Beastmaster of the Ages

Orderia was a world of talented elites. Those who squandered their talent there were few and far between. If there was anyone whose peers had already achieved godhood while they still remained a samsaran, they would be exiled to the nearby stellunar source worlds. As such, the legacy of Orderia and the distribution of sheer talent and might in their society was strictly maintained.

"A true superior lifeform indeed. Every single one of their members are basically gods! It isn't just a few talented geniuses from time to time!" That sounded like a nightmare to Tianming. "Most people on the Flameyellow Continent are only at the Unity or Heavenly Will stages, but their powers combined allowed me to fight Sovereign Xi, Bodhi, and even a hundred thousand gods. If the celestial orderians who live on a world with a nova source believe in me and take me as their emperor one day, I wonder how much more powerful I'll be."

An emperor of a mortal world was still a mere mortal at the end of the day. They couldn't outshine the countless beams of bright light coming from the sun that illuminated the entire continent. It was no surprise that Orderia was at the center of countless stellunar source worlds and mortal planes. Every single person there was capable of lording over billions of normal people.

"Even though not every one of them are necessarily talented and of good character and mind, it's already a miraculous stroke of luck for one to be able to reincarnate in their society." Tianming was no doubt impressed as he imagined the prospect of having elite parents in an elite clan with elite access to cultivation resources and a rich nova source. Even the most pathetic of people could be molded into someone with a lifespan of thousands of years under such conditions.

"Reincarnation is a skill, it seems," Lingfeng sighed.

The three of them were already really lucky to make it to this place from the mortal world in the first place. They passed through countless flaming clouds and came to the nova source world that had tens of millions of years of history. Once they were past the layer of flaming clouds, the burning heat began dissipating, revealing a boundless world before them. This world looked like it was sandwiched between the flaming clouds above and the core of the star below. It was completely unlike the molten purgatory everyone had imagined—there were vast continents, and even seas across the surface.

The only difference was that the sky of this world had no sun. Instead, there was a sea of fire above. Rain didn't seem like it would be a possibility here, but if it did, it would probably rain fire. The world was beautiful and boundless in a manner that shook one's soul. Despite the powerful waves of the nova source washing over the place, it didn't seem uncomfortable in the slightest.

"The fusion formation must've filtered the nova source into a form that can be absorbed and used for cultivation before letting it permeate the rest of the world." The world was stable thanks to the fusion formation.

They didn't really have the time to properly admire the world, being far too high up in the sky. As the attractive forces of the star drew them in, they began plunging down until, after falling about a million meters, they finally reached the ground. The sky of Orderia seemed so much higher up. The three of them began looking around blankly like country bumpkins.

"Darn, aren't these divine herbs? Every tree here has a divine pattern…"

They had fallen into a forest. Tianming saw countless trees stretching hundreds and even a thousand meters in height. Each and every one of them had divine patterns. They even seemed to bear delicious fruit. However, none of it seemed to have been harvested.

This world seemed like it had all kinds of things—divine hazards up in the sky, divine herbs on the surface, and divine ores beneath the ground. What would be considered treasures in the lower worlds were commonplace here. To the celestial orderians, such things were all too normal. They only valued those that had high-grade divine patterns. The herbs, ores, and hazards of the normal world resulted from fractured divine patterns being pulled down by the world's attractive forces, which then mingled with spiritual energy. In other words, this place seemed to be the soup kitchen of all those resources, while the lower worlds got the leftovers.

"What in the world… what other goodies can be found here? No wonder I was so 'malnourished'! I've been served pitiful scraps the whole time!" Tianming said self-mockingly, much to Lingfeng and Xiaoxiao's laughter. The ignorant view the mortal world had of the way things were here seemed to be bliss. Finding out how insignificant one was in the grand scheme of things would be a terrifying prospect for many.

"I'm suddenly reminded of something," Xiaoxiao said.

"Let's hear it."

