Chapter 310: Restoring Order

Gu Yuan increased the flow speed of the long river of time.

In the years that followed, Aqi dragged his crippled body, barely surviving at the lowest level of the slums.

He had no cultivation method, no credits to buy nutrient fluid, and no benefactor to help him.

The survival logic of the lower slums is extremely simple: exploitation and being exploited.

Aqi, having lost his healthy body, didn't even have the qualification to go to the junkyard to scavenge high-value parts.

He could only pick up the discarded remnants of synthetic nutrient paste.

His left leg was blown off by a stray bullet during a firefight between black-market gangs.

Without credits to buy antibiotics, the wound repeatedly became infected and inflamed.

Every day he cursed the teenager who stole his ring, yet never reflected on why he had fallen to such a state.

Aqi hid in a dark corner of the air-raid shelter and witnessed all of this.

He watched Gouzi transform from a bullied scavenger into a practitioner exuding a sharp aura.

Jealousy gnawed at his viscera like a poisonous snake. He repeatedly rehearsed in his mind: if he had reacted a bit faster back then, if he hadn't been tripped by the Harvester's hovercar, the person standing in the light should have been him.

The boy called Gouzi, relying on the assistance of the Heavenly Dao Terminal, quickly rose in the black market.

Gouzi's rise could be called a standard wasteland hero epic.

He used the Heavenly Dao Terminal's posted Harvester-slaying mission to obtain his first spiritual-energy weapon.

Afterwards, he infiltrated the black market, using the system's reward healing elixir to subdue several severely wounded gang leaders.

The Spark Organization he founded was like a nail, driven deep into the weak points of the consortium's rule.

He lacked Gu Yuan's dimension-crushing power, but he was cautious enough and ruthless enough.

He knew how to utilize every scrap of resource in the wasteland, and even how to use interests to sow discord within the consortium.

Each time Gouzi's deeds reached the slums, Aqi would bite his lip in the corner.

He firmly believed that those glories, those powers, ought to have been his.

This twisted obsession tormented him, causing his mind to gradually deteriorate.

The third winter.

Acid rain triggered a massive plague.

Aqi contracted a mutant virus, his whole body covered in abscesses, lying in a leaky tin shack awaiting death.

On his deathbed, earth-shaking cheers came from outside.

"The rebels have broken through the inner defense of Sector Eleven! Leader Gou Tianwang beheaded the Heavenly Source Consortium's steward!"

The cheers pierced the tin and stabbed into Aqi's eardrums.

He strained to move his eyes, and through a gap saw a holographic projection hovering in the sky.

Gouzi, clad in battle armor and holding a longsword, accepted the city's worship with high spirits.

Aqi's vision gradually blurred.

In the shadow of death, he saw clearly his laughable obsession.

The protagonist of the world has never lacked him.

The scattered fortune fragments of the Heavenly Dao are as numerous as cow hairs; without Aqi, there would be Gouzi, there would be Maozi.

He remembered everything.

He was not the unique Son of Heaven's Mandate; he was merely a discard that didn't even qualify to compete.

The high-and-mighty old monster was right—he was just a fool.

Aqi drew his last breath.

In the dilapidated tin shack, a corpse no one cared for gradually grew cold.

……

……

Within the meteorite core, the myriad illusions of time-lights gradually converged.

Aqi, kneeling on the alloy ground, his flesh bereft of all vital support, turned into a puddle of ashes.

His true spirit was utterly worn away in the despair of reincarnation, leaving not a trace.

"Now it's peaceful." Gu Xuan Ce clapped his hands, "Young Master, what should we do with this kid's fortune fragment?"

Gu Yuan gave no answer.

He closed his eyes; the laws of his inner world spread through the World Tree's roots, following the causal trail left by Aqi before his dissipation, extending throughout the Heavenly Pivot Source Realm.

Although Aqi is dead, he served as a vessel for a fragment of the Heavenly Dao.

And in time, those who, like Gouzi who stole his opportunity, slew others likewise containing Heavenly Dao fragments during their growth.

