Chapter Fifty-Five: The Past and Future Cease to Exist, Ending in the Present Age

Having chatted with Taiyin for so long and learned about two possible future trajectories, Fang Zheng suddenly grew curious.

He raised his hand, waved it, and said with mounting excitement, "Ah! I might have guessed the reason!"

"I finally understand why I don't exist in the futures you divined!"

"Oh?" Taiyin uttered questioningly.

Fang Zheng hurriedly jogged around the area and began explaining his hypothesis.

He ran a full circle, excitedly saying to both Emperor Taiyin and Emperor Taiyang:

"Look at my movements. Aren't I a blocky person right now?"

"The world I perceive in my eyes has only 120 frames per second. Although I cannot fully react in real time during my actions, I can use absolute memory to recall and count the frequency of my body's movements bit by bit, which turns out to be exactly 120 frames."

"In other words, every second of my existence seems to be composed of 120 frozen snapshots of myself."

Fang Zheng looked at them and asked, "Am I not 120 frozen, motionless frames per second in your eyes?"

Taiyin and Emperor Taiyang nodded, and treating Fang Zheng's 120 frozen motion intervals as what they called a single second, they calibrated their perception of time units with his.

Fang Zheng excitedly recalled some trivia he had picked up from popular science videos while watching television and scrolling through short videos.

First, he asked Taiyin, "Didn't I just tell you about the multiverse theory earlier?"

"I remember television saying there are actually many different kinds of parallel universes."

"You said you saw some River of Time, so I think your world might be the kind of world with converging timelines."

Taiyin looked slightly puzzled: "The convergence of timelines?"

From the literal meaning alone, Taiyin could roughly understand what this referred to.

Adept at divination, Taiyin knew far more about the taboos surrounding the River of Time than ordinary cultivators.

In his understanding, if the River of Time rolled relentlessly forward, the future, much like a river, would possess many different potential trajectories.

Any faction possessing the secret arts of divination was bound to warn their descendants:

Whether relying on divination or accidentally glimpsing a corner of the future, the future seen could never be entirely trusted, because reality and the foreseen future often diverged significantly.

However, attempting to observe the past of the River of Time through means such as divination or reflection was always fixed and immutable.

If, as Fang Zheng suggested, time possessed convergence, then everything could be easily explained.

Ancient texts recorded that time could not be altered; wishing to change time would inevitably incur catastrophic backlash.

The River of Time rolled forward, swallowing all tributaries and merging them into a single, unified river. Even if all living beings were like fish within that river, and the exceptionally strong managed to occasionally leap out of the water to glimpse a corner of the future, they would ultimately fall back into the river.

Thus, there should exist a current point in time that served as the convergence point during the merging process of different tributaries of the River of Time.

Prior to this current point in time, the River of Time had already merged into an indivisible whole and could not be altered; subsequent to this point in time, the distinctions between tributaries and the main stream still remained.

Fang Zheng said to Taiyin, "Didn't you say you divined two futures?"

"In the first future, neither I nor you exist, and your corpse even fell out from the Road to Immortality."

"This is probably a parallel tributary that never happened and has already been converged by the mainstream."

"As for the second future, I am not there, but you are. Yet I suddenly vanished precisely when the 'you' in that future was performing a divination."

"I think this one is just like the previous one—a tributary extending from the present into the future."

"Therefore, I suppose my blocky physique might have a certain level of compatibility with the minimum time scale of your world, but not quite enough."

"So, when the River of Time of your world flows and spreads downward, although I can go with the flow, when the River of Time splits into tributaries, I don't get separated along with you all into different tributaries."

"I must be somewhat amazing!"

"Oh?" Hearing Fang Zheng's words, Taiyin looked him over carefully and said with a sudden realization, "You mean your body remains unchanged while being washed by the River of Time?"

He recalled the past scenes of Fang Zheng that he had witnessed through secret arts reflecting the past within that divined future trajectory, and his brow furrowed deeply.

Exchanging a glance with Emperor Taiyang, the two tacitly began a joint deduction.

Instantly, in a fraction of a second, Yin and Yang energies intertwined to evolve into chaos, out of which Yin and Yang were cleaved apart. Numerous Dao principles emerged, weaving together to form a illusory minor world.

As Taiyin and the other continued their deduction, this illusory world split forward infinitely. Countless minor worlds connected into a single entity, transforming into a rolling, surging river. At the forefront of the river, numerous tributaries branched out and extended continuously, while at the rear, it gradually converged forward, drawing the numerous tributaries back into one to form a single, unique river.

At the same time, several illusory divine sense avatars were cast into it by Taiyin and Taiyang, transforming into tribal infants. They split apart along with the division of the numerous tributaries, acting out different lives across various branches.

Some became primitive savages, some tribal warriors, and others body-refining cultivators...

All the illusory futures were utterly swallowed as the mainstream of the river converged, and the numerous potential futures were all drawn back into a single unity.

Taiyin's gaze shifted, and he cast another strand of divine sense into the simulation.

However, this strand of divine sense acted like a stubborn stone; rather than extending continuously alongside the expansion of the illusory minor world, it plummeted directly into a single minor world, being swept relentlessly forward by the river as the minor world itself pressed onward.

Deducing the trajectory of the illusory river with meticulous care, Taiyin immediately spotted the problem. "No! If what Fang Zheng says is true, then not only should the future not exist, but even the past should not exist, leaving only the present!"

"However..." He lowered his head in deep thought.

"If neither past nor future exists..."

He looked at the illusory river.

That strand of divine sense, acting like a stubborn stone, was swept forward by the river. Because it did not split along with the river's own extension, it left behind a continuous hollow trail across the various illusory minor worlds.

Although this hollow rapidly healed under the wash of the river, a momentary trace still remained.

The healing process also caused faint ripples to propagate through the river.

Taiyin furrowed his brow. "If past and future do not exist, and only the present remains, doesn't that mean the past is being altered at every single moment?"

"If the past witnessed by Fang Zheng and me is altered, the present 'me' should not still be alive; I ought to have been obliterated by the backlash force of the River of Time."

"No!"

"If one continuously alters the past, what terrifying karma would that involve?"

"The River of Time should be thrown into violent turmoil, inviting cataclysmic heavenly punishment and backlash!"

"Unless..."

Taiyin gazed with a peculiar expression at Fang Zheng, who was still continuing his explanation.

"If Fang Zheng truly is, as he once claimed, undying and indestructible in Creation Mode, completely unaffected by any attacks."

"If even the backlash force of the River of Time is useless against him..."

A brilliant flash of divine light appeared in Taiyin's eyes. "The power of heavenly punishment backlash will be exhausted! The River of Time will be forcibly altered, triggering immense turmoil!"

Taiyin imagined that scene.

Above the River of Time, a blocky figure crashed into it like a gigantic celestial body of divine iron, sending monstrous waves that continuously rippled outward toward both the past and the future.

(Evening of the 1st day of returning to the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands)