Chapter 00085: Old Dreams
# Old Dreams
Chapter 85
Novel: Above Destiny
Chapter 85: Old Dreams
An endless brightness seemed to rush toward him.
Yet, within this blinding light was a brilliance so overwhelming that Ji Jue could see nothing clearly.
In that fleeting moment, all he could sense was the unique aura emanating from the One True Good: the Eternal Gate.
It was so pure, devoid of any flaws.
It felt as if he had leaped into the river of time, allowing it to carry him to an unknown, distant past.
Until the infinite radiance before him faded away.
A gentle breeze wafted from afar.
The sound of bells echoed in the square, startling the birds.
They took flight, then settled again, curiously peering down from their branches at the unfamiliar visitor.
Ji Jue looked around in confusion, only to find that he seemed to have returned to solid ground once more.
Yet this ground was nothing like he remembered; the ruins were gone, the collapsed skyscrapers vanished without a trace, leaving only a few weathered buildings standing along the street.
The streets were bustling with people, chatting and laughing, passing right through him, leaving only faint ripples in their wake.
In the distance, the bell of the cathedral chimed, like a celebration.
"What is this...?" Ji Jue asked in bewilderment, instinctively reaching out to touch his surroundings.
But his hand passed through everything, without any hindrance, creating ripples like water.
"Have we crossed over?" he thought, struggling to suppress the doubt while simultaneously rejecting the notion.
This did not seem like a real world; it felt more like a reflection in time, so incomplete...
Upon closer inspection, he noticed some flower pots by the roadside flickering constantly, their blooms shifting in color unpredictably.
The willow branches hung low, twitching without settling into a fixed form.
The faces of the passersby were mostly blurred, hard to define, their voices echoing as if far away.
In many places, the buildings and scenery lacked color; their positions seemed to change continuously.
At the horizon, a grand tall tower rose majestically, shining brightly—but fissures kept appearing atop it, blossoming and then swiftly mending, much like a wildly glitchy game.
"What on earth is happening here?"
"Fragments of time, reflections of the past, nothing more," the Seer replied, gazing intently at all that lay before them.
"These are phenomena collected by Mercury... the culmination of many years of work from the workshop—this is what her homeland looked like before its fall."
Ji Jue felt the Ghostly Artifact in his arms tremble intensely, as if it had just come online: "I get it now! I finally understand why Mercury has gone to such lengths to spread her workshop across the entire rift!"
This was the most perplexing problem for the Heavenly Craftsmen.
The ability to control the rift and manipulate everything within it sounded grandiose, even terrifying.
Yet in reality, it was lacking any cost-effectiveness.
To achieve similar results, countless secret techniques from the Tianyuan system could be pieced together, even if they came from multiple rifts.
For the workshop to manage everything centrally made far more sense than going through the trouble of converting the entire rift into part of the workshop.
The sheer scale of such a project was astronomical.
Even if Mercury was mad, she couldn't be bad at math.
Moreover, bigger was not always better for workshops.
The priority was ensuring the effectiveness of alchemy, not the extent of its range.
With Mercury's abilities, if she had reduced the workshop's footprint by half, or even a third, it would not have spiraled out of control as it had now.
"It's not that Mercury wants to cover the rift with her workshop; it should be the other way around. She needs this rift to serve as her workshop."
The Ghostly Artifact enlightened him: "The entire rift has been transformed into an unprecedented colossal receiver, centered around the workshop, crafted specifically to gather energy for the One True Good and the Eternal Gate! After spending so many blessings and materials, and investing decades or even hundreds of years, just to collect time!"
It was like people in remote areas using enormous pots to catch weak signals.
The entire rift had already been altered by Mercury into a giant receiver! Such an exaggerated scale would drain even a sage's fortune, possibly leaving them in debt for a lifetime...
For ages, it had floated amongst the stars, endlessly pursuing the sun, attempting to capture the scattered vestiges of the past in the darkness.
Day after day, year after year, for four hundred years, it had tirelessly gathered fragments of time, painstakingly reconstructing and repeating, trying to trace back to earlier days.
Everything on the ground was merely the manifestation of this accomplishment.
The true treasure lay within the deep well of records and phenomena buried in it!
"What exactly does she intend to do?" Ji Jue wondered, wandering amid that once-relevant history.
"Did you not already see?" The Seer stared into the past and sighed softly, "She merely wishes to return to the old days, and nothing more."
She wanted to reclaim everything—a homeland, family, and their future—from death and predetermined endings... from the calamities she had brought upon herself!
The endlessly repeating town, the colossal Tianyuan Tower collapsing above the sky, and all that was irreparable...
