Chapter 1754

Fang Yuan ascends the stone lotus island for the first time in this life and watches Red Lotus Demon Venerable’s memories, scenes he has already seen. Red Lotus Demon Venerable was a rank nine venerable who abandoned that position to rebirth with Spring Autumn Cicada and make up for his regrets. The island is hidden, so Heavenly Court has made little progress in finding it. In the previous life Fang Yuan ruined Heavenly Court’s chance at a new stone lotus island, and Feng Jiu Ge destroyed that island with assimilation wind song. ^{ch. 1754}

Looking at the river water, Fang Yuan has a realization about the River of Time. It begins at the world’s creation and ends at its destruction. His rebirth, he concludes, brings a will from downstream to upstream through Spring Autumn Cicada, to fuse with him at a point in time. Time in this world is unique and absolute with no parallel dimensions, so the downstream stays as it was after his death, when Heavenly Court dominated the world. After rebirth he is like a drop of ink in clear river water, and as he changes events and people the whole river will be dyed another color. ^{ch. 1754}

He decides that this ink effect explains rebirth better than the butterfly effect of Earth. He changes things easily because fate Gu is incomplete and he is an otherworldly demon not bound by fate. Native Gu Immortals are only ripples. Under fate Gu, outcomes return to their original route. His admiration for Red Lotus Demon Venerable grows, since that venerable forcefully created the current situation without being an otherworldly demon. ^{ch. 1754}

The island holds many time path immortal materials, mostly rank eight, and Red Lotus’ true meaning, which can raise a time path attainment to quasi-supreme grandmaster. It also holds killer moves with Spring Autumn Cicada as the core, and the method specially left as future self, which lets a Gu Immortal enter their peak rank seven condition in the future. Only regret Gu is missing. Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable took it, and it remains inside the dragon whale grotto-heaven, though in the previous life that venerable’s arrangements let Fang Yuan obtain it before reaching the island. Knowing the island’s location, Fang Yuan comes much earlier than in the previous life and takes the Red Lotus true inheritance. He lets Ying Wu Xie and the rest cultivate there to grow familiar with future self, and the survival of Fairy Miao Yin and Lady White Rabbit raises its usefulness greatly. Future self works on him too now that he is rank seven, though it was useless to him at rank eight in the previous life. ^{ch. 1754}

He wonders whether Red Lotus Demon Venerable deduced his rank seven arrival after rebirth and left future self, and the whole inheritance, for him as he is now. Leaving the others behind, he hides himself and searches every spot where the other stone lotus island could appear, but does not find it. Such islands move on their own. He is not dejected, since he expected this. ^{ch. 1754}

At Present and Past Pavilion an ancient year beast attacks and dies to the Four Xunzi working together. Xun Guo Zi cheers at the huge haul of time path immortal materials. Xia Xunzi recalls that Star Constellation Immortal Venerable, though not a time path Gu Immortal, mimicked time path with wisdom path methods through a tributary of the River of Time. She deduced that seven Lui Gui siblings would create the first Immortal Gu House, Turtle House, and so created Star Constellation Chessboard. They process the beast’s corpse and resume watching the river, unaware that Fang Yuan has secretly entered it and left with a Red Lotus true inheritance. ^{ch. 1754}

Fang Yuan returns to Northern Plains and activates Fixed Immortal Travel toward Southern Border, though the Gu is still with Feng Jiu Ge. The reason is future self, which makes a human-shaped phantom image in his sovereign immortal aperture, and its future aperture holds phantom Gu such as Fixed Immortal Travel. The downstream is not yet dyed by the ink and keeps the events of the previous life. Future self fixes him at his strongest moment as a rank seven, before he annexed Xia Cha’s immortal aperture and rose to rank eight. At that moment he already owned Fixed Immortal Travel. He does not go to the Five Regional Mountain Range, because the five regional true inheritance would cause a huge commotion and the range must be destroyed before Tao Zhu’s will awakens and acknowledges him. With only rank seven cultivation he would find rank eights and Immortal Gu Houses hard to face, so he leaves it for later and comes to an ordinary valley. ^{ch. 1754}