The ancient return was exposed by his sister's live stream.

There was no repulsion. The layer of molten liquid on the surface automatically separated, creating a gap.

He can go in.

Chen Hao did not hesitate.

His consciousness passed through the layer of light liquid on the surface of his heart and entered its interior.

The field of vision suddenly opened up.

The heart's internal space is much larger than it appears from the outside; the space is folded. He was all too familiar with this feeling.

The interior space is folded into countless layers, and its actual volume when unfolded may be larger than the entire solar system.

It was filled with light.

It is not light of a single color. It is light of countless colors, each representing a fundamental law, but not an ordinary law.

Chen Hao's divine sense traveled among those lights. Gold, silver, cyan, crimson, black, white—hundreds of colors. Thousands of colors.

His senses were drawn close to one of the silvery-white bands of light.

space.

It is a law of space, but it is far more profound than the spatial principles he once integrated.

The spatial path he had merged with was like a tributary compared to the ocean compared to the one before him.

This is not the fundamental principle.

This is the origin of the Great Dao's laws.

The spatial Dao he had cultivated for ten thousand years was merely a small stream branching off from this source.

And here, the source itself is right here.

Chen Hao's consciousness moved away from the origin of space.

He looked to the side. Another band of light, time. Flowing more deeply and slowly than space.

Beside it, cause and effect. Dark gold. Pulled by countless invisible threads.

In the distance, life. Death. Fate. Reincarnation.

There are many more. Too many to count.

Three thousand? More than that. Far more than that.

Everything is the origin.

Chen Hao stopped in the center of that sea of ​​light, his wisp of divine consciousness floating among countless laws of origin, like a fallen leaf falling into the ocean.

And just then, his field of vision was opened.

It wasn't his choice. Some force forcibly expanded the scope of his perception, pulling it from the inside of his heart to the outside. Pulled it very far. Very high. High enough to overlook everything.

He saw it.

Blue Star.

sun.

Moon.

Three celestial bodies he knew all too well. Right below his "field of vision". Blue Star was still that hazy gray marble, without green, without blue, and the clouds were gray and white.

The sun was dark red, its outer layers largely stripped away. The moon hung forlornly beside the blue planet.

But they are not alone, floating in the void.

They were wrapped in something.

One body.

Chen Hao's field of vision continued to widen. At a distance far enough, he finally saw the entire "body" clearly.

It is a baby.

An indescribably huge baby.

Its body was curled up, its legs slightly bent, and its arms crossed over its chest. The blue star, the sun, and the moon were all encircled inside its curled-up body, like three marbles held in a mother's arms.

Its skin is a translucent dark red. From the outside, you can see the luminous liquid flowing inside.

The light of those fundamental laws travels through the veins within its body, like blood in a blood vessel.

That enormous heart was beating right in the center of its chest cavity.

This is a baby.

It really was an infant. Not a metaphor. Its face was round, its limbs short and chubby, and its fingers were small and curled up, though each finger was longer than the moon.

But its proportions and shape are no different from those of a human baby a few months old.

It is asleep. Its eyes are closed. Its breathing is extremely slow, with intervals between each breath potentially lasting decades.

Then Chen Hao saw the injury.

Riddled with holes.

The infant's body was covered in wounds. These wounds were not physical tears, but corrosion at the level of laws.

Black, burn-like patches covered nearly a third of its body surface.

Some wounds were still oozing black mist—the Kuroshio.

The black tide came from it. No, the black tide is harming it. Those black, corrosive patches are the traces left by the black tide after it invaded its body.

It was being eaten piece by piece by something.

It started from the outer edges. First, it devoured the planets on the outer edge of the solar system, planets that were originally within the protective range of its curled-up body.

Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter were devoured one by one. Now only the blue planet, the moon, and the sun remain in its embrace.

Its body was already on the verge of collapse.

The wound continues to widen. The black erosion continues to spread. Its breathing grows shallower, its heartbeat slower.

The light of the fundamental laws flowing within their bodies was also dimming, not from natural extinction, but from being gradually devoured and polluted by those black things.

Chen Hao looked at it.

An indescribable emotion arose within him. It wasn't fear. It wasn't shock. It was something more complex.

An infant. An infant who hasn't grown up yet. Being choked and eaten alive by something in the cradle.

It was almost too weak to even resist.

Chen Hao's gaze fell on a certain spot on its surface. There lay a law he recognized: space.

There are also the Five Elements, Yin and Yang, life and death, reincarnation, and destiny.

All the great paths he cultivated originated from this infant.

Not just him.

The source of all the laws that all cultivators practiced in the ancient era of cultivation lies here.

Throughout the entire cultivation civilization of Earth, from the moment the first person embarked on the path of cultivation, every Great Dao that everyone touched was a fragment that flowed from this infant.

Chen Hao's consciousness remained stagnant within this understanding for a long time.

Then he looked at another spot.

The fundamental law of cause and effect. A dark golden band of light draws countless threads of cause and effect.

One of the lines extends outwards, connecting to a blurry image...

Fu Zhaojie.

That mysterious figure who appeared in the early stages of the spiritual energy revival. He mastered the Dao of Cause and Effect, his cultivation was unfathomable, and he came and went without a trace. Chen Hao searched for him many times but never truly found him.

Now he knows why.

Fu Zhaojie is not human.

He was neither an ancient cultivator who had lived for tens of thousands of years, nor a reclusive master.

He is the embodiment of the fundamental law of cause and effect, a projection of will formed from the law itself. A tool.

A chess piece.

Chen Hao's consciousness slowly moved toward the location of the origin of the spatial laws.

The origin of spatial laws.

A silvery-white band of light, more active than any other law, meandered and flowed through the infant's meridians.

When Chen Hao's divine sense approached it, an image appeared inside the band of light. Like a reflection on the surface of water, it was blurry but recognizable.

A young man, in his early twenties, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, carrying a travel bag, stood on a boardwalk in a scenic area of ​​Sichuan.

Below the plank road was a deep valley, with clouds and mist rising from the bottom. The young man leaned on the railing and looked down, the wind ruffling his hair.

It was him.

During my university years, that summer I traveled to Sichuan.

The scene continues. The young man's hand touches a weathered stone on the railing of the boardwalk.

The instant his fingertips touched the stone surface, an extremely thin silver-white line appeared in the image.

It extended from the stone. Passed through the young man's fingertips. And entered his body.

Spatial laws.

First time meeting them.

He always thought the accident during that trip was accidental; he had stepped into a hole, fallen into a deep valley, and then traveled back to ancient times.

It's no coincidence.

Silvery-white lines extended from his body, connecting back to the origin of spatial laws within the infant's body.

That line was always there, from the very first second he touched it.

It was the origin that chose him, pulled him into the river of spatial laws, and then dragged him back to the ancient era of cultivation through that line of laws.