Chapter 308: It just happened to choose you

"Helpless?" Gu Yuan looked down from above at the kneeling Tian Yuan Lao Zu, not interrupting his plea.

Seeing Gu Yuan seemed willing to listen, Tian Yuan Lao Zu hastily seized this lifeline, speaking earnestly with tears streaming.

"You immortals are unaware. In the Purification Accord three thousand years ago, Jin Gang, Xing Hui, and Gui Xu went mad, seeking to sever all spiritual veins with the art of mechanical ascension. I am weak and powerless. To preserve the last spark of the ancient immortal Dao, I could only feign compliance, colluding with them."

The old ancestor lifted his head, his withered face filled with righteous resolve and the endurance of humiliation.

"For these three thousand years, I have sealed myself in this lightless meteorite, day and night deducing a way to break the situation."

"I have nurtured Aqi to devour the heavenly Dao's fortune, not for personal greed, but to reshape the heavenly Dao, letting the orthodox immortal Dao regain glory on this wasteland! All I seek is for the sake of the world's beings!"

His words were seamless, wrapping a selfish, body‑snatching old monster into a martyr who endures humiliation and sets his heart on heaven and earth.

Gu Xuan Ce listened on the side, curling his lip, his formation disk spinning rapidly—clearly scoffing at this clumsy acting.

Gu Yuan listened silently, offering no agreement or disagreement.

He raised his right hand, palm up. An ancient‑looking bronze lamp appeared out of thin air.

Myriad Dao Time Light Lamp.

The wick unlit, yet it flowed with the mottled phantom of the river of years.

"The world's beings?"

Gu Yuan gave a light smile that didn't reach his eyes. "How interesting—people always cloak their basest greed in the noblest pretexts."

Gu Yuan flicked his fingertip; a thread of temporal law sank into the bronze lamp.

The wick blazed, and scrolls of history sealed for three thousand years were forcibly torn from the Heavenly Pivot Source Realm's river of time, projected into the void above the meteorite's core.

In the image, it was a one‑sided massacre.

Countless cultivators were surrounded and annihilated by the conglomerate's mechanical legion.

And atop the mountain of corpses stood four people.

Three of them were Jin Gang, Xing Hui, and Gui Xu; standing in the center, holding a blood‑dripping banner, was the not‑yet‑old Tian Yuan Lao Zu.

The image shifted again.

When the Star River Great Array was first built, tens of thousands of ordinary people and low‑level cultivators were shoved alive into its eyes beneath the forty‑nine major cities.

Tian Yuan Lao Zu personally etched the blood‑drawing seal, forcibly binding these clansmen's vitality and the earth's veins to become fuel for the Great Array's operation.

The final image.

In a secret cavern, Tian Yuan Lao Zu personally shoved his dao companion and several direct disciples into the alchemy furnace, solely to brew a potion that could delay the five heavenly declines.

The façade peeled away, the truth laid bare.

"Is this your so‑called preservation of the spark? Is this your proclaimed care for the world's beings?"

Gu Yuan put away the Myriad Dao Time Light Lamp, his tone flat. "To seek longevity, you betrayed friends for glory, slaughtered kin, even sparing no loved ones. Your three‑thousand‑year endurance is merely fear of death."

Tian Yuan Lao Zu watched the exposed old accounts, his facial muscles twitching wildly. The benevolent mask he had painstakingly cultivated was torn to shreds, and the last vestige of reason collapsed in despair.

"So what!"

The old ancestor sprang up from the ground, mad‑like, letting out a hysterical howl.

"Is it wrong for me to want to live? The Dao is indifferent, survival of the fittest! The ants on this wasteland deserve to die; becoming my nourishment is their honor! What do you, a lofty outsider, know? You were born with world‑shaking fortune—how could you know our struggle in the mire?"

He formed seals with both hands, preparing to fight like a trapped beast.

"Noisy."

Gu Xuan Ce had long grown tired of it.

This formation master of the Taigu Immortal Realm snorted, too lazy to even unleash a treasure. He stomped a single foot heavily onto the ground.

A True Immortal‑level formation law, centered on Gu Xuan Ce, burst outward in a radiant wave.

Within the meteorite's core, the ancient runes and the Star River Great Array's energy conduits, upon contacting this law, instantly turned to powder.

The half‑True Immortal power Tian Yuan Lao Zu had just gathered was forcibly dispersed by an overwhelming might.

"Pfft—"

The old ancestor spat a mouthful of black blood, his withered body crushed as if by myriad mountains, bones snapping inch by inch.

He didn't even have time to leave a last word; under Gu Xuan Ce's pressure he exploded into a blood mist, body and spirit utterly annihilated.

Even his true spirit could not escape, being ground to nothing by the formation law.

The last ancestor who had ruled the Heavenly Pivot Source Realm for three thousand years died thus, aggrieved, in a mere casual kick that wasn't even a proper move.

The room reeked of blood.

Aqi lay nearby, witnessing all this. The bonds within him loosened with the ancestor's death, yet he did not crawl up to flee.

He rolled and crawled to Gu Yuan's feet, his forehead thudding wildly against the hard alloy floor, making a dull thumping sound.

"Spare me, immortal! Spare me, immortal!"

Aqi wept tears and snot, none of the arrogance and bravado from when he had just severed the karma thread remaining.

"I was bewitched by that old villain! I know my fault! I wish to be a dog at the immortal's side, managing this Heavenly Pivot Source Realm for him—please grant me mercy!"

Gu Yuan lowered his gaze, looking at this bruised, tail‑wagging supplicant—this bait.

"You just asked why I could return unharmed."

Gu Yuan spoke softly, as if stating an utterly ordinary trifle,

"Actually, your sect's theory is correct. Ordinary cultivators crossing realms do need an anchor, need karmic pull."

Aqi stopped kowtowing, blankly lifting his face.

"But I don't need it."

Gu Yuan leaned slightly, looking at Aqi's bloodshot eyes.

"My coming to this world never relied on your pitiful remnant of fortune; it merely happened to have chosen you."

Gu Yuan rose to his full height, his tone flat enough to induce despair.

Aqi felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.

He, from beginning to end, was always dreaming on someone else's chessboard of being number one under heaven.

He thought he could turn the tables, thought he could defy heaven and change fate.

In the end, even the betrayal he thought he was committing was within the other's calculations.