ATEG Chapter 65.1

Still just a child.

Li Chi withdrew his distant gaze cast upon Ding Qin, a slight smile appearing at the corners of his lips. Divine seals communicated with deities, and excessively strong thoughts could be sensed.

However… he was indeed contemplating methods to deal with the aberration, and he even knew how to weaken or even eliminate this great calamity.

The great calamity arose from the chaos of destiny qi and the severing of karmic threads. With destiny qi suppressed by the Divine Court, as long as the karmic threads could be sorted out, even if the great calamity couldn’t be immediately eliminated, it could still be weakened to gradual nothingness.

The deity in the dream realm had spoken of establishing the Underworld to suppress karmic threads.

Each of Li Chi’s dreams occurred because he had contacted certain relevant information. Following this pattern, he could very likely guide himself into specific dreams.

As long as he actively visualized things he wished to know about, if they were related to the owner, he might be able to enter the relevant dream realm. But Li Chi had never used this method to actively explore information from the past. 

His memories were incomplete, and this body had many abnormalities. Feiying’s use of Shuoyue as a means of resurrection was still vivid in his mind—could he himself also be merely a means for the owner’s resurrection?

And by actively pursuing the past, might he accelerate his own transformation, ultimately becoming another person? He would eventually pursue what had happened in the past, but it shouldn’t be now—he was still too weak at present.

Yet this great calamity of aberration had descended.

Should he actively enter dreams to seek the past of the Underworld…

Li Chi lowered his eyes. Threads of prayers swirled around him like a net. He raised his hand, and a wisp of pale blue smoke coiled around his fingertips.

Tongdou’s childish voice sounded.

…I used to love it when it rained. Rain meant soft mud, good fishing and shrimping in the river, and little swallows pecking at mud… But this rain isn’t good, everyone’s unhappy. Is the deity also unhappy? I pray the deity will bless everyone to be happy, and the deity should be happy too, okay?…

Li Chi couldn’t help but smile.

Happy… Since awakening in this world, he had been constantly troubled by this body, acting cautiously in all things. First worrying that the enemy who had severely wounded this body would come seeking to endanger his life, then fearing being devoured by the owner’s self.

If he didn’t have these worries, what would he want to do? How would he choose to live?

Li Chi closed his eyes.

If he always acted against his heart, would what he ultimately became truly be himself?

Being a means for that deity’s resurrection was merely his own speculation. Moreover, after he awakened in this world, the owner was already severely wounded. He had established karmic threads, condensed the Seven Emotion Triggers, and had already anchored his own position in this world. Actively entering dreams to seek that deity’s past memories might not necessarily result in being devoured.

…The Underworld…

His divine consciousness guided him, seeking the past. Pale white clouds and mist arose from the void, gradually concealing the deity’s form, also concealing the purple-gold hidden scales that appeared below his left eye.

…..

Between heaven and earth was a vast expanse of white; he seemed to be within a fog.

In his right eye was the vastness of heaven and earth; in his left eye was the vastness of karmic threads. All beings dwelt within the fog, yet were blind to karmic threads.

Deities were born understanding karmic threads, but the world’s karmic threads operated on their own, never requiring his interference or influence, so he had never manifested his power over karmic threads, and the world never knew there was a deity who understood them.

He walked through the fog. Those fine, thread-like karmic lines avoided him of their own accord before making contact.

The deity saw all beings bound by karmic threads, their joy and sorrow drawn by them, but the karmic threads were clear and distinct, without error, and thus without injustice.

Then he suddenly heard a faint sound of breaking.

The deity looked toward the sound—a karmic thread had suddenly broken for some unknown reason. Half of the severed thread had already disappeared without trace; the other half floated disorderly in the fog, agitating several other nearby karmic threads into restlessness.

With a wave of his sleeve, the agitated karmic threads calmed, but this was only temporary. Karmic threads influenced each other—as long as this thread remained severed, other karmic threads related to it could never be stable.

The deity looked along the broken karmic thread and saw only a bewildered mortal.

The mortal looked up in confusion, as if sensing something was wrong in his heart, but he couldn’t see karmic threads and didn’t know what had happened.

The deity examined the karmic threads and destiny qi on this mortal—there was nothing about him that could relate to breaking karmic threads, so what had caused the thread to snap?

He searched for a long while but couldn’t find where the other half of the broken karmic thread had gone.

Starting from this first broken karmic thread, similar situations became more and more frequent. Those broken, drifting karmic threads floated through the void, throwing all the karmic threads between heaven and earth into chaos. The more chaos there was, the more karmic threads were broken by its influence. With karmic threads in great disorder between heaven and earth, the hearts of all beings lost their guidance and became increasingly lost.

Those beings whose karmic threads were destroyed and who received no justice gradually gave birth to ink-black resentment from their confusion. This wasn’t resentment born from the hatred in mortal hearts. The Seven Emotions of mortal beings stirred karmic threads, and these emotions also condensed upon the karmic lines, but after the threads broke, these emotions couldn’t be completely bound to them and overflowed from the breaks—drop after drop of thick, viscous resentment and sorrow, like pitch-black blood…

Looking into the broken karmic threads, the deity saw the suffering of each being.

