Chapter 1237: Insisting on Exploring the Star Sea

All extraordinary powers have vanished from the world; a lifespan of a hundred years is the limit for mortals. However, humanity's eternal pursuit of the Dao remains unchanged. By researching, analyzing, and utilizing principles, even mortals can unleash astonishing, world-shaking power.

In the blank world before Sun Erlang's eyes, a sphere suddenly appeared. The sphere rotated, and countless black dots representing humanity moved ceaselessly upon it at an extremely fast speed.

Initially, the buildings on the ground were only about ten feet tall, but as time rapidly passed, more and more skyscrapers rose from the earth. Soon after, even flying vehicles appeared in the clouds.

As Sun Erlang wove the world he envisioned in his mind, he recalled his master's teachings at the time.

"The predicament of the Xuanhuang Realm is fundamentally identical to that of worlds without extraordinary powers. Ancient texts often state that the immortal path is eternal; perhaps this is true."

"So-called immortals are those who have thoroughly grasped the principles of the Dao and applied it to its utmost extent. Standing beyond all living beings, on par with the Dao, they look down upon all creation, immortal and indestructible."

"But what if the Dao itself changes?"

"The Dao remains the Dao. However, those beings unable to adapt to the changed Dao will inevitably face destruction."

"Unable to harmonize with the Dao, immortals would no longer deserve the title. They would fall."

"Among the myriad beings, new practitioners of the Dao will always emerge. The power they wield will also grow stronger and stronger."

"Becoming new immortals."

At that time, the Faceless Saint Emperor's words were profound and abstruse; not only Sun Erlang but also the other direct disciples under the Saint Emperor could not comprehend their meaning.

However, now, aided by the power of the True Reality Fruit, he was fortunate enough to experience the taste of a creator.

As Sun Erlang gazed at the world he had created before him, he suddenly felt a profound insight.

In that spherical world, after countless years of natural evolution, a species consistent with the Dao of the world he had created would always emerge.

They could uncover the ultimate secrets of the world that other beings could not perceive, thereby becoming the so-called 'Dao-wielding beings' of this world.

Sun Erlang's vision rapidly traversed, descending upon the sphere he had created.

Inside an ordinary building within it, a young scholar was frowning in thought under the light.

On the blackboard in front of him, complex formulas and diagrams were scrawled.

"No, no, no..."

"Where exactly did it go wrong? Why is there such a large discrepancy between my calculations and the actual trajectory of motion?"

"It's as if some force is restraining us, preventing us from leaving this planet."

The scholar painfully tugged at his hair, then suddenly looked up and gazed out the window.

In the dark of night, his gaze seemed to meet Sun Erlang's eyes.

Sun Erlang's vision blurred for a moment, and the scene shattered.

When he came to, he was surprised to find that some spacecraft on the sphere had already begun attempting to fly beyond "the world's boundaries."

However, beyond this world, Sun Erlang had created nothing; it was still empty. Naturally, they would not succeed.

Sun Erlang's thoughts raced, and he began to expand the map.

The white space slowly darkened. In the starry sky, besides the original initial planet, thousands of other planets also began to appear.

The map's scope instantly expanded more than a hundred thousand times, and Sun Erlang's Dao-Transforming Stone suddenly struggled to cope.

To reduce the workload, Sun Erlang essentially set these planets to be barren, desolate places devoid of life. And to prevent the rapid expansion of the inhabitants on the original planet, he placed vast distances between each planet.

So far apart that, without the power of longevity, it would take nearly a lifetime for these little people to cross between planets.

With immense effort, Sun Erlang barely managed to save the world that was on the verge of collapse.

But soon, before he could fully perfect and expand the stellar sea landscape, the world once again became precarious.

Upon investigation, Sun Erlang suddenly realized that the inhabitants had begun to doubt the reality of their world.

This was not only due to their inability to fly out of the world but also because they had observed countless previously unseen planets in the stellar sea. These planets seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, shattering their understanding.

"One cannot simply set crude rules; rather, the appearances of all things must be rooted in the fundamental principles of the world."

This sentence suddenly appeared in Sun Erlang's mind.

Soon, he made the necessary adjustments.

Next, in another persistent attempt by the inhabitants, a spaceship actually succeeded in breaking free from the planet's restraint and entering the stellar sea.

