Zac steadied himself for the next one, which arrived without a sound. He was once more an external member of the Peck Clan. His true life had become the dream, while his life on the Left Imperial Expanse was the truth. Instead of dying of old age, he managed to finally mend his broken pathways, restoring his longevity and returning him to the path of cultivation.
In this life, he was truly Jikasi, a once-in-a-century genius who’d turned his setback into a whetstone for his Dao. Day by day, year by hear, he honed his Heart through the art of sculpting. When he finally emerged from the shallows, both his temperament and Dao Heart had been tempered to perfection. Without any fetters to hold him down, the sprawling lands of the Left Imperial Expanse would become the stage for his ascent.
Centuries had passed by the time Zac finally saw through the lie and severed the illusion. That lifetime quickly faded as he woke up. It was pure fabrication from the beginning, lacking the realism of his lifetime inside the Peregrine Ocean. It was simply because of the Heart Demon Tribulation he’d failed to notice the gaps, discrepancies and the accelerated passage of time.
Zac’s hands shook from overwhelming mental strain after he finished severing the fourth bolt targeting the world. The emotional turmoil was stacking up with each tribulation. Thankfully, the Heavens was finally displaying the telltale signs of rallying for a closing eruption. Zac couldn’t stop tears of relief from pouring down his cheeks. He’d been afraid it would go a double cycle, or even a grand circuit of nine tribulations.
“Only one more, just one more,” Zac whispered to comfort himself as he held on for dear life.
Comfort or any semblance of safety eluded him. The final attack was clearly different from the previous ones. Until now, Zac had been swept away by invisible winds while an ethereal bolt struck the ground. This time, Zac felt Heaven’s attention was trained solely at him. It must have realized that Zac was doing all the lifting and adapted. A massive bolt looking like tempered glass snaked toward him.
Zac couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so exposed before Heaven’s wrath. Part of it was that he’d lost control over his emotions. It was also that he simply had no tricks up his sleeves this time. Usually, this was the point in the tribulation where he activated [Void Heart] and overcame the most dangerous part without breaking a sweat. This time, he only had his determination and Heart Tempering to fall back on.
The two Warbringer Idols sped up around Zac as he chanted [Warbringer Dharma]’s mnemonic in his mind. He’d already entered his Void State. Zac also activated [Void Zone] and [Void Mountain]’s Dao-annihilating seal for good measure. He doubted that the Void could do anything to the ethereal force of the Heart Tribulation, but it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.
The lightning bolt showed no reaction when it entered [Void Zone], and Zac may as well have been punching air when extending the Dao-annihilating seal. The lightning snaked around his hand and struck him square in his chest.
A heart-wrenching pain akin to losing a loved one or seeing the life you’d built crumble before your eyes filled Zac’s existence. Countless languishing voices—all of them his own—occupied every corner of his mind. The assault was just as dangerous as the insidious whispers of the Lost Era’s corruption. The voices pinpointed the smallest gaps in his mental fortitude and began chipping away at his sanity.
The voices fused with the accumulated tribulations he’d picked up while severing the previous bolts, joining to gain unprecedented vigor. Everything was questioned. His path, his familiar bonds, his convictions, his actions. The very nature of his being was put on trial and found wanting. Zac furiously fought back with everything he got, and it was a losing battle.
The Idols could only provide rudimentary shelter to weaken the winds, and holding onto his Void State was utterly impossible. Intrusive thoughts ripped him out of his Zen-like state only moments after entering it. To make things worse, seeing himself losing ground only amplified the repudiating voices.
Adding further fuel to the fire was the worsening condition of his body. Zac was horrified to realize that the realm’s unique condition had added another variable to the Heart Demon Tribulation. He’d made himself champion of Janos’ cause, and now found his fate tied to the land’s. His body was gradually turning illusory like world around him.
Zac only had one last reservoir of strength to draw from. His heart stabilized as he drew on the remaining timeline essence. The stalemate lasted a few seconds, and Zac’s face grew overcast. It still wasn’t enough. More than half the lightning would remain by the time he ran out of essence. Out of better ideas, Zac could only dredge up the countless memories that the timeline essence represented.
Countless scenes flashed by his mind, many of them depicting mundane matters of his life as a woodcarver. Having a cup of tea by the door as he watched pedestrians walk down Greenworth Trade Street. Carving simple animal toys to the delight of Helisent’s children. Tranquil walks through the Whitfall Forest in search of timber that spoke to his artisanal sense. Countless everyday moments that had a type of magic of their own.
Without notice or great fanfare, a third object joined the two Warbringer Idols surrounding him. It was a statuette of a celestial, with long flowing robes. The wooden carving was weathered and showed signs of wear from the rough handling of a child. There was even a small stain marring a part of its robes, clashing with the lofty air of a refined cultivator.
It was the carving he gifted Helisent shortly after their first meeting. It wasn’t his first work during his career as a woodcarver, nor was it his best. Nevertheless, it held unique meaning which gave it more value than the artworks holding far more spirituality. The carving had accompanied Helisent to the day she died, accompanying her on her final journey on her nightstand. It was rife with another type of meaning than Dao.
