My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 746 – A Gourd from Beyond, Tilting Worlds into a Lake - Part 2

Chapter 746 – A Gourd from Beyond, Tilting Worlds into a Lake - Part 2

With the Yearscribes in hand, Li Yuan set off for the Outer Region.

Once, it had felt like the edge of the world.

Now, the edge of the world felt just a step away.

With a single step, Li Yuan crossed from the edge of the known world to the very brink of the abyss.

The moment he arrived, he scanned his surroundings.

The void here was shattered, floating fragments of space like scattered islands adrift in the dark. Just a bit farther out began the true voidveil, an expanse no living being could reach. Long before anyone could step into it, they'd be ground into nothing by the violent friction of the space that lay between worlds and the voidveil itself.

This Outer Region corresponded to that mysterious little red dot Li Yuan always spotted whenever he left the Ancestral Land and sailed into the stars. A lone island drifting in the dark, clinging to the edge of the abyss, not yet fallen.

All around, remnants of fallen flame gods and ghost domains flickered like dying embers.

Only now did Li Yuan finally understand. These weren’t just strange anomalies. They were likely traces of the ancient gods who perished before they could master human cultivation. Or perhaps echoes of divine beings who once tried to patch the heavens and perished in the attempt, leaving behind only fragments of their path and essence.

Once, such things might have posed a threat to him.

Now, they were ants beneath his gaze.

Li Yuan took out the star core. He summoned a great flame, manifested a radiant golden body, condensed Yin and Yang into a hammer, and bit down on one of the Yearscribes.

Thunder cracked through the sky like war drums.

A divine being, forging a world-anchor on the edge of existence.

Each strike echoed for a thousand miles. The earth beneath trembled like a taut drumhead.

Before long, Li Yuan looked up and saw numbers dancing before his eyes.

His lifespan was still infinite.

He gave his head a shake and, just for fun, tried subtracting 1,000,000 years to that infinity with the Yearscribe. But before the final zero of 1,000,000 was written, the number abruptly froze, stopping at 100,000.

A moment later, Li Yuan felt a surge as exactly 100,000 years of lifespan was drawn from him, absorbed into the brush.

It was clear now. The Yearscribe could handle a maximum of 100,000 years. Anything more, and it would break.

Li Yuan spat out the loaded pen. The Yearscribe, now glowing with the weight of a hundred millennia, plunged into the embryonic form of the world anchor. Instantly, the Yin energy dispersed, laced with a terrifying aura of lifespan, pouring into the forming artifact.

The balance of Heaven and Earth tilted. Yin and Yang were suddenly thrown off-kilter, triggering a ripple that pulled every nearby flame god and ghost domain toward him.

But this time, unlike before, they couldn’t resist.

One after another, they were dragged into the forging process, absorbed into the growing artifact. Their traces etched themselves into its surface, forming swirling patterns and divine markings.

Slowly, the shape began to take form.

It was a gourd.

The scene echoed that moment long ago, when Li Yuan forged a fifth rank spirit artifact and summoned thunder and calamity from the heavens. Except this time, the scale was orders of magnitude greater.

He took a deep breath and summoned a raging storm, hammer in hand once more, Yin and Yang clashing together with a force like a cosmic monsoon.

Had anyone been nearby, even a third rank cultivator, they would’ve been obliterated by the shockwaves alone.

Only those far, far away might have had the slightest chance of survival, but only if they were third rank.

Anyone beneath third rank, even if they stood far away, would have been obliterated by the sheer force of the blast’s soundwaves. Their souls and bodies alike would’ve been shattered by that divine thunder.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

A long time passed.

Finally, the deafening peals of thunder began to fade.

Li Yuan stopped hammering. With a thought, a great river hundreds of miles away rose into the air, arcing across the sky before crashing down upon the glowing artifact like a waterfall from the heavens, his chosen method for quenching.

Instantly, the mists of the Outer Region surged and thickened, blanketing everything in blinding fog.

Even with an entire river poured over it, the blazing world-anchor refused to cool.

