474: Chapter 473 Heaven and Earth Revolve, Pure Qi Rises, the Universe Returns to its Evolutionary Path

A pair of spotless cyan cloth shoes landed steadily on the edge of that massive rift, a million zhang wide.

Zhou Wannian did not immediately walk through the gateway he had cleaved open into the unknown high-dimensional deep space. He paused, turned around, and habitually, leisurely, clasped the two hands that had just unburdened the weight of the entire Universe behind his back.

He lowered his head slightly, his profound gaze piercing through the underlying Void Realm, quietly overlooking the vast sea of stars beneath his feet that had just experienced a life-and-death catastrophe.

A tide of the utmost grandeur was unfolding across these All Heavens and Myriad Worlds.

It was the receding tide of Death Qi.

Without the blockade of that giant copper coin with a square hole, and without that whetstone engraved with the character "Nothingness" grinding the Law in the dark, the grey-white Death Qi that had silted up in the crevices of every dimension of the Universe, settled over countless epochs, was like a thick layer of mold covering old artifacts, suddenly peeled away by an invisible pair of hands.

In Zhou Wannian's Great Perfection vision and hearing, the entire Universe was emitting a faint, fragmented sound that made one's very bones itch.

"Crack... crack, crack, crack..."

This sound came from those lower-level Cultivation realms.

In a certain Major Thousand Worlds that had once been completely frozen due to the exhaustion of Spiritual Qi, the surface of the vast, boundless Spiritual Sea ice sheet, frozen for tens of thousands of years, cracked open, creating a massive fissure spanning hundreds of millions of miles.

The thick, hard ice squeezed and broke against itself, emitting a roar like muffled thunder.

"Gurgle... splash!"

Following this, the underground Spiritual Vein springs, which had been suppressed for countless epochs, finally cleared their clogged throats. Clear, sweet Spiritual spring water, carrying a visible milky-white misty vapor, broke through the shackles of the ice, shooting into the sky like a fountain, and then turned into rolling waves, rushing towards the dried-up riverbeds.

The water washed over the withered roots of Spiritual Plants and over the remains of Cultivators that had largely weathered away.

The deathly cold winter was forcibly ended amidst the sound of water.

Meanwhile, in another vast mundane world.

A thousand miles of red earth had been drought-stricken for three hundred years. There was not a single cloud in the sky, and the earth had cracked open with deep ravines capable of swallowing cattle and sheep.

A gaunt, wizened old farmer with a face full of furrows was kneeling in despair beside a withered tree stump, his shriveled lips cracked and bleeding.

Suddenly, the old farmer felt a cool drop strike the tip of his nose.

He blankly opened his clouded, aged eyes.

In the sky, a thick layer of dark clouds had gathered, though he knew not when.

"Pitter-patter..."

Raindrops as large as beans, containing no sour or rotten Death Qi, only the purest water vapor and the scent of earth, pelted the cracked land.

The old farmer tremblingly stretched out his hands, which resembled the bark of a dead tree, and clawed frantically into the mud.

Where he touched, it was no longer the hard, iron-like dry clods of earth, but soft, moist mud.

Right beneath his palms, at the base of the tree stump he had deemed thoroughly dead.

A trace of extremely faint, yet so dazzling it made one want to weep, tender green.

Pushed through the heavy, wet mud, shakily poked its head out, and under the washing of the torrential rain, unfurled two delicate sprout leaves.

"It's raining... It's alive... It's alive!"

The old farmer collapsed face-first into the muddy water, letting the rain wash away the grime and tears on his face, howling in heart-rending grief.

This howling was mixed into the cheers and astonishment of the billions upon billions of living beings across the All Heavens and Myriad Worlds.

Those ancient Cultivators who had been in closed-door death cultivation, waiting in despair for the Five Decays of Heaven and Man to descend. Into their Dantian, shriveled like mummies, suddenly poured a wisp of warm, moist Spiritual Qi.

This Spiritual Qi was no longer the leftover scraps of the past that carried a faint scent of decay, requiring half one's life to refine the Death Qi with every breath. It was as pure as the freshly melted snow of early spring, flowing along the dried-up Meridians, and wherever it passed, withered flesh became plump again, and at the roots of grey beards, miraculously, a few strands of black hair grew.

The world reversed. Pure Qi rose, and turbid Qi descended.