Suddenly gaining a third Warbringer Idol didn’t bolster Zac’s Dao Heart to a noteworthy degree. The idols were something like self-made cultivation tools or visualized mnemonics. They could help anchor his heart in certain situations, but their protection against the heart-destroying force of a Heavenly Tribulation was limited.
To Zac’s surprise, the new idol still brought about a significant change. Like a devout soldier hearing a call to arms, the world responded to Zac’s plight. Countless strings of Karmic assistance poured into Zac from the ground. It felt as though his tired body was being held aloft by all the acquaintances he’d made inside this timeline.
Though each helping hand was much weaker than Zac’s own, their vast numbers made up for it. With their help, Zac began reclaiming ground in the battlefield of his heart. Zac was finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, yet his advances brought him little joy. He could feel the world losing its lifeforce to protect Zac’s state of mind.
It felt like he was sacrificing Beene and Helisent, giving up every bond and memory he’d made to survive the Heart Demon Tribulation. Forget about Janos and his slice of heaven, the whole timeline may very well collapse if things continued this way. It would be a pyrrhic victory that would undoubtedly leave a shadow in his heart, an imperfection that would undoubtedly hamper his journey.
At the same time, stopping meant death or something worse. Retreat was not an option. Even if Esmeralda managed to pull him out somehow, the Heavens would just follow him to the outside. And there, he wouldn’t have the false timeline to protect his Dao Heart.
Zac felt so suffocated. He had no way to turn, and he could only futilely look at everything burn. It almost felt like the Heavens were mocking him and his hubris. Who did he think he was, wanting to dictate reality? That was the domain of the Cosmos, not some arrogant Hegemon.
Despair gradually shifted to anger. Were they really asking so much by attaching one illusion to another? After all, they weren’t trying to bring Janos’ world into reality. If there was a breach in causality, it would be the Empire’s sin to bear when they activated the true ritual. Heaven’s vehement rejection was premature and excessive.
The anger boiled over, and Zac could no longer contain it.
“This isn’t right!” Zac roared with every fiber of his being, causing gusts of frigid winds to be expelled from his pores with enough force to trigger a sonic boom.
Zac wasn’t sure whether he was railing against the Heavens or the price of overcoming the Tribulation. He’d simply had enough, to the point he could feel an actual ball of fire appearing in his chest. It was at that moment a new voice appeared in his tangle of thought.
‘We do not cower before the Heavens! Ignite the flame!’
It wasn’t Janos who’d spoken, nor was it one of the oblivious farmers who winked in and out of existence as the world oscillated between true and false. It took Zac a moment to match the voice with a face, and the answer left him so surprised that he almost lost control over his ongoing tribulation. It was Xiphos, the very dead Enkindling Sage of the Empyrean Flame.
The how did not matter at this moment. Xiphos had reminded Zac of his parting gift. Taking on the burden of the Empyrean Flame would help him endure tribulations. Delirious and exhausted, Zac grasped at the chance for a turnaround like a drowning man. He poured every remaining morsel of timeline essence into the spark that had appeared in his chest, triggering a mysterious transformation.
Ethereal flames ensconced him like a suit of armor, and the Heaven-induced madness drastically lessened. The world was no longer being drained of his essence to keep him safe. A deafening roar brought Zac to his knees before he could plot his next course of action, and an irresistible pressure kept him there. Zac arduously lifted his head, and his eyes grew so wide that they risked popping out of their sockets.
A huge hole had been torn open in the curtain of tribulation clouds, nearly dispersing them entirely. Even more shocking, it wasn’t the normal sky he’d seen before that waited on the other side. The burning dome felt impossibly distant when he looked up, as if a tunnel had been carved far beyond the bounds of the Left Imperial Expanse.
And it very well may have.
A gargantuan chalice was rapidly descending from the dome of Heaven, trailed by a mantle of Imperial Flames that raged with incandescent intensity. The Empyrean Chalice radiated an irrefutable majesty, and the flames it had nourished for innumerable years flickered with the will of the Era’s greatest civilization.
Zac didn’t get the chance to digest the sudden turn before the burning backdrop flickered, turning into another familiar sight. Two rivers running through the cosmos overlapped. One was made from pure timespace, the other an incalculable number of memory lanterns. For the first time since the beginning of the trial, Zac was peering through the curtain to see the situation outside.
Over a dozen overwhelming presences flocked to the hole in reality, each no weaker than what he’d felt from Mox. Esmeralda had already warned that the Supremacies lurking outside the continent were the cream of the crop among this generation’s A-grade cultivators, along with some undying existences. Who else would dare compete for the Fifth Pillar?
Thankfully, there was an even greater existence that could enforce the absolute separation between Zac and the Supremacies outside. The System had descended in earnest, blocking perceptions before sealing the gap. Only the Empyrean Chalice remained on Zac’s side of the demarcation. It settled in the sky, where its trail of flames directly incinerated the Tribulation Clouds.
