Planet Pulverizer: A Mortal's Ascent-Chapter 973: Eternity

"Destiny is the beginning of everything and the end of everything."

Eternal Zhan Yuan turned his gaze back to his own era. That was Li Qiuxian's era.

For them, time and space were like a movie that could be freely rewound or even have its plot adjusted.

He had cut off Li Pin's path to Eternity and saw Li Pin sending One, who went by the name Null, back to his timeline, and then seemed to realize something. He then adjusted the time back to Li Pin's former self, Li Qiuxian, to review the words he had spoken about the theory of destiny.

"Eternity represents the ultimate of everything, representing omniscience and omnipotence. But when I truly stepped into this stage, I realized it was not so. This ultimate, this omniscience and omnipotence, was limited to the timeline I occupied and experienced. In other words, I could only know everything about certain existences if I had come into contact with and understood them... past, present, and future."

Eternal Zhan Yuan looked up, his gaze seemingly spanning the river of time. "But there is a law that surpasses Eternity in operation. It can even generate new Eternals in timelines I have never encountered or eras I have never visited..."

Eternal Zhan Yuan's gaze fell upon Li Qiuxian. Then, crossing him, looked toward Li Pin in another era.

"This is destiny."

Whether Transcendence or Eternity, neither could escape the origin of destiny. They could not escape that origin, representing the cause of all things and the effect of all things.

Seeing this, Li Pin felt a faint enlightenment in his heart.

When cultivation reached a certain level, one would develop absolute confidence, believing that their understanding and perception represented the sole truth in the world. This was how it was for Heavenly Emperors, Supremes, and Creators alike, let alone Eternals, who claimed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and representing all ultimates.

Eternals could clearly perceive all past, present, and future, making their perception of "I am the only one, I am the truth" even harder to shake.

So no matter how Li Qiuxian expounded on the great principles of destiny to Zhan Yuan, in the eyes of an Eternal who could perceive all clearly and was omniscient and omnipotent, it was a joke. It was treated entirely as amusement.

Until... something that should not have happened occurred right before his eyes, and in an incredibly reasonable manner.

This situation instantly overturned the Eternal's self-perceived omniscience and omnipotence.

At this moment, the Eternal could do only two things. One was to deny his own ultimacy and uniqueness, becoming an Eternal who nearly ignored the world outside, whilst the other... was to move forward! Continue moving forward! To take a look.

All Eternals possess an origin. Timelines continuously branched, but this idea must have a starting point... one that was above Eternity, representing the origin of all causes and effects. To maintain his ultimacy and uniqueness, the only way was to reach this origin and find... the destiny that deduced and orchestrated everything! And even to take control of destiny.

Given this choice, Li Pin felt he would choose the latter. Li Qiuxian would choose the latter.

Eternal Zhan Yuan experienced a moment of hesitation, a fleeting indecisiveness.

"I fear that when the time comes, I would lose the courage to move forward..."

Thus, Eternal Zhan Yuan withdrew his gaze from the past Li Qiuxian and the present Li Pin. Then, his figure gradually disappeared.

Vaguely, it seemed that a powerful conviction surged through the entire river of time.

"Let me see what so-called destiny really is."

Not for anything else, but only for the truth.

***

Crack.

It seemed that something had fractured.

Li Pin looked out as far as he could. It was the river of time. The entire river of time fractured following Eternal Zhan Yuan's disappearance.

It was as if some confinement that had occupied the river of time vanished, and the river reverted from being possessed to being unowned.

This strangeness made Li Pin feel a sudden enlightenment, as well as a trace of sorrow. Even he did not know where that sorrow came from.

Next, he directed his gaze toward the distant depths of spacetime.

There, at the other end of the river of time, Li Qiuxian's gaze also looked in this direction. Both of them were clearly not of the same era, timeline, or even of the same continuum, yet at this moment, their eyes met, and they simultaneously understood the intention in each other's hearts.

Li Pin smiled faintly at him whilst Li Qiuxian slightly nodded.

Then, light shone from Li Qiuxian, forming a colossal being of light. The radiance spread over the river of time, covering the past and converging it. Eventually, everything merged into the river of time itself, erasing all traces of himself and Eternal Zhan Yuan left in this river of time.

At this moment, within this river of time, there was neither Eternal Zhan Yuan nor Li Qiuxian, whose destiny had been interrupted by him. Everything had dissipated.

