The fake prince was exposed at the beginning, and I took office as emperor on the spot

Chapter 227 Fate's Trick (Three-in-One)

Prajna Lotus Moon never imagined that the person she had waited five hundred years to revive had actually been jokingly hanging around in front of her all this time.

The biggest obstacle she encountered on her journey to collect the three resurrection items was Gu Fangchen.

Originally, the "Lotus in the Womb" was taken away by the reincarnation of the Peacock Saintess. As long as her reincarnation is found, it can naturally be retrieved again.

The Peacock Clan reincarnates every five hundred years. While managing the Tara Sect's influence, Prajna Lotus Moon waited for five hundred years before finally sensing the location of her reincarnation. That's why she secretly went to Huangtian City.

That's why we stopped at Baima Temple midway and met Gu Fangchen.

As a result, the "lotus hidden in the womb" in Gu Lianxian's body inexplicably became fake, and now it has moved to Gu Fangchen's body...

Gu Fangchen was not polite at all, using this as leverage to repeatedly threaten her.

In Prajna Lotus Moon's view, this guy was naturally the biggest enemy on her path to resurrecting that person.

Not to mention, the "Wangyin Sundial" and the "Boundless Spring" are now in Gu Fangchen's hands.

Although Gu Fangchen proposed cooperation, in reality, it was nothing more than an attempt to use her to control the Western Regions; it was a completely coercive exchange of interests.

Prajna Lotus Moon wasn't initially so eager to kill Gu Fangchen, until he revealed her true identity.

This is her biggest secret, and the foundation upon which she stands.

Being controlled by someone like Gu Fangchen means that in the future, Prajna Lotus Moon will be completely controlled by him and obey his orders.

This is something that Prajna Lotus Moon cannot accept.

Especially considering how "humiliated" Gu Fangchen was.

However, when Prajna Lotus Moon looked back now, she realized that everything Gu Fangchen had done seemed to be a way of gradually confirming her identity and wanting to acknowledge her as her...

In particular, she remembered that when Gu Fangchen first met her, she was in the guise of Tan Yuan, the "possessed old monster".

If that's the case, it would explain why she couldn't find Gu Fangchen's soul, but after five hundred years, he was able to possess her complete memories and be reborn.

He was likely chosen by Tan Yuan to become one of them.

Five hundred years later, the petite and delicate girl in his memory had become the high and mighty Tara saintess, and he naturally could not recognize her.

Especially when Gu Fangchen died, his adopted daughter was still a mortal who needed him to protect her with all his might.

Who could possibly associate her with a second-rank cultivator?
Until now, perhaps Gu Fangchen discovered the clues, or perhaps he felt a sense of familiarity.

He decided to acknowledge his Mingzhu'er, but there had been conflicts before, and he could no longer simply face the current Prajna Lianyue as the former captain.

That's why Gu Fangchen said, "Let's have a long talk all night after everything is over."

Just like the shock Prajna Lotus Moon felt upon learning the truth, he also needed time to process everything.

But before he could be recognized, he died once again in front of his beloved daughter.

"Tick! Tick!"

Prajna Lotus Moon's tears burst forth like a dam breaking. Her veil had been blown away by the fierce wind, and her crystal-clear blue eyes were brimming with tears and mist, constantly overflowing.

Like tiny pearls falling from a broken string onto the stone in my hand, they clattered and pattered.

The dignified second-rank Heavenly Realm Saintess of the Tara Sect stood in the center of the kingdom she had once destroyed, and at this moment she cried like a helpless little girl.

“Gu Fangchen… Father… You liar… Why didn’t you say so sooner… You promised you would always find me…”

She wept, desperately wiping away her tears, while behind her appeared the pale image of Tara.

The Dharma image stands tall and upright, silent and still.

Reach out your hand, and a giant golden lotus flower blooms.

