Chapter 1081

In nothingness, the physical body is the boat, the soul rides the vessel, moving against the current.

This road is long and winding.

And recalling the past, officials, merchants, brutes, physicians, commoners, young boys...

Seemingly ordinary, they are experiences, reincarnations, and lives.

That is because one is within it, so one cannot see through the fog.

Now awake, looking back.

It is clearly the Five Elements.

Xu Jin Hong, the Prime Minister, although a civil official, supported the dynasty with thunderous methods all his life, had millions of brave soldiers in his heart, gold weapons and iron horses; his life represented Metal.

Wealth is Metal, power is Metal, weapons are Metal, and his fate is also Metal.

Xu Hong, who dreamed of becoming a wealthy tycoon, was charitable all his life, had vast wealth, and also drifted; however, his fate was full of twists and turns, and he finally withered; his life represented Water.

Wealth is Water, the main flow is movement, there are two extremes of drought and flood, and there is the saying that the highest good is like water, so his fate is also Water.

The brute Xu Shan, this mountain is not Earth, but has the meaning of Forest; his fate was like duckweed, his childhood like rotten wood, and as an adult, he became a bandit, mixing in the mountains and forests, a fate of rotten wood.

He was not very wise and was prone to anger, and his emotions were easily influenced by the outside world, so he would rather die standing than kneel and live in humiliation.

The physician Xu Yu, hanging the pot to save the world, had a benevolent heart, willing to be the furnace of heaven and earth, refining a single herb; his body was like Fire, his fate like Fire.

It was the Vermilion Bird's heart fire, the burning brilliance of guarding fate.

However, in this life, the wind and fire emerged, the heart was extinguished, and only until death did the heart recover, and the wind and fire returned.

The commoner Xu Kun, his life was ordinary, honest and taciturn, his feet steamed with the heat of the earth, his back scorched by the heat of the sky, he exhausted his strength without knowing the heat, but cherished the long summer days.

His head touched the sky, his feet touched the earth, continuing the time of the future, accumulating the fate of Earth.

As for the young boy and the remnant soul of the cultivator, they were the same person.

Bearing the responsibility of the message, like a long thread.

Starting from the Fire of the physician, passing through the Earth of the commoner, and then meeting the true self.

Crossing time.

This is Time Fate.

"Only lacking Space..."

Xu Qing muttered.

"The reason it is like this is because this road is not yet complete."

Reincarnation is ahead, and the source is behind reincarnation, so while walking, one looks.

No longer sinking.

Like a passerby, seeing the various states of life.

What is looked at has no form, so there are men and women, old and young, temples and pugilistic worlds.

Scene after scene, appearing before his eyes.

Don't know how long, don't remember the time.

This road, walking and walking, looking and looking, Xu Qing's footsteps finally paused.

What his gaze looked at, what his mind condensed on, was himself in reincarnation, transformed into... an actor.

An actor's life interprets many things.

The day before, the gongs and drums echoed through the beams, and the painted face took the stage, waving the water sleeves.

Today, the flags unfurl in the wind from all eight directions, and loyalty and treachery, black and white, and red are already decided.

The same face, different paint, whether man or woman, became a life in different periods of time.

There is the comfort of playing life, and the lack of regret in playing death.

It is precisely that life is like a play, and the many red-dust affairs of ancient and modern times are all sung in the play.

Nor does one know what kind of true heart lies beneath the face painted with oil colors.

Nor does one know if, after a long time, one will be unable to distinguish between reality and illusion.

Only at the moment when the song ends and the people disperse, after wiping away all the oil colors, the person who walks out carries melancholy thoughts, sighing at the joys and sorrows interpreted in the past and future lives, the floating life is like a dream, the years are like water, quietly drifting away, faintly leaving no trace...

Finally, he sighed lightly.

"There are many roles in the joys and sorrows of the world, do not say that people are miserable..."

"Can't distinguish..."

It is precisely that joyful songs are often drunk to look at, and time is blurred in the eyes.

Every memory is a ripple; waking up from a big dream, it was originally a plum blossom dream of a thousand or ten thousand years of encounter.

Thus this play, from the prologue to the curtain.

This life, from birth to death.

This dream, from sinking to waking.

Xu Qing woke up.