At the same time, the Heavenly Fate Light surrounding Li Pin's body began to spread, covering and integrating this river of time devoid of any traces of Eternity.

This time, the radiance of the Heavenly Fate Light even reached the future, following the path walked by Null, directly covering the battlefield in the future built by dozens of Creation, Chaos, and Transcendent Lifeforms. Even Liu Chengyuan, the Lord of Time, and other entities with potential for Eternity were covered by his Heavenly Fate Light.

Ultimately, the past, present, and future of this river of time all became part of the Heavenly Fate Light.

All these occurred silently, completed in quiet and speechlessness.

Indeed, because there was fundamentally no concept of time within the river, to the extent that all events had already occurred in an instant for non-Eternal Lifeforms. From the past, present, to the future.

"Eternal One...."

Li Pin quietly felt all of this.

Converging time and space. Sole True Self.

He was time and space itself. Or rather, the Sole True Self of spacetime itself.

He could not be bound by any spacetime, nor was he compatible with any of them. But wherever he went, the spacetime there would be converged and integrated by him. Wherever he saw a being, that lifeform's spacetime would become part of his own. And those converged spacetimes could be manipulated at will before him. All cause and effect within could be easily exchanged.

Matter, energy, time, space, cause and effect, reincarnation... none held any significance for him.

An Eternal's gaze could produce results ten thousand epochs later, so they could directly turn their gaze ten thousand epochs forward and obtain the results immediately. Similarly, if they were dissatisfied with some result ten thousand epochs later, they could optimize it at the source to form a new outcome.

Such power...

Li Pin sighed sincerely. "Thousands of words could not describe even a fraction of it."

It was a level of power that even an Eternal would be shaken by. It was a level that even an Eternal would likely find unfathomable.

What was his Dao? It was to transcend the self! To transcend limits!

But the Eternity Realm was, by definition, untranscendable. Even for an Eternal, it was unsurpassable!

At this moment, he finally understood why Eternal Zhan Yuan had been so calm and composed when facing Li Qiuxian, as though Li Qiuxian's rebellion was no more than a performance in a play, amusing.

That was because an Eternal was truly an unsolvable existence—what was seen was obtained, what was obtained was constant.

Li Pin exhaled deeply, even though such an action was practically meaningless now. All his actions were merely due to habit.

Perhaps in a few thousand or ten thousand epochs, all traits belonging to humanity in him would vanish, leaving behind a constant state, a will unchanging through Eternity. Only occasional ripples would prove his existence.

However, this was not what he desired.

"Although the Power of Eternity is enough to astonish any Eternal, enough for any Eternal to regard it as the ultimate end... Li Pin knew the truth very well."

Li Pin looked up and gazed into the distance.

Above Eternity, there existed another force—destiny. This force represented the origin of all causes and all effects.

"Eternal Zhan Yuan chose to move forward, and Li Qiuxian... would inevitably move forward as well. I... am no exception."

Li Pin smiled faintly.

After all, this was the core of his Dao Realm, and likewise, the meaning of his life.

Evolution! Transcendence!

At this moment, Li Pin suddenly realized something. The reason Zhan Yuan had achieved Eternity at all was partly Li Pin's contribution. And because of him, Zhan Yuan's achievement of Eternity blocked Li Qiuxian's path to Eternity.

Li Qiuxian, having his path to Eternity blocked, touched destiny, thereby extending this battle of Eternals into Li Pin's era.

The three of them seemed to form a ring—a cycle whose meaning pointed to something new, toward a new goal.

Li Pin suddenly lifted his head.

He did not dare to make speculations, nor did he dare to think it through in detail. That was because merely following this train of thought filled him with an indescribable shock.

Li Qiuxian and Zhan Yuan....

Everything, once again, pointed unmistakably to this.

The strongest proof of this was that he was not actually Li Qiuxian's true future form. Li Qiuxian had long completed the unification of past, present, and future True Self. He had not achieved Eternity. Instead, Zhan Yuan had cut off his path to Eternity, which was illogical.

"Something is wrong somewhere," Li Pin said.

It was as if a glitch had occurred.

From his current position, that ring was nearly complete, and he was its final link.

Through himself, he would allow this error to continue.

What this error would ultimately lead to... no one knew.