Chapter 1299: Time and Space Chaotic, Cause and Effect Reversed

Chapter 1299: Temporal Chaos, Reversed Causality

What is temporal turbulence?

For most cultivators, it defies precise description.

In a sense, it seems merely a metaphor.

Literally, it suggests chaos of time and space, birthing a singularity of infinite magnitude and infinitesimal scale.

Thus, it holds infinite possibilities.

Yet detailed explanation proves elusive, constrained by cognition.

Only those whose very constitution intertwines with time and space might grasp its nature.

Xu Qing once believed this too.

Before entering, he thought temporal turbulence resembled his own Interminable Art—only vaster, more mysterious.

Through his constitution, he should have greater certainty of returning.

But upon entry, all exceeded prediction.

The scenes there left Xu Qing’s thoughts adrift in pure bewilderment.

As now, he lifted his head. His gaze met countless kaleidoscopic vortices.

Vast and minute, boundless, some orderly, some fractured, some still, some spinning—many entwined.

They formed an abstract, complex starfield.

One glance brought a throbbing ache, the mind unable to contain such information.

Prolonged, it induced a sense of shattering.

And abstraction permeated not only this, but Xu Qing and Er’niu’s very state of being here.

Xu Qing’s body was no longer human.

It had become a luminous swarm of innumerable triangular fragments. Each glowing insect lived but a ten-thousandth of a breath.

At birth, it amplified its light into an ultimate radiance.

In death, it burst like fireworks, scattering chaotic visions of the future, then instantly burned to ash-dust, drowning all light.

Cyclic, endless.

As for Er’niu, freed from Xu Qing’s hair by this transformation, he manifested externally.

His form grew more abstract still.

Like a kaleidoscope of a million flickering points, shape ever-shifting.

His words, too, carried disordered meaning.

Now, Er’niu’s voice echoed.

He meant to say…

“What’s going on, Xiao Aqing? Where is this?”

But what reached Xu Qing’s perception became…

“Is what like this, Qing Xiao situation, where A?”

Everything was chaos—time, space, even themselves.

All twisted.

As if time here held no meaning, space here no purpose.

Xu Qing stood lost.

This differed from his constitution!

Even movement defied convention.

Here, advancing required no physical motion; merely the thought would make all around rotate, as if shifting.

Investigation followed the same law.

As if all secrets here lay bare—if only one could see, comprehend, endure them, then in a single glance, know all.

Thus now, as Xu Qing probed this bewildering temporal flow, he saw his own human form in some unknown distance.

That distance could be past or future, spatial layers apart.

When his focus gathered on that distant self, he swiftly saw not one, but… countless.

Countless selves, countless states.

He even saw liquid planets.

Planets transformed into flowing molten iron, drifting past in distorted shapes.

Galaxies became worms festooned with rotting fruit, vanishing in a flicker.

Star realms turned into unknown glyphs carved on tombstones, seemingly alive, locked in battle.

The cosmos itself was included.

Yet this cosmos resembled a shroud riddled with holes.

Moreover, his and Er’niu’s state of being, under this probing advance of thought, flickered between brilliant radiance and dimness, as if ready to extinguish.

Unexplainable.

Utter chaos.

This was temporal turbulence.

Xu Qing’s bewilderment deepened. Time lost measure—was it ten thousand years, or an instant?

Er’niu’s distorted voice, laced with strange inflection, echoed again.

“Somehow I saw a face that looked like I drew…”

“Was several lifetimes ago I…”

These phrases arrived scrambled, stretched through time and space, striking Xu Qing’s senses like thunderclaps growing louder, more immense.

They shattered his insect-swarm body.

Innumerable triangular insects collapsed, releasing more future visions, violently agitating Xu Qing’s consciousness, preventing cohesion.

Only light remained, flashing fiercely between brilliance and extinction.

Long after the tremors faded and Xu Qing’s state stabilized, his consciousness reassembled.

Er’niu was gone.

The words spoken before his disappearance had vanished from Xu Qing’s perception—remembered yet unknown.

Xu Qing fell silent.

He felt his thoughts slowing, his consciousness imperceptibly fraying at the edges.

The premonition of death rose within him.

