A Desolate Ghost

Yaan's premonitions of the coming catastrophes and his involvement in these events was becoming increasingly clear with each successive disaster. It seemed that as the world broke down and the Heavenly Dao's limitations loosened further, he was able to sense the fate surrounding his future quite clearly.

At least, he could sense the major fates that would involve him, such as this one.

As expected, it all ended in the Neutral Star System.

It was just as the God of Chaos had deduced, based on Yaan's premonitions which surpassed the scope of the old man's probability deductions. The God of Chaos understood that given such circumstances, the only possibility, was that Yaan would be the one to decide how this all ended.

Yaan had always known that the Sage would be in the middle of everything, too many paths of fate either started or ended with her. And so, his decision was simple - just as the Sage had used him in the past, he would use the Sage to bring an end to this period of his life.

It was time to take his leave, but not just yet. He needed to wait for just a few more seconds…

He could feel Defiance's gaze tearing into his back, but perhaps the man understood something, because he didn't continue to attack.

As soon as the Primordial Sage vanished, the world entered a state that could only be described as apocalyptic.

Yaan unhurriedly walked into the distance, keeping an eye on the collapsing net of destruction, until he finally saw what he was looking for. He grabbed the chain of fate and yanked hard, assisting the individual with their escape.

When a man was drowning, they would always grab an offered hand without caring to look first.

Shi tumbled through space weakly, thrust forth uncontrollably by her own implosion as the net of destruction suddenly collapsed without any warning. At the same time, she, and every other living being in the world, suffered from a splitting headache, as if something that had always supported their consciousness had suddenly been ripped away from them.

Around half of the remaining immortals died, purely due to the mental impact that resulted from the Sage Plane simply…vanishing.

Shi was exhausted. She had barely readjusted to controlling a normal body, and her mind was a mess - an even bigger mess than usual. By the time she realised that she was holding a familiar looking red chain, it was already too late.

Yaan felt like now was a good time to test his recently theorised fate-based movement technique. The other party had already taken the bait, grabbing hold of their shared chain of fate. In these circumstances, the chance of success was much higher.

"Switching Fates."

He took one step, and Shi, having already fallen into the trap the moment she grabbed the chain and allowed it to drag her, found that she couldn't control her body at all, and she was even forced to take an equal but opposite step to Yaan. Between the two of them, they took two steps of fate, passing each other silently, before each exiting from the passage of fate, landing exactly where the other had just been.

"Defiance, please fight Shi to your heart's content; you hate both her and her Origin Fate, making her the more suitable opponent. I've had enough of this Era, I will only appear again if something unexpected occurs."

Yaan's words entered Shi and Defiance's ears - this was a time-delayed message that he left behind for them moments before suddenly leaving.

Shi immediately turned pale, while Defiance roared with laughter.

He wasn't mad at Yaan, but instead very pleased. Indeed, between Yaan and Shi, he was far more interested in killing Shi! Since Yaan had left the scene and even brought Shi to his doorstep as a replacement, Defiance didn't hesitate to drop his battle with Yaan, instantly changing his target to Shi.

Yaan and Defiance actually had no personal grudge between them, so they could settle their differences so long as a reasonable solution was provided. Yaan knew that Defiance had never actually cared about killing him personally, Defiance was just targeting his Origin Fate, so he just needed to provide someone else with this same 'Origin Fate'.

Unfortunately, Yaan ended up exactly where Shi had been trying to escape from moments ago.

Yaan stared at the approaching tsunami of destruction expressionlessly.

He looked up, and saw that the night sky was quite literally collapsing, with every star in the Divine Star System falling down towards the other star systems, the sun, the moon and the continent.

When the Sage Plane vanished, countless beings who cultivated Psyche Power to any degree suffered dreadfully.

Many weaker immortals couldn't withstand the impact to their minds and died on the spot, despite having never touched Psyche Cultivation in their lives.

The influence of the Sage Plane was too terrifying, Yaan understood this better than anyone else now that the Primordial Sage had left the Era.