In nothingness, he muttered softly.

"Where is this a play? This is a life in time..."

"And people have life and death, and plays also have beginnings and ends; this difference between life and death is like the difference between dreaming and waking, changing in various ways, impossible to investigate."

"Then, crossing reincarnation, walking out of life, after waking from the dream, at the end of this scroll, what is waiting for me?"

The answer was already there.

Because he had walked all the way to the end of this reincarnation scroll and finally saw the source point of this scroll.

It was also the Dao foundation that carried the reincarnation of the scroll.

It was originally a painting.

What Li Mengtu opened was only a sliver, and what Xu Qing saw at this moment was the full picture of this painting.

It was a crystal.

Falling into chaos, appearing in the endless nothingness, blooming with incomparably brilliant light, and then shattering into ten irregular pieces.

Scattering.

Then, Thick Earth appeared.

This was precisely the scene formed by Thick Earth, and it was also the scene depicted on the meteorite that Xu Qing saw through the eyes of the Immortal Ancestor when he realized the Eight Extremes Dao back then.

Opening heaven and earth.

And, even clearer!

"I didn't expect that what this scroll painted was actually this scene."

Xu Qing muttered.

"That was a purple crystal."

Exactly the same as his own.

Thus, Xu Qing was silent.

At this moment, he could feel the method of leaving.

He had passed through the reincarnation of the scroll and walked to the end.

Now he only needed to take a step forward to leave this scroll.

But his gaze swept over the ten shattered crystal pieces.

After a long while, a strong gleam appeared in his eyes.

"Being sealed into this scroll is life and death, but also creation!"

"The Dao of my Immortal Body originated from those ten shattered crystal pieces; now that I see them again, and clearer than before, I can... verify my Dao again!"

Thinking of this, Xu Qing did not hesitate, sat cross-legged, his divine sense and even his soul erupted suddenly, like a meteor, heading straight for the ten shattered crystal pieces.

The next instant, reincarnation started again.

But this time, it was no longer a person.

I am a meteorite falling from the sky.

Landing on a star named Destiny.

I don't know where I came from.

Time passed there, and I gradually developed a wisp of intelligence, vaguely recalling some past events.

But not specifically, very blurry.

Only remembering a desert.

So most of the time, I was gazing at this star, witnessing the fate of all living beings on the star, and also recalling where I came from, recalling the story of that desert.

But unfortunately, I couldn't remember too much; no matter how hard I tried, at most I remembered a piece of dust and a river.

Who were they?

I was a bit confused.

And in the time I was pondering, on this Destiny Star, I was often discovered by the people here.

Sometimes they thought I was ordinary, and sometimes I was treated as an omen.

Similarly, there was a period of time when I was considered a holy object by the people here, who came to worship me.

Time passed, and the years changed.

I didn't care about these scenes.

I had thought that the rest of my life would be like this.

Until one day, a cultivator from outside the Destiny Star arrived here and saw me.

He seemed ecstatic, carried me from the Destiny Star, left this star, and went to a continent called Sky Fire.

There, it seemed to have no end, incomparably vast.

And I will always remember this continent, because there was a vast volcano there; this mountain... occupied ninety percent of the Sky Fire continent's area.

I was brought there, thrown into the burning crater, endless magma and scorching heat enveloped me, burned me, and refined me.

Until, I became a piece of iron.

The cultivator who brought me here used the power of this volcano to finally forge me into a sharp sword.

He went to a place called Beginning Forest and cut down the oldest tree there.

It seemed to be revenge.

And the cultivator was also seriously injured, took me away, and fell years later; and in the long passage of time, I met other sword-wielders.

Without exception, they all fell accidentally in the end.

The saying of being ominous fell upon me once again.

So the last sword-wielder brought me to a black, death-filled Yin River, erased my spirit, and threw me down.

I fell into the river, sank, and my spirit dissipated.

I was buried deep in the mud at the bottom of the river.

But the aura on my body seemed to form extreme nourishment for this river water, making it vast and increasingly surging.

And before I died, I heard someone say to me.

"This is, Fire overcomes Metal, and Metal gives birth to Water."

I was not originally called Ancient Yi Ding Third Month.

This name was because in time, I saw a drop of rain falling in the third month of the future Ancient Yi Ding year.

