Outside Of Time

1787  Today, I Become a Summer Immortal!

The fortune-teller Liu Xuanji burned his book of fates. At the moment the flames consumed his life, he had already calculated the Heavenly Dao of his world.

”All fates are one fate!”

The historian Chen Mo exhausted a lifetime exploring the truth. In the end, amid the interplay of starlight and candlelight, he saw everything—understanding that all historical outcomes revolve within the same wheel.

”Every person who tries to grasp historyʼs trajectory ultimately becomes part of that trajectory.”

Not only them. Under the illusions woven by the God of Pain, Xu Qing experienced countless lives—scholar, high official, commoner, beggar—each, at some pivotal moment, arriving at the same realization through different means and serendipities.

Until finally, the most extraordinary version—the painter—spoke the ultimate truth with a sigh:

”Return to One isnʼt just about space—but time.”

He, too, met another version of himself across spacetime.

And conveyed all his insights through the fabric of time and space.

They were all Xu Qing.

Ordinary enlightenment flows forward like a river—a straight line.

But Xu Qingʼs Ordinance had reached such heights that his enlightenment formed a circle.

Future selves, past selves, present selves—each became his teacher.

Thus, as the old painter departed with a smile and his world shattered, Xu Qing—gazing at that painting—felt the vibration of the Great Dao thrust in his mind.

A sound like the gathering of all spacetimes, a clarion call of enlightenment!

And so, Xu Qing stepped out of the painterʼs disintegrating world—Back to the original spacetime turbulence.

His anchor. The center of all parallels.

Here, he sat cross-legged.

After a long silence, he closed his eyes and whispered two words:

”Return to one!”

The moment those words left his lips, spacetime trembled. Every parallel consciousness rippled violently.

A storm erupted!

Xu Qing could clearly sense those scattered pieces of his essence—every version across all spacetimes—now converging like homing birds, merging into one.

The return had begun.

…

Time flowed like a murmuring stream, silent yet inexorable, as consciousnesses from divergent timelines reunited.

Even if time had lost meaning for Xu Qing in this moment, the long river of years still stirred with peculiar ripples.

The parallel worlds derived from his Ordinance stretched into luminous threads, weaving together in the turbulence, finally fusing into his true form.

This grand metamorphosis of spacetime also transformed all life within his infinite parallels.

Mountains and rivers reshaped by an invisible hand—some peaks soaring thousands of feet higher, others subsiding into rolling hills.

Lakes and seas abandoned their old courses—some drying into deserts, others swelling into new wetlands.

Beasts and birds gained strange new traits—some grew wings to soar beyond the clouds, others gained human speech as if awakening to sentience.

And the myriad mortals underwent soul-deep transformations—some with glowing marks on their brows, others wielding mysterious powers.

Countless miracles birthed from Xu Qingʼs will, manifested across his parallels.

Yet Xu Qing himself sat serenely in the turbulent void, mind perfectly clear.

No joy, no sorrow.

His cultivation, his realm, now underwent a long-awaited ascent—

Or more accurately, a world-shaking metamorphosis!

His skin glowed with vitality, silver patterns emerged on his bones, his hair grew endlessly, his body turned ethereal—while an aura unique to Immortals began flowing through his soul.

It spilled outward, illuminating the void.

An Immortal was being born.

With this aura came sublimated awareness—Immortal Consciousness. The Law birthed from his Ordinance.

Tougher than divine consciousness, operating on a wholly different level, its reach transcended spacetime—an immense, invisible web connecting everything within his Ordinance.

The moment this network completed, Xu Qingʼs unprecedented transformation reached its zenith.

He had ascended to a higher state of being!

As his eyes opened, heavenly thunder split the turbulent void. Darkness shattered, chaos realigned—all things gained a master the instant his gaze fell upon them.

His Immortal Consciousness swept across existence, piercing past and future, shaking heaven and earth!