The golden lotus, supporting the shattering "Past Cause Sundial," floated into the air, its petals reaching to the heavens and covering the entire "Boundless Spring."

Golden inscriptions detached from the "Heavenly Sundial" and spread along the lotus petals, transforming into countless red lines of cause and effect.

These countless causal lines intertwine and interweave, enough to span the heavens and the earth.

The red threads followed the lotus petals, gathered at the base of the lotus, twisted into a bundle, and formed a root resembling a pillar.

The lotus root, composed of causal threads, plunges into the "Boundless Spring" river, drawing it out.

"Wow..."

The ceaseless river flows upstream towards the sky, becoming "nourishment" for this lotus flower.

In the river, the phantom of time appears and disappears, changing rapidly.

Even the life of an ordinary person from five hundred years ago can be clearly seen in this river and can be easily located.

Moreover, Gu Fangchen had just died.

It's fresh and piping hot.

When he died, his body happened to be in the "Boundless Spring," so the "Lotus Treasury in the Womb" on his body no longer needed to be taken out separately.

Thus, "Lotus in the Womb", "Sundial of Past Causes", and "Boundless Spring" all come together.

This is the method of resurrection.

Prajna Lotus Moon had searched for these three things for five hundred years, and they were all used on Gu Fangchen.

Prajna Lotus Moon, her face streaked with tears, took a deep breath, raised her head, opened her arms, and her expression became incredibly resolute.

The Dharma image behind her made the same movement.

When the "Boundless Spring" was completely drained, leaving only a dried-up riverbed, the countless red threads of cause and effect, carrying the river water, rolled back to the center of the lotus.

"Father... wait for me!"

Prajna Lotus Moon gritted her teeth, flew into the air, circulated all her spiritual power, let out a low shout, and brought her arms together in the middle.

"Om-"

Suddenly, an eye opened on her forehead and in the center of her palms.

"Boom——"

The enormous image of Tara above opened its eyes, its arms supporting lotus petals as it pressed down toward the center.

The Mother of Salvation has seven eyes, which can see the Buddha lands in the ten directions and the sentient beings in the six realms.

She also saw the concept of cause and effect, and the cycle of reincarnation.

Therefore, only Prajna Lotus Moon can perform this resurrection technique.

Others, upon witnessing this immeasurable cause and effect, would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and would go insane on the spot.

Not to mention finding the person you need to resurrect among the countless causes and effects in the Ganges River.

This lotus flower, bearing immeasurable karma, represents the turning of time, and is slowly closed by the Prajna Lotus Moon.

Flowers bloom without regret, but youth never returns.

To reverse the blooming of flowers is to reverse time itself.

As the lotus closed inward, the power of time leaked out, and the riverbed at the bottom suddenly sank and broke. The remaining power, like an invisible wind, swept across the entire Garuda.

Wherever the wind blows, all flames are extinguished, and all existence is reversed.

Time flows backward at this moment.

The surrounding ruins were all twisted and distorted by the winds of time, and then transformed from their original broken state to a magnificent and resplendent appearance in the blink of an eye.

The bricks and rubble have been returned to their original positions, as if we have returned to five hundred years ago.

The enormous city is a miracle in the desert, like an eternal giant standing in the center.

Shady trees provide shade, and prosperity remains.

Only the scattered bones and bloodstains silently tell the story of what happened back then.

……

In the center of the desert, an invisible spherical force field has formed. On the flat sand dunes, a hemispherical depression has appeared, and at the very center, a black dot has emerged.

The formation that originally concealed Garuda was completely torn apart.

The black dot rapidly expanded, revealing the current appearance of the ancient desert kingdom that had vanished five hundred years ago.

King Mori's expression changed as if he sensed something. He looked up towards the desert and saw the magnificent city. His expression changed, and he took a deep breath.

"Is Garuda... truly about to be born?"

He walked out of the palace and saw the crowd below. They were first shocked, then overjoyed. Immediately, some people cheered and knelt down to kowtow in worship.

