What?
Qin Li was horrified.
Only he could reach the Other Shore?
“No, I want to take you all with me!”
He gritted his teeth, clutching the Sword of All Beings tightly.
He moved towards the Other Shore, drawing closer yet never able to reach it.
And the Sword of All Beings couldn’t hold, covered in cracks, a mere moment from collapse.
“Why is it like this? Why can’t I reach the Other Shore!” The further Qin Li went, the colder his heart grew, his rage burning wildly.
“Could it be that it’s not the Other Shore at all, but a mirage on the path to it, forever out of reach? Perhaps there is no Other Shore.”
Qin Li lost his mind.
Roaring in the chaos.
Venting his pent-up fury in the mist.
“Why is nothing ever smooth!”
The World Tree reminded him, “Qin Li, do you remember our earlier discussion?”
“To reach the Other Shore, five conditions must be met!”
Qin Li recalled the past.
The five Supremes had proposed five paths.
The Primordial Immortal Emperor: Merge the two highest fantasies into the strongest sword.
The Upper Ancient Divine Emperor: Gather the supreme will of all beings, surpassing the ultimate.
The Near Ancient Heavenly Emperor: Traverse the endless River of Time backwards, achieving eternity.
The Martial Lord of Wugong Mountain: Fuse the mysteries of the three Daos, forging an immortal body.
The Master of Lingtai Temple: Sever ties with the mundane world, cutting the bonds of karma.
Chaos laughed heartily, “Qin Li, you’ve completed four conditions. Sever your mortal ties, and you’ll break through the mist straight to the Other Shore.”
The World Tree nodded, “Qin Li, you must have noticed. As the will of all beings collapses, the Other Shore grows clearer and closer.”
Dugu Laomo was ecstatic, “Qin lad, fantastic! You’re about to succeed. Cast aside the Sword of All Beings, and you’ll achieve eternity. Don’t worry about us…”
“I can’t do it!”
Qin Li was torn between grief and rage, tears streaming down.
“What kind of rubbish Other Shore demands I sever all bonds and emotions!”
“No joy, no sorrow, cutting off all feelings! Such eternity, this loneliness—even if it’s the Other Shore, what’s worth pursuing?”
“Qin! Lad!”
Dugu Laomo practically roared.
“Please, abandon us!”
“As long as you live, what does our death matter!”
Qin Li’s forehead veins bulged, his teeth nearly shattering as he spat out five words through the gaps, “I! Will! Not! Agree!”
Pfft!
A muffled sound.
The Sword of All Beings pierced his chest.
Qin Li bled and wept, “I will merge with the Sword of All Beings!”
“I’ll take you all to the Other Shore—not one of you will be left behind!”
The wish was noble, but reality is often cruel. Qin Li couldn’t approach the Other Shore, merely walking in vain.
He had gone mad.
Chasing a fantasy with his ideals.
But was he the only one driven to madness?
“Qin lad!”
Dugu Laomo made his resolve, “Since you won’t sever it, I’ll cut it myself.”
With that!
Dugu Laomo’s primordial spirit, taking his wife and daughter, resolutely left the Sword of All Beings, vanishing into the mist.
“No, Elder…” Qin Li desperately tried to hold them back.
Yet.
The Sword of All Beings disintegrated.
More primordial spirits departed.
“Go, reach the Other Shore!” The World Tree left.
“Be a man, don’t cry!” The Demon Lord waved.
“Qin Li, you’re the pride of Xixuan Academy!” The Scholar drifted away.
“The greatest of all time, none but Qin Li!” Chaos sang a poem.
“You’ve fulfilled the wish of three epochs!” The Immortal Emperor, Divine Emperor, and Heavenly Emperor smiled.
“Taste the wine of the Other Shore for us—what’s it like?” Sword Hero, Buddha Hero, Demon Hero, and Dao Hero, four friends, departed together.
“Master, we love you most, so please forget us!” Little Dragon, Little White, and Die Yuyi waved fervently.
“Dad, you’re our great hero. Now I no longer need to chase your shadow!” Qin Hao and Qin Lianyi gave their final farewell.
“Child, when you reach the Other Shore, be happy!” Qin Yuanbo and Wen Shu, unaware of what the Other Shore was, offered their simplest wish.
