A Regressor’s Tale of Cultivation Chapter 816 Chapter 813

Side Story - A Tale of Cultivation After the Ending. Warning for readers: These side stories come from the author putting logic on hold temporarily to unleash suppressed urges and wandering ideas, leading to a style that's completely opposite from the main tale. For those who've finished the afterstories and hope to keep that lasting sentiment intact, it's best to let these side stories rest for 'at least a week before reading'.

Only folks who feel, "I need to shatter the afterglow stuck in my soul!" should rush ahead and devour the side stories in one go. To repeat the advice, diving into them might break the cherished emotion readers hold. After all, skipping the side stories causes no issues whatsoever, so if you're set on reading, the author would appreciate it if you wait more than a week, allow that afterglow to fade a little, and then tackle them.

Back when he first brought the so-called Enders into existence, there were indeed countless mistakes.

Once the Enders appeared, bizarre wonders erupted across Mount Sumeru in every direction.

This stemmed from the violent reaction of ripping apart the Absolute of Miracle by force.

Fate twisted into knots, sparking calamities throughout the entire realm.

Yang Hwe's past incarnations got dragged into those catastrophes more than once or twice, perishing like mere insects.

Handling miracles proves incredibly challenging.

Since they essentially form from shoving a sense of self into shards of the Absolute of Miracle, turning them into wild beasts, it's no surprise that regular fate can't easily rein them in.

On top of that, the old Creator God's lingering rule stood in the way.

The decree stating [a True Emperor can't meddle in another Emperor's progress] extended to these Enders too.

By injecting personalities into the Absolute Fragments, the Gestation World's laws viewed them as potential True Emperors.

Hong Fan couldn't directly assign fates to them or pull their strings.

The initial setup, progression, turns, and finale he'd planned to shape the Absolute Fragments all rebounded without effect.

Ultimately, Hong Fan accepted that no internal methods from this world could tame them.

So, he shifted his focus to realms beyond Mount Sumeru.

***

He journeyed across endless realms.

Hong Fan encountered beings on par with his strength, and others who, under certain setups, could surpass him entirely.

'If I'd crossed paths with them prior to ascending as a True Emperor...might I have edged nearer to redemption?'

Yet, before reaching True Emperor status, he lacked even the knowledge to venture into those outer realms, rendering the thought pointless.

Hong Fan also confronted Creator Gods from various outer realms and attempted their destruction.

But true to their immortal nature, no matter how often he struck them down, they rose anew each time.

Beyond learning that the sole path to ending a Creator God lies in them willingly forsaking their Creator God status, he uncovered nothing useful.

Killing them repeatedly as an outsider yields only a brief knockout, nothing more.

For Hong Fan, briefly slaying a Creator God always ended in defeat.

Even if he managed to confront and eliminate one or two using the Emptiness Sword without invoking so-called Divine Art, the curses and resentments they unleashed proved quite vexing.

'In a sense, did Mount Sumeru's former Creator God choose to abandon their Creator God position by dividing their soul into three parts and reshaping their form into the Gestation World?'

He picked up some fresh insights on Creator Gods, yet they offered little aid.

As Hong Fan wandered those outer realms, he uncovered myriad skills and grasped ways to skirt around laws or trick them.

Once he sensed the confidence to craft fitting Enders, he made his way back to Mount Sumeru.

With Splitting Heavens, he cleaved Miracle apart.

Next, he forged the seven Miracle shards into the seven emotions and dispatched them to an outer realm.

The Absolute wields vast might and dominion within Mount Sumeru, yet in outer realms governed by utterly alien rules, it fails to spawn anomalies as potent as those in its home.

The worst it can do is spawn a handful of weak specters in a ghostless domain.

Through this, the Absolute Fragments ripened in distinct realms with wholly foreign laws, developing personalities aligned with those worlds' principles.

By fate's design, Hong Fan summoned those personalities to converge at the exact same moment and drew them back to Mount Sumeru.

Right before his throne,

Within the Audience Chamber, he bound those personalities with pacts, promising them fresh existences, while pledging their full life's ownership, names, and very beings as collateral.

The Audience Chamber's position on the Gestation World's edge meant remnants of the prior one's influence, like the 'ban on meddling in a True Emperor's ascension rite,' didn't fully apply, making it feasible.

