Ascending the Steps
The moment Yao Qing's voice echoed in the sky above the Red Dust Domain, the world became quiet.
The azure Divine Path Star hung in the firmament, and countless phantoms of great figures stared at the end of the Divine Path... There, Yao Qing's figure stood tall and steadfast. In front of him was a patch of nothingness.
He was waiting for the Ancient and Present Cosmos to give a response; he was waiting for the ninth step.
The next moment, the scene before Yao Qing's eyes changed.
In the nothingness, it seemed something was descending. It had no physical body, yet it was omnipresent... The moment it descended, a massive amount of information flooded into Yao Qing's mind.
His consciousness seemed to cross time and space. He witnessed with his own eyes the first human nurtured in nature, witnessed a tribe struggling to survive under the washing of time... When they polished branches into sharp spikes for the first time, when they carved crooked patterns on rocks for the first time, when they ignited flames at the entrance of a cave for the first time, a deafening thunderclap exploded beside Yao Qing's ears!
From that moment on, the cornerstone of human civilization took deep root in the turbulent years. The edges of the long river of time brushed past Yao Qing's cheek. He saw days and nights like light and shadows sweeping through the gaps of swaying leaves, crazily flickering. Human civilization was rapidly piling up in units of thousands of years.
More and more symbols were engraved on stones; scattered tribes intertwined into towns, rising from the ground along the riverbanks; bright Fabric dotted the bustling crowds; some people danced joyfully around high-stacked bonfires; some people smeared dripping wounds with herbs; some people entertained themselves with stone dice carved with different numbers of round holes...
In the eyes of others, Yao Qing was still standing on the eighth step, with empty nothingness before his eyes;
But in his own eyes, he was already standing before the boundless and vast tower of civilization...
He was as tiny as an ant.
"Is this... the Ancient and Present Cosmos?" Yao Qing muttered to himself.
The era was changing, and civilization was still continuously piling up. He saw neon lights flickering briefly in the darkness, then quickly dying out and entering nothingness. After the Great Cataclysm, came the birth of the Human Domains... He saw the Red Dust.
Three hundred years was an unreachable shore of time for humans, but in front of human civilization, it was merely a flick of the fingers.
He saw the fake Red Dust Domain rise from the ground in the Nuclear Ruins. Millions of people thrived and reproduced in the Scroll. The old order was gradually replaced, and a new order slowly generated... Millions of people, to the fate of humanity, was just an extremely fine branch, but the fate of this branch had indeed been changed because of Yao Qing.
The existence of the Red Dust Domain was not perfect. Beneath the bustling and beautiful surface, it nourished sins and evils, but that was not Yao Qing's or anyone's fault...
Ultimately, this was Human Nature itself.
Human Nature was born earlier than human civilization; it was a mark branded into human genes that could not be modified. The prosperity and magnificence of human civilization largely originated from Human Nature, but where there is light, there is destined to be darkness. The evil of Human Nature would always exist in any era and any civilization. It might be restrained by extremely strict laws, but it could never disappear.
If it weren't for the Floating Life Painting established by Yao Qing, the dark side of Human Nature nourished in the despair of the Nuclear Ruins would only be more brutal and more rampant.
Art had indeed changed the era.
The Aura of the Ancient and Present Cosmos slowly receded from around Yao Qing, and that towering tower of human civilization also gradually faded in his vision... But at the same time, the ninth step was slowly outlined in the nothingness in front of Yao Qing.
That was the symbol of human civilization acknowledging Yao Qing; that was the final step the Ancient and Present Cosmos sent out for him...
Heaven and Earth Bestowing a Position!!
"...He succeeded??" Seeing this, the Lord of Wuji's pupils abruptly contracted!
The moment he saw this step appear, Yao Qing's aged face finally outlined a faint smile.
This smile was simple and pure. That once ignorant teenager who was scolded as a Sissy Yao had finally stepped over all the wind and waves to witness the clouds part and the sky clear... The moment he truly stood before the ninth step, he seemed to turn back into that teenager again.
"It can be considered, having no regrets in this life."
Yao Qing closed his eyes, took a deep breath, raised his foot, and gently landed on the ninth step...
The next moment, the loud noise of ascending the step was like the tolling of a great bell, resounding through the human world!!
...
Thief Path Ancient Vault.
Gray clouds flowed beneath the hollow firmament.
On the desolate and deathly still earth, a magnificent temple in European medieval style stood tall. Countless treasures and glazed floor-to-ceiling windows refracted light, like the only dazzling and brilliant pearl in the Gray Realm, shining brightly.
Through the colorful glazed windows, tens of millions of cultural treasures could be seen displayed in the temple... mottled and rusty bronze weapons, a jewel-encrusted Ming Dynasty gold tripod, Louis XV's Saint-Germain soup tureen, an Indian crown inlaid with eleven Colombian emeralds, a Da Vinci manuscript with yellowing pages, a perfectly intact classic Ferrari 250LM...
These treasures from different eras and different regions gathered here across time and space. It was as if an invisible giant hand had stolen the most precious things of every civilization from the years and treasured them in this magnificent and grand temple.
And at this time, in the deepest part of the temple, an extremely oppressive silver throne silently towered above all the treasures.
"Huh..."
In the deathly still temple, a soft sound of surprise suddenly rang out. A figure on the silver throne slowly opened his eyes.
That was a man wearing a British-style white shirt and a gray gentleman's vest. Gold-carved buttons were meticulously arranged in front of his chest, and his black slightly curly long hair was draped behind his ears, like a noble walking out from the European Middle Ages.
His facial features were three-dimensional, and his pupils were light blue. Although he had the contour characteristics of a Westerner, he also retained the softness of an Easterner's face, like a mixed-race person.
"Heaven and Earth Bestowing a Position huh... To think that in this era, the Path of the Arts can still produce a Demigod."
He propped his head with one hand, looking in a certain direction in the nothingness with great interest. The other hand produced an ancient Roman Aureus gold coin from nowhere, nimbly flipping and playing with it on his slender fingertips.
"The Path of the Arts is quite interesting. Borrowing it to play with for a couple of days wouldn't be bad either..."
His eyebrows slightly rose. With a flick of his fingertip, that gold coin flipped and flew into the sky. At the same time, his slender palm raised, seemingly wanting to grab something in the nothingness... But the next moment, his fingertips stopped in mid-air.
As if he discovered something, his eyebrows furrowed slightly.
Ding-a-ling——
The Aureus gold coin fell to the ground, making a crisp sound. After flipping twice, it lay motionless on the ground.
"Seeing as you're so pitiful, I won't steal from you this time..." He shook his head with some regret.
"I thought there would be one more interesting guy in the world... What a pity."