Chapter 427: 427: Wooden horse.
For the next few days, it was a period of peace.
Aside from the occasional visits from Fang Mei, who continued insisting that Fang Da’ai had called her jiejie, Fang Yuan enjoyed a surprisingly quiet life.
What entertained him even more was the steady stream of faith points.
"Hah. If only everyone had been in some desperate crisis and my return happened to save them. I’d probably have earned mountains of faith points."
He muttered the words with a sigh.
What he didn’t know was that, to many people, he truly had been a salvation they never expected to receive.
Ever since his return, the Matriarch had become astonishingly docile.
The entire clan was still struggling to adapt, some even suspected everything was an illusion.
An illusion formation powerful enough to deceive the entire world.
After all, in their collective opinion, Lin Zhaoyue was absolutely capable of doing something like that.
As for the details...
Ah, never mind.
Some things were better left unexplored.
For now, Fang Yuan was experiencing something rare.
Peace.
Every morning, he would walk through the world and every day, he felt his connection to it deepen.
He couldn’t influence the world itself but he was beginning to understand it.
The laws that hold it together, how it flow without disrupting each other and most importantly, how a world is structured.
According to Zhaoyue, one could not create an Inner World without first understanding a world.
"Ah, you missed again. You’re really showing your age."
"Hah! I wasn’t trying to hit it. I’m just scaring it away. I don’t want those rotting corpses anywhere near my crops."
As Fang Yuan passed a field, he noticed two elderly farmers arguing while holding a slingshot each.
Several crows were circling overhead.
The old man holding the slingshot had apparently been trying, and failing to hit them all morning.
Fang Yuan stopped in his track and a thought appeared in his mind.
Ever since gaining a deeper understanding of fate, he had never truly experimented with it.
His gaze landed on one of the crows and then on the old farmer.
In his perception, countless invisible threads intertwined with one another.
For the first time, he carefully reached out and connected them.
Drawing a single line of fate between the crow and the old man who could never hit his target.
The farmer released the slingshot and the stone flew.
Bang.
The crow dropped from the sky like a rock.
It spun several times before crashing into the field.
The two farmers froze.
"..."
"..."
"This..."
The old man stared blankly at the fallen crow and then at the slingshot in his hand.
"Old Shen..."
His companion swallowed.
"That was a clean shot."
"I..."
Old Shen’s mouth twitched.
"I don’t know what happened either."
Fang Yuan was quite satisfied with the result.
At least in this instance, his partial control over the realm had shown him something important.
Within the boundaries of the world, he could influence outcomes.
Whether someone lived.
Whether someone died.
The realization was absurd.
A terrifying authority disguised as a simple ability.
It was almost as if he could write a story.
Map out a life.
Decide where a person began and where they ended.
His footsteps suddenly paused.
"...Wait."
A strange thought surfaced in his mind.
If he eventually gained complete control over a realm...
Wouldn’t that mean he could control the outcomes of everything within it?
The clan disciples, their encounters and their opportunities.
Their victories and failures.
He could throw them into a mountain filled with spirit beasts and simply decide which ones survived.
Which ones succeeded and which ones became experts.
The more he thought about it, the more frightening it became.
Then he remembered the fly.
The one that escaped a certain death only to stumble into another.
His brows furrowed.
Perhaps possessing the power to do something did not mean he should do it.
The world had its own flow.
Its own balance.
Blindly interfering with every outcome might create consequences even he could not predict.
With that thought, Fang Yuan stopped dwelling on the matter.
He turned and headed back toward the estate.
The moment he stepped through the gates, a child’s crying entered his ears.
Fang Yuan instinctively looked in that direction.
Ever since he began perceiving the threads of fate, he found it increasingly difficult to ignore them.
Every person carried countless strands.
Every strand carried possibilities.
And every possibility told a story.
Naturally, his gaze drifted toward the source.
And when he looked, he immediately regretted it.
"..."
A blinding radiance exploded into his vision like a flashbang.
The countless threads he normally saw were completely drowned beneath an overwhelming sea of light.
For a brief moment, he genuinely thought the sun had descended into the estate.
He raised a hand to shield his eyes yet even then, the brilliance remained impossible to ignore.
At the center of that dazzling sea of fate were two children.
One was sitting on the floor, crying loudly while waving her tiny fists in the air as if trying to beat the culprit responsible.
The other stood nearby, calmly holding a wooden horse.
A scene that should have looked completely ordinary.
Yet within Fang Yuan’s vision, the two children shone brighter than countless stars.
———
Inside the room.
Aunt Yueyao and Aunt Lin Xi were chatting with each other while watching over the children.
One was a widow of the Fang Family.
The other was the Matriarch of the Lin Family and the wife of Fang Yuan’s uncle.
The atmosphere was peaceful and warm until suddenly then space rippled and Fang Yuan appeared directly inside the room.
The two women looked over.
"Yuan’er."
"Clan head."
They greeted him with at once to which Fang Yuan nodded in return.
Then his gaze immediately landed on the crying child.
"Why is he crying?"
Aunt Lin Xi chuckled.
"Because his toy was taken away by little Tianyi."
Fang Yuan blinked.
"Then why not simply give them one each?"
Before Lin Xi could answer, Aunt Yueyao spoke first.
"Little Tianyi took it because he wanted to play together with Da’ai."
She looked toward the two children with a gentle smile.
"So we decided to let them handle it themselves."
Fang Yuan nodded slowly.
"I see."
