Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Between the agonizing transition of death and the jarring breath of a new life, Li Yu floated in an endless and lightless expanse.

In this brief purgatory, the crushing weight of the Temporal Dao Stone was slightly muffled by the resonance of his Koi Soul. His consciousness felt heavy and saturated with the memories of lives he had not truly lived, yet had intimately experienced.

'I understand now, I think.' Li Yu thought as the void swirled around him. 'This is not an illusion. This is an archive.'

He finally pieced the reality together after experiencing a person’s life all the way up to their death at the hands of the first Temporal Dao Stone. He had made similar enough choices or through luck walked a similarish path to the person he was experiencing.

The Temporal Dao Stone did not just accelerate time to rot the flesh; it compressed the entirety of a person’s existence into a single point within it somehow. Because his Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique was slowly consuming the temporal laws to adapt his body, his soul was absorbing the spiritual residue trapped within the relic.

He was sort of living the lives of the victims. He was experiencing the echoes of the elite soldiers from the ancient era who perished in the first stone and he would likely experience the lives of those who were trapped in the current one.

'The ones from the first stone, they all died in here.' Li Yu realized as a heavy sadness washed over him. Then realizations that he too could end up the very same way.

'And I am walking their paths, in a way. But I still have my own mind. I can make my own choices and my choices alter their very path. I am not them, it is impossible for me to choose the same choices they made. Their choices led them to their deaths at the hands of the first Temporal Dao Stone and only once did I ever make it there.'

The darkness rushed up to swallow him once more. He opened his eyes to the smell of damp earth.

He was Han Sen, an elite scout of the ancient Emerald Sky Empire. His foundation was forged in the dense, aggressive jungles of a primordial continent. In Han Sen’s original life, he had used his mastery over Wood and Vitality to act as the ultimate assassin, turning the very forests of enemy territories against them.

But Li Yu felt the vibrant thrum of life within his meridians and made a different choice.

'I have seen enough slaughter,' Li Yu thought as he remembered the countless battles he had just gone through in the last life he experienced. He looked at the sharp, leaf blade daggers strapped to his forearms. He unbuckled them and let them drop into the mud.

'If I possess the laws of life and growth, I will use them to cultivate in this life, not to kill. I will live the simple life like I was doing in my real life before being called to help.'

Li Yu deserted the Emerald Sky Empire before their grand conquest began. He traveled for months instead. He masked his aura and began traveling until he found a quiet and unnamed valley in a remote mortal kingdom.

He claimed a small plot of land. Using the laws of Wood and Life, he coaxed the soil into yielding unparalleled harvests. He grew spirit wheat that glowed with a soft and golden light. Medicinal herbs that could cure the most severe mortal ailments. He did not build a grand sect or declare himself a king. He built a simple wooden cabin and spent his days tending to the soil.

Years turned into decades.

Li Yu lived in a state of quiet contentment. He watched the seasons change. He understood the slow, patient rhythm of a tree taking root. His understanding of the Wood laws deepened but it was entirely focused on nurturing, healing and passive growth.

He avoided conflicts where possible. When wandering cultivators passed near his valley and fought, Li Yu simply hid his presence and let them pass. When a local mortal lord demanded a tribute of his spirit herbs, Li Yu handed them over without a fight. He was preferring to lose a portion of his harvest rather than invite the bloody reality of the cultivation world to his doorstep.

He spent fifty years in perfect peace. But the cultivation world was a churning ocean of greed and a hidden pearl would eventually be found.

In his fifty-first year of isolation, the Ash Bone Marauders arrived. They were a sect of rogue cultivators who specialized in the Death and Rot techniques. They did not stumble upon his valley by chance; they had tracked the dense accumulation of vital energy from his spirit herbs.

Li Yu stood on the porch of his wooden cabin as three dozen figures wrapped in gray robes descended from the sky.

