บท 426: Possibility
Yaan found Shi at the beginning of the 18,000 years. She was in the exact same place over 17,000 years later when Defiance arrived, hidden in a secret realm that she learned about from the Primordial Sage.
It was located underneath Primordial Mountain, 10,000 miles underground. The entire realm was hidden within a highly complex formation that was disguised as a small pebble. Inside of this formation, there was a very simple chamber.
It was dark, because Shi had not bothered lighting any of the lanterns in the marble palace hall. She sat in complete darkness, panting for breath. Her pupils rapidly dilated and shrunk unevenly in each eye. She was even drooling blood as she sat there on the stone floor, wearing ragged clothing due to her rough years before reaching here. Clearly, cleaning herself up wasn't on her mind, despite the fact that as an Empyrean, it would only take a thought.
She had clearly sat down in the lotus position to meditate, but she completely lacked the demeanour of an expert. Her body was slumped forwards, she was breathing heavily, and occasionally even growling like a wild beast.
"I suppose it's not surprising that she descended even deeper into madness, given that I experimented on her Dao Soul with Divine Runes for so long, and then she was refined into a formation of destruction…"
Regardless, Yaan continued to watch. Her entire body was simply a vessel of destruction, barely restrained from exploding out and collapsing this secret realm. Apparently she had a tinge of rationality left inside her…no, actually, it might just be survival instinct; her heart knew that she could not expose herself right now.
Just to get an overall look at the situation as a whole, Yaan spent a year rushing forwards through time for over 17,000 years, right up until the moment that Defiance attacked her.
Obviously, he missed the finer details, but he noted several key points.
Just like himself, Shi had also spent this period of time meditating…or at least, she was trying to do so.
She gradually stabilised her condition, and even her mind…sort of. She became less 'chaotically insane', and more 'obsessively focussed and insane'.
She was quite ridiculous in how she cultivated, adding to her obsession, and refining her destruction dao heart in a way that made Yaan's eyes shine with interest.
He watched her again, accelerating time by 100 times, until she underwent one of her five sudden enlightenments.
1,000 years in, her destruction started to restrain itself as her will grew stronger by the second.
"Enough of this." She growled hatefully. "I don't have time to waste being so useless! So…destroy! Destroy the weakness in my heart, destroy the distractions in my mind! Any memories that are irrelevant to my pursuit of destruction, anything in my mind at all that won't help my pursuit of absolute destruction…destroy it, destroy it, DESTROY IT ALL!"
And destroy she did. She literally risked destroying her own destruction dao with an even stronger destruction, one that would either hit its mark and cleanse her heart…or truly end her life.
And then, she destroyed roughly half of her memories.
Yaan couldn't read the memories of an Empyrean without interfering in the world, doing so would instantly shatter the illusion. This proved that he still had much room to improve with his Conceal Truth Dao Spell, but it also revealed a flaw in the Temporal Ghost Dao Spell. If this spell was truly perfect, he should be able to read an Empyrean's mind, regardless of his actual capabilities…but he could not.
He could use an enhanced version of Reveal Truth with zero consequences, but that wasn't enough to see into an Empyrean's mind.
That said, even if he could read Shi's mind, he got the feeling that it would be a completely incomprehensible mess.
"Strange. I can see dao, but not thoughts…I see, so completely committing to the Dao Path has enhanced my dao perception by such a degree - I can look into the heart of an Empyrean without even creating karma between us! Of course, this girl frequently releases her aura uncontrollably, anyone can read the signs of dao from that."
He watched as Shi made the insane decision to erase any memories of hers that couldn't possibly be of assistance with her pursuit of destruction. She successfully cleansed her heart of her myriad of heart demons and rapidly calmed down…then gradually started to seep with more and more destruction as her eyes became manically focussed.
After spending several years curiously examining every minute detail of the changes she was undergoing, despite being unable to read her memories directly, Yaan was able to discern some clues from the changes to her heart.
She had annihilated around one half of her memories, and this was completely unrecoverable. However, she didn't forget a single second of her time spent with him, or any memories she had regarding him, including her thoughts about him…that was why she only lost half and not 80-90%.
"Uncle…" Shi muttered. "You're still too far away. Your path is one that awes me constantly…but I have my own path, a path that will allow me to attain absolute destruction in the end. Even if I need to destroy the world before I'm qualified to face you…so be it. I will destroy everything, and there will be nothing aside from eternal destruction, preventing existence from ever returning…"
"She's really lost it, hasn't she?" Yaan sighed. "Also, why does she always mutter her goals, yet she never mutters a single reason for pursuing such madness? It might be easier to deal with her if I knew her reasoning…unless she has forgotten her own reasoning by now. Well, let's move on."
After 3,000 years of cultivating her focus and will by restraining her destruction and condensing it within her heart and flesh, Shi experienced another major enlightenment.
Her body was shimmering with destructive lightning, causing Yaan to frown the more he observed at all different speeds…
"What is this? It's almost like the opposite of Defiance, and yet they're both cultivating their focus! Defiance cultivated his certainty in his hatred for Shi and his absolute resolve towards pursuing her without being distracted. Like this, he aligned every possibility with his unwavering resolve to static to his pursuit – even if the sky falls, even if the Paragon Wills invade, he won't become distracted. But Shi...this lightning has absolutely no certainty at all! She recognised the unstable nature of her cultivation, her dao, and herself…so she cultivated this to an extreme, as if cultivating an infinite array of new possibilities. Yet somehow, she's managing to control everything despite the complete lack of predictability in that lightning."