“Brother, thank you for reviving me, letting our family reunite!” Qin Nitian, Qin Taxue, Mo Yaorao—a happy family.
“A person like a rainbow, known only when met! To be favoured by you is our lifelong fortune.” Chu Qingyin, Xia Yufei, Ye Qingyu, Bai Yuru, Xue Ji, Bai Ruyun, Yun Shiyu, Su Qingxue, Zhao Tianyu—the women wept endlessly.
“Don’t blame yourself. Reaching this point makes us happy!” The Alchemy, Craftsmanship, Confucian Immortals, and many saints faded into the mist.
“Wah wah, I still wanted to confess to Brother-in-law!” Chu Zitan lingered reluctantly, laughing and crying as she made a heart shape at Qin Li before drifting away.
…
Friends and family parted one by one.
They were truly gone, lost in the endless mist.
The Sword of All Beings burst, turning into countless fireflies, vanishing completely.
“Please, don’t go! Don’t leave me alone!” Qin Li frantically grasped at the lights, trying to hold onto his loved ones.
But his hands held nothing.
Save for tears.
Qin Li went mad.
Roaring in despair:
“Ah…”
“Ah!”
“Ah…”
The new Heavenly Dao roared too.
For Qin Li’s shadow was fading.
This was the sign of transcending this shore to reach the Other Shore.
“No way! A mere mortal reaching the Other Shore before me!”
“Fist of Finality, Collapse of the Great Dao!”
Boom!!!
A dark punch struck.
It shattered the Nine Yang Great Sun.
The resulting ripples engulfed Shadow Qin Li.
Like an empty room losing its last bright light.
The tattered cosmos, its eight hundred worlds long collapsed, saw matter and energy silently annihilate. All beings vanished, the River of Time broke apart.
The third epoch began its destruction!
“It’s over!”
The Third Heavenly Dao sighed powerlessly.
It could feel the macroscopic laws no longer protecting it.
“Soon, I’ll die, marking the end of the third epoch and the start of the fourth.”
The new Heavenly Dao nodded, “We were one step from the Other Shore. To be safe, we won’t break through now. We’ll wait for the next epoch, birth the Fourth Heavenly Dao, and ensure no more surprises…”
Suddenly!
Everything froze.
As if the world paused in an instant.
The heavens didn’t continue to crumble but halted.
As though an unfathomable supreme macroscopic will had stopped it all.
“Could it be…”
“Impossible! He’s just a mortal!”
A terrifying guess arose in the new Heavenly Dao’s mind.
The Third Heavenly Dao, horrified, urged, “No hesitation—merge! Break the dimensional wall, or we might lose!”
“Fine!”
The new Heavenly Dao opened its maw wide.
It swallowed the Third Heavenly Dao whole.
The First, Second, and Third Heavenly Daos melded perfectly.
They were originally one, planning to devour three civilisations, using three epochs of despair to tear through the dimensional wall and reach the Other Shore.
But now, with the Third Heavenly Dao incomplete, they fused out of necessity.
At last!
The true Heavenly Dao was born.
Breaking all limits, its power unimaginable.
With a mere thought, it could touch the dimensional wall.
The wall embodied macroscopic will, encountered by all who sought transcendence.
“Crystallisation of all despair, essence of all terror, core of all evil, totality of all darkness, source of all pain…”
“Trident of the Three Fallen Daos!”
Boom!
Amidst wails.
Countless horrific visions converged.
Reflecting the anguish of three epochs.
Civilisations decayed, worlds collapsed, beings perished, the five declines of heaven and man…
Heart-wrenching scenes fused into a trident, seemingly ordinary yet capable of destroying the heavens—one prong broken in half.
“Open for me!”
The Heavenly Dao began to burn itself.
Wielding the Trident of the Three Fallen Daos, it stabbed the dimensional wall fiercely.
No grand explosion, just a grim corrosion, melting a hole.
“Brilliant!”
The Heavenly Dao was overjoyed.
“I didn’t expect success—truly didn’t expect it!”
With no more hesitation, it crossed the dimensional wall into a chaotic mist.
