing that this still would not be enough, the Lord of Danxia exchanged faith crystals with the knights stationed in the interstellar city of the Temple for energy stones. Whenever the density of spiritual energy on the island fell even slightly, it was replenished at once.

To prevent the people inside the Sacred Palace from competing for spiritual energy, they were all driven back to the mainland.

Dean Qinghe and the others had only just settled into the rooms assigned to them in the Sacred Palace when they were summoned back by its envoys. He was fortunate: because he knew Sang Sang, the Sacred Palace’s divine servants treated him with some respect. The others received no such courtesy and were practically driven down the mountain.

When this group returned to the Royal City, it caused an uproar. It was not only Dean Qinghe and the others from the current generation. Even the great painters from previous generations—some from ten or twenty generations ago—had returned to the mainland, provided they were still alive. Their strength was unfathomable, and their arrival disrupted the balance of power within the painter community.

Yet no one had the heart to fight for power anymore. The vortex of spiritual energy in the direction of the Sacred Palace showed no sign of shrinking. Instead, it continued to spread. Even ordinary mortals could tell that something was wrong with the strange clouds high in the sky, while those with a natural affinity for spiritual energy could faintly sense that the spiritual energy of the entire world was diminishing.

What had happened in the Sacred Palace?

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Everyone throughout the Danxia Painted Realm was filled with fear and unease.

With Sang Sang and the Celestial Emperor working together, the temporal reversal had reached four-fifths completion. The soul’s vitality had visibly increased. The mirrored spacetime no longer showed only the unchanging scene of the Life-Birth Pool. Memories frequently drifted out through the cracks in the soul.

“Danxia, Danxia, you will certainly be well.”

“Danxia, Danxia, do not be afraid. With me here, no one can take you away.”

“Danxia, Danxia…”

“Danxia…”

Danxia had been the soul’s name before death. The Danxia Painted Realm had been named after the person loved by the world’s will.

Within the mirrored spacetime, the soul’s condition rose and fell, sometimes improving and sometimes deteriorating. Whenever it worsened, the Lord of Danxia would leave. When he returned, he always brought treasures or sources of power that improved the soul’s condition.

Most of the time, the Lord of Danxia would return utterly exhausted, visibly weaker than before. On two occasions, he could not even maintain his physical form. After placing the treasures into the Life-Birth Pool, he vanished into thin air and could only gradually condense a body again after several years.

The memories drifting out of the soul also grew more numerous. From time to time, scenes of the two of them together during their lifetimes appeared. The images became increasingly abundant and increasingly coherent.

Their carefree youth had been filled with the joy and bickering of two unparalleled prodigies. They were destined rivals.

They had once loved and fought each other in equal measure, yet whenever danger came, they could entrust their lives to one another. They had once stolen divine wine from an eighth-level civilization, then fought until heaven and earth darkened after drinking it, only to be detained and forced to work in the winery to repay their debt. They had also silently accompanied each other when one of them lost a loved one, lending a shoulder to the other in grief…

One was the Goddess of Danxia, who disliked the constraints of sainthood and resigned from her position to wander the stars, working as a pirate in the Middle Ring and specializing in robbing other pirates.

The other was Rocky, the Son of Life, a high-ranking grand priest who had stepped down from his post as the Temple’s holy son. Whenever he toured the various star regions, he would secretly venture into the Middle Ring to rescue the rival being hunted by pirates.

After thousands of years spent quarreling and causing trouble together, the young man and woman gradually matured. Holding hands, they gazed at each other and smiled, vowing beneath the vast clouds glowing with sunset colors that, from then on, they would have only each other and would never part.

From that moment onward, the goddess became the priest’s personal knight. They were inseparable. They loved, understood, and guarded one another.

But happiness was brief, and disaster arrived without warning.

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