📖 Chapter 1101 - First Life!

24 Sep, 2023

The owner of the aged voice seemed to have reached their limit, using every last bit of their strength to propel their voice. It passed through the infinite universe and endless years, sinking into reincarnation and resounding in the dark void and finally reaching… Wang Baole’s ears.

The voice seemed to touch his soul, and Wang Baole’s mind stirred. At first, it barely moved, but as the voice echoed again and again, the fluctuations of his mind became stronger and stronger. Eventually, Wang Baole’s whole body trembled violently, his mind awakened, and his eyes… opened.

What he saw was not Planet Heaven’s Mandate, nor the Book of Heaven’s Mandate, nor Reverend Heaven-Learned. Instead, he was looking at… a starry sky!

Brilliant starlight and countless shining stars stretched as far as the eye could see. Obviously, innumerable stars had eventually converged in this place over the endless years to form… a boundless river of stars.

This alone wasn’t too strange. Although the sight was wondrous and even fantastical, Wang Baole had seen many similar sights in the Never-Ending Dao Domain.

But… the scene here was a little different from everything he’d seen before. Here, the starry sky was almost illusory, as well as extremely vast. Everything about it held an unspeakable sense of time. Standing there, one would feel like a minuscule speck of dust in front of the majestic passing of years.

Wang Baole’s eyes were hazy as he looked at all of this. His consciousness had awakened due to that voice earlier, but his memories hadn’t completely returned yet. All he remembered was that Reverend Heaven-Learned had helped him sink into his past lives again, and then… he opened his eyes, and he was looking at this starry sky.

But just as Wang Baole was at a loss, the memories of the seventy-eight other lives appeared in his mind one by one. Each life was like a clap of heavenly thunder exploding in his mind, filling his consciousness with countless scenes.

Again and again and again… when the memories of all seventy-eight lives finished appearing, Wang Baole’s whole body was trembling and his expression distorted in pain. This pain didn’t come from any emotions, but rather because the appearance of all these memories made his mind feel like it was ripping apart.

"Sun De!"

"Sun De!!"

"Sun De!!!" Wang Baole repeatedly roared the name of one man. This name was the name that had appeared again and again in all seventy-eight lives!

In each of the seventy-eight lives, aside from Wang Baole himself, Sun De was always there. Sun De, holding the black wooden board, experienced life after life, reincarnating again and again as if searching for a direction, searching for an… opportunity.

“Instinctively looking for an opportunity to revive Ancient’s remnant soul…” Wang Baole held his throbbing forehead, eyes bloodshot from the sudden influx of memories. But as he digested the memories, his mind slowly calmed down and his eyes gradually narrowed, bright light flickering in their depths.

Everything seemed to have become clear!

Ever since the second life of the universe, Sun De, no, Ancient’s remnant soul had been trying to wake up. But unfortunately, the opportunity to awaken never appeared. In the end, after seventy-nine lives, Ancient’s remnant soul failed to wake up and disappeared for all eternity.

And Sun De’s continuous reincarnations also came to an end.

Perhaps the next life of the universe should have originally been a desolate one, where all living things didn’t exist and the starry sky became deathly silent. But the trajectory of fate had changed, and it was all because… Wang Yiyi’s father, seeking a cure, came to the Never-Ending Dao Domain.

Thus, the eightieth life of the universe, as seen by Wang Baole via Xu Yinling’s past life trial, gave birth to the river of dream bubbles. Thinking about it now, perhaps those bubbles represented the inception of life.

And everything that came after, the mushrooms, butterflies, etc., were the process of life growing and enriching itself…

“The past ten lives of this universe were created by Wang Yiyi and her father…” Wang Baole murmured. He suddenly recalled what Li Wan’er had said – “There are gods three feet above your head”. At this moment, he felt that he finally understood the meaning of these words.

