This wasn’t Tongtian's first attempt to merge the Law of Time and the Law of Space. She failed the first attempt the moment the golden sea tried to fill in the gaps between the branching rivers, so she made tremendous progress since then. Unfortunately, she had reached an impasse.
Time and time again, she would fail at the critical juncture.
Tongtian doubted that she would succeed with time. Or that if she did , it would be far too slow for her plans. She needed inspiration or an epiphany.
Had the Three Realms possessed a complete Law of Spacetime, she could have used her Saint Corpse's authority to take a glimpse at it. Then again, if the world already had the Law of Spacetime, she would not be in this position. Her Saint Corpse would have controlled the spacetime of the Three Realms, and she would have instantly entered the Primordial Origin Ream like Laozi did when his Good Corpse Taishang Laojun became consecrated.
"Why didn't Father God merge the Law of Time and the Law of Space into the Law of Spacetime when he formed heaven and earth? I'm certain that the Law of Chaos and the Law of Infinity wasn't among the laws that birthed the chaos fiendgods," Tongtian griped.
She suddenly shot up from the Throne of Heaven with radiance shining from her eyes. The Three Realms did not have three thousand laws because they naturally occurred, but because Pangu imbued them during the creation. What if she also created a world using the Law of Time and the Law of Space and fused them later as an experiment?
All those in the Primordial Origin Realm, including Saints of Heaven, possessed the ability to open up a world. The created world would be based on the law they mastered, but few did because there was hardly any point. Any world they created would be inferior to the Three Realms, and they would waste precious materials during the process.
However, Tongtian had the perfect materials: the fragmented world and the Sealed Treasure Stone. The reason she had stored the broken world inside the Seal Treasure Stone was that the stone was actually a fragment of the Chaos Pearl Pangu used to create the Great Desolation.
Tongtian had already digested all the laws from absorbing the fragmented Way of Heaven from the broken world. Although incomplete, they would increase the foundation of her newly created world and her success rate.
But she would only have one chance. Once she attempted to fuse the Law of Time and the Law of Space in the world, the world would likely perish in the aftermath.
She still needed to make preparations. Luckily, when she first left Kunlun Mountain to roam the Great Desolation, she had collected numerous plants and materials that had become extinct in the current Three Realms. It took over forty thousand years for Tongtian to complete her preparations.
Tongtian disappeared from Eminence Heaven Palace and flew out of the boundary of the Three Realms. She only stopped when she was outside the chaotic boundary, in the true chaos. With a wave of her hand, the Sealed Treasure Stone appeared in front of her.
Her departure alerted all the Saints. Saints of Heaven were Golden Immortals of the Primordial Origin linked to the world. If they did not return within a certain amount of time, it would detrimentally affect the world. Many wanted to investigate, but Tongtian had already asked Yuanshi to block them as part of her preparations.
Years earlier, she ordered Kuming to assemble all the humans and relocated them into the Twelfth-Ranked White Lotus of Purification. Although the humans of the broken world held no more usefulness to her, she wasn't so heartless as to kill them after they had prayed to her for so many years.
First, Tongtian created a formation to gather the chaotic energy to integrate with the Chaos Pearl fragment. As the torrent of energy swirled around it, the Sealed Treasure Stone absorbed them all. During this process, she had to constantly replace parts of the materials used to form the formation as they would be corroded and destroyed by the chaotic energy.
It took several thousand years for the Sealed Treasure Stone to reach its maximum capacity. The formation changed from gathering chaotic energy to sealing the energy inside.
Next, Tongtian started to imbue the Sealed Treasure Stone with the Law of Time, the Law of Space, and all the other unmastered laws she comprehended. Her brows furrowed as she attempted to balance the myriad laws within the Sealed Treasure Stone.
Tongtian not only had to balance the laws so that they didn’t conflict but also mutually reinforced each other. The process revealed numerous flaws in the merging process in the Law of Time and the Law of Space she had the most confidence in.
This revelation did not anger Tongtian. On the contrary, it aroused her spirit. What one should fear in cultivation was not imperfection but perfection. Perfection meant that progress stopped, but imperfection meant that one could still advance on the path.
Tongtian refined the merging process between her two mastered laws through this process. Although she lost control of the balance many times, it only expelled the chaotic energy within the Sealed Treasure Stone and did not destroy it. At most, Tongtian would have to waste materials to gather chaotic energy again.
What she didn't expect was that her comprehension and usage of the Law of Yin-Yang advanced tremendously. It was a happy discovery.