The vitality that had been suppressed for countless epochs by this giant copper coin, in this moment of losing its shackles, ushered in a retaliatory rebound from the bottom.

The sky-filling copper coin fragments transformed into billions of gentle new stars. They suspended themselves in every corner of the All Heavens and Myriad Worlds, emitting various lights of crimson, water-blue, and warm yellow.

These starlights intertwined, resembling a vast, boundless filter.

They settled and stripped away the residual negative emotions, heat death waste, and the resentful dead ash in the Universe bit by bit, finally pressing them into the abyss at the very bottom of the Universe, turning them into the foundational soil that nourishes new life.

And that light, vibrant, and vital Pure Qi, like wisps of colorful mist, soared upwards, filling the space of every major galaxy and every dimension.

The original dark green and grey-white main tone of the Universe was completely washed clean.

What presented itself before Zhou Wannian was a resplendent sea of stars that seemed as if washed by spring rain, transparent and vibrant to the extreme.

His gaze passed through those reviving stars and fell back onto the very bottom of this Universe.

It landed on the place once known as the "Backend."

There, it was originally a suffocating machine room, arranged with transparent Law threads that were as uniform, cold, and rigid as bookshelves. That giant whetstone spun in the center, carrying out a rigid cleanup program.

But now, the whetstone was shattered. The System that represented absolute rationality and a closed loop had collapsed.

This Backend space was undergoing a world-shaking natural evolution.

Having lost the pressure of the "Nothingness" brand and that obsessive-compulsive absolute order.

Those Law threads representing the underlying logic of the Universe were no longer pulled straight, nor were they hanging in fixed positions.

They were like vines that had gained life, freely stretching, twisting, and intertwining on this Void Realm floorboard.

"Rustle... rustle..."

In Zhou Wannian's ears came the faint sound of threads rubbing against each other. This was not the sound of grinding, but the murmurs of life during wild growth.

He saw a crimson red thread representing the fire attribute floating aimlessly in the air, inadvertently wrapping around a water-blue thread representing extreme icy frost.

If it were the old Backend machine room, such a logical conflict would have been immediately erased by the System, and both would have annihilated each other.

But now, there was no erasure program.

These two threads wound together, permeating each other, rubbing against each other.

At the node where they intersected, a strange purple-gold halo erupted. Within this halo, a brand new, strange flame had actually been conceived, possessing both extreme high temperature and the characteristic of absolute zero freezing.

This purple-gold flame followed the crevices of dimensions and fell into a desolate galaxy, instantly igniting a dead, silent planet, allowing that planet to give birth to a new form of life that did not rely on oxygen or carbon-based structures amidst the interweaving of ice and fire.

And on the other side, several broken, half-worn Law threads did not dissipate into grey-white dust as they had before.

After the Death Qi receded, they seemed to possess an instinct for survival. Several broken ends attracted each other in the Void Realm, connecting head to tail, and actually managed to piece together into a deformed, yet stubbornly closed loop.

Inside this crooked thread loop, space twisted. A small, Minor Thousand Worlds embryo, only a few dozen miles in radius, like a rough mud ball, slowly took shape in the Void Realm.

No planning. No blueprint. There were even frequent logical errors and collisions.

The entire Backend space became chaotic, just like a wild field overgrown with weeds.

But within this chaos, there was an unstoppable, exuberant vitality.

Life and death not predetermined, endings not calculated—everything was full of the unknown. A star might be destroyed tomorrow due to a collision of Laws, but it might also give birth to miracles that even high-dimensional life could not understand.

This was what the Universe was originally meant to look like. It was not a precise machine; it was a muddy pond, overgrown with weeds, yet capable of blooming with colorful flowers.

Zhou Wannian looked at this Backend that had returned to a state of natural evolution, looking at those Law threads intertwined like tangled hemp. On that handsome face, slowly and genuinely, he pulled up a smile that was relaxed to the extreme.

He withdrew his gaze and slightly closed his eyes. Deeply, lengthily. He took a breath.

This breath was taken very deeply, inhaling the high-dimensional aura carrying the warm yellow starlight at the edge of the rift into his lungs.

"Hoo..." Then he slowly exhaled.

Between this inhale and exhale, Zhou Wannian experienced an ultimate sense of lightness that he had not felt in tens of millions of years, ever since he comprehended the Great Perfection Space Law.