Yet the crisis that should have heralded death never arrived.

This realization surfaced only after his previous self-shattering.

Alongside it emerged the instant shift of his form from swarm to human,

followed by the sudden appearance of cocoon strands woven from Constitution.

That was his Constitution.

Only after all this did a seemingly belated thought take root in Xu Qing’s mind.

“I should forge an interminable void with my Constitution, to resist the temporal maelstrom beyond.”

“Chaos against chaos!”

As the notion arose, Xu Qing’s spirit trembled; he snapped his eyes open,

staring at the Constitutional cocoon enveloping him, his gaze grave.

Normally, the thought would precede action.

Here, it was inverted.

Cause and logic were scrambled.

Or rather, logic ceased to exist; causality stood reversed.

“What a veritable temporal maelstrom…”

Xu Qing murmured. Only now, sealed within the Constitution-woven cocoon,

did his existence stabilize, his thoughts regaining semblance of order.

Thus, he recalled Erniu’s disappearance.

“Ordinarily, I’d have unfurled my Constitution the moment I entered…”

He pondered, searching memory for why he hadn’t woven it immediately.

Gradually, clarity wavered.

“All was but an instant.”

Xu Qing whispered.

He remembered—his confusion, exploration, Erniu’s voice, even forming the Constitutional cocoon—

all occurred the instant he entered this temporal chaos.

That single moment held too many events.

Simply put, upon entry, all timelines converged,

overlapping, erupting simultaneously in one breath.

Xu Qing fell silent.

Yet soon, his eyes gleamed strangely. Gazing at the cocoon before him,

he recalled his external ordeal.

“Here, all is disordered, illogical, causality inverted—yet existence is justified.

In a sense, this is time’s other visage.”

“Beyond my interminable void…”

Xu Qing mused. Suddenly, he understood why he’d grasped temporal chaos

within the Pain God’s illusion.

“Because this very chaos is a higher revelation of temporal Constitution!”

His eyes flashed keenly.

“Escape is impossible now; Senior Brother’s whereabouts unknown,

and I cannot linger beyond this cocoon.”

“Then let me hone my insight within this maelstrom!”

“But first, I must discern what a temporal maelstrom is,

and how it relates to, yet differs from, my Constitution.”

“Only understanding enables transcendence.”

With this, Xu Qing sat cross-legged. As his eyes closed,

his consciousness merged with his external Constitution.

Within the temporal maelstrom, he became an island amid raging seas,

unmoved by each crashing wave.

Only his mind expanded limitlessly.

Externally, this manifested as dense down sprouting from the cocoon’s silk—

his thoughts warped by chaotic time. Though bizarre,

they functioned as synapses, transmitting external sensations

to nourish his insight.

Time flowed within the cocoon.

Yet this flow held no substance; all was constrained,

unmeasurable beyond its walls.

Like Xu Qing’s fruitless contemplation—

he could find no thread of order in the fractured timelines,

no foothold to grasp.

Without it, all remained a mirage, a moon in water.

Thus, the down on the cocoon lengthened,

spreading deeper into the chaos.

Yet the outcome remained unchanged.

Xu Qing opened his eyes, brow furrowed, staring outward.

“A tangled skein, no thread to follow.”

“Like countless shattered puzzle pieces, lacking a reference image…”

“I need that reference to see the maelstrom’s essence.”

He murmured, “It must be the foothold, the thread to pierce this chaos…”

“But what reference would serve?”

Xu Qing pondered.

“This maelstrom defies control, holding all possibilities—

yet bound by invisible limits, as if by fate…”

A sudden tremor seized his spirit.

“Fate?”

His eyes blazed.

In the next breath, his right hand swept across his body.

A radiant divine spark materialized in his palm—

the gift of Prince Miming!

Its power was fate itself.

Staring at the spark, Xu Qing’s gaze intensified.

“Let fate be the image, piecing together the temporal maelstrom—

my foothold to dissect its truth!”

And fate is abstract.

Like this temporal maelstrom.

If the spacetime maelstrom were viewed as countless jigsaw fragments, then upon the fate’s tapestry now being pieced together, the first fragment…

Xu Qing had chosen himself.