Baby with Daoist Monarch System

And, at that same moment.

The Dao Ruins suddenly lifted its head.

His chaotic eyes did not look at the disappearing teardrop, but instead, pierced through layers of time and space, penetrated the walls of the ”world of illusion,” and looked toward that deeper, more indescribable...

”Black Coast.”

There.

Sitting at the edge of darkness, upon the throne, was the eternally sleeping ”King.”

The eyelids that had been shut for countless eons seemed to slightly move.

As if a person dreaming a sweet dream was gently bitten by a pesky mosquito.

Though still not awake.

But already...

Disturbed.

The river of time lost its meaning here, the grand epic of eras shifting was but a weathered line on a stone wall. Endless darkness and deathly silence are the only themes here, even light cannot escape, swallowed by a more ancient, more fundamental ”rule.”

This is Gui Xu, the end of all realms, the graveyard of the Cosmos.

A wisp of consciousness, so weak it was nearly imperceptible, flickered like a candle in the wind in this eternal stillness for countless chaos years.

”Who am... I?”

The question, like a stone cast into the Dead Sea, aroused no ripples. The master of the consciousness, a broken body indistinguishable in form, quietly suspended in the void. His body was no longer flesh but like an ancient divine statue eroded by time, full of cracks, from which no blood but a gray, end-tinged dust oozed.

”Ruins of Forgetfulness... Doomsday Dust...”

More fragments of memory emerged, carrying a piercing chill. He remembered the name of this dust. It was neither substance nor energy but an ”infection” at the level of information, a virus aimed at annihilating ”existence” itself. It would erode everything, from the most basic particles to the most profound Dao Principles, erasing their ”concepts” from the Cosmos’s foundational logic, returning them to true ”nothingness.”

He was the prisoner at the deepest part of this ”Ruins of Forgetfulness.”

”Xu... Ran...”

When the name resounded in the depths of consciousness, the broken body trembled violently. A strand of barely perceivable golden light burst forth from the deepest part of his brow, like the first light of creation, immediately dispelling the gray dust in the surrounding inch of space.

Xu Ran!

The name seemed to contain supreme power, the key to an ancient covenant. As the name returned, the flood of sealed memories broke through the dam with a sudden burst.

He remembered.

He was not a creature of this era, nor entirely a product of this Cosmos. He was a ”Guardian,” a remnant from a past great annihilation era, surviving through the Cosmos’s cycles of life and death. His mission was originally to guide the Dao Principles of this newborn Cosmos toward true Perfection and Eternity.

However, he failed.

An unforeseen ”pollution” erupted from the source of the Cosmos. It was no celestial calamity but... a human disaster. An unknowable, indescribable horror descended from beyond dimensions, sowing the seeds of ”Ruins of Forgetfulness” throughout the Cosmos.

As the nominal ”Fire Holder” of the Cosmos’s Dao Principles, he was the first to bear its brunt. To protect this Cosmos from being instantly assimilated and erased, he used his body as a cauldron, drawing ten thousand Dao as fuel, attempting to refine this ”Doomsday Dust.”

The result was pollution. His Sacred Body, that ”Ten Thousand Dao Furnace” cast from supreme Dao Principles and Immortal Divine Gold, shattered inch by inch in the struggle, becoming the wreckage now parasitized by forgotten dust. His Primordial Spirit was fragmented into billions, suppressed within every particle of his body, enduring eternal obliteration and forgetfulness.

He became this Cosmos’s greatest ”source of pollution.”

To prevent the spread of his ”pollution,” his remaining will exiled himself to this place of Gui Xu, falling into endless sleep and forgetfulness.

Era after era...

The once flourishing sea of stars, those radiant civilizations he witnessed being born, those extraordinarily talented Immortal Emperors and Heavenly Lords, have likely turned to historical dust, perhaps not even leaving dust behind.

”The Cosmos... is dying.”

Xu Ran’s consciousness swept beyond Gui Xu. He could ”see” that the borders of the Cosmos were contracting, stars’ light dimming and fathomless, like the gaze of a dying person. Chains of law snapped one by one, and the structure of time and space showed irreversible folds and collapses. The entire Cosmos, like a painting eroded by ”Ruins of Forgetfulness,” was, from the edges, little by little, turning gray.

The spread of ”Doomsday Dust” did not stop after he fell asleep but only slowed. Now, it had corroded to the origin of the Cosmos, poised for final ”reckoning.”

No! It cannot end like this!

The will of Xu Ran, silent for billions of years, erupted with unprecedented fury and unwillingness. He had once vowed, to protect this world!

”Ran!”

He roared, a single syllable, yet it resonated with ten thousand Dao. The golden light on his brow suddenly blazed, like a miniature sun, arduously purifying the ”Doomsday Dust” within his body.

Gray dust and brilliant golden light engaged in a fierce tug-of-war within his broken body. Every inch of flesh, every particle, became a battlefield. It was the direct confrontation between ”existence” and ”nothingness.”

The process was painful beyond words. Each purification felt like tearing his soul from its origins then reassembling it. Yet he had no retreat.

It was unclear how long had passed, perhaps a moment, perhaps ten thousand years.

When the golden light at his brow finally spread to his heart, a deep sound like the creation of the world exploded within his body.

”Pfft!”

A mouthful of gray ”blood” was spat out by him. This blood did not disperse but coagulated in the void into a savage creature made of pure deathly silence and concepts of end, silently roaring, then swallowed entirely by the darkness of Gui Xu.

Xu Ran’s consciousness finally reclaimed control of the core of his body.

He slowly opened his eyes.

What kind of eyes were those?

In the left eye were cosmic births and deaths, the illusion of eras shifting, star rivers shining, all things flourishing. While in the right eye was the dead silence, the collapse of the Dao, everything falling to final deathly silence. One life, one death, one glory, one decay, forming a perfect cycle in his eyes.

Just the act of opening his eyes caused ripples in the void around him.

”The Sacred Body is destroyed, the Dao Foundation is incomplete... power, not even one billionth of its peak.” Xu Ran whispered, his voice hoarse and parched, like two rusty metals rubbing against each other.

He introspected his body. The once ”Ten Thousand Dao Furnace Holy Body” now left only an empty shell, its network of laws almost entirely shattered, its divine source gnawed into a thousand wounds by ”Doomsday Dust.”

To combat the impending great annihilation, to find the traces of the mastermind, with this body would be but a fool’s dream.

He must reshape the Sacred Body!

This undertaking, any Cultivator would see as an impossible feat. The Sacred Body is the ultimate manifestation of a cultivator’s life’s Dao Fruit, once destroyed, it signifies the end of the Dao path.

But Xu Ran was different. His Sacred Body was already a microcosm of the Cosmos’s ten thousand Dao. As long as this Cosmos hasn’t completely perished, he has a chance to start anew.

”To reshape the Sacred Body, the heavens and earth must be a furnace, the ten thousand Dao as materials...”

Xu Ran’s gaze deepened, piercing through Gui Xu’s barrier, looking at the dying Cosmos.

”Since the Cosmos will die, then... take its bones to reforge my immortal body!”

His plan was maddening in the extreme. What he intended was not to seek some heaven’s material treasures, but to use this dying Cosmos itself as his ”medicine”!

”The first step, reforging the backbone.”