Wang Baole knew that Wang Yiyi’s father had come here to cure Wang Yiyi’s illness. As for the reason Wang Yiyi and her father were able to give life to the universe, that was presumably because… of the words Sun De had spoken at the end of the seventy-ninth life of the universe, when he promised to help save Wang Yiyi.

With the memories of the second through eighty-ninth lives of the universe appearing in his mind, Wang Baole knew that he himself actually owed Sun De a favor as well.

Because if he hadn’t inherited Sun De’s will at the moment the remnant soul of Ancient dissipated, then perhaps he would still be a black wooden board floating around in the starry sky. He might have vitality, but he wouldn’t have true life.

As for the origin of the blood-colored centipede, Wang Baole had two guesses. Although he didn’t know which one was correct, he was sure that the truth lay somewhere between them.

“The first possibility is that it’s related to All. When All and Ancient competed for the Immortal Throne^[1], All came out victorious, but Ancient’s remnant soul escaped, causing the Immortal Throne to remain incomplete. But Ancient didn’t know that there was still a wisp of All’s consciousness inside his remnant soul, and this wisp of consciousness… for some reason or another, eventually gave birth to spiritual wisdom.

“As for the second possibility…” Wang Baole fell into deep thought. He recalled the roar of the blood-colored thread in Sun De’s second life.

“’You dare suppress the Immortal’…” he murmured. This sentence was the origin of his second guess.

“The second possibility is… that the blood-colored thread wasn’t from All. Instead, it came from… the Immortal Throne that All and Ancient spent a full loop fighting over… Perhaps the Immortal Throne itself already had a spirit from the very beginning. Or perhaps it originally didn’t have one, but under a special environment and in certain circumstances, it gave birth to spiritual wisdom. That centipede I saw was not its true appearance, but more like a symbol!!”

Wang Baole fell silent. Both guesses seemed plausible, so he had no way of judging which one was correct. But just when he wanted to analyze the details more closely, he suddenly felt his heart palpitate. When he looked up, he saw a sea of light far, far, in the distance.

The immense sea of light was rushing over with overwhelming momentum. Looking closely, it could be seen that this sea of light… was actually a universe!

This universe seemed infinitely large and contained innumerable stars within, as well as astonishing fluctuations of power. As it closed in from the front, Wang Baole suddenly sensed something and looked behind him. There, he saw an enormous, pallid beast, roaring and flickering between reality and illusion.

This enormous beast looked like a whale, and it was so large that its size could actually compete with the boundless sea of light. Taking a closer look, Wang Baole saw a continent inside its body, as well as countless cultivators flying out of the continent. These cultivators fused into the flesh and blood of the enormous beast, filling it with world-shaking, godly might.

In the blink of an eye, the whale and the sea of light collided. A fierce battle instantly broke out in front of Wang Baole, and it was also at this moment that he finally realized what he was seeing!

Here, in the first life of the universe, was… the battle of extermination between the two Dao Domains born at the beginning of the second loop. It was the war between the Never-Ending Dao Domain and the Vast Expanse Dao Domain, a war that occurred countless years in the past!

Wang Baole stood on the battlefield and watched as the two Dao Domains fought it out. He saw countless people dying, watching as people howled in madness and tragedies played out all over. The entirety of this massive war fell into his eyes.

Be it the Vast Expanse Dao Domain or the Never-Ending Dao Domain, they both exhibited unimaginable strength. Wang Baole’s heart trembled, and he recalled the secret that Wang Yiyi’s father had told to Sun De.

This Never-Ending Dao Domain is not the real Never-Ending Dao Domain!

As soon as those words reverberated in Wang Baole’s mind, he saw changes occur in the pallid whale, which had fallen into a disadvantage. On the continent inside of it, all the cultivators were kneeling down. They were kneeling down in worship!

And the object of their worship was a statue!

The statue depicted an old man!

He was… the first cultivator ever born in the Vast Expanse Dao Domain, as well as the supreme existence in the Dao Domain. He had no name, only a title.

Patriarch Vast Expanse!