“So that’s it—severing my present self on this shore to be reborn on the Other Shore. I care not for these karmic ties; I’ll discard them all.”
The Heavenly Dao cast aside the trident.
It charged towards the Other Shore like a madman.
The moment it landed, the Heavenly Dao underwent a staggering transformation.
Like climbing out of a pond, or a paper figure turning solid, its realm soared to an unimaginable height.
The Heavenly Dao became a mass of darkness, containing multidimensional folded grand worlds, its power swelling beyond belief—far beyond its former self.
Looking back, it transcended the shackles of time and space. The cosmos was but a bubble, the long tale before merely shifting shadows on its surface—a dream easily popped.
In the “nothingness,” it saw billions of worlds—billions of bubbles. Most were far smaller than the heavens; a single breath could destroy tens of thousands.
This shore was illusion, fleeting as a flower.
The Other Shore was reality, eternally unyielding.
“Hahaha! This is the Other Shore, grander than I imagined…”
The Heavenly Dao’s laughter stopped abruptly.
Because.
Something changed ahead.
An incomprehensible being appeared.
A giant, perhaps, folding infinite miracles within.
The Miracle Giant arrived instantly, brimming with boundless fury. One punch unleashed billions of miracles, bursting with unfathomable power.
“Die! For! Me!”
Boom!!!
The punch caught the Heavenly Dao off guard.
It shattered ten billion folded spaces within.
“You’re Qin Li!” In an instant, the Heavenly Dao’s mind calculated countless times, quickly grasping the foe’s identity—and its strength far surpassed its own.
“You destroyed my loved ones; I’ll destroy your Other Shore!” Qin Li had become a miracle. In a flash, billions of miracles shone within him like stars, endlessly brilliant, beyond comprehension.
“I’ve reached the Other Shore—I’m immortal! You can’t kill me!” The Heavenly Dao panicked. It had ascended flawed, arriving a step late and weakened, utterly dominated by Qin Li.
Qin Li seethed, “True, I can’t kill an Other Shore being, but you’re imperfect. I have a chance to force you back to this shore!”
“What!”
The Heavenly Dao was gripped by terror.
Yet it had no room to resist.
Countless miracles assailed, forming a cage around the darkness.
“Get down!” Qin Li, fuelled by vengeance, shoved the Heavenly Dao out of the Other Shore, back to this shore.
“No, no, no…”
The Heavenly Dao clawed desperately at a corner of the Other Shore.
Its infinite dark folded spaces began to dissipate, flattening, like a mosquito squashed into paper.
“No! I’ve reached the Other Shore—I don’t want to go back!”
“You’ll never return!”
Qin Li, in retribution, severed the Heavenly Dao’s last tie to the Other Shore.
Like a man falling from a peak, the Heavenly Dao suffered a collapse of realm. When it came to, it was back in the broken cosmos.
An overwhelming sense of loss struck, as if a mighty emperor became a powerless mortal.
This indescribable pain was a hundred times worse for the Heavenly Dao.
Having tasted the Other Shore’s wonders, it could no longer bear this shore’s inferiority. Even surrounded by immortal herbs, nothing compared to a moment on the Other Shore. It screamed in madness, “I want to go back! I want to go back!”
Snap!
A crisp sound.
To Qin Li.
It was merely crushing the Heavenly Dao with his hand.
But the moment he touched the heavens, the cosmos burst like a bubble.
“This shore and the Other Shore, low and high dimensions, are fundamentally incompatible!” Qin Li instantly grasped this cold, macroscopic rule.
At that moment!
All matter in the heavens.
Began annihilating at a terrifying pace.
In a few breaths, everything would vanish.
“Hahaha! If I can’t reach the Other Shore, it’s still destruction.”
The Heavenly Dao, bitterly unwilling, ranted hysterically, “Qin Li, you’re no better off!”
“Since you reached the Other Shore, you must have forsaken your family, betrayed your loved ones, and abandoned your ideals. Even if you revive them, you’ll never meet again—this shore can’t bear any trace of the Other Shore.”
“You’ll be on the Other Shore, eternally alone…”
Its words fell.
The cosmos perished with them!
All reset, all became nothing!
Nothing remained…
Nothing…
