Myriad Rivers to the Sea

'I’ve been injecting my own philosophies into these lives and then I die prematurely.' Li Yu thought as the golden resonance of his Koi Soul continued its desperate but losing battle against the crushing weight of time outside. 'I don't know the choices these people originally made. I only get their memories up to the exact moment I take over. But I keep substituting their natural instincts with my own.'

He had tried to be peaceful when the host was violent or paranoid when the host was arrogant. And the cosmos had swiftly shown that he made the wrong choice by killing him. The original hosts had obviously survived whatever crises he kept failing at, eventually living long enough to reach the Temporal Dao Stone.

'I am fighting the current,' Li Yu deduced. 'This time, I will not force my own personality onto them. I will surrender to their nature. I will let their ingrained instincts and the momentum of their pasts completely take the wheel.'

With that resolve, the darkness shattered.

He opened his eyes. He was lying on a hard wooden bed in a dilapidated shack. His body ached and was covered in fresh bruises.

He was Ye Xiao, an outer court disciple of the ancient Flowing Cloud Sect.

But the memories that flooded Li Yu’s mind up to this point were utterly absurd. Ye Xiao’s original memories did not begin in this cultivation world. They began in a realm of towering structures made of glass and steel.

Where mortals rode in metal carriages powered by explosive fire and stared into glowing tablets of light. He had been a mortal named "Kevin" from a place called "Earth," who had died after being struck by a rushing metal beast on wheels, only to wake up in this bruised body.

Li Yu was completely baffled.

'What kind of realm is that?' Li Yu thought while sifting through the memories of cubicles, glowing screens and most people couldn’t fight. 'No Qi? No cultivators? Just billions of mortals competing with one another to get money?'

Before Li Yu could fully process the absurdity of "Earth," a sharp chiming noise echoed directly within his mind. It was not a divine sense transmission. It was mechanical, flat and entirely devoid of life.

[Ding! Ultimate God Emperor System activated. Binding to host Ye Xiao. Binding complete.]

Li Yu jumped up from the bed with his Qi circulating defensively. 'Who goes there? Show yourself!'

[Host, I am the System. I am here to assist you in reaching the apex of the cultivation world. Initializing Novice Gift Package...]

A glowing, ethereal screen appeared in Li Yu’s vision. It listed numbers, attributes and something called "Experience Points."

[Quest Triggered: Slap the face of Outer Disciple Wang! Reward: 100 System Points and the Nine Suns Tyrant Body manual.]

Li Yu stared at the glowing words. The memories of the transmigrator surged forward with a wave of manic excitement. In the host's mind, this "System" was the ultimate, heaven defying cheat.

'This is completely nonsensical,' Li Yu thought. 'Cultivation requires years of meditation, understanding the Dao and forging one's foundation. What is a system point?'

But he remembered his vow. He would surrender to the host's instincts and experiences. And Kevin’s instinct was to completely abuse this bizarre phenomenon.

Li Yu walked out of the shack. He found Outer Disciple Wang, a bully who had beaten the original Ye Xiao half to death the day before. Li Yu didn't use any profound martial arts or careful plotting. Following the bizarre and arrogant urge of the transmigrator, he walked right up to the stunned bully and slapped him across the face so hard the boy’s teeth shattered.

[Ding! Quest Complete. Reward issued.]

Instantly, a supreme body-refining technique, the Laws of the Nine Suns Tyrant Body was injected directly into Li Yu’s mind. Furthermore, a burst of pure and unrefined energy surged through his meridians and forcefully broke him through two minor realms in the span of a single breath. There were no bottlenecks. There was no risk of Qi deviation.

Li Yu stood there and was entirely dumbfounded.

'This... this is cheating,' Li Yu realized. 'This defies everything.'

For the next several decades, Li Yu lived the most ridiculous, frictionless life imaginable. He leaned entirely into Kevin's chaotic arrogance. He didn't have to scheme. He didn't have to spend years in closed door cultivation. He simply followed the floating blue text.

He went to a random mortal market, bought a rusty sword for two copper coins and the System revealed it was the Heavenly Dragon Crushing Blade. He fell off a cliff and landed on a small platform with a tree growing a glowing fruit. He ate it and gained immunity to all poisons. When a supreme elder of a rival sect attacked him, the System generated an "Emergency Absolute Defense Shield," allowing Li Yu to mock the elder before using a random talisman to teleport away.

He was arrogant. He was incredibly loud. He offended everyone he met, leaving a trail of furious young masters and weeping jade beauties in his wake. In any other life, this behavior would have gotten him turned to ash within a week. But the "System" simply rewarded him for his arrogance with more power.

