Beyond the Timescape-Chapter 1132: What Is Canon??

Xu Qing looked out beyond the scroll painting. He looked... in the direction of the Dao Immortal Sect.

His fleshly body had not reacted at all because of what happened there. But it was different when it came to his mind. There was a vague sensation that surpassed the level of the fleshly body, and existed in his thoughts.

Someone wants to take my dao?

He considered the situation briefly, then cleared his thoughts.

Right now, the most important thing for him was to stabilize his eighth extreme. The eighth extreme had appeared exactly as he had planned it to. But the birth of canon was definitely beyond what he had expected. It would forever change how he fought.

After the first seven extremes, this extreme would push him to an entirely different level. The first five extremes were the foundation. Time and space were like fuel. And when they ignited, it led to the creation of his eighth extreme. It contained reincarnation, karma, and everything else, to create the dao of space-time. Its arrival caused a realization to hit him.

It’s a type of upgrade. It has nothing to do with the fleshly body, but rather, an upgrade to thinking and the soul.

He closed his eyes to sense the eighth extreme within him.

This is a space-time state that I can enter at will! Once I do, my fleshly body is external, while my thoughts surpass everything else, reaching a level of omniscience. While in that state, I can look at all living beings in the same way I can look at and modify a sketchbook. I can influence. I can fiddle. I can control.

As he thought such things, the eight extremes within him spread... and the feeling of space-time appeared again. He looked around and felt everything more deeply.

Fighting in this state will surpass anything I could have imagined before. No one can keep any secrets from me. Magical technique. Physical factors. Even thoughts, fate, reincarnation. The past and the future will even be transparent to me.

Before my enemy can even detect what is going on, I can influence his choices. Right and wrong. Life and death. All can be determined by my will. I could alter the magical techniques of an enemy, regardless of their origin or substructure. All with my will. I can go to any time and any place. In fact, I could go to the point where an enemy is born, and kill them then.

So, this is the power of canon, huh...? If it was in the lower worlds, this might not be on the level of the immortals, but it wouldn’t be very far from it. But here in the thirty-six higher star rings, where something greater exists, canon, it forms a limitation. Canon....

When his own canon appeared, and the voice spoke from the void, a sudden, preexisting understanding of canon came to him. Part of it came from himself, and part of it came from the message delivered by that voice.

Canon surpassed natural and magical laws. It was the unknown and supreme power of the gods in the thirty-six higher star rings.

The thirty-six higher star rings belonged to the gods. And the gods could easily use that unknown and supreme power. It started out as godly authority. But after rising to the level of True God, it became godhood.[1]

Thēy were born with the ability to acquire it. That was why gods were so powerful. After all, thēy were native to the thirty-six higher star rings.

Cultivators were outsiders, and didn’t inherently qualify to acquire it. The qualifications were broken up into various processes. First came essence, then dao affinity. Next, by means of the process of forming an immortal embryo, they could absorb the nutrients of the star ring, and give birth to something similar to godly authority, which were the dao lineaments of cultivator authority. That was the way to tread that path.

However, though dao lineaments of authority were similar to gods and spirits, fundamentally speaking, they were not the same. The only option was to advance dao lineaments of authority until they formed canon. Then a cultivator could acquire personhood that was truly equivalent to that of a god.

Canon and godhood were on the same level!

It was by means of that complex process that cultivators in the thirty-six higher star rings could, with great difficulty, qualify to be like gods. In the final analysis, canon was the most definitive way for immortals to seize the origin of power in the thirty-six higher star rings.

Because there were so many complications in the process, it was usually only when a cultivator reached the Quasi-Immortal level and had an immortal embryo that canon might possibly appear within them. However, even that was an uncertain possibility, and came down to destined opportunities.

Normally speaking, it was only when the immortal embryo finished forming and turned into an actual immortal embryo... that canon would appear. There were two other ways that could cause canon to form earlier, or would allow someone to at least use it.

Those were legacies and magical treasures.

An example of the former was the legacy flower from the most recent round of the Trial of the Hunt. It was when a cultivator with their own types of canon would peel some off and deliver it to another.

As for the latter, they were called canon treasures. However, canon treasures usually weren’t complete, and had low levels of canon force. Canon force was the way to measure canon.

Once canon formed, it needed to be expanded to completion, whereupon it would become an origin. That process was one of the essential factors in reaching the level of Immortal Lord. It was also for that reason that cultivators under the level of Quasi-Immortal needed destined opportunities to get canon....

If a cultivator with Imperial Sovereign battle prowess got it, then the difference between them and someone without canon would be massive. Even people with the same level of cultivation base would have battle prowess that was as different one from the other as heaven was from earth.

That was why Li Mengtu was willing to engage in a dao fight to the death with Xu Qing for that legacy. It was because having canon would place one at the absolute and ultimate peak of the Imperial Sovereign level.

Only other cultivators who also had canon would possibly stand against such a person. Anyone who didn’t have canon had a lower level of personhood, and would have no chance. That was also why there were three laws that governed canon.

One: Canon belonged to cultivators, and was a symbol of immortals.

Two: A conflict of canon versus canon was a process leading to destruction. Whichever canon was destroyed first would lead to death.

Three: As canon was known to be paramount, the only thing that could destroy it was canon or that which was equivalent to canon, godhood.

