Chapter 1529: Trans-temporal Anchor Point
Though his upper body was little more than a ruin of flesh and blood, Li Fan could still feel the Reverse-Flow Boat, a gift from the Mount Tai Emperor, resting quietly in the depths of his mind.
As his yearning to travel back in time reached a fever pitch, the boat began to radiate a soft, crystalline white light, tinged with subtle hints of green.
The scenery of the real world started to dissolve and twist, like a painting drenched in water.
A wave of almost unbearable pain crashed through Li Fan’s mind, as if his skull were being simultaneously pierced by a billion chains. Then, as if they began to spin at high speed, the chains churned his thoughts into a vortex of agony.
“Ahhh!”
Even without a head, the remaining pulp of his flesh convulsed and trembled from the indescribable torment.
The Mount Tai Emperor had passed on all his insights into the Dao of Reverse Flow, but he had never mentioned that the side effects of activating the boat were so terrifying.
Li Fan vaguely recalled enduring all manner of torturous pain in past simulations, but none of it came close to even a ten-thousandth of what he was suffering now.
It felt as though it had seeped into his true, innermost self.
Faint sounds of wind and rain began to echo around him, and countless "droplets" pelted him from the front.
Each drop was like the sharpest blade in the world, slicing into him again and again.
The pain intensified with every cut.
But the vast, formless power from his memories had already finished crushing his remaining body. With his flesh gone, Li Fan, desperate to survive, had no path of retreat.
Amidst the boundless torment, he clung to a sliver of consciousness, refusing to let the power of the Reverse-Flow Boat dissipate.
The sounds of wind and rain grew louder.
The droplets were no longer solitary, but connected into continuous streams.
Under the constant barrage, the Reverse-Flow Boat groaned and thundered, threatening to break apart at any moment.
Fortunately, at this critical juncture, the hidden green light bloomed, swiftly repairing the damage to the vessel's hull.
He held on for nine agonizing breaths.
Finally, the countless streams of water converged, becoming a river.
In that instant, Li Fan plunged into it. All the pain he had felt vanished without a trace.
He felt as though he had detached himself from the entire world.
His perspective rose, ascending from the small world of the Great Xuan and the Xuanhuang Realm itself. After a brief pause, it began to rewind.
Li Fan saw himself entering the sealed village within the Mountain and Sea Fishing Ground; he saw himself suppressing and taming the sacred wood of the Xuanhuang Realm; he saw himself as the Grand Preceptor, his authority casting a shadow over the empire; he saw himself just after his memories had awakened, forced to drink a foul talisman-infused water...
The River of Time flowed tumultuously, and the small wooden boat navigated its currents with trepidation.
It seemed that the slightest misstep would lead to its capsizing.
However, the very fact that he had lived through these moments in his past served as a series of anchor points. Every so often as he traveled back, he could "borrow" their strength to stabilize his vessel in the torrential river.
But when Li Fan reached his first anchor point, set one year into his past, and tried to journey further upstream, everything changed.
The moment he crossed that critical node, the scouring force of the River of Time intensified a thousandfold.
It was like transitioning from a clear, rushing channel into a much murkier and more violent expanse. Li Fan could no longer see any clear images from the River of Time.
His surroundings blurred into a surge of flowing lines, a fusion of a million colors that completely blinded the time traveler's senses.
The terrifying power that erupted from the river nearly obliterated the unprepared Reverse-Flow Boat. The boat's white light seemed utterly insignificant against the raging torrent, weaker than a single drop of water in the river. Yet it desperately held on, a fragile shield preventing the vessel from being instantly crushed.
Li Fan knew what failure would mean.
It wasn't as simple as being sent back to the present.
He would be utterly erased from history, with no trace of his existence left in the world.
Li Fan fought with all his might to twist his fate.
But a single individual, compared to the vastness of the River of Time, was far too small. Even with his knowledge of the Dao of Reverse Flow, he was now adrift in the river, subject to its whims, his fate no longer his own.
It seemed a truly hopeless situation.
Still, Li Fan did not give up on survival. He held fast to the principles of the Reverse Flow, struggling to control the boat.
As he fought for his life, his mind was filled with questions.