Garuda is a sacred place in their hearts, and now that it has reappeared, it is still as magnificent as ever, perfectly matching the ancient legend.

If this isn't a miracle, what is?

When the enormous lotus flower came into view, King Mori let out a long sigh.

He knew that from this moment on, Prajna Lotus Moon would become the rightful saintess of Vatuma.

……

"Boom..."

The lotus petals closed inward, finally forming a bud, just a hair's breadth away from closing completely.

In mid-air, Prajna Lotus Moon gritted her teeth, her arms trembling, and blood tears flowed from all seven eyes, including the Dharma Image. Her face was covered in a mixture of blood and tears, making her look extremely disheveled.

And that endless power of time continues to leak out.

The object being blown about naturally included Prajna Lotus Moon herself.

To ensure Gu Fangchen's complete demise, Luo Song's method of suicide was extremely ruthless, annihilating both his soul and body.

The person Prajna Lotus Moon originally intended to revive was an ordinary person who had already been crushed into dust in the cycle of reincarnation.

Now, the goal is to resurrect a cultivator whose body and soul have been destroyed.

The difficulty is actually only higher, not lower.

But Prajna Lotus Moon could not give up at this moment. She channeled her energy again, and the eyes on her forehead and palms burst open instantly, gushing out a large amount of blood that stained her arms and cheeks red.

"Well!"

She groaned, overwhelmed by excruciating pain that was beyond her endurance, causing her to tremble violently.

But she kept staring intently at the flower bud.

Until the last crack closed, the lotus was wrapped by the red thread of cause and effect, turning into a red cocoon.

Faxiang clasped his hands together, gently cradling the lotus cocoon in his arms.

"Phew... It worked!"

Prajna Lotus Moon was overjoyed and breathed a sigh of relief.

Her body swayed, her vision blurred, and she almost fell, but she managed to swallow a few more pills to keep herself conscious.

Prajna Lotus Moon flew forward, carefully placing her palm on the lotus cocoon. Her eyes were glazed, and she pressed her cheek against it as well. Feeling the faint heartbeat within the lotus cocoon, she revealed a sickly yet gentle smile.

She murmured softly:

“Father…I’ve finally waited for this day.”

……

What does death feel like?
Gu Fangchen can now be said to have a lot of authority to speak on this matter.

He could even emulate Wu Jing's questioning—"I've died, have you ever died?"

He had assumed that he would be resurrected by Prajna Lotus Moon the moment he opened his eyes, and that he would see an unfamiliar ceiling or something like that.

After all, this time he didn't fake his death; he truly exchanged karma with Luo Song, and his body and soul were annihilated. —That's how it should have been.

But the situation was completely different from what he had imagined.

Gu Fangchen looked up, blinked, and saw a semi-trailer truck parked in front of her.

Yes, a semi-trailer truck.

It looks very familiar.

To this day, he can still clearly remember what the front of the car looked like.

The impact of that truck suddenly crashing into the third floor was so immense that it's unforgettable.

Before him stood a shattered wall, a blinding light, and a computer smashed to pieces.

Gu Fangchen sat in her gaming chair, with an overturned thermos cup beside her.

He slid back a step, tilted his head, and saw the water that had spilled from the thermos cup frozen in mid-air, each droplet distinct and motionless.

"All right……"

"Now we can be sure that this is an illusion."

Gu Fangchen took a deep breath, stood up from her chair, and looked at the truck in front of her.

The truck crashed through walls and windows, getting stuck in mid-air, with the highway right outside, which explains where it came from.

However, there was no driver in the truck's driver's seat.

Gu Fangchen opened the car door, checked it, and confirmed that there was no one inside.

He squinted:
"That's quite a generous gift."

“This so-called Honglu Company must have the involvement of the old man known as ‘Master Hengchang’.”

However, his relationship with this illusion remains very mysterious.