Gu Yuan has already observed all of these.

The number……1,024,

each representing a host chosen by the Heavenly Dao, like Gouzi.

Hundreds to thousands of faintly glowing dots are scattered across every corner of the Forty-Nine Cities of the Heavenly Pivot.

These are all the remolding terminals laid out by the fractured Heavenly Dao.

"Gu-style self-rescue."

Gu Yuan opened his eyes and gave his evaluation,

"After the Heavenly Dao was shattered, it lost the ability to oversee the whole situation, and can only rely on this wide-net approach, placing hope on an individual breaking the consortium's blockade. Efficiency is low, and it is extremely prone to losing control."

"Just like the Heavenly Source Ancestor, grasping just one fragment lets them follow the clue to the source and inversely devour the Heavenly Dao."

"Uncle Xuan Ce, how's the parsing of the authorization for the Stellar River Great Array coming along?"

Gu Xuan Ce pulled out a formation disk from his storage ring, his ten fingers flying.

"That old turtle died too fast; I seized ninety percent of his core permit. Adding the permits from those three and a half semi-finished products earlier, we now control over seventy percent of the entire Star River Great Array."

"Gu Xuan Ce's formation expertise in the Primeval Immortal Realm can be called the pinnacle of perfection."

"As soon as the young master gives the word, I can at any moment cut off the spiritual energy supply of the forty-nine cities and uproot the foundations of those financiers."

"Uproot the foundations, and this world will be ruined." Gu Yuan walked to the center of the altar, gazing at those ancient runes, "What we want is not a wasteland, but a rear garden that can continuously produce resources."

"Gu Yuan raised his hand, and the fragmented excerpt of the Myriad Worlds Pulling Displacement Method torn from the memory of the Heaven Source Old Ancestor, together with the complementary portion he had deduced, turned into a stream of light that struck Gu Xuan Ce's brow."

"The core of the Myriad Worlds Pulling Displacement Method lies in deceiving the heavens."

"It does not drag a world away by brute force; rather, by altering the world's cosmic coordinates, it causes a shift in the void."

"The complementary portion that Gu Yuan deduced incorporated the law-concealment of the Inner World World Tree."

"We need to use this meteorite as the core array eye." Gu Yuan pointed to the altar beneath his feet, "Pour the three thousand years of spirit energy reserves accumulated by the four great conglomerates entirely into the array eye. With this tremendous energy, we will tear open the cosmic barrier. Then, Uncle Xuan Ce will control the Zhou Tian Xing Dou Great Array to complete the coordinate jump."

"Gu Xuan Ce closed his eyes to receive it; moments later, his eyes blazed with fervent light."

"Marvelous! Absolutely marvelous! If this secret art were combined with my Zhou Tian Xing Dou Pulling Formation..." Gu Xuan Ce spoke extremely fast, "Young master, we could package and drag the entire Heavenly Pivot Source Realm to the outskirts of the Primeval Immortal Realm as a vassal world!"

"Exactly so."

"Gu Yuan stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze piercing the meteorite as he looked down upon that azure planet."

"The aberrant age of mechanical ascension must end. Go take control of the hub of the Star River Great Array and reverse all the spirit-gathering matrices. I will make the spiritual energy suppressed for three thousand years thoroughly nourish this realm."

"Gu Yuan's order was clear and explicit."

"As for those sons of fate chosen by the fragments of the heavenly dao..." Gu Yuan paused for several seconds, "Since the heavenly dao is deficient and does not know how to guide, I will let the Gu family establish the rules."

"Gu Yuan pointed his fingers like a sword, carving an irrevocable law imprint in the void."

"Issue the command to Tie Tu: from this moment on, the Ancient Immortal Sect shall be renamed the Gu Clan Immortal Sect; all who have obtained a fragment of the heavenly dao must enter the Gu family's gate and be dispatched by the Gu family. The obedient shall be granted orthodox immortal arts; the defiant shall have their fortune stripped and be cast into the mortal realm."

"Setting things right, starting from the bottom."