Chapter 427 403: The River of Time's Past

Song Ciwan returned to her cave residence and released the Big White Goose again.

During her earlier battle with Gu Peng, she hadn't left the Big White Goose in the cave residence, but had instead put it away in her personal Spirit Beast Bag.

Now that the battle was over, the Big White Goose tumbled out of the Spirit Beast Bag. It first tilted its head and let out a series of sleepy squawks at Song Ciwan.

It had taken a nap in the Spirit Beast Bag, and now that it was suddenly let out, it looked as if it hadn't gotten enough sleep.

Song Ciwan smiled and gently stroked its back, patting it. "Go on and play, Big White. I need to go into seclusion again, so I'll have to trouble you to watch the house."

The Big White Goose lifted its head and cried, "HONK HONK HONK!"

Wanwan was a cultivation maniac, something the Big White Goose had long since gotten used to. It puffed out its chest and told Song Ciwan in its own goose language, "HONK HONK HONK, SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK!"

Its meaning was clear: The goose will watch the house, so Wanwan can rest assured!

This exchange felt as if it had been repeated countless times in the years gone by.

It gave rise to an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if time were repeating itself.

Song Ciwan found the feeling incredibly subtle. She carefully tried to capture this bit of Spiritual Charm, said goodbye to the Big White Goose, and returned to her Cultivation Room, where she once again brought out the Han Guang Glaze Residence.

A cave residence was a cave residence. No matter how good it was, even if Song Ciwan came here a hundred more times, she would never cultivate directly inside it.

The Han Guang Glaze Residence was her true home.

A Cultivation Room within a Cultivation Room. Song Ciwan sat down cross-legged and cast the Recovery Spell on herself twice, repairing the damage she had sustained from the earlier backlash.

Thanks to the Netherworld Fog Barrier scrambling the Celestial Secret, the damage wasn't severe. Song Ciwan had, at most, been caught in the tail end of the shockwave. Besides, she had already cultivated the Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique to the Great Success Realm of Flesh and Blood Slaughter. At this point, even without the Recovery Spell, such a minor injury would heal on its own quickly.

Of course, using the Recovery Spell made it heal even faster, so… if she had it, why not use it?

Once her injuries were repaired, a sense of relief washed over Song Ciwan's entire body.

She immediately opened the Heaven and Earth Scale and first sold off the Malice she had obtained from Gu Peng.

[You have sold the post-mortem Malice of a Celestial Pride Level Golden Lion Demon that was parasitized by an Ancient Divine Insect Race Golden Core, weighing six jin and one tael. You have obtained 61,000 years of Lifespan.]

BOOM!

A torrent of life force and Vitality descended from the void at a speed Song Ciwan had never anticipated.

It was like a rushing river of stars, like time itself plummeting down.

At that moment, time and the ages seemed to take on a physical form, coalescing within Song Ciwan's Thought into countless lines with no beginning and no end.

Song Ciwan felt as if her entire being were floating again. Her body drifted gently upward, and in a certain instant, her Divine Soul suddenly leaped up, broke through the confines of her physical form, and rode the waves of the river of time upstream—

This upstream journey was not something she consciously controlled. Instead, it was as if her Divine Soul had been drawn by some wondrous existence, abruptly breaking through the resistance of the waves.

Then she saw it. She saw it again. At the source of the river of time, in the distant, ancient, immeasurably far-off past, a familiar figure...

The figure was dressed in white robes. As the waves churned, a shimmer of tears flashed in a pair of eyes as bright as stars, then vanished.

That was clearly... clearly Song Ciwan herself!

A tremendous shock once again swept through Song Ciwan's body, mind, and Divine Soul. When another great wave surged at the end of the river, Song Ciwan faintly glimpsed a world that was both familiar and strange... a world scarred and devastated!

It was just for an instant, a fleeting glimpse.

Then she tumbled out of that strange state of riding the Wind upstream. With a THUD, Song Ciwan fell to the floor of the Cultivation Room!

"Cough..." She clutched her chest, coughing violently. It took a long while for the turmoil in her heart to subside.

The Sutra of Sitting and Forgetting began to circulate on its own. The Flesh and Blood Slaughter technique repaired her Qi Blood and meridians. Gradually, Song Ciwan settled back into a cross-legged position in the present.

She assumed a cultivation posture but had no desire to check her remaining Lifespan. Her entire mind was immersed in the vision she had just glimpsed.

'This time, I saw it clearly, and I remember it clearly!'

'I wasn't mistaken. I really did see myself in the distant past of the river of time.'

'Yes, the past, not the future!'

At this point, Song Ciwan did not yet possess the ability to peer into the future. Although she seemed to be cultivating the Path of Time, her method of accelerating time to drain an enemy's Lifespan—

—was perhaps nothing more than a minor, trivial technique when compared to the true Time Dao.

A deep-seated feeling washed over Song Ciwan: the more she cultivated, the more insignificant she felt.

An even deeper sense of confusion and bewilderment arose within her. 'Why? Why would I see myself in the distant past of the river of time?'

'It's not that I can't have a past, but I'm only twenty-six this year. How could a twenty-six-year-old Song Ciwan trace back... perhaps thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands of years, or maybe even a version of myself from an even more distant time?'

'That ancient, desolate feeling couldn't be wrong. It must have been me from a long, long time ago!'

Song Ciwan racked her brain. At that moment, countless thoughts and speculations flooded her mind.

She possessed Innate Wisdom, which made her wonder, 'Why was I the one to awaken Innate Wisdom?'

To see through the Mystery of the Womb and awaken the memories of a past life.

'So, is it possible that before my previous life, there were even more past lives?'

'No, no, no!'

Song Ciwan quickly rejected the idea herself. 'No, no, no, it can't be like that. If a person truly has many, many past lives, then is the self from a past life's past life truly still yourself?'

'With fragmented memories, a different temperament, and completely different life experiences, even if the soul is continuous, are you truly the same person?'

The more Song Ciwan thought, the more her thoughts diverged, until a sharp pain pierced her mind. The deity within her Sea of Consciousness wavered and ripples spread, jarring her back to her senses.

'Oh no, I've fallen into my own mental maze!'

This was a Heart Demon, the "unsolvable enigma" in a Cultivator's heart, a state of chaos and deviation brought on by the rapid, massive increase in her Lifespan.

Within her Sea of Consciousness, the Samadhi True Fire burned quietly, Refining the Soul and Forging the Spirit. Song Ciwan reined in her mind and painstakingly tempered it for a long time. Finally, she could breathe again, having broken free from her tangled thoughts.

She stopped thinking about her past self in the river of time. Things she couldn't figure out should be temporarily set aside to prevent a Heart Demon from festering.

Song Ciwan opened the Insight Technique's panel to check her remaining Lifespan.

The Insight Technique panel displayed a striking number: Two hundred twenty-seven thousand, one hundred years!

A light, floating sensation enveloped Song Ciwan. She let out a long breath and stood up, pacing back and forth to slowly acclimatize to a body overflowing with Lifespan.

It was truly unexpected. After hitting her previous Lifespan limit, Song Ciwan had thought Gu Peng's Malice would sell for one thousand years per jin at most.

After all, her Cultivation had already risen from the Qi Cultivation Stage to the Divinity Transformation Stage, and the very essence of her life had ascended. Because of this, she even felt that estimating Gu Peng's Malice at one thousand years per jin was an overestimation!

But who would have thought that Gu Peng's Malice would actually trade for ten thousand years per jin?

It wasn't that she had too much Lifespan; it was just that this kind of explosive increase was something an ordinary person could never withstand!