"If you die and return here, does this place actually exist, or does it not exist?"

Gu Fangchen muttered to herself, walked around the room, and looked at herself in the mirror in the bathroom.

But here, he looks the same both inside and outside the mirror.

Gu Fangchen looked at herself in the mirror and touched her face.

Actually, the question should be... whether he himself exists or not.

This doesn't mean he started thinking about any philosophy of life, but rather that it's clear that when a person dies, their consciousness should also be annihilated.

But now, he has returned to the "illusion".

Add to that the "Honglu Company," which can't be found and seems to exist in the world.

Gu Fangchen had a guess in her mind.

"I may not exist in the current time and space, but have simply projected my consciousness onto a certain body."

Only in this way can the current phenomenon be explained.

This means that he didn't actually die at all; his consciousness was just jumping between two spaces, like a dream, jumping from one dream to another.

However, it is clear that dying in a dream does not mean that the person dreaming is dead.

Gu Fangchen thought for a moment, then walked out the door.

The whole world seemed to freeze at that moment, the instant he "traveled through time," yet the expressions of every passerby were so vivid.

This doesn't feel like an "illusion" at all; it's a completely real world.

Gu Fangchen raised her head and squinted at the sky.

He tried to fly... and then he actually took flight.

As Gu Fangchen's thoughts raced, his cultivation level returned, but when he tried to imagine breaking through his current realm, he couldn't.

“My cultivation level is still the same… This means that the formation of this ‘illusion’ is not entirely due to my own subjective consciousness.”

This is an objectively existing space.

Gu Fangchen found a high-rise building to sit down, looked down at everything below, stroked her chin, and fell into deep thought.

He searched around but still couldn't find the "Honglu Company," which meant that the thing didn't exist in this space.

That means they must be in another world.

The only thing that can be associated with the word "furnace" is the mysterious "Great World of Furnaces".

Before the ancient Zhou Dynasty, that era was completely lost to history.

At the same time, it is also the era from which "Master Hengchang" and "Immortal of War" truly originated.

Now, from the words of the "Soldier God," we can know that in that era, the first rank was called "attaining the Dao," and there should be an even higher realm above the first rank.

Just like the scene Gu Fangchen once saw, this old man, "Master Hengchang," is capable of creating another world at will!

The Nine Netherworlds and the Yellow Springs are the cycle of reincarnation he created.

After reaching the ancient Zhou Dynasty, the first rank was the limit, and no higher realm appeared.

In the present day, Xie Qian doesn't even have the power to control time and space, let alone what he has now.

If the "Six Star Lords" want to control cause and effect, they have to painstakingly divide themselves into six parts and then reincarnate for an unknown period of time.

So, this gap might mean that someone has erased this realm.

“Since ‘Tao’ is a parasite, it means that ‘attaining Tao’ is a wrong path. And now, those who resist ‘preachers’ must have chosen the opposite path.”

Gu Fangchen pondered in her heart:
"'Attaining the Dao' means reaching a higher realm."

"The opposite path is naturally to suppress one's cultivation level, or even to head towards the end of Dharma."

"The end of the 'Great Furnace Era' may be equivalent to the 'severing of the connection between heaven and earth,' cutting off a path to a higher level."

"Therefore, the first rank is the highest level now, and if it continues to develop, the level will probably get lower and lower."

"This also explains why the 'Master of Hengchang Dao' chose to hide his cultivation level and then send out the so-called 'Tan Yuan' behind the scenes to control the beginning and end of each dynasty."

Gu Fangchen recalled the rise and fall of the five dynasties.

Aside from the cycle of division and unification, basically, with each new dynasty, due to the extremely brutal wars and chaos, the overall strength of cultivators would decline...

When they arrived in the Great Wei, on the surface, only Xie Qian, the "Confucian Sage," remained.

Gu Fangchen took a deep breath.