The humans on board the spaceship were astonished to discover a blue halo existing outside the planet.

It was precisely the presence of this halo that had interfered with observations from within the planet and prevented their earlier attempts to break out.

This was a groundbreaking, monumental discovery!

After experiencing a life-or-death crisis, this spaceship finally returned to the ground, making its discovery public.

And the scholars on the planet, after incorporating the stellar ring as a variable into their calculations, finally achieved temporary consistency between theory and reality.

People cheered, welcoming the dawn of a new era. At the same time, all the crew members of this first ship to fly into space were hailed as heroes.

With successful experience, the planet's inhabitants, who had been suppressed for a long time, saw their development speed reach a peak.

Fortunately, by this time, Sun Erlang had mostly finished depicting the desolate landscape of the stellar sea.

Moreover, due to the vastness of the stellar sea he had created, he temporarily kept these inhabitants contained using space and time.

But Sun Erlang knew this was merely a temporary measure.

One day, they would notice the anomaly of this stellar sea.

"If I don't want to be discovered, I must continue to expand this stellar sea."

"And the speed of expansion must exceed the exploration speed of these little people."

His macroscopic vision was again elevated tens of thousands of times.

Endless nebulae and galaxies were born beyond the darkness. The Dao-Transforming Stone was also faintly operating at its limit.

"As the saying goes, 'pull one hair and the whole body moves.' Every object in the stellar sea is interconnected."

"It's not enough to simply add them later; I must also consider the impact of their appearance on the original planet."

After pondering, Sun Erlang felt that the Dao-Transforming Stone was on the verge of collapse. He steeled himself and simply, even roughly, used vast spatial distances to minimize these impacts.

"By the time these little people notice something is amiss, it should be a very long time from now."

The inhabitants continued to progress rapidly.

They studied the stellar ring and invented the 'Retrograde Vessel,' capable of leveraging the stellar ring's restraining force in reverse.

Like a slingshot, it would hurl the spacecraft forward at high speed.

Though unable to return, it greatly accelerated the inhabitants' exploration speed of this stellar sea.

"This is too fast!"

Sun Erlang watched, dumbfounded, as the first Retrograde Vessel continuously accelerated by utilizing the stellar rings of passing planets. It sped towards the outskirts of the stellar sea.

"No..."

Sun Erlang pondered for a moment, then guided a meteor, altering its original trajectory to make it violently crash into the Retrograde Vessel.

Unexpectedly, the people on the vessel managed to narrowly evade it.

Sun Erlang's vision flickered, and the scene from inside the Retrograde Vessel appeared before him.

"My lord, thanks to you! Otherwise, we would have been utterly annihilated this time!"

A serious-faced, long-bearded middle-aged man remained tense: "This fragment came rather strangely. The cosmos is so vast, yet it just happened to encounter us..."

"Maintain vigilance! Don't be careless!"

Hearing the words of this 'little person,' Sun Erlang couldn't help but feel embarrassed; indeed, he had handled it a bit clumsily.

However, in an instant, he thought of a way to compensate.

Sun Erlang lightly pointed at the planet closest to the Retrograde Vessel.

Before long, it was seen violently disintegrating.

Transforming into thousands of fragments, like a torrential downpour, they showered down upon the Retrograde Vessel.

Luck favors once, but not twice.

Such a dense cluster of fragments, furthermore, was precisely guided. Naturally, there was no chance for the Retrograde Vessel to survive.

In the collision, it turned into a ball of flame and vanished from the stellar sea forever.

However, a single accident could not possibly curb the inhabitants' curiosity about the stellar sea.

Subsequently, increasingly larger and more advanced Retrograde Vessels continuously flew out from the original planet. They began exploring in all directions.

Although he truly wanted to destroy all these spacecraft again using the old method, Sun Erlang knew that his previous intervention had already shaken the rules of this creation game.

If he continued to directly interfere in this manner, this world would collapse even faster.

Thus, Sun Erlang had to devise another plan.

He watched the countless spacecraft bouncing off the stellar ring, and soon an idea came to him.

With a thought, the stellar ring around the original planet underwent a subtle, unnoticeable change.

It was a year later when the little inhabitants discovered something was wrong.