It was muddled, and one day it was called Ancient Yi Ding Third Rain by someone, so it gained intelligence and became a lake; countless years later, it became the North Sea.

I saw all of this and thought it was good, so before it was born, I used this name.

"When you are born, I will return it to you."

And my life was also full of waves; I once swallowed an iron sword that was full of killing intent.

The malevolent Qi of this sword was a huge nourishment to me, making me flow and cover the starry sky, extinguishing a world-shocking and magnificent volcano, and submerging it.

However, fate is often like this; there is cause and effect; one day a group of great beings came, and they entered my life riding a special ship.

That ship had a connection with me.

So I couldn't bear to shatter it, and seeing its remnant soul about to dissipate, I nourished it, giving it the possibility of revival.

Only, I didn't expect the purpose of this group of great beings was to send it into the volcano I had extinguished, using its burning as the price to revive the volcano.

The eruption of the volcano could not bury me, but the volcanic ash sprayed out was my tribulation, making me turn into gas, become rain, and nourish all things.

Vaguely, I seemed to hear a voice.

"This is, Water overcomes Fire, and Fire gives birth to Earth."

I was born in a desert.

A sudden heavy rain gave me vitality and gave me intelligence, but it was also the appearance of intelligence that made me understand what loneliness was.

So I changed some causality, at the cost of weakening myself, separating myself, and making more of my kind appear all around.

Slowly, the river disappeared, and endless forests occupied everything.

And here, it gradually had a name, called Beginning Forest.

My clan also grew stronger, they contacted the outside world, realized heaven and earth, and thus had cultivation.

But I became increasingly weak, choosing to sleep more often, occasionally waking up to watch the years, witnessing the grievances of the clan, witnessing the rise and fall of the clan, witnessing one life race after another being wiped out by my clan.

Until one day, a cultivator whose clan had been wiped out came with a special sword to take revenge.

He slaughtered my clan and stood before me.

I gazed at that sword and understood that it was the tribulation in my fate.

So I chose to obey and fell under the sword.

In the ten-thousand-year process of my spirit dissipating, my corpse was used by people and refined into a ship.

I originally refused.

But they said that only a ship made of my material could sail on a river named Ancient Yi Ding Third Month, and could absorb the river's power during this sailing to reinforce itself.

Giving me the possibility of revival.

I believed it, but the result was that they used my remnant body to reignite a dead volcano.

At that time, I heard a sentence.

"This is, Metal overcomes Wood, and Wood gives birth to Fire."

I was born in the starry sky, burned a black hole, became a body, and transformed into a volcano.

People called me Sky Fire.

Fire is my life and also my personality, so I roared all year round, shaking all directions.

One day, someone came before me and threw down a meteorite.

I refined it into iron and it became a sword.

I had thought that the brilliance of my life, like the fire on my body, would be eternal.

But a black river filled with death and malevolent Qi came from the starry sky, covered me, and extinguished me.

This was my tribulation; no matter how I roared or resisted, it was of no avail.

Until after endless years, a ship came, ignited itself, and awakened me; the eruption after countless years of silence formed dust all over the sky.

That was my anger, covering everything.

Accompanying the anger, there seemed to be a sentence coming from somewhere.

"This is, Water overcomes Fire, and Fire gives birth to Earth."

I am the land formed after the volcanic ash settled.

The moment I was born, I filled a vast long river.

That was the thing I was most proud of.

And there was an iron sword in the mud in the river.

I gazed at this sword, not knowing that time had passed.

So my life was boring.

Time passed, I slowly fell asleep, and I don't know how long it was; when I woke up, I had become a desert.

The arrival of rainwater nourished the vegetation, and my life was sucked away bit by bit.

And that sword, in this endless passage of time, was nourished by me; it gradually settled and finally became a meteorite.

Finally, at the moment my life was sucked away and I was about to die, I used my last strength to send this meteorite into the starry sky.

It became a shooting star, not knowing where it would go.

But I was gratified.

Because it carried my reincarnation and carried my revival.

In the next life, I don't want to be so boring.

Muttering, I closed my eyes.

Only in my blurry consciousness, there seemed to be a sentence echoing.

"This is, Wood overcomes Earth, and Earth gives birth to Metal."