If Xie Qian is a preacher, then his aspiration to achieve "eternal harmony under the same sky" has another interpretation.

If one follows the path of "Hengchang Daozhu", the practitioner's strength will decrease as they progress.

It's even possible that in the end, it will develop into a world of ordinary people.

However, if we follow Xie Qian's path and move towards "eternal unity," then the end will be the beginning, everyone will be trapped in a cycle, and their strength will inevitably grow stronger.

These two paths are completely opposite.

This is the real game between the two.

"So, the 'Master of Hengchang Dao' has chosen me?"

Gu Fangchen looked at the frozen world below and squinted her eyes:

"Disrupt Xie Qian's 'eternal unity' plan, and then proceed with normal development... but how many years would that take?"

"The time span of five dynasties only reduced the upper limit to the first rank."

The strength of a first-rank cultivator is still terrifying. It is conceivable that if it were to be weakened further, it would probably take another hundred thousand years.

But there are preachers everywhere, so they won't just wait idly.

People like Xie Qian will continue to appear sooner or later, and there will be other variables at that time.

So... is there a completely ordinary world?
Thinking of this, Gu Fangchen suddenly stared at the city below.

Isn't that right in front of him?

Gu Fangchen jumped up suddenly, her pupils contracting.

A world composed entirely of mortals, devoid of spiritual power, a world where "Mirror in the Dust" is merely a game.

In addition, he possesses the ability to turn "illusions" into reality...

Could this be the real purpose of "Hengchang" Lao Deng?
Gu Fangchen was dumbfounded, but suddenly felt a dizzying sensation and her vision went black.

……

Gu Fangchen opened his eyes and saw a sphere made of boundless red lines enveloping him.

He was slightly taken aback, as if he had sensed something—

Just now, I actually managed to survive the tribulation of the wandering soul.

Under normal circumstances, the wandering soul tribulation in the Refining Tribulation Realm should be affected by the fierce winds of the Netherworld, so that the soul cannot be completely integrated with the body, resulting in frequent soul separation and absent-mindedness.

But now, he went back to his "hometown" and actually survived this ordeal.

Gu Fangchen looked ahead.

His body was already largely formed.

However, his soul was floating in mid-air, temporarily separated from his physical body.

However, because it was a retrospective of cause and effect, his physical body was completely restored one-to-one, and the "heart poison" was also restored.

The blood-red demonic flower, like a leech, was blooming vigorously on his body.

Of course, this situation was within Gu Fangchen's expectations.

Golden threads and blood streaks gradually coalesced on his body, and the 108 Demon-Suppressing Nails returned to their original positions, transforming once again into a puppet body for "magic refining."

Meanwhile, the lotus buds on the outside are continuously providing spiritual energy and blood to help him reshape his body.

Gu Fangchen narrowed her eyes, immediately sat cross-legged on the spot, and closed her eyes.

Now is the best time to refine the "Heart-Planting Poison"!

Outside is the Prajna Lotus Moon, and this flower bud is connected to her. In other words, all the pain he suffers will be transferred to the Prajna Lotus Moon.

Gu Fangchen immediately began her breakthrough to the fourth level of "Refining Magic".

At this moment, because it was his weakest moment, the Heavenly Dao also began to exert its power.

All sorts of calamities were arranged for him all at once.

Inside the lotus, lightning flashed and thunder roared, illusions appeared frequently, and Gu Fangchen's physical body was in a state of chaos.

However, since this lotus flower was arguably the strongest causal technique, it blocked all of his attacks, and his cultivation level began to rise rapidly.

I do not know how long it has been.

The thunder gradually subsided.

Gu Fangchen's soul and body merged into one once more. She suddenly opened her eyes, and in her palm, a demonic flower bloomed, swaying gently.

Peak Fourth Rank!

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

P.S.: I posted this first and then revised it, but it failed. The more I try to fix it, the more sleepless I get. My future looks utterly ruined.

(End of this chapter)