It took Tongtian thirty thousand years to reach the best balance. During this time, she improved her comprehension both faster and further than the eons she spent arduously cultivating in Eminence Heaven Palace.
Cultivation not only needed diligence but also chance. Had Tongtian not taken the Sealed Treasure Stone, she would have missed this opportunity.
Tongtian allowed the Sealed Treasure Stone to float a fair distance away from her. Her hand grasped the handle of her Qingping Sword and unsheathed it. The sword released an audible sharpness as it flew out.
Chaotic energy gathered around it as it glowed silver and gold. "Heaven Opening Sword Art First Strike - Splitting Chaos."
The Qingping Sword cleaved down. It was as if everything condensed at the edge, and the moment the blade sliced through Sealed Treasure Stone, chaos erupted, splitting into yin and yang. Simultaneously, vibrations rippled through the chaos.
She raised her sword again as it was coated in a golden light. Tongtian had already started gasping for breath. Despite having created the Heaven Opening Sword Art and refining it over eons, she had never actually used it. Only after having experienced it firsthand did Tongtian further realize how powerful Pangu had been.
Each strike would be more than twice as hard as the previous strike, and Pangu unleashed eight strikes. Tongtian didn't even know if she could unleash the third strike, but she wouldn't give up now.
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"Heaven Opening Sword Art Second Strike - Rending Heaven." Accompanying her soft words, Tongtian's sword struck half of the divided chaos. The golden glow left the Qingping Sword and merged with half of the chaos, transforming it into the skies.
The sky started to curve as if to encapsulate its other, untransformed half. When the sky touched the corrosive chaos qi, it started to break apart, reverting to its original form.
Tongtian knew that she had to unleash the third strike as soon as possible, but she felt drained, like all energy had been sucked out of her body. She gritted her teeth and raised her sword once more.
Silver light encased the Qingping Sword. As Tongtian's sword became more powerful, her form wilted. Her muscles disintegrated, skin clung to her bones, her face turned gaunt, and death was but a breath away. "Heaven Opening Sword Art Third Strike - Dividing Earth!"
The Qingping Sword struck the untransformed chaos. The silver light left the sword and merged with the chaos, starting its transformation. It transformed into land and seas, forming a delicate balance with the sky, like yin and yang.
Despite her exhaustion, Tongtian forced herself to observe the process. She had already depleted her Saint Corpse and three incarnations of their energy just to fuel the third strike. She didn't even have enough energy to combat the corrosion of the chaotic energy.
Still, she didn't care.
Tongtian watched with rapt attention as the nascent world developed. The numerous laws that formed it clashed against one another until finding a delicate balance. Luckily, after some destruction, the primary laws that formed the world, the Law of Time and the Law of Space, stabilized.
Her comprehension increased during the process, and she even sensed the dormant Way of Heaven form. Despite all her best efforts, Tongtian could sense that the world couldn't even compare to ten percent of the Three Realms.
Still, the fact only reaffirmed Tongtian's conjecture. Pangu had definitely exceeded the Primordial Origin Realm. He did not die from fighting the three thousand chaos fiendgods but fell due to exhaustion. She had to wonder why Pangu was so hellbent on creating the Great Desolation. Couldn't he just quietly comprehend the Great Dao?
All of this was still beyond Tongtian’s abilities. Despite her transcendent status in the Three Realms, she found herself far too weak.
As the world started to stabilize, Tongtian found herself pleasantly surprised. The creation of her world had produced Xuanhuang Qi!
Under Tongtian's control, the Xuanhuang Qi flew out of the world and merged with her Qingping Sword. Once fully merged, the Qingping Sword's grade improved slightly and gained a dark golden luster like Laozi's Heaven and Earth Pagoda. If she improved it any further, it would reach the rank of a pseudo-chaos spiritual artifact.
When the myriad laws no longer clashed, Tongtian flew into the newly created world. She didn't bother naming it as it would likely disappear after she was done with it.
At the rate it was maturing, it would take a few eons to fully stabilize, but Tongtian didn't have the time, so she entered the core space of the world. There she found the dormant Way of Heaven and refined it.
The dormant Way of Heaven didn't struggle. Since Tongtian created the world, the Way of Heaven was like a clone of hers, allowing her to easily refine it and turn it into an existence like an incarnation.
Tongtian manually stabilized the newly created world. Like her time balancing the laws in the Sealed Treasure Stone, the process advanced her comprehension by leaps and bounds. Each time a law interacted with another one, she discovered new points that she never realized, even for the Law of Time and the Law of Space.