Yaan now understood much better, how she was able to escape from Defiance for so long.
If Defiance's focus could be compared to fate, then Shi's…was Chaos!
And yet, they were both seemingly cultivating something similar…
Her third enlightenment after 9,000 years, saw a similar, but more extreme version of the second. The black lightning bolts were so unpredictable that Yaan could swear that after watching everything repeat back and forwards, time after time, at every possible angle and speed…he started to see shadows of the black lightning, as if it was uncertain about its own place in space…
"How is she controlling this? No wonder Defiance was slowed down when passing through the region of space-time that she destroyed…he couldn't control his strength accurately when passing through those regions, throwing off his balance and forcing him to slow down, no matter what he tried."
The fourth enlightenment struck her after another 10,000 years!
This time, Yaan was starting to feel like he was touching on something. The lightning shadows became difficult to differentiate from the black lightning itself…
Her fifth enlightenment hit several seconds after the fourth finally settled.
Yaan went back and forth, watching her half a second explosion of black lightning, which all impossibly vanished as soon as it tried to erupt out from her body. He watched it time after time, millions of times, at speeds anywhere from a million times accelerated to a million times decelerated, and every acceleration in between.
He stopped this for a moment to listen to Shi after she opened her eyes and smiled.
"Success."
"I finally did it."
"I succeeded."
"Not bad at all."
"Attainment at last…"
"Hahaha…"
Yaan staggered back several steps, nearly losing control over the Temporal Ghost spell, but stabilising himself rapidly after pausing time to forcefully suppress the tremors in his heart.
Finally, he opened his eyes and stared at Shi in shock.
"What the hell was that? It was almost like countless possibilities collided and all transpired simultaneously! I didn't notice this when I looked through this so many times before, what changed? Only one thing changed – me! Shi definitely said 'Success' and nothing else. Could it actually be Chaos? Did I just touch upon the dao of chaos…? Shouldn't that be impossible though? The God of Chaos definitely said that he didn't understand my dao of fate one bit, and back then, everything he did and said felt completely incomprehensible to me. If Chaos and Fate are truly a binary pair, opposite daos connected by probability and possibility, then surely the same should go for me, and I should be unable to see through Chaos?"
Yaan pondered for a moment, but he felt like lighting had struck his heart upon realising what he had just said without even realising the major breakthrough!
"Chaos and Fate are connected by probability and possibility…since when did I comprehend that truth? Since I knew it in my heart, yet not even my mind realised it…that's dao comprehension, it can't be anything else, it can't be a mistake! But that means I've started to comprehend the connection between Chaos and Fate, and that…is Chaos dao comprehension."
Yaan sat down, shut his eyes, then meditated for a hundred years in the illusion world's frozen time without hesitation. When he opened his eyes again, he felt even more confused than before.
"I have indeed comprehended something…something that is incomprehensible to me. What exactly is going on, how can I not comprehend my own dao comprehension? Perhaps…"
Yaan's gaze flicked and he appeared before Defiance once again. He skimmed through the passage of time, only stopping when he felt the beginning of the emergence of Fate. He watched from that point on, for several thousand years, not altering the passage of time.
He continued to follow Defiance as he stomped down on the Blood Plane, only this time, Yaan's heart roared like crazy.
Cultivated certainty in Fate, collided with cultivated control over Chaos! Defiance knew nothing about Fate, and Shi had chosen to destroy all dao comprehension in her heart aside from destruction; even her quite impressive understanding of Chaos.
And yet, right now, Yaan watched as Fate and Chaos collided. For a brief instant, the two extreme opposites, which had been cultivated to achieve the same effect – control over possibility – fused together, before erupting into countless shadows that Yaan now understood.
He stared down as it finally hit him, why his dao comprehension had been incomprehensible. He had comprehended the bridge between Chaos and Fate – but only the Chaos side. Now, after putting two and two together and seeing the same bridge manifesting as Fate, he was instantly enlightened.
"Possibility…the dao of possibility!" Yaan felt enlightened as it hit him, and in retrospect, it seemed obvious. It was just that…he had never heard of this dao.
But it clearly existed, and it was a seriously important dao when it came to the fundamental laws of the world!
"Possibility is the bridge between Chaos and Fate. It is the region of overlap, a derivative dao of the two formed by a fragment of both daos. Chaos dictates that there are countless different possibilities…Fate dictates that there is just one possibility. In this world, the truth is a mixture of the two."
He thought about Defiance and Shi, and how they had unknowingly caused these two fragments to manifest in extreme clarity in the world.
"Defiance ensured that his will would not waver no matter the possibility, establishing his resolve with such intensity that he aligned every possibility, which is no different than there being just one possibility. Shi completely destroyed everything within her that was not helping her pursuit of destruction. She transformed every possibility of her every action, into a pursuit of destruction…but there are countless of these, and all are equally likely, making her impossible to predict…what I saw, were the overlapping possibilities, shadows of things that could have happened, but didn't actually come to fruition in reality."
"Haha…if I could pursue this further…if I could develop 'Possibility Fate' in my heart and cultivate it to a certain level, could I potentially look through every possibility and choose whichever I wish, essentially creating fate? Or even…create new possibilities that otherwise would not exist?!"
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