Fan Wubing watched as his old friend, who had never spoken and never even moved, eroded away all traces of existence over billions of years.

And everything he once possessed, at this moment, continued to inherit timelessly within this ocean.

A pair of dragon horns slowly fell from the massive dragon bones.

Fan Wubing’s perspective swayed with the ocean waves. He watched as his old friend’s skeleton disappeared from his sight.

At this moment, an emotion named "sorrow" erupted in his primarily perspective-driven will.

Yet what he received was still only silence.

Now, he had forgotten everything.

He didn’t remember his own name, nor why he appeared here.

The ocean was his home.

He was carried to the sea surface by a group of glowing jellyfish. To these jellyfish, it was a joyful game. But to him, it was the first time in billions of years that he saw the sun again.

His perspective broke through the sea surface.

This pair of gigantic dragon horns carried a kind of timeless stubbornness, sparkling brilliantly under the eternal, unwavering sunlight.

When he sank back to the seabed, creatures of enormous size had begun to appear.

Gigantic whales, enormous turtles, gigantic fish like mountains with massive trees growing on their heads...

They seemed to have countless eyes, looking from all directions, staring at the dragon horns.

Until the dragon horns were swallowed into the belly of a giant whale.

Fan Wubing’s perspective became that of the whale’s belly. Together with the whale, he swam in the endless ocean. There were predators even larger than the whale... Fan Wubing’s perspective constantly shifted, appearing in all sorts of places in various ways.

It was like a journey.

A journey without purpose or direction.

One day.

A large fish that had swallowed him was stranded.

Fan Wubing was able to see the land again. But the sun was still in the sky, having never moved.

The changes between seas and mulberry fields were the scenery in Fan Wubing’s eyes. He had seen countless such eras, and no amount of time could defeat him.

He calmly welcomed his next journey.

He had once been buried in the earth, fallen into the lava of a volcano, witnessed the struggle of beasts in the jungle, seen monkeys with less hair on their bodies in caves carve patterns into the walls with stones, watched them seek cooked meat amidst thunder and fire.

Time seemed to accelerate.

Yet Fan Wubing fell into another long sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, he found the world had become bizarre and fantastic. The monkeys, except for their heads and crotches, no longer had long, hard hair, but they wore clothes and could emit a colorful light from their bodies.

They began to use this light to fight.

Fan Wubing gradually learned that they called this light cultivation—a magical power obtained through practice.

This power made them extraordinarily strong, able to move mountains, fill seas, kill from a thousand miles away, and cause thousands to bow with a wave of the hand.

One day, a Red Flood Dragon found Fan Wubing.

Fan Wubing saw excitement and greed in its eyes.

It placed the dragon horns upon its own head, then burrowed into the shoulder of a young man.

The young man and the Red Flood Dragon arrived in a bustling city, planning something.

But the plan seemed to fail.

The Red Flood Dragon seized the young man’s body and burrowed underground. There, a glowing, dragon-shaped vein resided.

The Red Flood Dragon wanted to burrow into the dragon vein and claim it as its own.

But suddenly, a massive force came from above. The Red Flood Dragon had no resistance, was seized without struggle, and pulled up.

Then, Fan Wubing saw a little girl. She was holding the Red Flood Dragon, which somehow turned into something like an earthworm in her hand.

The little girl was adorable, with big, shiny eyes reflecting mystical brilliance.

But to Fan Wubing’s surprise, she swallowed the Red Flood Dragon whole.

Soon after, she spit out the dragon horns and the young man whose body had been occupied by the Red Flood Dragon. Then she picked up the dragon horns and quickly ran off.

Fan Wubing’s perspective followed, bouncing up and down.

Until the little girl suddenly grabbed the dragon horns, placing them on a boy’s head.

Time... suddenly stopped.

When Fan Wubing opened his eyes again, a familiar yet strange face appeared before him.

Memories rushed in quickly.

Prompts popped up one after another—

[You have comprehended a thread of the Life Dao]

[You have comprehended a thread of the Life Dao]

...

There were so many of these prompts.

Until the final sentence,

[You have witnessed the birth, reproduction, and inheritance of countless beings; in the river of time, you returned to yourself, saw your original heart, and successfully comprehended the Life Dao]

The Life Dao, one of the Nine Supreme Innate Dao. It grants the ability to create and bestow life upon beings; it can illuminate all things and imbue them with spirituality; it can also perceive the life force of all beings.

Xue Ya’s gentle and melodious voice sounded, "You’re awake."

Fan Wubing arose from her embrace and looked back. Bai Yihuan sat not far away, nearly turned into a stone, covered in leaves, twigs, and dust. This showed that she had been sitting still here for a long time.

"How long did I sleep?"

Xue Ya laughed, "A year and nine months."

Fan Wubing squinted his eyes, "That short, huh?"

Xue Ya gazed at the man in front of her. His eyes carried an ancient, enduring essence. Such a meaning was also possessed by those Taoists of the White Jade Capital who had lived for over ten thousand years, but none were as pure as his.