Yaan's Sea of Consciousness was an illusion, however, he also possessed an illusory Divine Step Sea of Consciousness…

He managed to avoid the backlash until now thanks to his mind's illusory nature, but he could feel the approach of a fatal calamity.

With the Sage's departure, all forms of mental cultivation had lost their viability. She was the progenitor of mental cultivation, but she was also the source of its operation. Without the Primordial Sage and her Sage Plane…Psyche Cultivation could not exist.

"As expected, I must let go of my Divine Step Psyche Cultivation. This wave of destruction will also reach me within the next 15 seconds, I can't outrun it, nor can I safely pass through it, even with my Two Steps of Fate travel. And now, even the stars are falling. The Evil God will likely make his move soon, and Defiance will inevitably chase Shi into the golden crack, initiating the Chaos Era invasion. I see…nothing lost, nothing gained…if I wish to step out of this futile game, I must let go of all powers which force me to remain a player…"

He didn't even need to think about it. With a smile, Yaan shifted to the side, separating his two bodies.

His Dao Body stared at his cultivation base body and they both smiled, understanding that this might seem like an extreme and hasty decision to make, but in reality, this was necessary for his path. If he could make this decision with a heart free from doubt, he would prove his true resolve to himself; his resolve to forever walk the path of his own dao of fate.

He followed the dao path, this was Yaan's self-created path, and it had always served him well. Hi true path was not that of a Qi refiner, a body temper, a soul cultivator, or a psyche cultivator.

The one truth that he cultivated, was his own dao. His dao, his will, his fate - his dao heart of fate. This was what he cultivated, and everything else…was completely expendable.

"Go, sacrifice yourself. I suggest targeting Injustice, she is weak in her current state, we can use this to hinder the Evil God." Yaan's dao body spoke calmly. The other body with golden eyes and a robe inscribed with the four symbols of the four cultivation bases nodded.

They were the same person; whichever one lived and whichever one died was only a matter of practicality, there was nothing else to it.

The truth was, Yaan needed to discard his psyche cultivation regardless - he could probably hold on for at most another few minutes before his illusory Divine Step Sea of Consciousness imploded due to the Sage's departure.

When the Sage departed, she not only took the entire Sage Plane…she didn't bother disconnecting the formations within the Sage Plane from the myriad living beings' minds. For divinities, this wasn't a concern…for Yaan, the issue was that she had actually removed the concept of 'psyche cultivation' itself from the 2nd Origin Era…

The Primordial Sage was born when the first Primordial Demon had their first thought, and from that starting point, she managed to create psyche cultivation. Without the Primordial Sage, without the Sage Plane which overlapped with the world…there could be no psyche path.

Yaan also realised that Defiance was correct before, when he warned that strengths could also become weaknesses. So long as he possessed his Divine Step body tempering, soul cultivation and Qi refining cultivation bases, he could not evade this massive universe-scale disaster, he could only face it head on.

The more tangible power he clung onto, the more he would be forced to fight back against the tangible forces of the world. In the past, he wouldn't have minded it, he would even take it as a challenge and an opportunity to refine his dao…but now?

Yaan didn't care anymore. Strength could be defined in many ways. Whilst others would be fighting for their lives with all their powerful divine spells and treasures and cultivations, Yaan had decided to attain a different strength - the strength of not needing to fight at all.

Yaan sighed gently as his cultivation base clone locked onto Injustice's thread of fate and took two steps.

Moments later, he lost his connection with his cultivation base body.

Just like that, his clone with the strength of an Empyrean had attacked a dazed Deity in a deliberate suicide attack. He even did so whilst concealing the truth of his body, making it look like a genuine destruction of his complete self. This would definitely confuse the divine world.

Strangely, Yaan did not feel like he had lost anything. That clone of his had been created to strengthen himself to face the Divine world, and to comprehend the four cultivation paths and their strengths in the 2nd Origin Era. Now, after understanding the correct path for his cultivation to progress beyond the limits of this world, the part that bound him to this Era and its affairs, was disposed of.

In the end, he only trusted his own dao.