"A vibrant oasis," the Marauder leader hissed as his eyes gleamed from beneath a bone mask. "The energy here is staggering. We will take the herbs. And we will use the blood of the cultivator who grew them to fertilize our Death lotuses."

'I can just leave.' Li Yu thought as his heart was beating a steady and calm rhythm. 'I don't need this land. I can start over somewhere else.'

"Take what you want," Li Yu said. "I surrender the valley to you. I will depart peacefully."

The Marauder leader laughed at him. "You misunderstand the nature of our path, old farmer. Your submission is meaningless. Your flesh is the prize."

The marauders attacked.

Li Yu sighed and tapped into his cultivation base. He stomped his foot and the earth erupted. Massive, thick roots tore through the soil and attempted to bind the attackers. He wove walls of dense vines to shield his cabin.

But he quickly realized a fatal flaw.

He had spent fifty years nurturing plants. He had not spent a single day pushing his laws to their breaking point in terms of offense and defense. The focus had been on life and growth. He had not tempered his Wood Dao in the fires of life and death combat.

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His vines were thick but they were brittle. The Marauder leader swung a sword of concentrated rot and Li Yu’s roots simply withered and turned to ash upon contact.

Li Yu tried to evade but his footwork was slow and out of practice. He had spent too many years in the previous life fighting so he didn’t want anything to do with it in this one. He had the steady pace of a farmer, not the lightning fast reflexes of an elite scout. He had the Qi capacity of an expert but he lacked the killer instinct to utilize it.

The scythe caught him across the chest. The rot instantly invaded his meridians and quickly overpowered the gentle life energy he had spent cultivating. Li Yu fell backward into his field of glowing spirit wheat. The gray rot spread rapidly through his veins. He looked up at the sky he had loved so much.

'I tried to walk away from the world.' Li Yu thought as the cold grip of death took him. 'But the world is not peaceful enough. A tree cannot simply choose to ignore the lumberjack. Without the strength to shatter the axe, even the oldest, most peaceful tree will fall.'

The darkness claimed him and pulled his soul from the rotting corpse.

The transition was violent. There was no slow awakening, only the sudden and overwhelming sensation of cold, hunger and the scent of blood.

He opened his eyes and saw the world in sharp, monochromatic hues. The scents of the forest assaulted his mind, the metallic tang of a wounded deer, the musky warning of a territorial bear and the crisp bite of frost on the wind.

He looked down and around. He did not have hands. He had paws covered in thick, midnight blue fur. He was a Shadowfang Wolf pup. He was one of the war beasts that had been trapped in the current Temporal Dao Stone, a loyal mount from the grand army.

But right now, he was just a pup in the frozen depths of the Whispering Woods.

'I must survive,' Li Yu thought as the primal instincts of the beast merged seamlessly with his human consciousness.

There was no room for pacifism here. The forest was a cruel and unforgiving crucible. If he did not hunt, he would starve. If he showed weakness, the larger predators would snap his spine.

Li Yu embraced the hunt in this life. He learned the laws of Shadow and Moonlight instinctively. He learned how to melt into the darkness between the trees, making his massive body entirely invisible to the naked eye. He learned how to draw the cold and piercing energy of the moon into his fangs, allowing him to bite through spiritual barriers and dense armor alike.

He fought constantly. He fought rival wolves for territory. He fought towering, multi-armed apes for access to spirit springs. He fought rogue human cultivators who came to the woods looking for beast cores.

He did not shy away from conflict. The wolf instincts had him seeking it out, realizing that in the wild, the only way to secure a peaceful den was to be the top predator. Time skipped forward. Decades blurred into a montage of blood, howling winds and the cold light of the moon.

He grew into a massive, terrifying creature, standing as tall as a house. He was now the top predator of the Whispering Woods. Then, the sky tore open.

A grand human armada descended upon the region. It was Li Canghai leading an army. They were expanding their defensive lines. The human cultivators did not negotiate with the beasts; they conscripted them. Li Yu could not see Li Canghai’s face as it was always blurred.