So he summoned another body of water, a vast, frozen lake, and poured its glacial depths over the artifact as well.

Only then did the glow begin to fade, revealing, at last, the form of the gourd.

Li Yuan lifted the gourd. Its surface was etched with countless patterns, each one formed by the ghost domains and flame gods drawn into the forging. There were far more than just a few dozen or hundred, each swirl and mark a frozen memory of some ancient force.

These patterns gave the gourd a weathered, aged appearance, like an old gourd passed down through generations.

He tossed it lightly in his hand, inspecting it again, and couldn’t help but laugh.

“Looks just like an ordinary gourd,” he muttered. “But this unassuming little thing is a true world anchor.”

He turned the gourd over in his palm, letting himself rest for a short while. Then, with a flick of his fingers, he pinched a small empty world into existence, an uninhabited pocket dimension, and tethered it to his voidship. Without hesitation, he tossed the gourd inside.

And then something strange happened.

The moment it entered, the entire world attached itself to the gourd, completely absorbed.

Li Yuan wasn’t surprised.

According to his World Sealing Armanent Creation skill, this kind of world anchor could become a world itself.

Back then, the Radiant Treasure Buddha had managed to hold a single-person sanctuary inside something the size of a prayer bead. As for the Black Buddha Statue, it was solid and unmoving.

But Li Yuan had just stored an empty world, hundreds of miles across, inside a single gourd.

He clipped the gourd to his belt and gave it a light pat, expression growing solemn as he recalled the forging process.

He remembered it clearly, that moment when Yin and Yang had been thrown completely out of balance.

It was his lifespan that had been consumed, but it was the world itself that had paid the price.

As if...this world was somehow tethered to him.

And because of that, he possessed an infinite lifespan.

After a long silence, he muttered, “I’ll need to be a lot more careful next time I forge one of these. No more casually throwing lifespan into the mix.”

He glanced around. Much of the surrounding landscape was in ruins, scorched and shattered from the forging.

With a thought, he took out the old gourd and swept all the broken mountains and rivers into it. He considered it a bit of cosmic housekeeping.

Then, Li Yuan returned to the Underworld and told Yan Yu in detail how he had used the Yearscribe.

Yan Yu listened in silence, then suddenly said, “Three of the Six Paths are now in place. Good souls go to the Mortal Path, the wicked to the Beast Path, and the wooden-hearted to the Wood Path. I want to split off a part of my soul...and be reincarnated.”

Li Yuan immediately understood. “So...it’s time to begin the Four Symbols experiment?”

Yan Yu nodded.

As the embodiment of the Underworld itself, she could only step into Li Yuan’s voidship because it partially existed within the voidveil. But the human world, the starry heavens, those remained beyond her reach.

To study the cycle of rebirth, especially the reincarnation of evil souls, she had to experience it personally. Rebirth was the only path forward.

In the past, taboo level beings with power near the peak of third rank could act in the outside world through their jade husks.

But someone like the Primordial Earth Mother, a being far more terrifying, could go one step further. Her version of a jade husk was a full-fledged reincarnation, a thread of her soul reborn as a mortal.

Li Yuan had never even heard of splitting a soul, let alone done it himself.

But Yan Yu, who had wrapped herself around the Ancestral Land, absorbed its Yin and Yang, and devoured the starkin of Heaven itself, had that kind of power.

After a moment of thought, Li Yuan said, “Perfect timing. I’ve been thinking of returning to the mortal world for a fresh start. Why don’t I go with you? Childhood sweethearts. I’ll wait for you to grow up, then marry you.”

Yan Yu raised an eyebrow. “That so? But if you keep your eyes on me and only me, won’t you get bored?”

She smirked. “Why not marry someone else while I focus on my experiments? You can enjoy your mortal pleasures, and I can focus on research without distraction. I was never one for flowery romances anyway, and the human world’s full of beautiful women.”

Li Yuan shook his head without hesitation. “Never. My heart for you is written in the stars and carved into the earth.”

Yan Yu chuckled. “But what if I decided not to reincarnate this time? Would you still want to go back to the mortal world?”