The planet generally experienced record-breaking extreme weather. Cold waves and droughts swept across and raged.

Food production decreased, and even the inhabitants' birth rate began to subtly decline.

The little people noticed the anomaly, gathered the planet's most elite scholars, and began researching the causes of these disasters.

Ultimately, they reached a conclusion.

Although the stellar ring restrained them from venturing into the stellar sea, it also served as a protective umbrella.

It isolated the planet from the extreme environments of the stellar sea.

In recent years, due to the overuse of the stellar ring's elastic force, the stellar ring had subtly contracted.

Even though this degree of contraction was negligible for the stellar ring itself, the planet's fragile ecosystem simply could not withstand its effects.

After a fierce debate, the little inhabitants finally temporarily abandoned their plans to explore the stellar sea. The Retrograde Vessels were henceforth sealed away.

"I can hold on for a bit longer," Sun Erlang couldn't help but sigh in relief.

"I wonder how much time has passed in the real world outside."

As he gazed at the galaxy he had personally shaped before him, his expression became somewhat dazed.

Time flew by. In the blink of an eye, another hundred years passed on the original planet.

Starting from the third decade, spacecraft successively approached the stellar ring for sampling and research.

In the fifth decade, after the unremitting efforts of all the little people, they finally found a way to repair the damage to the stellar ring.

Sun Erlang personally witnessed these little people recreate the stellar ring's power in their laboratories.

His mind was shaken, and a myriad of thoughts surged within him.

"The power of the stellar ring originates from the fundamental principles of the world I created."

"But these little people are also manifestations of this world's principles. As part of the world, they are capable of exploring the world's essential origin..."

"Because it truly exists, it can be studied and utilized."

Changes on the original planet continued.

After numerous experiments, the little people confirmed the effectiveness of repairing the stellar ring. Having been suppressed for so long, they finally could no longer endure it.

An unprecedented age of exploration dawned.

Countless Retrograde Vessels once again departed the original planet, venturing into the endless stellar sea.

In the seventh decade, the little people invented a method for long-distance travel without relying on the stellar ring's elastic force, using only a stellar ring engine. From then on, the inhabitants officially achieved round-trip stellar sea exploration.

From the eighth decade to the first hundredth year, the little people ushered in a new era of stellar sea colonization and expansion.

At this point, Sun Erlang knew it was only a matter of time before his world of deception was exposed.

Watching the countless little people who still sacrificed everything for this, Sun Erlang felt an inexplicable emotion rise within him.

He no longer tried to expand the boundaries of the stellar sea. Instead, he silently watched as the little people's footsteps reached the edge of their world.

Five hundred years later.

When a uniquely designed Retrograde Vessel finally reached the outermost reaches of the stellar sea, the world before Sun Erlang's eyes suddenly shook violently.

Like exploding clusters of stars, it burst forth with brilliant light. And vanished.

But Sun Erlang did not return to the real world. Before him, there was still a blank void.

"Hm?"

Sun Erlang was somewhat surprised. He looked around, unsure of what had happened.

"Do you think there was anything wrong with the world you just experienced?"

A voice suddenly spoke from behind Sun Erlang.

Sun Erlang's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately turned his head.

He saw a Daoist with long eyebrows and white hair, holding a whisk, smiling as he observed him.

"This is..."

Sun Erlang vaguely guessed the person's identity and, emboldened, tentatively said, "Greetings, Heavenly Venerate."

The Daoist did not reply, merely continuing to smile at Sun Erlang.

Sun Erlang pondered for a moment, recalling the civilization of the little people on the original planet.

After a while, he realized with a start: "Something isn't right. Those little people on the planet..."

"They were too unified."

"There were no major wars or internal strife. Even when the planet faced a crisis, they always managed to set aside their differences and unite to solve it."

"Compared to the current situation in the Xuanhuang Realm, it's truly unbelievable." Sun Erlang shook his head.

The Daoist nodded, then asked, "That's one thing. What else?"

"Else?" Sun Erlang slightly frowned.

"The little people's obsession with exploring the stellar sea was a bit too profound."

"Even after facing multiple obstacles, they never gave up."

"Even the highest echelons of the planet's society held the same belief..." Sun Erlang looked at the Daoist.

"This, perhaps, would be unimaginable in the real world."