To dominate those Enders and impose their origins, arcs, twists, and ends, he introduced them to the Immortal Cultivation system.

Hong Fan himself devised the Immortal Cultivation system as a core incantation.

Thus, should an Ender willingly engage with it and pursue strength, he could sidestep the 'ban on ascension interference' law and weave in their origins, arcs, twists, and ends.

Naturally, Immortal Cultivation wasn't the only path; even the Heart Tribe, who drew on the Plane of Soul's power and tapped Interdimensional Void forces via a tweaked version of Hong Fan's Emptiness Sword Martial Arts system, remained firmly in his grasp.

Should the Absolute of Miracle spawn endless unpredictabilities, he'd enact a flawless scheme to capture and confine those boundless variables for certain.

Such was Hong Fan's strategy.

Still, Miracle itself breeds fresh variables in the most improbable scenarios.

Though he trusted in his scheme's flawlessness, Hong Fan understood it wouldn't achieve perfection.

'Even after all this effort, my goal won't manifest immediately, and the Enders will break free from my hold once more.'

As a result, he didn't expect the endeavor to wrap up after just one or two tries.

Countless thousands, billions upon billions...

Only through uncountable, vast repetitions would he finally claim Miracle's variables.

'Keep cycling.'

He relentlessly shredded the Absolute of Miracle, dispersed its pieces into outer realms, let them incarnate as mortals, and repeatedly pulled them here to harness the powers he'd forged.

He constructed this cycle without end.

In time, the Enders—the Absolutes of Miracle...

Via the repetition of history and fate.

Under the dominion of those dual Absolutes' laws, they would slowly become his own...

"It will cycle forever."

Up to the moment when the Creator bearing every secret to salvation emerges.

Clinging to hope without release...

***

Poong-

Deep within the shadowy, murky Darkness World.

From a dark, bubble-like void hovering in the space, a Supreme Deity composed of countless stellar clusters materializes.

Tsuaaaaaat!

That being, radiating starlight for a moment, shrinks down and reshapes into human form.

"So Enders get created like this...?"

A figure clad in a white dragon robe.

Seo Eun-hyun steps forth from the bubble-resembling void, the Future King's recollections, and gives a nod.

His current location rests inside the Gestation World.

It forms the core of the Future King's corpse, shaped by boundless gravitational darkness after his demise.

Paaaatt!

In a flash, Seo Eun-hyun turns to starlight and hurtles away, then directly escapes the Future King's form, soaring up toward the pinnacle of the conical cosmos looming overhead.

The spot dubbed the Audience Chamber by some.

Ascending to where the grand Crystal Throne, Flame Throne, and Darkness Throne reside, he settles onto the biggest chair emerging from the Crystal Throne and declares.

"By peering into the deceased Future King's memories within his body, I uncovered what 'precisely' Mount Sumeru has been pulling in from beyond lately."

Perched on the Crystal Seat, Seo Eun-hyun details to the figures on the opposing Darkness Throne and Flame Throne the root of Mount Sumeru's odd recent happenings.

"Mount Sumeru's current pull of [something] from [beyond] the Gestation World...stems from the Ender creation process that's looped for an inconceivable span... It's evolved into a cycle of history."

On this note, Cheon Woon, the Heavenly Venerable of Time and Darkness Throne's Agent, inquires.

"So that law's influence stretches even outside the Gestation World?"

"Likely not to every single realm."

Then, Bong Hwa, the First King Heavenly Venerable of the Underworld, speaks up in response.

"The scope of that Ender production history cycle's law probably...confines itself to the dimension from which the Crystal King and the final Enders originated, his native dimension. With the Crystal King's divided forms and allies present there now, the pull between our worlds has linked up."

Bong Hwa served as the true Life Supreme Deity.

Leaning on her ascent as Akashic Records' Master, she shares her wisdom.

"Yet one puzzle lingers unsolved. The Ender production history cycle packs real power, but...its originator got cut off, and no matter the lingering history cycle strength, under normal rules...this shouldn't happen."

Bong Hwa's eyes shift elsewhere.

A transcendent's vision pierces vast stretches of time and space.

Across remote time and space,

Past the turmoil enveloping the Gestation World.

In one such spot, a warp-like anomaly has formed.

