Chapter 35: Then I Can Only Make This World a Bit More Lively

Stroking the worn tombstone and looking at the scribbled, resentment-filled carvings upon it, Gu Jiangming closed his eyes.

The thoughts in his mind were gradually deconstructing; things that were previously uncertain were now completely certain to Gu Jiangming.

Before Gu Jiangming's eyes, countless unrelated straight lines diverged, continuously extending and splicing together brand-new scenes.

One was in the rural fields, singing loudly, ink splashing as if writing one's ambitions to Heaven and Earth.

One was amidst the towering, cloud-wreathed mountains of Chuanshu, where an Immortal patted his head, binding his hair to receive longevity; the figure in the painting tapped all living things with a whisk, exhausting the Dao into emptiness yet still seeking the truth one pursued in one's heart.

When they both looked at him at the same time.

The corners of their mouths curled into a smile in unison, a meeting that seemed to span time and space, and in the next second, these scenes shattered.

Only Gu Jiangming remained, having closed his eyes and opened them once more.

He felt as if a long time had passed, yet it also felt like the blink of an eye; but for a fleeting moment, the past—vast as the changing seas—flickered, rewound, fast-forwarded, and repeated from the beginning, like an endless, ceaseless Reincarnation.

"So, the function of Mie Changsheng is to change the past?" The things Gu Jiangming had not fully grasped before were now almost completely sorted out.

"My first save file, which is to say the theoretically successful Reincarnation, was seventy years ago."

"This also proves one point: the world I Reincarnate into via Mie Changsheng is the very place I am currently in."

"Therefore, the information I obtain in the Reincarnation World can be fully applied to reality."

"This world has demons, and it also has cultivators."

Gu Jiangming confirmed this fact, then continued to mutter in his heart, following his previous train of thought, "Leping County, where I am, is the spawn point of my first save file."

Now, three questions lay before Gu Jiangming.

The first question: if the corpse in Leping County was truly the work of a demon, then what kind of demon was it? Did he have the ability to protect himself, or did he need to give it a wide berth to ensure his own safety first?

The second question: since it was already confirmed that Mie Changsheng could change the past, did the Shushan of several hundred years ago validate the effect of Mie Changsheng?

And the world he was currently Reincarnating into had advanced to ten thousand years ago; if he changed the world of ten thousand years ago, would the present world change as a result?

The third question was also the one Gu Jiangming most wanted to know right now.

Was Jiu Jiu, the wife from his second save file, still alive?

Because of the timeline issue, there was a time gap of at least two or three hundred years between the events of several hundred years ago and the present.

He could not be certain whether Jiu Jiu was alive or dead.

And the fact that the wife he had talked to in Mie Changsheng had become real was something far beyond the scope of Gu Jiangming's contemplation.

Was she still alive? Did she still remember him?

How did this feel like the unexpected joy of a virtual wife becoming real?

But if one had to calculate it, this must be a debt of love from his past life, right? Although the one who performed the main operations was himself, and the one who experienced everything together was also himself.

Even worse, Gu Jiangming did not just carry the love debt of one person.

But two.

Because Gu Jiangming had saved a full two save files.

At this moment, he suddenly thought of the two prompts that had previously sounded in his mind.

【To respect your personal rights, this Reincarnation has preserved your initialized physical state.】

【At the same time, you will receive one opportunity to change a save file; please explore and use it at your own discretion.】

What is a preserved initialized body?

Gu Jiangming asked in his heart.

【This is a service provided to respect the player's rights; although your consciousness has returned to the past, this is not a fixed, established fact, so your initial physical condition will be initialized until the save file is no longer changed and the final direction is determined.】

And at this moment, on the screen of 【Mie Changsheng】, there appeared the options from one hundred Reincarnations of Gu Jiangming, who had appeared as a descendant of the Northern Wei Gu Family.

Different options led to different choices.

Some fell for various reasons while searching for their father's whereabouts, while others simply gave up the search, cultivated bitterly in the mortal world until their forties, and were killed when the Baishou Yao personally visited to slay the new generation Sword God.

Every route moved forward, but most died halfway due to the Baishou Yao blocking the path, ending the Reincarnation like a scripted death.

And only one route surged forward; from the moment he met Jiu Jiu, the gears of history changed.

【Your arrival is an arrival of your consciousness; every Reincarnation is yourself. You are a traveler of time, and even more so, a weaver of the river of history.】

【At the same time, at the end of each Reincarnation, you will also receive one opportunity to change a save file, which will be carried out on the original save file's story through your personal experience. You possess the absolute ability to change all of this and make it an established fact.】

【You have many grievances, you have many regrets, and in this Reincarnation, you and she will wield the only opportunity to change these regrets. Please remember, you have one, and only one, opportunity to change a save file to explore the deeper past, so please choose this option with caution.】

"Isn't this just giving me a chance to be reborn?" Gu Jiangming took a deep breath.

He finally realized the power of 【Mie Changsheng】 and that those mere mortals were simply not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath.

This was equivalent to an opportunity for save-file backtracking.

"What is the biggest regret of the Shushan file? It is, of course, that I didn't manage to preserve Shushan, and I also failed to ferret out the mastermind behind that monk Dharma Flower."

"Although I went wild before I died and shocked the world, in reality, I was the ultimate loser."

"Clearly, there are still many, many details here worth digging into and exploring."

"The thing I should do most is to perform multi-line operations during the peak of my cultivation, allowing myself to seize the initiative, rather than burying myself in studying Daoist arts on Shushan and being plotted against by villains."

If he could start over, with Gu Jiangming having taken precautions in advance, he would have countless ways to cope, and at the very least, he could have preserved Shushan.

But Gu Jiangming quickly calmed down; if he used this save-file change opportunity now, he would be a reckless fool.

Because he had only just clarified that the world deduced by 【Mie Changsheng】 was the world he was currently in, and Gu Jiangming himself was still a mortal with no cultivation experience.

Without absolute certainty, making the save file worse would be fatal.

Gu Jiangming hadn't even caught that deadly demon in Leping County yet.

"That's right, what I should be doing right now is actually determining whether the Reincarnation of ten thousand years ago can change reality, and whether, after successfully saving, I can actually make the current world change."

"My location is Leping County, and in several Reincarnations, I have often used Leping County as a spawn point."

"If I leave some things in Leping County ten thousand years ago, can I, ten thousand years later, obtain these things by saving the file? This is what I need to further attempt and even research."

"It is also the only thing I can do right now."

"Moreover, I must try every possible way to increase my achievements within the Reincarnation World, for only then can I explore the full picture of the world."

"Only then will I be qualified to leave something behind."

"If I were just an ordinary person, I wouldn't be able to pass anything down at all."

"If I want the me from ten thousand years in the future to benefit from this, I must be a great figure."

"Then I can only make this world a bit more lively."

Gu Jiangming stood tall before the grave.

He whispered, "Wait for my return."

(End of chapter)