All paths lead to the Great Dao.
As the new world stabilized, Tongtian began to stimulate the merging of the Law of Time and the Law of Space in preparation for when she truly attempted the act. It took an additional twenty thousand years for the world to fully stabilize, and not long later, it would start undergoing its first tribulation.
Tongtian wanted more time to stimulate the merging process, but the chaos would not allow her to wait. Although she had confidence that the world she created would at least survive one tribulation, its foundation would be irreparably damaged, hurting her chances of success.
Not even the world created by Pangu was immune. Had it not been for the Saints of Heaven, the Great Desolation might have shattered at the end of the Titan-Demon Tribulation when Gonggong shattered Buzhou Mountain. In order to survive the Immeasurable Tribulation, the Three Realms didn't need to pass each tribulation but ace it without damaging its foundation.
The new world's River of Time emerged in the sky. In contrast to the River of Time from the Three Realms, the new world's River of Time was one continuous stream. A soft golden light exuded from the land. Slowly, its radiance brightened as it turned intense as a golden sea rose from it.
The silver river descended, shortening the distance between the two metaphorical bodies of water.
The magnitude of this phenomenon far exceeded the scene in the Eminence Heaven Palace. Correspondingly, so did the speed. Tongtian only had one chance, and she didn't want to screw it up. Already, fractures appeared at the edge of the sky and land, slowing Tongtian’s comprehension speed.
The merging process sped up once more when the fractures no longer spread and even started to heal. Like in her simulations, the River of Time slowly branched off in a spider-like pattern until it reached the same perimeter size as the Sea of Space. Golden waters filled the gap between the branches of the River of Time.
Tongtian grunted as her brows pursed further. Veins bulged on her forehead.
Silver and gold intertwined, mixing time and space. As spacetime started to form, dimensional shifts and cracks appeared. Areas of land appeared in the sky, crashing to the ground like meteorites. Bodies of water splashed, eroding the land. Conversely, blots of land disappeared, revealing parts of the sky.
It was the collapse of the Buzhou Mountain reenacted in Tongtian's world. However, instead of slowing down, she increased the merging, displacing heaven and earth even more. The instincts of her Way of Heaven incarnation flared in warning, but she suppressed them and continued the process.
More and more, the difference between heaven and earth became indistinguishable, akin to returning to chaos. However, that would defeat the purpose; Tongtian wanted heaven and earth to coexist without returning to chaos.
Slowly, more pockets of sky coexisting with land appeared, showing partial success. Tongtian's smile grew despite the growing veins and receding blood on her face. More and more examples of coexistence between sky and land appeared.
It was magical. Giant landmasses floated into the sky as they did in the water. Those pockets gathered in the center of the world as the edges continued to return to chaos. Time passed, and a central continent emerged composed of a colossal mountain attached to land and sea.
In the end, only twenty percent of the sky and land remained, while eighty percent had turned into chaos. Still, an incandescent smile appeared on Tongtian's pale face; the veins on her forehead also receded. However, she wasn't done just yet. The new Sea of Spacetime slowly merged with the new world again, and like the re-shaped world, it had lost around eighty percent of its size.
With the final step finished, Tongtian closed her eyes and immersed herself in the completed fusion between the Law of Time and the Law of Space, the Law of Spacetime. Her body gained a sublime exalted light, and when she opened her eyes again, golden energy streaked from her argent eyes.
Tongtian sighed and waved her hand, exterminating the Way of Heaven. As a consequence, the new world started to grow disorderly, and the chaos would eventually destroy it.
The land had turned barren from her act, and the signs of life that showed signs of emerging stopped. It would take perhaps eons before life would appear, way after the first tribulation would begin. Using the Three Realms as an example, the first tribulation should test the life of the world. Without life, the world would fail the tribulation and be destroyed.
When she created the world, she gained insight into the Law of Creation. In reverse, she would gain insights into the Law of Destruction if she destroyed it. Since that was the case, why not destroy it herself? She would maximize her gains from the world before it was gone.
Tongtian grasped the hilt of the Xuanhuang Qingping Sword. On a side note, the fact that she wanted to test the Law of Spacetime and the upgraded cardinal spiritual artifact did not play a role in her decision to destroy the world. Not at all.
A silver-gold sword light erupted as the Xuanhuang Qingping Sword left its hilt, dividing the entire world in half.