This lightness was not just physical. It was a thorough liberation from the deepest part of his Divine Soul.

Before, every breath he took, every heartbeat, felt as if it were weighed down by millions of catties of lead. Because inside his body, ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Jade-ified Chains were sealed. He had to use his own limitless Absolute Mass to resist the trend of heat death that was constantly collapsing inward.

He was like an idler passing by who saw a dilapidated temple about to collapse. His heart softened, and he crawled under the temple, using his own shoulders and spine to hold up the main beam that was about to snap.

This holding up lasted for countless epochs.

He strolled through the All Heavens and Myriad Worlds, seemingly doing as he pleased, but in reality, every step was like walking on thin ice. He dared not release his power at will, dared not truly lose his temper, because he was afraid that if he moved even slightly, the dilapidated temple on his shoulders would collapse with a roar.

He used his own "existence" to anchor the "non-perishing" of this Universe.

What a heavy shackle this was.

But now. The whetstone used to dismantle the house was shattered, and the copper coin lid that smothered living people inside had been pried open.

The chains melted within his body, becoming a part of his flesh and True Spirit. He no longer needed to suppress anything, nor did he need to support anything.

He opened his eyes. Those profound eyes no longer looked down upon all living beings, but quietly gazed straight ahead at the Void Realm.

His perception extended infinitely outward. He felt it.

"Hoo... hah..." "Hoo... hah..."

That was not his own breathing sound. Nor was it the snoring of the Old Shopkeeper dozing off in the dilapidated tavern.

This sound was grand, calm, and carried a rhythm of rebirth after experiencing the vicissitudes of life.

This was the first true "breath" emitted by this vast, boundless Universe after experiencing a long state of heat death shock and being forcibly awakened by a mouthful of sour, inferior wine.

It was no longer a one-way energy consumption, no longer an irreversible sedimentation of Death Qi.

Zhou Wannian could clearly feel that with this grand "inhalation," the galaxies at the edge of the Universe were slightly expanding outward, absorbing the fresh, unknown energy pouring in from the high-dimensional deep space rift.

And with that "exhalation," the major nebulae, while rotating, fed back the stardust and light nurtured within to those dried-up dimensions at the bottom.

This huge skin bag, this world that had been tossed and turned until it was riddled with holes. Finally, it learned to breathe on its own.

It had its own rhythm of rise and fall, its own metabolism. It no longer needed an idle scholar wearing a cyan cloth robe to squat underground and use his shoulders to support it from the bottom.

"The burden is lifted."

Zhou Wannian raised his hands, twisted his neck from side to side, and his bones emitted a series of crisp, connected sounds.

He touched his empty waist. The earthen wine gourd that had accompanied him in smashing the deadlock of the Universe had long since been emptied of its wine, and he had casually tossed it away into the ruins of some nebula, he knew not where.

Zhou Wannian smacked his lips, as if the sour aftertaste of that over-fermented inferior yellow wine still lingered on the tip of his tongue.

"My shoulders feel so light they're almost floating; I'm really not used to it."

He lowered his head and clapped his fair, slender hands together. It was as if he were patting away the dust from his hands, and also as if he were patting away the heavy Karma belonging to this old Universe that he had accumulated over tens of millions of years.

The action was casual, revealing a sense of free-spiritedness after completely putting down the burden.

Afterwards. Zhou Wannian turned around, with his back to the vibrant, star-studded newborn All Heavens and Myriad Worlds. He did not look back even once.

That massive rift, a million zhang wide, which he had forcibly torn open, was right before his eyes. On the other side of the rift was the unknown, high-dimensional deep space that was not framed by any rigid rules. There was no copper coin with a square hole, nor a life-taking whetstone.

"Since this Heaven has learned to breathe on its own, this dilapidated house has also become a convertible."

Zhou Wannian clasped his hands leisurely behind his back. The hem of his cyan robe fluttered gently in the wind blowing from the high-dimensional deep space, carrying an endless aura of the unknown.

"I should also go and find a new, conscientious tavern for my empty gourd."

The spotless cyan cloth shoes stepped steadily into the Void Realm. The back of the idle scholar, unhurried and calm, took a step. He walked into that truly boundless high-dimensional deep space.