"Space is the fundamental essence of the universe, and time flows through it. The flow of time is like a river that doesn't have an end in sight, but there has to be a beginning somewhere. What would the starting point of the universe be? The birth of the universe? What happened before that? Was it just chaos? What comes before chaos? Will one eventually reach a singularity through near-endless regression? Speaking about space, we now know that the lower levels of the cosmic aether and astralscape of order are above the Welkin plane. But what's beyond that? Wu You said it's an empty void. How far would that void stretch? If there's a limit, what's above it? What lies in the space out of space?"

"So what's your conclusion?" Tianming asked.

"Promise not to laugh. Just treat it as an empty conjecture."

"Enlighten me, o great philosopher of nature!"

"Well… it feels to me like everything is a closed loop. Think of a thread with a start and end. Then, put the two ends of the thread together to form a loop. That way, you can't easily distinguish the start and end points. For all we know, it could be at any point of the loop. If time is a closed loop, then as we look further and further toward the starting end, we might see the destruction of a universe that precedes its creation. Countless cycles with countless untold stories of countless peoples, endlessly repeating. If this cycle is infinite, it isn't a stretch to say that what is happening now has happened before and will always continue happening completely identically down to the smallest detail, such as at what point in space each and every grain of sand is located.

"If space is a closed loop, we can travel all the way up to the astralscape of order and beyond it to what might be the realm of chaos. And if we continue traveling through that, we'd eventually reach the Welkin plane once more. That way, there will be no space outside of space. It's just an all-encompassing loop of space. It's often said that every albus in our bodies is a universe in itself, so it isn't a stretch to think that, in those universes, there exist countless other albi," Xiaoxiao said earnestly.

"So space and time are closed loops is the gist of it?"

"Yeah."

"That sounds interesting. But as far as insignificant existences like us are concerned, it isn't something that affects us. It might not even be possible for us to verify. We should be more concerned with surviving to the next day instead of considering what'll happen to us at the end of the time cycle."

"Well, I can't argue with that." Xiaoxiao seemed a little downcast from Tianming's mediocre reaction.

"Xiaoxiao, want to try considering another possibility?" Tianming asked.

"What possibility?"

"Imagine opening up a storybook. The book tells a tale with its own start and end. It contains the lives of people, who, in the context of the plot, are living, thinking beings like you. The book is the only universe they've ever known."

"Okay."

"To the people in the book, your theories might not apply. There's no closed loop there, only a defined start and end. Closed loops seem to imply an automatic restart of the loop once you reach the end, regardless of the actions and intent of the individuals within that universe. But if spacetime isn't a closed loop, there could be an even higher existence that regards our universe like a book of tales. To these beings, we are characters in a story that has a beginning and an end."

"So you're saying there's humans outside of our world?"

"Well, 'human' is a really specific category. They might not necessarily be people as we understand it. Perhaps it's some kind of universal law that governs everything in our universe and has no agency of its own. It might even be an existence we can't even begin to comprehend on our terms. Well, this is just another empty conjecture of mine. We can't really say which is true without observing it ourselves first. Either way, it doesn't hurt to have an active imagination. In fact, it helps us frame our experiences better as we move forward."

"Alright. Once I can freely travel about in the astralscape of order, I want to try looking for the end of the universe. That'll be my new life goal," Xiaoxiao said.

"Congratulations on finding your vocation."

With a new goal in sight, Xiaoxiao would be able to let go of her past. Freely roaming throughout the world without any responsibilities was something Tianming yearned to do as well. However, he had to stay grounded to watch over those he was beholden to.

……

Three days later, the three of them finally made it out of the forest.

"This place really is empty! There isn't a single soul in sight after three days of traveling."

In such a vast world, lifebound beasts could roam freely without worrying about space constraints. Even Lan Huang didn't feel like a gigantic beast in this world. The past three days, it had been running about in the forest until even it got sick of it. Now, only Ying Huo and Xian Xian's spiritform were standing on Tianming's shoulders. As for Meow Meow, it had been napping for the whole past month.

"Let's hope there's some sign of people outside the forest," Tianming said as he looked for high ground.