A tricky question. A trap wrapped in silk.

Li Yuan’s mind raced, ready to find the perfect answer.

But before he could speak, Yan Yu broke into a bright laugh. She giggled like a girl, clearly enjoying the look on his face.

The majestic Primordial Earth Mother vanished in an instant, replaced once more by the warm and gentle woman he’d known so long ago.

“I’ll find a virtuous soul,” she said, still smiling. “You’ll go down with her, and it’ll be a great blessing for her. The Three Paths of the Six Paths may now allow for reincarnation, but I still can’t control where those souls end up. In other words, even a good soul reborn as a human could end up in hardship, in pain, in poverty.

“But since you’re returning anyway, why not do a good deed while you’re at it? As for my reborn self, she’ll be devoted entirely to experimentation. No distractions. No emotions. If you miss me, just come find my original self in the Underworld.”

Before Li Yuan could refuse, she had already taken charge. Just like in the old days, she arranged her man’s future concubines as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

With that, she brought him to the far northern reaches of the Yellow Springs.

This place, once desolate, had now become the Reincarnation Hub.

Li Yuan gazed ahead and saw three long queues of spirits stretching endlessly into the distance. At the head of these lines stood hundreds of gates.

The Underworld now fully enveloped the Ancestral Land. All the gates that had once led to the Realm of Reincarnation had been rerouted here.

Each gate corresponded to one of the Lower Three Paths. But notably, there was no gate for the Celestial Path, the fourth of the Six Paths.

Yan Yu stepped forward and walked toward the many gates of the Human Path. One by one, she studied the gentle spirits waiting to be reborn. In her gaze, she could see the entire tapestry of their past lives.

She scrutinized them carefully for a long while. Then, raising her hand, she pointed at one particular spirit.

“Husband,” she said with a teasing smile, “why not go to her in your next life?”

Li Yuan looked at the soul she’d chosen.

It appeared as a young girl, delicate and sweet, not unlike Yan Yu herself in size and bearing. But here in the Underworld, her eyes were blank and lifeless, her head bowed as she shuffled forward in silence.

“Who was she?” Li Yuan asked.

Yan Yu replied softly, “In times of chaos, tragedy often strikes without reason. This girl was born into a noble household, yet she never lorded her wealth over others. Quite the opposite, she was kind to the common folk, saving many lives during troubled times. But her father...was a fool. He joined a rebellion.”

She paused, her tone dimming.

“When the rebellion was crushed and enemy forces surrounded the city, her father feared she would be dishonored. So he stormed into the inner quarters...and killed her with his own hands, tossing her body down a well.”

Yan Yu sighed. “A girl who lived her whole life doing good, never even had a chance to glimpse the beauty of the mortal world, cut down by the man who should’ve protected her most. Since goodness brought her no reward in her last life, I’ll make sure she’s repaid in the next. And honestly, husband, if you’re going to live another life, why not live it beside her?”

“Rebellion...defeat...” Li Yuan frowned in thought. He vaguely remembered that decades ago, there had been a major uprising in the outer provinces of the Tang Dynasty.

The world was vast. The capital and surrounding regions might have flourished, but the Emperor could hardly oversee every distant corner. Each year, only a chosen few were brought along for the royal bestowal ceremony, a mere drop in the ocean compared to the entirety of the mortal world.

Out in those remote regions, corruption and unrest could still thrive. Rebellion was hardly rare.

Seeing Li Yuan lost in thought, Yan Yu chuckled. “So then, my dear husband...I’ll leave this girl in your care next life, all right?”

Li Yuan nodded. Then he asked, “Since the reincarnation gates have all been moved from the old cycle into the Underworld, have you found any trace of Ping’an?”

Ping’an had gone missing in the Hall of Life, and that hall itself had once been part of a broken, abandoned reincarnation path.

Yan Yu shook her head. “Ping’an is as much my child as yours. If I had even a hint of his whereabouts, I would’ve done everything in my power to bring him home.”

Author’s Note

The entire Return to the Mortal World Arc will not be described in detail.