Lastly, among countless phenomena, what appeared to Ji Jue was a fleeting illusion—the lonely figure lingering amidst the ruins.
With all her strength, she dug through the rubble, clearing the stones, and what she found were only countless bones.
She bent down, cradling a bloodstained wedding gown, silently weeping, screams of despair unheard.
This was the price Mercury had to pay.
In an instant, a flash of enlightenment pierced his mind, connecting all he had seen before entering the rift.
Those ancient histories and past events seemed to finally link together.
"The disasters that occurred in the town were caused by Mercury, weren't they?!" Ji Jue exclaimed, turning sharply to ask, "Was it because of the collapse of the Tianyuan Tower?"
Boom!
The scene of earth-shattering devastation emerged again from the reflection of time.
In the mournful cries of the tower breaking, calamities reappeared from the sky, fire beneath the earth spread, devouring everything.
Mournful wails and cries echoed in the wind, consuming everything.
All the blessings belonging to the Tianyuan dissipated, leaving behind only boundless corruption, as the prosperity and glory built upon it were lost to the winds, leaving nothing but the fractured images eternally engraved in time.
The Tianyuan had fallen!
“Eradicate the eternal master, sever the Tianyuan Tower, break the stagnant world that had lasted for millennia, cutting off the accumulated sins of the Eternal Empire—the long-held wish of twelve hundred years was fulfilled in the hands of the Calligrapher. Mercury was the crucial key.”
The Seer said, “The spear of change against the Tianyuan was remade by her... but the cost? What is the cost?”
She said, “The cost is the loss of everything.”
Just as all that was displayed before them.
At the moment the Tianyuan Tower shattered, all the participants would face the backlash from the collapse of order—no matter their initial intentions, the fall of the Eternal Empire would unleash countless disasters upon the land.
It was the evil fruit she had wrought by her own hands.
She knew she would lose everything; she should have known.
But she loved too much; there were too many things she could not let go of.
Even seeking help from the Ether, the sage erased her original name, rewriting her past.
But fate was not so easily toyed with.
She thought that after the empire fell, she could achieve her goals and return home.
But once everything ended, there was nowhere left for her to go but ruins.
All she cherished vanished along with the empire's collapse.
First came the natural disasters, then earthquakes, followed by the mutations caused after losing the Tianyuan and the chaos that led to invasions...
Everything she held dear was utterly destroyed in just seven days.
Her daughter, brother, sister, mother, friends... even every ordinary person who knew her name was consumed by disaster.
Only the lonely sage remained, wandering amidst the ruins and desolation, bearing the weight of honor and curse.
"How ironic. She personally ended the reign of the Eternal Empire, hoping to create an ideal nation, yet in doing so, she birthed disaster, spreading endless toxicity... thus, she became the first ever cursed survivor born from catastrophe."
The Seer looked at the false yesterdays and sighed, "Even if she exhausts her life and effort to revert everything to before the disasters, trying to reclaim what was lost, what’s gone is simply gone, no matter how fake, it cannot return."
All that was left was this false dream and an unending cycle of torment.
In the brief silence, Ji Jue stood still for a long time: "Is it impossible?"
"It is impossible," the Seer replied, unwaveringly.
Thus, Ji Jue fell silent.
He seemed frozen, staring blankly into the air, as if he could hear the distant whistle of a train leaving, along with a faint, far-off song.
How could it be impossible?
Clearly, the sage was elevated above the mortal realm; clearly, the embers of creation were boundless!
This world was vast and too brilliant.
Twelve True Goods, nine Great Evils, Federations, Empires, Central Lands, Security Bureaus, Wasteland Collectives, the Taiyi Circle... so many blessings, so many abilities, so many powers beyond his reach.
He had held on to illusions for a long time.
Perhaps when he became strong enough in the future, possessing enough power, he could reclaim everything lost, even—prevent that disaster from occurring.
"I thought there would be a chance," he murmured to himself, unsure who he was speaking to.
“She thought so too. What you see is that very outcome,” the Seer scoffed. “One cannot change their past or choose what makes them who they are... What has pass will eventually pass, no matter how unwilling, no matter how many regrets. So right now is more precious than the future.”
Her tone was initially indifferent, tinged with contempt, but in the end, she relented, merely sighing: “Why should I let a puppet, who cannot even govern their own life, teach you such lessons, Ji Jue?”
“Who knows?” Ji Jue whispered softly, speaking to himself, “Who would ever resign to fate?”
When faced with destiny, should one humbly bow their head and endure in silence, or foolishly resist?
Laid before him was the pitiful outcome left behind by the pioneers.
(End of chapter)