Li Yu fought back furiously. He utilized his mastery of shadows to slaughter an entire squad of elite scouts. But he was eventually cornered by a human general whose cultivation base dwarfed the laws of the forest.

Instead of killing him, the general bound him with a soul contract. Li Yu became a war beast of the grand army. For the next century his life was an endless and exhausting blur of warfare.

He was placed in the vanguard. He carried heavily armored cultivators into the heart of enemy formations. He tore through the lines of the Star Eater Brood. His fangs were used to crush insectoid chitin. He melted into the shadows of the void to assassinate enemy commanders of the Silent Oblivion Sect.

He grew incredibly strong. His understanding of the Shadow laws reached a terrifying peak, allowing him to sever a person’s life simply by stepping on his shadow. But the mental toll was immense.

Li Yu felt the deep and bone weary exhaustion of the wolf. Every day was a battle for survival on a cosmic scale. He slept with one eye open, the scent of burning blood permanently etched into his snout. He saw generations of his riders die, replaced by new and younger faces who would eventually die as well.

He grew incredibly weary of the slaughter. The honor of the army, the grand defense of the realms. None of it mattered to the wolf. He just wanted it to stop.

Eventually, after a century of flawless service, he was freed from his soul contract. The human general respected the beast's immense contributions and released him from service. Li Yu was free.

He turned his back on the grand armadas and the glowing fortresses. He traveled for days. The wolf crossed the void and traversed realms until he returned to the Whispering Woods.

The forest had changed but the shadows were the same. Li Yu found his old den, a cave overlooking a silver lake. He curled his massive and now battle scarred body onto the cool stone. He let out a long and shuddering sigh.

'Finally,' Li Yu thought as he was watching the moonlight reflect off the water. 'I have fought enough for ten lifetimes. I have earned my rest.'

For five years, he lived in absolute peace there. He did not hunt for sport, only for his daily meals which he still enjoyed. He roamed his territory and was enjoying the simple rustle of leaves and the quiet solitude.

But the cosmos was a machine of war and its gears ground everything into dust. In his fifth year of retirement, Li Yu was sleeping in his den when the very fabric of the realm screamed.

He rushed to the mouth of the cave with his fur standing on end.

High above the Whispering Woods, a tear in reality manifested. Two supreme experts were engaged in a battle. It was a stray conflict from the grand cosmic war he had left behind. A commander of the Fiend Sovereign Armada clashing with a hidden ancestor of a human sect.

They were not fighting over the forest. They didn't even know the forest existed. They were simply exchanging blows and had somehow ended up here. A single, stray beam of destructive Qi missed its target.

The beam descended from the heavens like a falling star. It was aimed directly at the center of the Whispering Woods.

Li Yu roared. He channeled every ounce of his cultivation base and was drawing all the shadows of the forest to form an impenetrable dome of dark energy over his mountain. He pushed his powers to the absolute limit and was determined to protect his home.

The stray beam struck his shadow dome.

The difference in scale was absolute. Li Yu was a powerful war beast but the beam was an errant attack from an expert capable of shouldering the sky. His shadow laws shattered in an instant. The beam pierced through his defenses and struck the mountain with apocalyptic force.

Li Yu felt the earth vaporize beneath him. His midnight-blue fur caught fire and his bones instantly turned to ash.

As his vision faded once again, he looked up at the shattered remnants of his beloved moon. He had done everything right. He had fought, he had grown strong, he had earned his freedom and he had retired to a place of no strategic value.

'It doesn't matter where you hide,' Li Yu thought, a profound and terrifying clarity settling over his dying soul. 'It doesn't matter if you walk away from the war. If the sky falls, it crushes the pacifist and the warrior alike. You cannot run from the cosmos. You can only be stronger than it.'

The mountain was erased and left nothing but a crater.

The darkness took Li Yu once more. The carousel spun and was preparing to forge him in the fires of yet another life.