Time meant nothing here.
Or perhaps it meant everything. Chen couldn't tell anymore.
The Reincarnation River was not a place in any conventional sense. It was a concept made manifest, the great cycle of souls rendered visible to one who had transcended the normal boundaries of existence. Here, the linear progression of past to future dissolved into something far more complex.
Souls flowed past him—or perhaps he flowed past them—each one a tiny spark of light in the endless darkness. Some were bright, recently extinguished lives burning with residual memory. Others were dim, ancient souls that had cycled through the river countless times, their individual identities worn smooth by eons of rebirth.
Chen tried to hold onto his sense of self, but it was like trying to hold water in cupped hands. The river wanted to smooth him down too, to strip away the accumulated weight of thirty thousand years and prepare him for a new life.
No, he thought fiercely. Not yet. I need to remember. I need to...
Time stretched. Or compressed. He couldn't tell.
Eons passed in a heartbeat. A heartbeat lasted for entire ages. He saw souls enter the river from points of light that might have been dying universes. He saw them exit into... elsewhere. Other times. Other places. Other universes, perhaps.
The river was not confined to a single universe. That was the revelation that struck him with the force of a physical blow. The Reincarnation Cycle was universal—not in the sense of his own Qingxuan Universe, but in the sense that it connected all universes, all realities, all possible existences.
Souls flowed between worlds like water finding the lowest point.
And Chen Tianlong was swimming upstream.
He pushed forward—or backward, or sideways, directions having lost all meaning—fighting against the current. His cultivation, vast as it was, felt like a candle against a hurricane. The river was patient. Eternal. It had all the time in the universe. Literally.
How long have I been here? he wondered. Minutes? Years? Centuries?
There was no way to know.
He focused on the mission. Find a younger universe. One where the rifts were just beginning. Where cultivators might actually have a chance if they acted quickly, if they didn't repeat the same mistakes, if they—
Suddenly, the River's assault grew stronger.
Chen felt the weight pressing down on him again—that vast, incomprehensible presence that had briefly turned away to deal with the entity. The Reincarnation Cycle, its attention now fully returned to the violation in its midst.
The brief respite was over.
The timeless void began to shift once more.
At first, it was subtle. Small distortions in the flow of souls around him. Eddies in the current. But rapidly, the disruptions grew. The smooth, eternal flow of the river began to churn.
Waves.
Impossible in a place with no physical form, but they existed nonetheless. Conceptual waves. Ontological turbulence. The river itself rising up to expel the foreign object that had dared to swim against its current.
The assault intensified. What had been a steady erosion during the entity's distraction now became a full onslaught. Chen tried to maintain his position, but it was like standing against a tidal wave. A massive surge hit him, and he felt something tear away—a memory, scattered into the void. The face of a disciple he'd trained two thousand years ago, gone as if it had never been.
No!
He drew on his cultivation, wrapping himself in layers of protective law. The path he had walked from mortal to transcendent over thirty millennia, now manifested as armor against the impossible. It blazed around him like a shield, and for a moment, the waves slowed.
But only for a moment.
The river was infinite. Patient. Eternal. And it did not tolerate violations.
Another wave crashed over him, larger than the first. Chen felt more memories scatter—entire centuries of his life, dissolving like sand in water. He tried to hold on, tried to preserve something, but it was futile.
Ming'er's laugh. Gone.
The Azure Sky Sect's founding ceremony. Gone.
His first teacher's name. Gone.
The waves came faster now, relentless. Each one tore away another piece of who he was. His cultivation began to fragment under the assault, the carefully accumulated power of three hundred centuries breaking apart like a shattered mirror.
Not yet, he thought desperately. I can't fail. Not after everything. Not after...
But he could feel himself breaking. Soul-deep fractures spreading through his very essence. The Reincarnation River was not trying to kill him—it was trying to unmake him, to reduce him to the raw spiritual material that could be safely processed and reborn.
Complete erasure. Just as they'd warned.
Another wave. Larger. Stronger. Inevitable.
Chen felt his soul beginning to shred. Not dying—that would have been a mercy. Shredding. Fragmenting. Dissolving into countless pieces that would scatter across the infinite expanse of the river, never to reform.
But then—
—warmth.
A presence. No, nine presences, surrounding him like shields. Like armor. Like the embrace of those who had chosen to die so that he might live.
Chen, Yun Zhantian's voice echoed through the void, already fading. We're here. We'll hold as long as we can.