What was more, it didn’t really matter how many types of canon someone had. The specific number was linked to their personhood. That was even the case if someone commanded multiple types of canon. Multiple types of canon could only improve one’s battle prowess. But to reach higher levels, one had to push their canon toward completion.

All of these thoughts were running through Xu Qing’s mind. A moment later, he cleared his thoughts.

It’s time to leave.

He looked up, but did nothing else but examine the void in front of him. The void rippled, then a tempest sprang into being, spreading silently. In an instant, it engulfed the entire world of the scroll painting. Everything blurred and then disappeared.

When Xu Qing appeared, there was no scroll painting in front of him. Instead, there was a pill cauldron surrounded by burning flames. The fire went out. It could do no more harm.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the fire had a spirit, and that spirit simply couldn’t comprehend what Xu Qing was. All it could do was burn pointlessly.

Even the pill cauldron blurred within Xu Qing’s field of view, as if it didn’t even exist.

Xu Qing was standing in the minor world in the Li Clan, right in front of the wooden shrine hall. As he looked around he saw countless pasts and countless futures of this world. It was the same with everything, including the wooden building, and the calligraphy scroll.

Of great note... was that within the past of the wooden building’s time, he saw a person. That person was different from this world. He only had a past, not a present or a future. And even that past was blurry, as if it were in the middle of collapsing. He was a middle-aged man clad in a green, sleeveless garment, and he was positioned in front of a table in the wooden building. He had a writing brush in his hand. He seemed lost in thought, as if he wasn’t sure what to write.

“I’m not really sure how to write my dying words,” he said coolly, not bothering to look up from the table. “Since you came here through time, Fellow Daoist, can you help me out?”

Xu Qing was silent for a moment. He looked at this person’s crumbling past, and he saw Deep Earth. He saw Revered Ancient. And he saw who this person was. He sighed in his heart.[2]

The man in the green garment said nothing further.

After a while, Xu Qing spoke. “Like a pious guest, he searched for a temple that might not exist.”

Having said that, Xu Qing clasped hands and bowed. Then he looked away, and everything disappeared. The world was back to normal. Xu Qing looked up at the sky. Up there, space-time was in flux, unlike everything else in the area.

Before long, that area revealed the image of Li Mengtu of the past, coming to put the scroll painting in the pill cauldron. Xu Qing reached out, and the image turned into a stream of light that entered his hand. All of Li Mengtu’s life trajectories then became clear in Xu Qing’s mind. He followed one such trajectory and took a step forward.

The world melted, and the void became a road. He walked away, leaving no traces behind.

***

The entire minor world was silent.

However, after Xu Qing left, there was a sigh in the space-time that had once existed there.

Every generation, and in fact, every person, ends up searching for a different type of temple. Back when I left, I went my own way and walked my own path. I used to think I found what I was looking for here. But the reality is that I didn’t. I now see that I was not strong enough to walk my path. But now that he’s appeared, I have the feeling... that he is the temple.

The voice faded away. The calligraphy on the wall in the wooden building blurred and changed into something else. It was a single saying.

“I think I found it.”

The moment those words appeared, it was as if fate throughout the Fifth Star Ring stirred. However, the effects were not wide-spread. They only touched on the living members of the Li Clan. All of those people, including Li Mengtu, remembered the words in the calligraphy scroll in the ancestral shrine hall. But right now, those memories changed.

The aurora in the dome of heaven rippled. The eyes of the twelve heavenly inspectors glittered, and intangible threads spread out from them, as if they were seeking information.

Beyond them were the eleven immortal palaces. Nine were the same as always, but two of them glittered brightly as dazzling magical symbols formed in their vicinity.

Then a boundless voice spoke from high above.

“This space-time is already determined, and cannot be altered. But given the latent power of this canon, immortals cannot seek information from it.”

The twelve heavenly inspectors in the aurora bowed their heads, and the threads coming off them snapped.

After some consideration, the two shining immortal palaces chose to give up.

The calligraphy painting in the wooden building blurred again as the words went back to the way they were before. The memories of the members of the Li Clan also reverted to their previous state.

1. Godhood is a term that has not come up yet in this novel. It does have other real-life definitions, but I’ve previously translated this term as ‘godhood’ in xianxia. What’s more, it combines one of the characters from the term I’m rendering ‘personhood’ with the character for ‘god.’ So it fits in neatly with the established nomenclature of the novel so far. ☜

2. There were many commenters in Chinese whose speculations aligned exactly with my own. Quite a few people thought that this person is Lord Li from I Shall Seal the Heavens. For those of you who have read ISSTH, you might remember that Lord Li had powers related to time. What’s more, he kind of just disappeared from the ISSTH universe with little explanation. This has always stuck in my mind because A) I wondered about that whole thing and B) RWX specifically asked Er Gen about Lord Li. RWX mentioned a theory about what happened to him, and Er Gen gave a vague response that didn’t answer the question. Again, this is all speculation at this point! However, considering that we know the founder of the Li Clan came from “Deep Earth,” it certainly seems within the realm of possibility that Lord Li from ISSTH, whose surname is the same Li, could be this person. Of course, Li is the second most common Chinese surname, so there are lots of other people throughout all of Er Gen’s works who are surnamed Li, and even other clans that use the surname. So, again, this is all speculation. For all we know, this theory could be shot down in a few chapters, or a few dozen, or a few hundred. Or there could never be a clear explanation. I also know that Er Gen likes to leave some things unexplained to let the reader rely on their imagination to decide what’s going on. ☜