Mutated Tao

“Where… where are they?” Li Huowang floated around in Baiyu Capital and stared at the empty space around him.

The various beings—the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, and the gods—were gone. The once-populated Baiyu Capital was surprisingly vast and quiet.

Li Huowang was here to help. He thought that the war in the Baiyu Capital was intense, but apparently, that was not the case. He couldn’t find the Simings at all.

He did find several dangerous things, but he wasn’t sure if they were the Simings trying to invade Baiyu Capital.

Tentacles wriggled around his body, pushing him around in the empty space to search for clues.

Li Huowang still recalled how fast the Dharma Sect was acting down there. This place shouldn’t have been this calm.

“Ji Zai! Come out! I’m here! Where are you? What’s going on?”

This wasn’t what he had expected. It was not what Xuan Pin had seen when he was out here. Xuan Pin wouldn’t have died if it was this calm up here.

“Ji Zai! Ba-Hui!” Li Huowang continued to shout, but there was no response.

Li Huowang was thinking about that when he felt a mirror appearing below him. He touched the mirror gently.

In the next instant, he saw himself being reflected in the mirror. His reflection was staring at him through the lake at Cowheart Village! Li Huowang himself rarely goes there.

In the blink of an eye, he caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror. Surprisingly, his mirrored self was gazing back at him through the lake at Cowheart Village, a place he rarely visited.

“Ji Zai?” His reflection spoke from the other side of the mirror. Li Huowang was so startled that he let go of the mirror.

Li Huowang raised and looked at his trembling hands. “I’m Ji Zai? I become Ji Zai the moment I reach Baiyu Capital?”

Li Huowang was filled with confusion as he realized that he had transformed into the very Siming that he had once resented. The disbelief washed over him as he reached out to touch the mirror once more. The familiar voice echoed from the other side once again.

The Li Huowang on the other side was very angry. “Hey! Speak! Why aren’t you speaking?”

“The Natural Disaster this time is different! In the past, the sun disappeared and everything stopped decaying. But now, Death is gone!”

Li Huowang let go of the mirror and his reflection paused. His reflection was waiting for him to answer.

Li Huowang looked at the scene in front of him with shock. He had said the exact same words previously! He was talking to his past self now! He was Ji Zai!

The moment Li Huowang understood what was happening, more mirrors appeared below him. Each mirror represented the different times that Li Huowang had been trying to find Ji Zai.

Some of them had happened in the past, while others had yet to happen.

He stared at his past and future self before he realized something. Only the mortal realm had time—there was no concept of time here in the Baiyu Capital. In this place, the past was the future. There were no distinctions between them. “Simings… Beings without past nor futures?”

As Li Huowang vaguely remembered what Zhuge Yuan had written on his fan, the surrounding space changed again. The space around him became very cramped as more and more mirrors appeared.

Some of the scenes happened in the past, and others happened in the future. The Baiyu Capital was a place without the concept of time, so everything occurred within the present.

“Something is moving!” Li Huowang snarled and swung the tentacles covered in dragon scales around him. He barely missed the beings around him.

His surroundings slowly became more chaotic, and Li Huowang found what he was looking for—the Simings. They were back!

They were fighting. The Heavenly Daos clashed against each other. The Baiyu Capital was torn apart and then stitched back together, again and again.

Li Huowang was currently stuck in a small pocket dimension, and his surroundings became increasingly dangerous.

He hadn’t figured out why the Imperial Preceptor and the others blinded themselves before coming here, but now everything had become clear.

Those with eyesight would stare too far into the Baiyu Capital and would know too much to focus, just like what was happening to him now.

“AAAAAAH!” Li Huowang’s pupils darted around as he stared deep into the Baiyu Capital and saw the things in the past.

He witnessed the unfolding of the past and why Da Nuo went mad. He also observed the Heavenly Daos that shouldn’t have existed creeping in.

The Heavenly Daos were still here, but the Heavenly Daos that were not from this world had caused Da Nuo to go crazy. The world had gone crazy!

As more Simings appeared, more details stemming from different time frames forced themselves into Li Huowang’s mind. They continued to push into Li Huowang, forcing out the things that were supposed to be his from inside his body.

Li Huowang dug out his eyeballs and felt his surroundings finally return to normal. He could finally focus on what he needed to do.

Despite losing his eyes, he retained other organs to perceive his surroundings, along with six dragon whiskers. Although his range of perception had diminished, he could still sense everything in his vicinity.

He could still hear the Simings’ voices, smell them, and taste them.

He felt Ba-Hui! He felt Death! He even felt Rot! They were fighting against something sticky, a sticky Heavenly Dao that was foreign to the Baiyu Capital.

The Heavenly Daos were glued together, cycling out one after another. The sticky Heavenly Dao were laws that didn’t exist in this world.

They were trying to consume Baiyu Capital. Li Huowang had lost his eyesight, so he wasn’t sure what they looked like, but he was confident that they were just a large black mass.

Li Huowang felt that suns were colliding above him as the Simings fought.

Li Huowang wanted to help—he was Ji Zai, the Siming of Bewilderment, but he wasn’t sure what he could do given the intensity of the fight.

“No, it shouldn’t be like this!” Li Huowang ducked and weaved while attacking whenever a gap presented itself.

“Xuan Pin and the others were up here! They should’ve killed god Yu’er!”

He seized an opportunity and jumped out from the little pocket that he was in. He floated in the space and swung both arms forcefully. “Die!”

Nothing happened. Ji Zai was somehow thrown back. He didn’t have the qualifications to join in the fight.

If not for Dragon Qi on his body, even looking at them for a moment would have been lethal.