Chapter 192: Time Flow Rate: One to Ten Thousand
“Immortal Elder, I have a question for you.” Jiang Li came to find Immortal Elder Changcun, bringing Yu Yin, Bai Hongtu, and a question.
Immortal Elder Changcun greeted them with a smile, “You came looking for me right after returning from another world? Sounds like a serious problem. Go ahead.”
“Is it true that the will of living beings at the moment of death produces something that the Outer World Demons fear?”
Immortal Elder Changcun gently shook his head, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Did you get this from the demons themselves?”
“No, I just overheard an Outer World Demon telling its subordinate that in the face of great death and terror, the will of living beings becomes incomparably powerful.”
“Then I thought of how, across three different worlds, the Outer World Demons never dared to act directly—they always killed through indirect means. It makes me think they’re afraid of something.”
“The stone stele left by the Dao Ancestor also supports this. It said, ‘Refine myself into a continent… to give you a place to stay, so that they won’t dare…’”
“What stone stele?”
Yu Yin frowned. She had never heard of such a thing.
“Do you remember the Mingzhong World I visited?”
Yu Yin nodded. She had read about it in the Tianji News.
“The continent in Mingzhong World was formed from the Dao Ancestor’s immortal corpse. Before his death, he left behind a stone stele recounting his final experiences—though the record isn’t complete.”
Yu Yin felt like she’d been struck by lightning.
The Dao Ancestor… died?
Jiang Li recited the contents of the stone stele word for word, while Immortal Elder Changcun explained the cold nature of the Celestial Realm.
“So the Dao Ancestor failed, fled the Celestial Realm with a group of people, encountered the Outer World Demons along the way, fought them to no avail, and ultimately fell. Before his death, to protect the people, he refined his own body into a continent,” Yu Yin struggled to accept the truth.
At the mention of the Dao Ancestor, everyone present felt uneasy. The atmosphere turned somber.
Jiang Li sighed inwardly and continued, “This also shows that the Outer World Demons fear the will of the masses, especially that of beings on the verge of death.”
“I couldn’t understand it before, but after what King Shang said, I now get it—the demons are afraid that something might be born from the will of all beings, or that it might cause some sort of change.”
“Highly likely,” Immortal Elder Changcun agreed with Jiang Li’s viewpoint. But even with all his knowledge, he didn’t know exactly what was hidden in that collective will.
They couldn’t very well kill everyone in the world just to find out.
“Then why don’t the demons play dirty with us in the Nine Provinces? Why do they just start wrecking things right away?”
Bai Hongtu didn’t get it. Aside from that Celestial Immortal-level demon that caused trouble and fled, all the demons who’d appeared in the Nine Provinces over the last nine thousand years came purely to kill.
No schemes, no mind games—just straight-up slaughter.
“Maybe because the Nine Provinces are too powerful,” Immortal Elder Changcun wasn’t sure whether to feel proud or troubled.
“Outer World Demons are divided into Celestial Immortal-level and Terrestrial Immortal-level. The Terrestrial Immortal-level ones lack intelligence and only follow the orders of the Celestial-level ones.” Immortal Elder Changcun shared a secret he had never told anyone.
“What I say next is just speculation—take it with a grain of salt.”
“Celestial-level demons might believe that it’s too difficult to destroy the Nine Provinces through deceit. There are just too many Tribulation Stage cultivators here, and some of them are downright terrifying, capable of rivaling Immortals.”
“So they sent Terrestrial-level demons to go on killing sprees. Naturally, cultivators from the Nine Provinces would fight back. In the process, the Nine Provinces would gradually wear down their foundation, eventually becoming like other worlds—weak and easy to manipulate or invade.”
“Look, once the number of powerhouses dwindled, Celestial-level demons began infiltrating the Nine Provinces, laying traps everywhere, slowly trying to reshape the land. If we hadn’t caught on, who knows what the Nine Provinces would look like in a few thousand years?”
Jiang Li nodded. If nothing else, the rise of the Divine Repository Sect alone would’ve been enough to push the Nine Provinces to the brink.
“Judging by what Jiang Li experienced in three different worlds, it’s highly likely that all other worlds beyond the Nine Provinces have already fallen into the demons’ long-term scheme—dying a slow death.”
“The demons won’t let failure slide. They’ll definitely come back. Even with the Nine Provinces Barrier Formation and Jiang Li here, we can’t let our guard down,” Immortal Elder Changcun warned sternly.
Three? Jiang Li was startled.
He suddenly remembered—the Mingzhong World wasn’t the first world he’d visited.
Before that, there had been a world of endless yellow sand and gray beasts. He’d thought there was nothing worth seeing, took a quick look around, and left.
He had named it the Gray World.
That world gave Jiang Li a deeply uncomfortable feeling—so much so he didn’t want to stay there.
Now that he thought about it, something was definitely wrong with the Gray World.
“What? You visited another world, and there were no people?” Immortal Elder Changcun was shocked. He thought Jiang Li had been to three worlds, not four. “That’s impossible. Humans are the leaders of all races—there’s no such thing as a world without people in all of existence.”
“Let’s go check it out.” Immortal Elder Changcun said seriously.
Jiang Li had the Brahma Tower open a temporary portal and sent Immortal Elder Changcun, Bai Hongtu, and Yu Yin over.
“This is the place.” Jiang Li grabbed a handful of sand. Same familiar, unpleasant feeling.
“There really are no people.” Bai Hongtu and Yu Yin had never seen such a barren world—just sand and gray beasts, with spiritual energy so thin it was frightening.
A place like this—completely devoid of civilization—actually existed.
They all felt a kind of aversion.
“How can this be a continent without people?”
Immortal Elder Changcun was puzzled. If it were a planet, it’d be one thing. But if this was a continent, that meant the rest of this world had no humans either.
“What’s the time flow here?” Immortal Elder Changcun asked.
The first time Jiang Li had come here, he had no Remote Communication Talisman for cross-world contact, and no experience measuring time flow rates.
He had seen there was nothing here and simply returned to the Nine Provinces.
Jiang Li contacted Holy Maiden Jingxin to confirm the time flow.
With a bitter voice, he said, “Nine thousand years have passed in the Nine Provinces… Here, it’s been ninety million.”
Time flow rate: One to Ten Thousand!
What could happen in ninety million years?
If the demons interfered, ninety million years was enough to take a thriving world and reduce it to sand.
Immortal Elder Changcun grabbed one of the gray beasts and studied it closely. His lips trembled. “You may not know… there’s a thing called the Dao of Creation… it… it can turn people into beasts…”
“These gray beasts… they carry traces of the Dao of Creation… faint, but definitely there…”
“All of them… all the gray beasts on this continent… were once human… or rather… their ancestors were…”
The three of them froze.
They never expected to find a world with such a fast time flow rate—much less that the mindless, sand-eating, grotesquely twisted beasts before them were once human.
Ninety million years—too long to even imagine.
They had no way of knowing what the demons did to turn people into this grotesque, pitiful, tragic form.
Nor could they save them.
Or rather… save it.
Jiang Li stepped into the heavens, entered the cosmos, and let out a howl that made the stars fall.
He stretched out both arms, then suddenly brought them together, using a raw, unreasonable force to condense the entire starry sky into one massive stone stele.
Jiang Li planted the stele at the edge of the continent—as the gravestone of this world.
The group bowed deeply to the stele, mourning a world they’d never met—and never would.
From that point on, the Gray World had no stars.
Only a continent, a gravestone, endless yellow sand, and countless gray beasts.