Chapter 914 - 354: My Name Is Jiang Ran
Fan Wubing was not surprised that Baili Yao Yue could touch destiny.
After all, the Celestial Demon will that is used to locate and concretize the Heavenly Dao was created by her. The Blood Demon Dao within the Celestial Demon will is a rebellion against destiny. If one were not a person who had touched destiny, it would be absolutely impossible to create a power like the Blood Demon Dao.
However, Fan Wubing felt that when Baili Yao Yue created the Celestial Demon will, there was another layer of private intent that belonged solely to her.
In the previous Small Thousand Worlds, the Eternal Immortal Continent, Fan Wubing had chosen to part ways with her because of his identity as a Demon Cultivator. After coming to this Small Thousand Worlds, she certainly had other methods to locate and concretize the Heavenly Dao, yet in the end she chose the Celestial Demon will.
Judging by her temperament, it is hard to believe this choice was not driven by private intent.
It can be said that she was the one who brought Demon Cultivators into this heaven and earth. From her overlooking-the-masses vantage point, perhaps it does not count for much. But when you look at the fine details, this is one of the reasons why this world has gradually moved toward disintegration.
In this sense, calling her a Demoness is not excessive.
Fan Wubing brushed aside stray thoughts, maintained his own state, and quietly felt Baili Yao Yue’s power.
Her power altered the very essence of his existence.
All things that exist within the Great Thousand Worlds have their essence. This essence is determined by destiny. Fan Wubing’s essence is "real life." In the definition of the Destiny Dao, life is a being that possesses will.
Real life is a being that possesses will while at the same time occupies a position in space-time.
Yet under Baili Yao Yue’s power, he no longer occupies a position in space-time, but still retains his self-will.
This kind of essence, in the definition of the Destiny Dao, is "Dao life."
Strictly speaking, the Heaven that has ruled this world for more than twenty thousand years is a Dao life. It is just that, besides being a Dao life, Heaven also possesses an eternal essence.
Baili Yao Yue’s Celestial Demon will altered Heaven’s essence, turning it into real life.
Only then could Fan Wubing succeed in facing it directly.
If he did not have this aid, then even if he possessed the power to destroy heaven and earth, he would still be unable to inflict the slightest injury upon Heaven.
This is the cruel arrangement of fate that destiny imposes upon all things.
Therefore, to touch destiny and transcend beyond it is the supreme pursuit of countless attained Dao beings across countless Small Thousand Worlds. If you cannot achieve this, then no matter how much Dao you obtain, it is nothing more than destiny’s arrangement.
Feeling that the timing had matured,
Fan Wubing transformed into Dao life and began to move backward along the trajectory of his destiny.
This was not time flowing back, but destiny reversing.
The time of the real world was still under the control of the Eternal Cosmos Dao, continuously moving forward.
The long river of years surged forward, while his destiny was continually winding backward.
Using the perspective of Dao life to once again experience the destiny he had already gone through, the feeling was completely different. This is not merely the difference between the self-perspective and the super-self perspective; it is also the difference between the perspective of the thing-being and the perspective of the creator-being.
Fan Wubing was able to view his own destiny from a more comprehensive and three-dimensional angle.
Starting from his reunion with Baili Yao Yue, continually moving backward, to being trapped in the balance interrogation, to the conversation with Celestial Venerable Zizai, to the return of the Innate supreme treasure to its rightful place, to his reunion with Senior Sister...
If we take the birth of his self-will as the starting point and his reunion with Baili Yao Yue as the endpoint, then the trajectory of destiny is a vast semicircle.
Now, then, this semicircle has become a true circle.
"And this... is the rotation of fate."
Fan Wubing’s reverse movement grew faster and faster. Everything he had experienced, without the slightest omission, unfolded before his eyes.
What they call "the player is confused while the onlooker sees clearly."
At this moment, all doubts were resolved in this experience of acting as the "onlooker."
Whether it was Senior Sister’s layout, Baili Yao Yue’s layout, or the layouts of the Dao Ancestor, the Teacher, Shituo, and all the other Great Powers, in his eyes they all became extremely clear. This world that, to him, had seemed utterly chaotic now arranged itself as neatly as soldiers on a drill field awaiting roll call.
Under such a vantage point,
all things are interconnected and mutually influential.
Yet when Fan Wubing reversed back to the point of his birth in this Small Thousand Worlds and wanted to continue reversing, he discovered that the trajectory of his destiny had abruptly come to a halt. He could not return to the time when he was still on Earth, much less to the time on the Eternal Immortal Continent.
It was as if his destiny had only begun after he was born here.
"The world in which Earth is located really is within the Infinite Sea..."
He could not help but think further,
"If in my previous life I was born on Earth, does that mean I have already transcended destiny?"
He then negated this idea himself.
After all, if that were truly the case, would that not mean that everyone on Earth is a being that has transcended destiny?
Yet if we use the experiences of today to look at Earth... when has anything there ever not been trapped within a cage of fate?
This still remains a question difficult to answer.
Fan Wubing kept firmly in mind Baili Yao Yue’s instruction not to act recklessly. He did not attempt to do anything superfluous in time. After establishing this rotation of fate that joined beginning and end, he began to search for traces of "Jiang Ran."
But circle after circle, there was not a single shred of trace associated with this name.
"Yao Yue said that Jiang Ran was erased by the Destiny Dao. Is this erasure total annihilation, or merely extracting Jiang Ran from the destiny of mutual connection between things?"
Fan Wubing sank into contemplation,
"If it is total annihilation, then Yao Yue and Senior Sister should also no longer remember Jiang Ran. Since they still remember, it shows that, with high probability, Jiang Ran was only extracted. It is equivalent to... being locked in a single-person cell?"