Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 1304: The One and Only State!

The wind blowing in through the window caused the candle to flicker. The pages of the Cycle of Civilization flipped gently. The book cataloged the rise and fall of the successive dynasties. And in the end, Chen Mo had organized it in a way that revealed a closed cycle, like the path of a bright moon on a long night. That cycle caused him to realize that every word of history, the name of every era, and all other things were just evidence of the turning of the wheel. And that wheel never stopped moving.

Despite being weak and sick, Chen Mo used the last of his strength to carve his insights on to twelve bronze slips. Because the details were put onto bronze slips, they would be able to stand up to the corrosive power of time. Chen Mo knew that his enlightenment would be nothing but a tiny ripple in the great river of reincarnation. Even still, he persisted.

The imperial historians used some unknown power to obscure the way time overlapped. They used myths to cover the truth about destruction. They used different words to hide prophecies. But Chen Mo was now carving the truth into the bronze slips.

The last line he wrote was, “The reincarnation of all things ends in the unification of silence.”

Thunder boomed outside! Rain fell steadily onto the roof over his head. The rhythm of the sound caused Chen Mo to slip into something of a daze. Suddenly, he found himself thinking about a thousand-year-old document Sealed Tributes, which mentioned a rain of destruction that had a similar rhythm.

“I’m about to depart…” Chen Mo murmured. His life force was about to go out, and his vision was blurring. He had lived a life that felt like being trapped in a boat on the open sea. Nobody understood him. But at least he left behind something.

“I still have some regrets…” he whispered. As he lay there waiting to die, he eventually struggled to lift his head and look out the window at the storm.

Perhaps it was his regret that caused it, or perhaps his blurred vision, but the next time the lightning struck he noticed that his shadow on the wall seemed to overlap perfectly with the bronze slips, the Spirit Empress’ nine revelations hexagrams, the inscriptions on the ancient oracle bones, and the coiling dragon carving on the golden imperial edict of the reigning dynasty.

Chen Mo was stunned momentarily. Then his eyes began to shine brightly.

Whenever someone tries to grasp the trajectory of history, they actually become that trajectory.

He laughed softly. Rain blew in through the window and ran down the wrinkles on his face. He let it. He suddenly didn’t feel like he was trapped on a boat in the sea. Instead, he felt like a lamp being held by the boatman.

Maybe that lamp couldn’t penetrate all the way through the eternal fog ahead, but at least those who came after him would realize that there was someone who lifted that lamp, and then carved some clues to be left behind in the great river of time. Maybe a thousand years from now, another historian would be organizing ancient records on an autumn night, and they would notice a clue, and would understand about that lamp in space-time.

And then, just like Chen Mo himself, that person would understand that it was a clue about the endless cycle of civilization’s cycle of destruction and rebirth. Such people would be alternate versions of himself, who would befriend a certain person in the future.

“It is done!”

His enlightenment didn’t bring rapturous joy. Rather, it was silent, like the first melting of ice in spring. Chen Mo knew that each word of history was just a part of reincarnation. The truth he had been seeking his whole life wasn’t about making all civilizations conform to the same explanation.

Rather, the explanation was that everything was a flowing cycle. That was unification.

The candle in the hostel was flickering, casting shadows that seemed to represent numerous dynasties and countless overlapping versions of reincarnation. Candle light and starlight glittered and intersected. It was like the fluttering wings of a jasper cicada.

Chen Mo smiled and closed his eyes.

***

The cicadas buzzed just like before.

The cicadas’ wings fluttered.

The scenes, the motes of light, the shafts of brightness, all illuminated different space-times. They had the same source, but different trajectories, and thus, they resulted in vast and diverse lives. They were all colorful in their own way, but they all contained thoughts of unification.

Those thoughts rose through space-time, returning to Xu Qing’s consciousness, bolstering it. The experiences of many lives caused his aura to create a shapeless hand that plucked the strings of canon like a musical instrument.

More and more notes were added, weaving together to ultimately produce an exceptional sound called ‘statute.’ But… though that sound grew, the music never played. It was because….