Zac gaped in awe at the scene. Xiphos wasn’t joking when he said that the Limitless Empire didn’t fear the Heavens. The Empyrean Flame had forcibly ejected the Heavens, ending the tribulation whether it liked it or not. And the chalice was not done there.The chalice tilted, and a singular drop fell toward the ground.
The world lost its color before its radiance. Truths and falsehoods faded before its glory. Wherever the drop spread its luster was irrevocably made real, an absolute part of the Limitless Empire’s domain. Zac watched it fall with a mix of desire and fear, ultimately letting it fall to the ground at an empty spot. No matter how much his body craved it, it wasn’t his to take. This was a Heavenly Bestowment meant for the earth.
A pulse of flames swept out, spreading like a wildfire. It didn’t destroy, it remade and elevated everything. Unstable timeline frequencies locked in and were sealed with a film of Imperial Destiny. It was like the lands had been blessed by Laondio Evrodok himself. And after leaving its gift, the chalice winked out in a puff of golden fire.
Zac’s mind blanked out as the flame passed through him, singing all the lingering Heart Demons clean. What remained became nourishment for his utterly exhausted Dao heart. And something new grew in the ashes. Like a star winking into existence, Zac felt an illusory space open in the depths of his heart.
It was invisible to most scans and impervious to most attacks. It was there, yet it was not. Only Zac could with utmost certainty know it was real. He infused his will, finding a small pergola placed by a cliff. Only a churning mist waited beyond the chasm, and there was nothing on the other side. Apart from the pergola, there were only three more objects: his three Warbringer Idols.
Zac didn’t understand what was happening, and a powerful tug precluded Zac’s plan to supplement his lacking knowledge with practical experience. The chalice was long gone, and Zac knew there was no chance in hell he could recall it even if he tried. He suspected his sudden ability to call down the Empyrean Chalice was made possible by something more than grit and force of will.
It was another mystery to add to the tally, because Zac had bigger fish to fry. For one, it felt like the whole timeline was moving. It was definitely connected to the rebirth through flames. Zac neither wanted to or could stay for the conclusion. Esmeralda’s camouflage had been reduced to one final layer, and even that was fraying at the edges. As the world picked up in speed, a repulsive force appeared and quickly grew stronger.
Just as Zac was about to wrap up his visit, space flickered in a familiar manner. A second threat had reared its ugly head. Four ripples shimmering with silver sprouted out of thin air, each one located exactly where he’d severed the chains of the Heavens. Zac’s cursed at the familiar sight, and his expression grew even worse upon sensing Arthur’s aura on the opposite side.
Why had realmgates appeared here? Had the tribulation exposed his timeline to the corrupted invaders? Or were they drawn over by the Empyrean Chalice? There was no point in deliberating causes. Zac shot out like a rocket, [Void Mountain] already armed and ready. The Dao-annihilating seal tore through the nearest gate, directly destroying it before it could stabilize.
A powerful backlash threw Zac back dozens of meters, and he felt like he’d been hit by a train. He also felt the realm’s rejection to him growing stronger. Some of Esmeralda’s starlight had been dispersed by the backlash. He still pressed on, closing a second one before it could cause any trouble. Just as Zac dealt with the third, a person emerged from the fourth.
Both man and gate flickered and winked out on its own before Zac could do anything. He traced the source to the orb in Janos’ hands. He’d somehow turned the realmgate into an illusion to disperse it. He’d prevented his home from being turned into a battlefield, at a steep personal cost.
The demon had already come within an inch of his life from Heaven’s torment, and closing a gate almost pushed him beyond his edge. His aura fluctuated precariously, and he was holding onto his consciousness through sheer force of will.
“Thank you my friend. For everything,” Janos said, his face full of bliss despite the torment he’d been put through. “Give my regards to the young master. I’ll introduce you two to my wife the next time we meet.”
Zac wasn’t given the opportunity to respond. Esmeralda’s camouflage collapsed, and the hill turned into a dot on a boundless landmass in the blink of an eye. It was like the timeline was trying to eject him the same way where the chalice came from. Further above, Zac could feel the pull of the true timeline. Zac looked down at the sprawling world one last time.
The Chalice’s flame was still expanding, and the world was undergoing a huge transformation with Janos’s village as the epicenter. Was quite unusual, like it was open to interpretation. Though it was clear, it was slowly harmonizing with the real world. If he’d been able to hold out for a few hours, Zac may actually have been able to stay indefinitely without Esmeralda’s help.
Zac didn’t know whether the change was a good thing or bad, but he hoped it would make it easier for Janos to return to the main timeline in the future. Even if the Omnipresence Chamber failed in the end, this attached world might still emerge in one piece. What was clear was that he wasn’t the only one seeing the potential of this timeline.
He could feel them. Realmgates, hundreds of them, like festering maggots burrowing into wood. At the same time, hundreds of pyres made of pure Imperial Faith burned across the world, casting light to disperse the darkness. Zac exhaled, and the scene faded. The rest would be up to the Mercurial Court. For the first time, Zac genuinely hoped those ancient madmen might pull through.