And composing this extraordinary sense were all parallel versions of himself—

They were the origin point—all spacetimes, all causality, radiating outward from here.

Theoretically, this point represented boundless time and space, allowing one to traverse history and cross cosmic boundaries.

This was Xu Qingʼs Tenth Extremity—

What his painter-self had named… Dimension.

And in this moment, Xu Qing achieved his long-cherished breakthrough—He became a Summer Immortal!

Transcending mortal shackles.

Entering the transcendent realm of Immortals.

As his eyes opened, the spacetime turbulence revolved around him—every chaotic fragment bowing like subjects to their sovereign.

The effects rippled outward.

Within the Fourth Star Ring, time itself underwent a change. All living beings seemed to lose a fragment of time, only for it to return in the next instant.

The shift was so swift that most could hardly perceive it.

Only those who cultivated time-based powers—cultivators and gods alike—experienced a fleeting trance in that moment, vaguely sensing that a colossal mountain had appeared on the path ahead of them…

Because now, in the hierarchy of spacetime, Xu Qingʼs Ordinance… had reached the absolute peak!

In the past, though gods and cultivators had walked this path, none now stood ahead of him.

There was no one before him—because he himself… had become the foremost of all who wielded the divine authority and Ordinance Laws of spacetime!

The reason for saying ”foremost” rather than ”the first” was that, at the moment his Tenth Extremity reached completion, Xu Qing could sense that across all thirty-six star rings, five other existences stood on the same level as him!

And all were at the level of Lord Gods, each exploring how to take the next step in the concept of spacetime!

At the same time Xu Qing sensed them, the five Lord Gods he faintly perceived—located in the Seventh, Thirteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Sixth, and Thirty-Fifth Star Rings—experienced the same ripples.

In the Seventh Star Ring, there was a Lord God named Aeon, whose divine might was extolled by Its worshippers. In their hymns, Its body was described as forged from flowing sand.

Its eyes were the boundary between dawn and dusk.

Legend stated that the silver sand pouring from Its left eye could freeze any battlefield in time, while the golden sand falling from Its right eye possessed the power to accelerate the growth of civilizations.

As for Its body, it devoured all fragments of time that strayed from the trajectories of fate.

In the Thirteenth Star Ring, the god perceived by Xu Qing took the form of a woman. Clad in a moon-white robe with hems stained by eternal night,

She walked barefoot through the cosmos, leaving burning footprints in Her wake. The star river itself reversed its flow along Her path.

Her silver hair, entwined with nebulae, billowed around Her, revealing shattered gears hidden within.

She was the Mother of Star Trails.

Then there was Freyja of the Nineteenth Star Ring, known as the Weaving Mother.

Within Her divine kingdom, Her true form was a flower blooming upon antlers entwined with jade vines.

This flower radiated threads of four colors:

Verdant threads of spring could make flesh grow upon bare bones.

Crimson threads of summer could melt stars.

One was the Eye of the Instant—a being with no fixed form, instead composed of countless overlapping moments. Its body shifted according to the observerʼs gaze. At this moment, within Its divine kingdom, It appeared as a figure covered in mirror-like scales.

And upon each scale, Xu Qingʼs reflection flickered, containing every possible future iteration of him. Yet in the next instant, all these possibilities shattered.

It could not perceive him!

The other was the Lord of the Abyssal Ruins—a colossal serpent coiled at the end of time in the Thirty-Fifth Star Ring. Its scales were forged from solidified darkness.

Every exhalation spewed black sand that consumed memories, while the tip of Its tail bore a rusted bronze compass.

Many legends surrounded this god in Its star ring. One spoke of how, when It unfurled Its skeletal wings, the membranes would display the chronicles of all forgotten civilizations.

And now, those wings spread once more—Xu Qingʼs name flickered upon them, as if about to be inscribed.

But in the end, it blurred into obscurity.

Because Xu Qingʼs Ordinance Law was the same as Theirs…

A Law belonging to the level of Immortal Lords!