As expected, the unwavering decision to destroy his own Empyrean-strength clone like that, without a second thought or a single trace of doubt, allowed his dao to take another step onwards. He could clearly feel the Origin Step boundary, to the extent that now, Yaan could actually attempt the Origin Ascension whenever he chose to do so.

Perhaps this new, higher perspective of his, was why he had started seeing things differently. When he eventually stepped out of the 2nd Origin Era and entered the vast world of Chaos, he couldn't take any clones, treasures, or anything at all with him, aside from his truest core self and his Dao Treasure. Maybe, taking this chance to separate himself from all but his own dao heart, was his way of adjusting his mindset and preparing himself for the major change in his life that was soon to come.

After all, if what Defiance said was true, the Chaos was a lonely place, a desolate world, empty and unforgiving, where one would truly come to learn the meaning of the world 'solitude'.

Or maybe, staring into the Void for 10,000 years had caused Yaan to gain something, or perhaps lose something. Right now, he wasn't sure which it was, nor which would be preferable, if it even mattered to begin with.

Yaan sat down, his robe shimmering with crimson aura and his red eyes glimmering with calm killing intent, as a giant wave of imposing darkness approached. He was facing the imploding net of destruction, the wave of inescapable death that left countless divinities panicking, all across the cosmos. The calamity this time…was definitely going to take many lives.

As Yaan sat there, he looked at the wave of destruction and lightly shook his head. Even as the wave slammed into him and he was submerged into a dense, dark, destructive realm, he was unmoved and didn't so much as react.

Discarding his reliance on cultivation had also removed the flaws within his dao. Previously, an extremely powerful attack of this magnitude would definitely harm him, and could very well threaten the absolute destruction of his life…

But now?

His dao was the dao of fate, his body was an illusion, and he defined the truth of his world with each step that he walked. A mere universe level extinction event was no different than a spark flying off a flint - there was no will, no intent behind it, it was simply power moving according to the principles of natural dao.

Unless someone attacked him with their true will, creating real and unmistakeable intent to harm, then no power in this world could so much as touch him.

As the darkness continued to pour over him, Yaan couch vaguely feel divine auras being extinguished throughout the world, like bright stars in the night sky, fading until they were as weak as flickering candles, before finally, losing their light and flame.

Yaan activated Conceal Truth, removing all traces of his existence from the world with the help of the colossal wave of destruction.

As he sat there, Yaan's only goal was to become a ghost of a being. He would become the living embodiment of observation itself, bearing testament to the final efforts of this world as the last living beings fought desperately, clinging to their waning lives.

Even his chains of karma and fate were destroyed, something that he facilitated by using his Define Truth Dao Spell to re-define all threads of karma and fate connected to himself, changing their truth to the following:

'My karma does not exist, never has existed and never will exist.'.

Even when he altered reality, changing the world's truth such that he had never formed any karma or developed any fate…even when everyone else, the world, and even the Heavenly Dao, all 'forgot' about him…Yaan's own understanding of fate made it such that he could not redefine the truth to the extent that he forgot himself.

This proved that his redefining ability was still imperfect.

Anyway, he seriously doubted that simply removing his karma and fate would be enough to make Defiance, and probably certain others, truly forget him…

But what he could achieve, was to make the world 'forget about him until he returned'. This meant, for those more powerful beings whose memories couldn't be so easily manipulated, although he couldn't force them to totally forget him, he could push his existence to the farthest depths of their minds, leaving those memories untouched until they met again.

So long as he could conceal himself properly, he would remain a ghost until the end of the 2nd Origin Era.

After the wave of destruction swept over him, not even the hem of Yaan's robe had been damaged. He used the destructive power to wash away all traces of his karma and fate, becoming an entity that even the Heavenly Dao could not observe.

Yaan sat atop the surface of the black sun, the crimson flames of which had been extinguished, thrusting the world into perpetual darkness. He looked out across the world with a still heart, and bore witness to the final futile struggles of all living beings, as they desperately fought to survive beyond the world's end.