Li Yu absorbed it all. He learned the Nine Suns Tyrant Body, the Heavenly Dragon Sword Art and a supreme movement technique called the Void Stepping Boots. He amassed a terrifying cultivation base without shedding a single drop of sweat in actual training. Li Yu thought he had it fairly easy on his road to cultivation but envy is the thief of joy. Knowing that it could be even better made him feel bitter.

Eventually, his heaven defying luck and overwhelming combat prowess caught the attention of the ancient Imperial Court. He was drafted and quickly rose through the ranks to become a Grand General of the Vanguard.

He stood upon the deck of his colossal flagship and was clad in golden armor. He looked out at the cosmic void. He commanded millions of troops. He was at the absolute peak of his powers and had never found a rival.

'I have won,' Li Yu thought. Yet, a strange sense of foreboding was occurring. He knew how this story eventually ended. 'This life was fun but it lacked depth. I never got a chance at true love or enjoyed myself nearly as much as I have in my own life. Perhaps it's because my sources for happiness are so different from this person’s. I wonder if he made similar choices to mine.'

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The fleet advanced toward a critical chokepoint in the cosmic war. The enemy forces, a coalition of ancient cultivators, were waiting. Li Yu drew his Heavenly Dragon Crushing Blade and was ready to unleash a skill that the System promised would wipe out half the army.

Then, the enemy supreme commander raised his hand. He didn't cast a spell. He didn't summon a beast. He simply crushed a glowing, iridescent stone. The void shrieked. A massive, expanding bubble of temporal energy erupted and swallowed Li Yu’s flagship and the surrounding armadas.

The mechanical voice in Li Yu’s head panicked for the first time.

[WARNING! Unblockable Cosmic Relic detected: Temporal Dao Stone. Lethal threat level: Absolute.]

'System!' Li Yu thought while feeling the crushing weight of tens of thousands of years crashing down on his shoulders. This was the moment, there was the Temporal Dao Stone. Li Yu reacted quickly to see if he could get away. 'Buy the escape teleportation! Use the invincibility shield! Do something!'

[Error. Temporal laws exceed System parameters. Attempting emergency extraction... Error. Host connection failing. Error... Error...]

The blue screen shattered into static and vanished entirely as the bubble trapped him.

Li Yu’s golden armor withered to rust. His Nine Suns Tyrant Body cracked and crumbled under the immense, unyielding pressure of time. As his flesh turned to ash, Li Yu let out a dry and bitter laugh internally.

'All that ridiculous luck,' Li Yu thought as the darkness claimed him. 'All those system points, the arrogance... and a single albeit powerful rock ends it all. The cosmos doesn't care about your cheats. In the face of a stronger power, it did not matter.'

The darkness swallowed him and washed away the lingering absurdity of the transmigrator. The next awakening was sharp and filled with the scent of blood and a burning hatred.

He opened his eyes. He was kneeling in a courtyard with rain pouring down on his bruised face. He was Chu Yan. But the memories in his mind were perfectly split in two.

He possessed the memories of a sixteen-year-old boy who had just been brutally beaten and stripped of his cultivation by his treacherous fiancée and his jealous cousin. But layered perfectly over those memories was the consciousness of a three thousand year old Supreme Commander.

In Chu Yan's "first" life, he had survived this beating, crawled his way up from the mud and spent a lifetime fighting a horrific war. He had finally reached the peak, only to be betrayed by his closest allies and murdered before the final battle had even begun. He had died cursing his own blindness.

But the heavens had answered. Chu Yan had reincarnated. He woke up in his own sixteen year old body exactly at this moment, possessing all the knowledge of the future.

'A second chance,' Li Yu thought, marveling at the sheer clarity of the memories he had just inherited. 'I actually know the future this time. I know where every hidden treasure is buried. I know the weakness of every martial art I face. I know who will betray me and who will rise to power. This is the ultimate roadmap.'

Li Yu did not have a mechanical voice in his head this time. He had something far more potent: history. He let Chu Yan's cold and calculating instincts guide his every move.

He stood up in the rain and ignored the pain in his shattered meridians. He knew exactly what to do. Instead of resting, he walked into the treacherous Soaring Peaks behind his clan's estate.

He knew that exactly three days from now, a rogue cultivator would die in a specific cave, leaving behind the Nine Nether Frost Art. Li Yu arrived early and waited for the cultivator to die and claimed the peerless manual.