According to the Mount Tai Emperor’s teachings, the journey shouldn't have been this difficult. At the very least, when traveling back less than a thousand years, even a damaged, near-disintegrating boat should have been able to handle the waves.
But now, after traveling back a mere fifty years, the storm Li Fan faced was as powerful as what one would expect after ten thousand years!
He knew from the Mount Tai Emperor's experience that the pressure increased exponentially the further back one went.
And here he was, just beginning his journey, facing such immense resistance...
It was hard to imagine how ferocious the storm would be when he reached ten thousand, or even thirty thousand years into the past!
“How could this be!”
Li Fan’s mind reeled in shock.
Suddenly, he remembered the images he had glimpsed in the river—the scenes from his own life.
While those images were visible, the river had behaved normally. But the moment they vanished, the waves had risen up, as if to devour him whole.
“Could it be... because I never actually lived through this period? Without anchor points to support me, the resistance has increased a thousandfold?” The realization struck him with the force of a thunderclap.
Yet, even understanding the reason for the river’s sudden fury, he was in a desperate bind, unable to advance or retreat.
The River of Time was a murky chaos, making it impossible to discern up from down, east from west. A colossal crushing force was constantly "slicing" at him from all directions.
It made it impossible for him to find a safe point in time to “land.”
Amidst the storm, the light of the Reverse-Flow Boat grew dimmer and dimmer, flickering precariously.
It seemed the next wave would be its last.
Just as all seemed lost, an immeasurable, countless torrent of green light suddenly erupted from nowhere.
Like a mystical pearl calming the winds, it temporarily suppressed the storm in the river.
This green light seemed to emanate from within Li Fan, yet simultaneously, countless points of green light glittered throughout the endless River of Time, from the most ancient past to the present moment.
They shone like a series of lighthouses, illuminating the path forward for him.
Although their effect was somewhat weaker than his own anchor points, they were, without a doubt, his lifeline.
The Reverse-Flow Boat surged forward, following the direction indicated by the green light.
One hundred years, three hundred, five hundred.
Until a thousand years passed, then five thousand...
The green light emanating from Li Fan's own being had begun to fade, nearly exhausted.
The green lighthouses in the river also grew dim, gradually receding back into the surging torrent of history.
Yet, beyond the fading glow of the green light, Li Fan still couldn't find a safe place to land.
“If I were to force myself out of the River of Time now and return to reality, there would be two possible outcomes.”
“First, I could fall to my death, torn to shreds by the currents of time and reduced to historical dust.”
“Second, I could, by some miracle, successfully land...”
“I’ll wait a little longer.”
Although most of Li Fan's knowledge of time travel came from the Mount Tai Emperor’s teachings, their experiences within the River of Time were vastly different.
Li Fan had faced far more violent waves, but conversely, he felt very little of the erosive, stripping sensation that the Mount Tai Emperor had feared so much.
After all, on his first journey, the Mount Tai Emperor had only managed to last three thousand years before feeling he was about to dissolve completely into the river, forcing him to return to reality.
But now, on his first attempt, Li Fan had already traveled back several thousand years, and he still felt little of that so-called stripping pressure.
If it weren’t for the lack of the Longevity Dao’s protection to guide him and the sheer violence of the waves making it impossible to navigate, Li Fan felt he could have continued traveling back indefinitely.
Though the erosive pressure was small, the overall force pressing down on him grew stronger the further back he went.
When he had traveled back about eight thousand years, the waves in the river were towering and chaotic, making any sort of navigation impossible.
Li Fan was swept into the maelstrom, unable to even discern the direction of time’s flow.
He scanned every detail of the river, desperately searching for a sliver of hope, a chance at survival in his final moments.
But he was, after all, not a particularly lucky person.
Crack!
The Reverse-Flow Boat began to break apart. Without the protection of the treasured vessel, Li Fan was directly exposed to the River of Time, and the pressure he faced instantly multiplied countless times over.
He finally understood what the Mount Tai Emperor had meant by the sensation of “dissolving.”
Every wave that washed over him stripped something away.
His cultivation, his divine abilities, his comprehension of the Dao...
All these things, like external attachments, were gradually peeled off by the river’s current.
Only his innermost core held on, fighting desperately.