The War Saint's essence wrapped around Chen's fragmenting soul, absorbing the brunt of the River's assault. Chen felt Yun's thirty thousand years of combat experience, his understanding of the Dao of War, his indomitable will—all of it flowing into Chen like water filling a vessel.
And then Yun Zhantian was gone. Not dead. Not scattered. Simply... gone. Erased from existence, his final act to gift everything he was to Chen's cause.
Don't waste it, Shen Meihua whispered, and then she too began to pour her essence into him. The Plum Blossom Immortal's lifetime of cultivation, her mastery of life and growth, her gentle strength—all of it merged with Chen's soul even as the River tore at them both.
She faded. Smiled. Vanished.
One by one, they came. One by one, they gave everything.
Gu Pojun, the Army-Breaking Ancient, his fists that had split galaxies now splitting his very soul to shield Chen from dissolution. Hit them hard, boy. Harder than I ever could.
Mo Qianjue, the Ink Sage, his mastery of reality's written laws flowing into Chen like liquid knowledge, even as his consciousness unraveled. Write a better ending than ours.
Feng Wujian, the Seamless Wind, his understanding of barriers and boundaries, his ability to slip through impossible spaces. Find the cracks in fate itself.
Xiao Wuhen, the Traceless Wanderer, his command of void and space, his techniques for surviving in places where survival should be impossible. Leave no trace until you're ready to shake the heavens.
Lei Zhenhan, the Thunder-Shocking Cold, his dual mastery of opposing forces, his understanding that destruction and preservation were two faces of the same coin. Strike when they least expect it.
Bai Wuxian, the Immortal-less White, who had rejected ascension to stay and fight, now ascending in the truest sense—giving up existence itself. Sometimes the greatest cultivation is knowing when to let go.
And finally, Hei Yuanshi, the Black Primordial, eldest among them all, who had seen the universe young and now saw it die. His vast age, his deep understanding of cosmic cycles, his patience measured in eons. Remember, young one. Universes end. But the Dao is eternal.
Nine transcendent cultivators.
Two hundred thousand years of combined experience.
Countless insights into the Dao, different paths, different understandings, different ways of touching the fundamental truths of existence.
All of it flowed into Chen Tianlong's fragmenting soul, wrapping around his core like layers of protective silk. The knowledge didn't integrate—there was no time for that, no capacity in his breaking mind. Instead, it compressed, condensed, buried itself deep in the foundations of his being. Waiting. Locked away behind barriers that would take lifetimes to unlock.
A gift from the dead to the living.
A legacy from one universe to another.
The River's assault continued, but now it met resistance. Not Chen's own failing strength, but the sacrificial essence of nine who had chosen erasure over surrender. They couldn't stop the River—nothing could—but they could slow it. Deflect it. Buy time.
And then, wrapped in the last wisps of the nine guardians' protection, Chen saw it.
Light.
Through the chaos, through the turbulence, through the waves that were tearing at the edges of his being, he saw something.
A golden light.
No—not gold. Something beyond gold. A luminescence that seemed to exist outside the normal spectrum of perception. It hung in the timeless void like a beacon, like hope itself made manifest.
A bubble. Spherical. Perfect. And inside it, wrapped in layers of protection that Chen's fragmenting mind couldn't quite comprehend, was...
A soul.
Another soul, caught in the river.
But this one was protected. Shielded by something that even the Reincarnation River couldn't immediately break down. Foreign. Alien. Wrong in a way that Chen's dissolving consciousness recognized with a scholar's instinct.
Technology, he realized dimly. Not cultivation. Something else entirely.
It didn't matter what it was.
It was his only chance.
With the last shreds of his will, with the final fragments of his cultivation that hadn't yet scattered to the void, with the dying echo of nine sacrificed souls urging him forward—
Chen Tianlong threw himself toward the golden bubble.
The river rose up one final time, a massive wave of dissolution, but Chen was already moving. Swimming. Flying. Falling.
Just a little further, he thought. Just...
His consciousness touched the edge of the bubble.
The Ten Become One
Inside the bubble, something stirred.
Not Chen. Not yet.
But the accumulated essence of ten transcendent cultivators—Chen Tianlong and the nine who had sacrificed everything—compressed into a single point of existence, waiting.
Waiting for the final piece.
Waiting for the moment when ten would become one.
Waiting for a new universe.
A new life.
A new hope.
The golden bubble drifted through the Reincarnation River, carrying its precious cargo.
And somewhere, in a young universe called Azure Sky World, in a city called Redstone, in a modest home of a fallen alchemist and his pragmatic wife—
A child was about to be conceived.
END OF CHAPTER 2