That warp resembles...

Amid the Heavenly Domains, it's akin to the spatial ripples from Radiance Hall's ancient inter-Heavenly-Domain transfer array.

"Regarding that warp, the Akashic Records hold no records, so even I remain in the dark. It's hazardous. It could serve as a breach for some foreign great divinity to invade the Gestation World with ill intent. In our current states, you and I can fend them off, but the fallout might doom countless lives. We need to seal it swiftly. Crystal King, did the Future King's memories yield any leads?"

To Bong Hwa's query, Seo Eun-hyun on the Crystal Seat nods affirmatively.

"From the Future King's views of outer realms, I've spotted a lead. It appears a entity grasping an artifact tied to our world, upon rising as a great divinity, impacts this place too. Most likely..."

"This arose because you flung the source of Omnipotence to a far-off outer realm."

"It's not just the Omnipotence source and an outer great divinity's rise alone...but layered with the Ender production history cycle, all these factors intertwined to cause it."

Bong Hwa lifts her hand.

A tremendous vital energy caresses the dimensional warp manifesting in the Gestation World.

"Gate...it's a Gate God. Linked to the Omnipotence source...in a remote dimension, 'the one who embodies the gate, guards it, and unlocks it' has emerged. That one's ascension and the Ender production history cycle have aligned in a stunning twist...forming a dimensional portal linking the Crystal King's home dimension to ours."

Her golden gaze gleaming, Bong Hwa foretells with a furrowed brow.

"Via the [Gate], Ender-like figures will re-enter Mount Sumeru from Earth to fulfill the history cycle. They won't be genuine Absolute Fragments, but based on past history cycle patterns, they'll stir up serious chaos. And even in death, the history cycle persists. Thus, to halt this history cycle, just one approach remains."

As Bong Hwa presses on, the Crystal King Star Genesis Supreme Deity Seo Eun-hyun heaves a heavy breath.

"Normally, while any Ender's history endures, the subsequent wave doesn't start. Crystal King, since this mess traces back to you casting the Omnipotence source outward, you need to clean up your own doing. Take those emerging Pseudo-Enders...and preserve them through a hundred billion years, breaking the history cycle that way. Doing so will erase that rift spawned from tangled coincidences like history cycles and divinity ascensions."

Seo Eun-hyun recalls hurling the Omnipotence source to a distant outer realm.

Indeed, back then, merged with Bong Hwa and fellow Ender allies, they'd consented...

But Seo Eun-hyun's core self pushed hardest for ditching the Omnipotence source.

Likewise, the one who executed it was Seo Eun-hyun.

Hence, Bong Hwa's call for Seo Eun-hyun to own it rings true.

'Now I must preserve Enders myself, eh.'

Of course, it's partly in jest.

Bong Hwa just invoked a harsh term echoing her past bid to preserve Seo Eun-hyun,

and really, nurturing a True Immortal or Governing Immortal tough enough for a hundred billion years suffices.

Or, akin to Ban Ta still toiling in Sacred Master duties with cries of torment, pinning them as a Middle Realm's Sacred Master for a hundred billion years could stretch their span.

'Either path...they aren't real Enders...but fresh arrivals...'

Sensing a novel sentiment over snatching new ones from Earth and elevating them to True Immortals—at minimum, Sacred Vessel level—Seo Eun-hyun stands from his throne.

"...Got it."

He relays a dispatch to his comrades and Immortal Treasure Sword Extreme lingering on Earth, savoring its ways.

He also contacts Wol Ryeong, head of the star-cluster Wuji Religious Order that spirals through Mount Sumeru, overseeing its inhabitants.

"Starting now...the next Enders—no, not authentic Enders, but ones birthed via history cycles and odd twists...Neo-Enders. I'll fetch the Neo-Enders from Earth and see them preserved."

Thus, Seo Eun-hyun's Immortal Treasure, the [Silver Snake Biting Its Tail] Ji Hwa, commences scouting Earth for fresh souls.

All the night's stellar glow starts surveying the globe and spinning fates for those new souls.

In the tale's closing stretch, the Crystal King Star Genesis Supreme Deity Seo Eun-hyun readies to preserve the incoming new souls and, upon the Crystal Throne, shuts his eyes to await.

The dawn of a fresh saga!