Necropolis Immortal

The Dao King felt that Lu Yun was spewing bullshit. As someone who followed Mo Yi, the Dao King had also cultivated the method of three lives. He had a past, present, and future self. The agile and nimble future self could travel through time, but to the point of the grand beginning?

That's one of the most outlandish claims I've ever heard.

The future self could indeed travel to the end of their future—a function of the marvelous uses of this cultivation method. To travel through time at will, however, depended on the depth of one's strength.

The limits of the Dao King's future self had been the era of the original Hongmeng. He'd been able to relive the events of that time period, but hadn't been able to change a thing.

"How were things at the grand beginning?" Mo Yi believed Lu Yun.

When she first crossed paths with this marvelous young man, she'd been a regular august immortal constantly bullied by other immortals. After making his acquaintance, she broke through certain restrictions and gained her freedom in the world of immortals.

She'd then severed her cultivation so she could progress through the void realm, ascended to immortality from the void realm, and became the goddess cherished by the world of immortals.

All of that had to do with Lu Yun. She'd never met anyone else similar to him, not even in the original Hongmeng.

That was why she didn't find it inconceivable that he'd visited an era before the great devastation.

"I saw it with my own eyes," he chuckled weakly. "My future self stood at the beginning of our past and looked into the eyes of another me that was also from the future."

"…what?! You mean you saw your past self at the beginning of history?" The Dao King frowned.

"I mean I saw my future self, one exactly the same as the one that'd just traveled back in time. It looked back at me when my future self reached the starting point of everything." Lu Yun shook his head gently. "I don't actually know if that was me because my future self didn't see another future me when it went to the future."

Mo Yi's delicate eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"Have you two ever had the sensation at some point that you seem to be repeating something you've already done?" Lu Yun had experienced deja vu before, but it'd no longer occurred after he arrived in the world of immortals. Actually, those moments had stopped as soon as he obtained the Tome of Life and Death.

"Yes, but I dismissed them as a fleeting misconception," the Dao King responded.

Mo Yi nodded as well.

"Then it all makes sense." Lu Yun inclined his head. "Those moments were actually fragments of memory from the time before the previous devastation. They've become very faint after being eroded away."

"You're… not telling me that you managed to visit the era before the great devastation??" The Dao King's jaw dropped.

"That's precisely what I'm saying. That other future self of mine took me through their time. We traveled backward from his end of time until we reached its beginning, and then we saw another future me at the grand beginning of it all." Lu Yun's voice droned on weakly, but a bit of hope powered him to finish. "And another, and another, and another until I journeyed through thirty-three eras and met thirty-three of my future selves.

"Every era before the great devastation was the exact same, down to the last blade of grass and tree, every emotion and trace of life, and even the slightest heartbeat. You know the movies and dramas in the mortal world—Earth, right? It was like I was watching a movie, an incredibly long movie, and I watched it thirty-three times!

"I'm sure that if I continued further, I'd see the same sights go on and on without end… without beginning."

Mo Yi remained silent.

"You're the thirty-fourth," she suddenly said. "Did you see the next grand beginning when your future self traveled to the future?"

Lu Yun suddenly smiled. "This era is different from all the eras before the great devastation. Perhaps this era is the end of that repeating cycle."

He'd still transmigrated to the world of immortals in previous great devastations. However, he then truly became one with the immortal dao and met Mo Yi, Qing Yu, and the little fox. He also became the headmaster of the Dao Academy and traveled to the past, befriending Fuxi, Leize, and Huaxu.

Everything proceeded according to the path that Fuxi laid out for him and he cultivated the method of the three lives to collect the dao fruits of the past and future.

Those Lu Yuns did not have the Tome of Life and Death, nor did he have the Envoys of Reincarnation who would later become the Ten Yama Kings. He couldn't enter the fourth realm and become a Nihil World Sovereign, and he never crafted the Disordered Hell.

Everything started from the world of immortals, proceeded to the chaos, then the Hongmeng. Once the immortal dao traversed the Hongmeng and the fourth realm, what followed would be Lu Yun passing away and the end of the immortal dao. A new protagonist would appear to dictate the rise and fall of existence.

"Something has changed," Mo Yi smiled. "All of the futures that you saw at the end were prearranged, a show put on for you to see and believe. But the conductor didn't anticipate that something would change in you, and that you'd become the facilitator of change yourself!

"This endlessly repeating cycle of reincarnations might be an illusion itself, and one day, we'll break it. We've already taken the first step, have we not?"

"That's right!" Lu Yun laughed heartily. "Something has changed and altered this static loop! In previous cycles, you reveal yourself during the battle of Azure Dragon Lake and bring down the Hongmeng Tower to perish together with the Curse King. But this time, you live and haven't suffered any harm."

The Dao King fidgeted uncomfortably when he heard Lu Yun's words.

"Oh don't look at me like that, I clearly remember that you died thirty-three times for her, and you always die taking a hit for her." Lu Yun frowned at the Dao King. Here was a very weird man. He obviously liked Mo Yi, but was never willing to open his heart to her. Not now, and not in the original Hongmeng.

Mo Yi looked at him with surprise while the Dao King flushed bright red and didn't know what to say.

"Alright, enough of that. Everything's changed because of this factor. If the existence behind these endless reincarnation cycles notice me and the changes in this Hongmeng world, he'll likely move against me.

"But I can't really imagine what kind of existence it might be." Lu Yun pondered silently.

"My father once saw a pair of eyes survey the original Hongmeng." Mo Yi suddenly lifted her head and looked at the horizon. "Perhaps that pair of eyes belongs to that existence. …ah, did you see the three brushes in the grand beginnings of the past?"

Lu Yun's eyes lit up. "Nope!"

He grinned broadly, Mo Yi chuckled, and the Dao King threw his head back with laughter.

etvolare's Thoughts

Holy shit, what a revelation. Okay one quick thing, I don't understand the significance of them laughing like that at the end.

But what a fucking bombshell. Hopefully everyone's clear on what happened, and I really want to know what changed in this loop. The Tome of Life and Death, obviously. But is the change whoever set it in the tomb in chapter one? Or is it the brushes?