Using his lifetime of future combat experience, Li Yu easily crippled his jealous cousin in the clan tournament. When his treacherous fiancée tried to annul their engagement to humiliate him, Li Yu produced a crystal recording of her colluding with an enemy sect. A secret he knew she had harbored in the future. He executed her on the spot and seized control of her faction's resources.

His rise was a masterpiece of flawless execution.

He went to the secret realms before they were officially discovered. He dug up the Absolute Annihilation Halberd from a seemingly empty riverbed. He recruited loyal geniuses while they were still destitute beggars and secured their absolute devotion. He preemptively slaughtered the enemies who would have caused him endless grief in his previous life.

He learned the ice and destruction laws with ease. His soul perfectly aligned with the future he was manifesting.

Centuries passed in a blur of perfect victories. Li Yu never made a mistake. He never fell into a trap because he already knew where the snares were laid. He followed Chu Yan's path exactly, acting as the perfect prophet.

‘So this is what Malos must have felt like. But the way he described it, it wasn’t nearly as clear as this. I finally got to have a glimpse into what his life was like.’ Li Yu thought.

He rose to the rank of Supreme Commander of the Allied Armadas, achieving in a few thousands years what had taken him tens of thousands in his previous life. And there he stayed until the fateful day of his death in his first life.

He stood at the vanguard of a great war. The allied forces stretched across the void, an unstoppable tide of righteous fury.

'This is the battle where my host died in his first life,' Li Yu thought while gripping the Absolute Annihilation Halberd. 'His lieutenants stabbed him in the back. But not this time. I executed them centuries ago.'

"Commander Chu!" His loyal general shouted. "The enemy armada is approaching! The Patriarch of the Ashen Void is leading the charge!"

'I know his technique,' Li Yu thought with a cold and victorious smile. 'He will feint to the left and unleash his devouring laws on the center. We have the perfect counter array prepared.'

"Hold the center!" Li Yu roared as his voice echoed across the fleets. "Prepare the Sun Piercing Formation! Wait for his feint!"

The enemy armada engaged. The Patriarch of the Ashen Void charged forward. But the Patriarch did not feint to the left. He did not unleash his devouring laws.

Instead, the Patriarch stopped just outside of range. Because Chu Yan had died before this specific engagement in his first life, he had never seen what the Patriarch truly held in reserve. There was a gaping hole in his knowledge of the future.

The Patriarch looked at Li Yu with a grim and desperate expression. He pulled a glowing iridescent stone from his robes. Li Yu’s eyes widened in horror.

'Wait,' Li Yu thought as his omniscient roadmap shattered into pieces. ‘So no matter what I did after reincarnation, the result was the same? If I hadn’t been betrayed in my first life, I would have died here too!’

The Patriarch crushed the Temporal Dao Stone. The void shrieked. The bubble of accelerated time exploded outward and instantly swallowed Li Yu, his army and the collective army he was a part of.

Li Yu raised the Absolute Annihilation Halberd. He was trying to freeze the temporal laws with his Nine Nether Frost Art. But it was utterly useless. The future knowledge, the perfect preparations and the peerless techniques. None of it meant anything against the crushing weight of a cosmic relic.

His flesh withered. His halberd rusted to dust. As his vision faded for the final time in this life, Li Yu couldn't help but laugh at the cosmic joke.

'You can know the future,' Li Yu thought as the darkness claimed his soul. 'You can memorize every step of the dance. But it doesn't matter if you know history when the enemy decides to drop a mountain on the board. In the face of absolute power, foreknowledge is just an elaborate illusion of control.'

The darkness took him. Floating in the lightless void once more, Li Yu took a moment to reflect on the madness of the two lives he had just lived.

A chill ran down his ethereal spine. He had faced grand patriarchs, terrifying war beasts and demonic sects. But the concept of the transmigrator and the reincarnator was something far more horrifying.

'It is terrifying that such beings exist in the cosmos,' Li Yu thought as his mind raced. 'People who possess Systems that defy all natural laws or people who have lived the future and returned with perfect knowledge. If I ever run into someone who acts inexplicably arrogant yet suffers no consequences or someone who predicts every movement and unearths hidden treasures with perfect accuracy... I cannot treat them like a normal cultivator. Make them a friend, never an enemy.'

He etched the warning deep into his mind. In the brutal world of cultivation, the most dangerous enemies were not always the ones with the highest cultivation base. Sometimes, they were the ones who didn't play by the rules at all.

'I must be incredibly careful,' Li Yu promised himself. 'If I ever meet an anomaly like that and can’t become friends, I must either avoid them entirely or strike them down with overwhelming and absolute force before their "cheats" can activate.'