Emperor’s Domination

The couplet exuded arrogance and painted the picture of a soul who looked down on the rest of the world.

However, Li Qiye interpreted it differently; he was the only one who could make the connection.

His eyes narrowed as he scouted across time and space. At a distant point in time, he saw a young man acting with absolute freedom, not conforming to any boundary and restriction.

His position was the dao itself. His thoughts were the dao. There was no need for him to cultivate. He was born with the dao or rather, the dao was birthed by him. To put it simply - freedom.

Unrestrained and unbound, all forms could be created on a whim and shaped into reality. This youth was the one who left the couplet with his brush and in a single, seamless flow. The characters created an eternal grand dao in this spot.

Gods and immortals were envious of the youth, one untainted by the myriad affinities. He alone was unique, especially with the way he made Li Qiye smile.

Li Qiye’s gaze extended beyond the youth, piercing through the distant time. After piercing through the light, he saw the source of the grand dao. The primordial chaos seemed to be manifesting from this place guarded by three gates.

They resembled the foundation of all things in nature. The roots of heaven and earth were there. There was no need for cultivation and merit laws, only the heart and mind to obtain freedom.

Li Qiye chuckled and decided to add a couplet to the other piece of timber. It matched and fused with the existing couplet.

‘Ignoring the family’s ways, the disobedient child needs to pay.’

“Hahaha…” Suddenly, a burst of laughter could be heard from afar.

“I’m outta here!” The voice was filled with infectious joy, capable of affecting others with no spatio-temporal limit.

Li Qiye himself was affected and chuckled as well.

“Boom!” Visions and phenomena became chaotic and started rolling. All of them were morphed together with an image of a youth rolling like a ball. [1]

He rolled from one temporal sphere to another, could be many million years from the past to the present or vice versa…

The youth was still happy and smiling despite rolling in an embarrassing manner. The two managed to communicate across time and space through the couplets despite having never conversed before in the past.

He eventually rolled into the river of time and the chaotic phenomena dispersed. Li Qiye left the area and returned to the chaos filled with magnificent spectacles.

The memories of an epoch. Though time itself never stopped flowing, these temporal vestiges couldn’t be fully erased.

After a while, he eventually stepped into another one. Nothing existed here outside of the ultimate transformations of the grand dao. The various affinities had their original and final appearance.

One dao mystery flowed like a river toward an unknown destination. Due to a lack of worldly orders, direction and distance became unclear.

What should be just the void and constant dao derivation was disrupted by this strange river. Li Qiye noticed something peculiar - a man being one with this area. His body was ethereal and virtually undetectable.

However, Li Qiye’s focused gaze still separated him from the dimension. He could be going anywhere - the past or the future.

Due to his ethereal nature, no one could recognize him. Nonetheless, Li Qiye had a decent idea.

He turned his gaze toward the imperceivable direction of the river. Others couldn’t do this but it was his epoch, allowing him to perform special feats.

What he found were an ultimate concealment and a barrier at the destination. Nothing could ever get inside but the man still kept on trying.

Li Qiye snorted and the ethereal man could sense his existence. He glanced in the direction of Li Qiye but didn’t stop the unceasing flow.

Li Qiye didn’t stop him either and continued to focus on the ever-unchanging destination. This place most likely detected Li Qiye as well but didn’t react.

“One day.” He let out an eternal mantra that would imprint itself into reality.

This resonated with a particular lineage known as Ultimate in the four broken realms of the upper continents and left the same mark there. [2]

Of course, this change was unknown to the rest of the world. Li Qiye didn’t pursue this matter because it was only one of the final destinations. In fact, it could even be a bait.

He chuckled because regardless of the truth, he did gain information from it - those in the past were still around, unable to give up.

They continued to search for the truth or hide in the darkness. This ethereal man was one of them.

1. The joke is hard to explain. In Chinese, when you want someone to leave, you use the literal word for “roll”. This can be playful or disrespectful. Li Qiye loves using this, when it is used against enemies, it’s disrespectful. He also uses it against the juniors in a playful manner. In this particular context, the youth said, “I’ll roll” but he’s either accepting defeat by the playful prose or is running from a potential beating. It’s a playful response. I could translate it more literally as “I’m rolling then!” or “I’ll roll”, but I think “I’m outta here” matches the tone without being disruptive to readers. The two proses and these lines are so vague and might be changed if there are new contexts. For example, the word for gates can also mean trials. I translated as trials initially until the previous passage of the three gates’ description. I am unsure of what they are completely, but the resulting translation maintains the vagueness and it makes sense. This is just the nature of translating ED. In this particular instance, it’s interesting enough to not be frustrating. There were crazy passages like this with words of several meanings that were just ridiculous. This one seems to be a reward from the authors to long-time readers so it’s fine ☜

2. The word for ultimate can mean poor as well, this can change after more context ☜