“I’m missing one of them.” Xu Qing opened his eyes and looked out into the void.

***

There was one final version of himself in space-time who had not yet thought of unification. Not even the authority of the god of pain could control his thoughts.

He was a painter. At some point in the past, he had burned all of his paintings. Then he took out a sheaf of fine paper and put down a single brush stroke. It was the character 一, which meant ‘one.’

Right now, he was adding five more brush strokes. In that manner he changed 一 into 来, which meant ‘come.’

As it turned out, that first brush stroke was actually the first part of the character he later intended to complete. It was an invitation across space-time.

Xu Qing looked at it for a while, then stood up and took a step forward. That step took him into space-time and into parallelism. A moment later, he appeared in the studio with the old painter.

The old man’s brush hovered above the canvas as he looked up. A smile broke out on his wrinkled face as he looked at Xu Qing.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to write this for you. There’s no need for you to say anything. Just let me speak.

“I started studying painting when I was young. Eventually, I became a master. I used painting to understand the world, and as I grew old, I came to understand how heaven and earth operated….

“Within my paintings I saw living beings and inanimate objects. I saw anything and everything. For example, there was Liu Xuanji, and Chen Mo, and I even saw you…. Eventually I burned them all, and then I sat down here. It was because I understood that I and the world I live in probably didn’t exist before. We came to exist because you needed us to exist. As for why you need us, I actually saw it in a painting twenty years ago.”

The painter pulled out a fresh sheaf of fine paper, took a deep breath, and ground some fresh ink. Then he picked up his brush, dipped it into the ink, and started painting. It was not some masterwork. Instead, he put down only a few simple brushstrokes to create a grid pattern.

After, the painter dipped the brush into the ink before drawing a single line! That line connected all parts of the grid!

He put all of his remaining energy into the brush stroke. Afterward, his aura began to fade, and he quickly grew so weak he couldn’t hold the brush. At that point, he spoke in a faint, raspy voice and said, “Unification isn’t just about space. It’s also about time. Time is a line, but it doesn’t have just present, past, and future. Space is made of a grid. But the parts of the grid are not static. When the timeline connects them, they move.

“It’s like this painting. The parts of the grid are all of our lives, from beginning to end. The one timeline connects all the parts of the grid. And that is the complete life of space-time parallelism.

“Our path is to take the timeline, extract it, absorb it, and make it ours. The next step is to absorb all of the static parts of the grid. Having accomplished all that, it will lead to the unification of parallelism. You will become the only one. That state of being the one and only will be named by me. It is… ontology! And that is our tenth extreme!”[1]

The painter closed his eyes.

As Xu Qing took a step forward in the study to look at the painting, the world around him… began to collapse!

1. There is a bit of wordplay here that cannot be conveyed in English. First, “parallelism” has the character for “one” in it. The author takes the character “one” and adds a character to it that creates the phrase “one and only.” Then he drops “one,” leaving behind that added character. Then he picks another character with the exact pronunciation that means “ontology.” So there is a unified linguistic element connecting them all. The author loves to do this kind of wordplay. Now, what does “ontology” mean, and why did I select it? Well, the specific character the author uses has a lot of meanings. In modern times, that character is often used to mean “dimension.” For example, it’s commonly used in the Chinese term for 3D or “three dimensional.” It also has other dictionary definitions. The meaning of the character in this novel is more profound, and will be explained later. The main explanation doesn’t have to do with “dimension.” Unfortunately, due to the character having that meaning, the author is able to do some wordplay based on the “dimension” definition. However, the primary definition is NOT anything to do with dimension. There will be a detailed explanation later. In the meantime, I’ll save you a google search by providing you with a link to the Wikipedia page for ontology, which might give a clue as to why I picked it. Just be aware that neither the dictionary definition of the Chinese term nor the Wikipedia page for the English version will provide you with the exact meaning the author is assigning to this character. It is a unique meaning for use in a xianxia setting. So… stay tuned for further details. ☜