He patrolled between heaven and earth every day, yet never found the cause of the breaking karmic threads. He could only continue his daily patrols, seeking methods to resolve the broken karmic threads.

Until one day, he heard the voice of a mortal’s prayer.

…Wronged with no one to tell, crying out in agony… I pray the deity will observe clearly. May this offering be received!

It was an extremely sorrowful and resentful voice, and because of that sorrow and resentment, the thought was as intensely strong as the blazing sun over the great desert.

But this prayer voice only dispersed between heaven and earth, unable to go toward any particular existence.

At that time, there was no Divine Court between heaven and earth; at that time, deities had not yet manifested their divine names; at that time, there were only the innately divine Celestial Gods, and the thoughts of beings were merely like dewdrops on grass blades or smoke in the breeze—natural and fleeting things, nothing worth paying attention to.

Yet the deity stopped for this.

He followed the sound and stopped there, seeing an altar built of earth and stones—crudely made, without divine image or offerings, only a figure kneeling before it. On that figure hung a broken karmic thread.

He looked into the broken karmic thread and saw a spirit heavy with grievance and insoluble sorrow.

Parents, brothers, wife, and children all dead; home, property, and reputation all destroyed. He had nothing left, yet couldn’t find his enemy no matter how he searched.

No—he still had a dagger, but he was keeping it for revenge!

The kneeling person stood up, took out a dagger from his chest, cut open his arm, and sprinkled blood on the altar, praying and sacrificing to an existence between heaven and earth that he didn’t even know.

The deity didn’t need his blood, nor did the deity need his worship.

Yet the deity lowered his eyes and extended two fingers, actively touching karmic threads for the first time. Using that person’s blood, he reconnected the broken karmic thread for him.

The blood-red karmic thread extended—how could those who committed sins act as if they had done no evil?

The person before the altar seemed to sense something, crying and laughing as he kowtowed heavily to the blood-stained altar.

The deity calmly withdrew his hand into his sleeve, seemingly without sorrow or joy. Yet on the divine body that had never touched karmic threads, a karmic thread connecting to the worshiper grew from his fingertips.

Vast fog surrounded everything.

One segment of memory ended, but the dream realm didn’t stop.

Li Chi walked through the great fog. Between heaven and earth was a vast expanse of white. He had no direction and didn’t know how to leave. He just kept moving forward, not noticing that in addition to his original karmic threads, another karmic thread had quietly grown from his fingertips…

In reality, more and more clouds and mist surged out from around the deity. They gradually filled beyond the room, stopping after submerging the entire courtyard, as if bound here by some invisible force.

The Manor Spirit Hou Li appeared from outside the courtyard, shocked as he looked at this courtyard shrouded in clouds and mist. All of Li Manor was his main body, yet now he discovered he couldn’t sense anything within the clouds at all. He tentatively reached his hand into the white mist, but his palm was blocked the moment it touched the clouds. He felt the texture beneath his palm was soft and yielding, like touching a ball of glutinous rice cake—no matter how much force he used, he couldn’t enter.

What was happening?

…..

The deity was lost in the dream realm; the great calamity operated in reality.

Ding Qin walked along the road, the earth on both sides yellowed and withered. Where her divine consciousness sensed, most places were barren and deathly silent, with the little surviving life force anxious and restless. This wasn’t only due to lack of water, but also because of the malevolent qi pervading heaven and earth.

This place wasn’t far from Ding Family Village. A few months ago, Ding Qin had left Ding Family Village via this road. It had been early spring then, and though some of winter’s decay remained, new greenery had already covered the earth like velvet.

Now this stretch of yellowed road seemed completely different from that time, as if it had become an unfamiliar road.

Who knows what Ding Family Village has become now…

…..

Ding Yuliang had secretly run out of the village. The three days of heavy rain had destroyed large areas of land and water. Everyone knew there would inevitably be food shortages ahead, and every household had already started tightening their belts early.

Their Ding Family Village bordered the Jiuqu River. Though they also had fields, they mostly relied on fishing for their livelihood. Fields could be protected, but how could water be protected? Even if rainwater fell elsewhere, once the water flowed, it brought pollution with it.

After three days of rain, the river surface was covered entirely with dead fish. The neighbors scooped up fish wanting to try if they could eat them. They also feared the fish were problematic, so they added plenty of perilla and stewed them for over an hour before eating. But after just a few bites, they got stomach troubles.

Elderly people examined the types of dead fish, speculating that the lower layers of the river should still have relatively clean water, and there should be quite a few living large fish at the bottom, but deep-layer fish weren’t easy to catch.

Although river water could self-purify, if upstream water was unclean, downstream water couldn’t be clean. Who knew when the Jiuqu River would return to normal?

Though the rain had stopped, things hadn’t ended. Above Ding Family Village, there used to always float wisps of pale white cloud vapor—that was the Crane God’s protection, and within the range shrouded by cloud vapor was safe. After the heavy rain, these vapors gathered together, becoming more condensed and heavy, and the range they covered had shrunk by a full third. Some people living on the village’s edge had moved inside.

The adults kept performing sacrifices, but the Crane God hadn’t responded. If not for the protective cloud vapor still being there, they would have thought the Crane God had met with trouble. For this reason, the adults at home kept them confined, not letting them leave the village.