His Heavenly Pupil World was a mess. He could tell that it probably once used to be some semblance of vibrant, and even now there was wild life and plant life struggling to survive. But it had been completely ravaged by the toil of time, and more importantly than that, the surging spatial tears that would appear randomly and at all periods of time. One region would only just barely survive, and yet another would appear in its place.
What surprised Ryu the most, though, was just how complex the world was. The fact that it had wild life at all was absolutely ridiculous. Spiritual Herbs made sense because there were many planted here before his eyes were sealed, and there was, of course, Ailsa to take care of them. He wouldn't have been surprised even if his world had Spiritual Herbs that had never appeared before, but wild life?
For wildlife to appear here, there were only two possibilities. The first was that his beast companions had mated, but that was impossible unless they had managed to take on human forms. In Sacrum, beasts had no human forms, even if they made it to the Sky God Realm. But he had heard some inkling about it being possible for God Beasts of the True Martial World, but the requirements were impossibly high, likely
Dao Lord at the worst.
Technically, this was possible. They had been stuck in here for a very long time, and there was a woman among them in Little Gem, as disgusting as it felt to think about that little adorable griffin mating, the assumption here was that she had long since grown up.
The problem with this was that while the wild life he could see were powerful, they weren't nearly powerful enough.
Ryu was certain that along with the Spiritual Herbs, Ailsa would have also spent her time helping the little ones to improve. Setting this aside, if they managed to make it to the Dao Lord Realm and had children, their offspring couldn't possibly be so weak.
That only left one explanation and one that he hated to admit to... and that was that so much time had passed that these beasts had naturally evolved to this state. However, without a Protector to bestow them with the ability to cultivate, this was basically the limit of their potential.
Ryu gripped his fists, scanning the region. Suddenly, he felt a raging pulse emit from his eyes. As though he had been hit by an avalanche or even a falling star from above, a rush of power nearly tore his mind apart.
He understood what was happening instantly. While his eyes were still sealed, while he was within his world, he could access the strength he would have, at least in part. But this partial strength was so overwhelming that he could feel even his real body shuddering. Suddenly, he understood exactly why it was that his eyes had yet to unseal.
Ryu took a deep breath, his dull silver eyes suddenly gaining a fluctuating light. Suddenly, the disorganized world became like a library in his mind. If he could see the lines and voids of space before, he could even predict them now, on top of seeing what they had once been.
His [Third Perspective] blanketed the entire world in an instant and he didn't miss a single thing. He raised a hand.
"[Rob the World of Color]. [Fate Reversal]!"
The world went completely black and white. The rampaging spatial and time qi was halted in its tracks, like a optimal mold taken and peeled back, constrained. Then, [Fate Reversal] descended, peeling back more and more of those layers, forcing it to back track.
Maybe if this had been the real world, doing this would have been far more difficult.
Ryu was currently applying [Fate Reversal] in a way he had never before. It had to be remembered that [Fate Reversal] was meant to reverse damage the owner of the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils had taken on, pushing it onto the person that had caused the damage in the first place, or in exchange for more energy, to a new person entirely.
However, Ryu felt that he could use it on more than just himself and an opposing party now. He used it to rewind the variations of time and space completely, undoing and rewinding what had happened until he could see what he needed to.
Luckily, this was his own world, and it was one without a Protector at that. On top of that, the spatial and time qi here was his own.
Although he didn't say it, he faintly hoped that he could reverse things until they appeared again... but he knew it was a foolish thought. In order to succeed in such a thing, not only would he have to use [Fate Reversal] on five existences at once, they would likely have cultivations far above him, and it would expand the scope to wherever they had gone. That would mean that he would be playing with reality on an impossibly large scale.
If he was a Dao God, maybe he would have the cachet necessary to even think of attempting such a thing. But he wasn't even in the Sky God Realms yet and had only just entered the World Sea Realm... How could he even aspire to do such a thing?
But there was a bright side to this as well. So long as he felt clear resistance, so long as he reached a point where he couldn't push past no matter how much energy he poured into it, he would know that he had reached the last moment that they had been alive in here.
And soon, he reached that point.
Ryu's gaze sharpened and he released [Fate Reversal]. He perfectly mapped the situation in his mind, and then he began to test the regions one by one to check which the most resistance. So long as he could find it, he could find the exact tear they had entered, and he could hopefully reverse engineer exactly where they had gone.
'There!'
Ryu's body flickered and vanished. His soul moved through his world as though it had no danger at all, but this was the bare minimum requirement for him. How could he be hurt in his own world, and by two elements he was so intimately familiar with at that? It could be said that if he had been here, they wouldn't have been in danger at all.
In fact, Ryu felt that if it had only been a matter of spatial tears, Yaana would have been able to keep them all safe. The trouble lay in the fact that time was layered atop of it, making it impossible for her to handle despite being a half-sprite.
'What...?'
Ryu stood before the portal he was sure they had entered in a complete and utter daze. He didn't understand what he was seeing at all. That was because...
This portal didn't have aspects of time at all, it was entirely space.
Ryu's expression turned a ghastly sheen of pale. The implications of this weren't something that he was willing to think about, but his mind worked too fast.
Indeed, if they had a choice, why would they enter a tear with aspects of time? Yaana would have definitely been able to tell the difference. Not only would she make sure not to pick a tear with time fluctuations, but she would also pick one of the more stable ones to maximize their chances at success.
This portal here definitely fit those criteria. It was completely stable. There was no time qi aspect. It was the optimal choice, it was far better than every other tear that Ryu had seen to this point. In fact, he had no doubt that Yaana had taken action to make it even more stable as she and the others crossed.
So why couldn't he sense them? They should be in the same timeline as him, they should be within the range of his thoughts. Why were their souls so dormant within his own?
He could only think of two explanations, each one as bad as the former.
The first was that they had never made it through. They died in the portal. He never got news of their death because they had still been within the seal, and even if his eyes unsealed now, he would never get word. It would forever be in the dark.
The second was a variation of the first. They had almost made it through the other side, but the gate on the other side wasn't nearly as stable as it was on this side. They could be in any number of states of limbo...
If they had entered a blackhole, they could be in both the present and the past, their bodies stretched to the point of existing in two states at once.
If they entered a wormhole they could very well have ended up in the past anyway.
If they had simply entered a field of danger, they could have ended up in the depth of Infinity Mist like he had, or any number of other impossibly perilous regions practically cut off from the outside world.
What all of these possible causes had in common was that...
None of them were good.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