When that true core began to take damage, an instinctual, extreme sense of mortal danger screamed through him. He knew he couldn't delay any longer. Even a reckless "landing" offered a better chance of survival than dying here in the River of Time.
Maneuvering the shattered remnants of the Reverse-Flow Boat, Li Fan gradually pulled himself out of his state of deep comprehension of the Dao of Reverse Flow.
The vista of the River of Time slowly faded from his vision, replaced by a sky filled with a torrential downpour.
In an instant, Li Fan was almost completely lost.
He was trapped in the boundary between the River of Time and reality, caught in a place where he could neither advance nor retreat.
To move forward recklessly might plunge him straight back into the River of Time. But to remain here meant staying within the river's scouring range, his core self continuously eroding. It was also a dead end.
Just as he hesitated for a fleeting moment, he suddenly saw a familiar glimmer of light amidst the downpour before him.
This perhaps meant that, at some point eight thousand years in the future, he had come into contact with this very light.
Though it did not exist in the past, that contact had forged a single anchor point that spanned across time.
Li Fan knew how incredibly rare it was to find something connected to himself amidst the storms of eight thousand years ago.
This was an opportunity he could not miss. Without further hesitation, Li Fan commanded the battered remains of the Reverse-Flow Boat to fly toward that fleeting glimmer of light.
With the anchor point as his guide, just before the Reverse-Flow Boat completely disintegrated, Li Fan finally broke through the storm of the River of Time.
He arrived in the real world.
Xuanhuang Realm.
Eight thousand, six hundred and forty-three years before the initial anchor point!
“That streak of light... the Medicine King Sect?! How dare they run?”
“Quick, inform the elders!”
“Wait! The Medicine King Sect may not be large, but they’re quite wealthy. If they fled in such a hurry, they couldn't possibly have taken all their treasures with them...”
“Let’s go. Don’t let anyone else beat us to it!”
“Hold on, what’s that? Why is there another streak of light?”
“Could it be the Medicine King Sect had a disagreement and decided not to run after all?”
“Let’s check it out first!”
...
When Li Fan regained consciousness, he was completely surrounded.
“Huh?”
Still in a daze, Li Fan hadn’t fully come to his senses. He was only vaguely aware of the cultivators around him, who were taking stock of their gains while occasionally glancing his way.
“You’re finally awake, kid.”
“Spit it out, what happened at the Medicine King Sect? Tell us everything, and we might spare your life. Otherwise...”
“Quit wasting time with him, just search his soul!”
“You idiot, those two streaks of light were so bright, we can’t possibly keep this quiet. When the elders ask, what are we going to tell them!”
The group muttered amongst themselves, completely ignoring the tightly bound Li Fan.
Li Fan paid them no mind for the moment, instead focusing on assessing his own condition.
Although his body had been almost completely erased in the River of Time, the moment he returned to reality, the Longevity Dao within him had regenerated a new one.
To Li Fan’s dismay, however, it seemed the journey had taken a heavy toll on the Longevity Dao.
And this damage, it seemed, was irreversible.
At least for now, it showed no signs of recovering anytime soon.
“After all, it wasn’t truly mine to begin with, but a gift from Shou Qiu Gong,” Li Fan mused with a touch of self-deprecation.
“Hm?”
“Shou Qiu Gong?”
A moment later, it dawned on him.
Eight thousand years traveling upstream in the River of Time.
Although it had scoured away his cultivation, his divine abilities, and even the Longevity Dao, in exchange, all of his lost memories had been restored.
The events of his two lives played out before him, one after another, drawing a faint sigh from his heart.
“A single moment of greed led to infinite variables.”
“The consequences of fusing the Daos of the Mountain Sea, Longevity, and Truth were indeed far beyond what I can handle at my current level.”
“Fortunately, my luck held out. Even with amnesia, I managed to find a great opportunity.”
“The Dao of Reverse Flow...”
Li Fan looked down, a strange light glinting in his eyes as he recalled everything he had experienced in the River of Time.
“[Truth],” he called out in his mind, his first priority.
The system’s repeated failures to respond had left him with a profound sense of unease.
There was still no answer.
But after carefully sensing his inner self, Li Fan finally confirmed that [Truth] was still with him.
It seemed, however, to have fallen into a deep slumber for some unknown reason.
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