Chapter 1147: Four-Dimensional Beings!

Another three thousand years passed.

"Have we reached the limits of our growth?"

Within the vast and ancient palace, a deep sigh echoed, a husky voice lamenting, "It's been three thousand years. Three whole millennia of doing nothing."

After all, a Seventh-Tier Celestial Emperor represented the ultimate limit for a flesh-and-blood being, having exhausted all their physical potential.

The Eighth-Tier was a qualitative leap, involving a dimensional ascent to become a higher-dimensional being. This required traversing a never-before-seen path through higher-dimensional space-time, a path that needed to be forged.

For Yi Mang, "growth" was actually not that important.

In this chaotic, primordial universe where only they existed, what was the use of such immense power?

He simply wanted something to do, a purpose for living.

Even his immersion in sculpture was merely a way to pass the time.

The same applied to cultivation.

In a life stretched across an eternity, one always needed something to occupy themselves, some pursuit to chase.

"Is life merely this fleeting moment of dullness, or will it always remain so?"

His fingertips gently traced a delicate, prismatic sculpture, as if caressing a loved one.

His talent in sculpture had already reached its pinnacle.

His creations seemed to come alive, every angle and even microscopic particle shockingly perfect.

Yet, after twenty thousand years, he had long lost interest in sculpture.

Unable to cultivate,

Unable to sculpt...

Life continued in a quiet, monotonous repetition, day after day.

Suddenly, he felt an unprecedented loneliness.

Loneliness was inescapable for any life, a fate even the greatest heroes could not avoid.

This was, in itself, a form of torture; keeping someone in a pitch-black room with nothing for a month could drive them to the brink of collapse. Darkness and solitude would slowly engulf a person entirely.

And the entire vast, primordial universe was, in essence, a dark room.

Now, this loneliness felt like vines from a black abyss in Yi Mang's heart, ceaselessly coiling around him with each passing day of tedium, suffocating him to the point where he could barely breathe.

He suddenly yearned for a spectacular death.

Reflecting on his entire life, he realized his happiest moments had been during the most arduous and perilous years of disaster, leading his clan in a desperate, day-to-day flight, fearing what tomorrow might bring, and the initial freshness of learning to sculpt and cultivate.

"I'm tired..."

Yi Mang suppressed this terrible thought and slowly walked out of the palace.

His steps suddenly slowed, as if an ancient, decaying soul resided within his eternal body.

He emerged from the palace and observed the young clan members scattered everywhere, enthusiastically learning sculpture and cultivating.

"Hahaha, I'm cultivating faster than you!"

"I don't believe it, I'll be even faster!"

"My sculpture is better than yours! Look at this!"

He watched these young members of his clan, and a powerful thought arose in his mind: "They still have pursuits now, and they can still be enthusiastic about sculpture. But what happens when they reach my level?"

As he watched his joyful clan members, a chilling dread suddenly pierced him.

In this universe, they could only do two things: cultivate and sculpt. But what if both reached their limits?

Then, merely living day after day would become a disaster in itself.

"Is this world's curse upon us? A curse on our eternal existence?"

The Great Tribulation of Desolation was approaching.

He vaguely sensed an ominous premonition.

One day, Yi Mang suddenly made a bold decision. Sitting in his palace, he summoned all the talented individuals from across the land and announced to the entire civilization that a grand sculpture competition would soon be held.

"I'll do it!"

"Let me!"

Immediately, a fervor swept through the crowd.

Countless native clan members, skilled in sculpture, were eager to participate.

They were incredibly naive. The chance to interact with beings from various chaotic star regions and showcase their millennia of sculptural mastery thrilled them.

The entire universe thus fully entered the Great Sculpture Era.

For a time, every patch of cosmic soil, as far as the eye could see, became a site of exquisite sculptures. The entire universe transformed into a magnificent, sprawling exhibition hall of statues.

"Letting them compete with sculptures will only delay their cultivation progress. Eventually, they will reach my level and see that there is no path forward."

Yi Mang directly handed over his administrative authority to his wife, then vanished alone into the vast universe. "Since there is no path, I will forge one."

After leaving, Yi Mang journeyed through the cosmos for several millennia.

He began to diligently observe the intricate structure of the universe, contemplate his own body, and immerse himself in seeking a method for breakthrough.

During this period, he returned to his tribe a few times.

On his first return, the annual sculpture competition had already been held 1,738 times. The participants had grown bored, and a large number of clan members had broken through to the Seventh-Tier, now completely stagnant.

Their expressions were already listless from the monotonous daily repetition of their lives.

On his second return,

Six thousand years had passed. A large number of clan members looked utterly spiritless, and some had already begun to commit suicide.

The suicide of the first god-demon seemed to trigger a chain reaction, with countless other clan members following suit to escape their suffering.

To them, there was no difference between "living" and "dying."

For the immortal ancient gods and demons, choosing death when life became tedious seemed like a natural course of action.

Yi Mang glanced at them, then left directly again.

But then, the dullness in his expression suddenly brightened with vitality. A fierce fire ignited in his eyes, as if he had rediscovered the meaning of life, a new goal: he would change everything.

"In this monotonous, eternal chaos, is it always to be this way? Is there truly no hope? Only despair... we all suffer from this."

He recalled his beginnings.

The moment he had first learned sculpture in his youth, his question about the universe surfaced again:

Why wasn't the universe orderly?

He embarked on his journey once more.

He tried every possible method, but found no clue.

"There must be a greater growth phase for us... we are limitless."

He traveled through the ancient primordial wilderness.

"No matter how I try, whether through external suppression or continuous cultivation, there's no reaction. Could it be that I haven't lived long enough? That's it... Childhood at ten, adulthood at twenty, then a massive leap of ten thousand years to reach grand adulthood... This means that perhaps it's not that we can't grow, but that our next stage might require an even longer, much longer period! It could be like the difference between twenty years old and ten thousand years!"

He speculated.

But he knew in his heart that in the chaos of this primordial universe, no one could endure such a long period of monotonous existence.

"There must, there must be other cultivation methods to accelerate our growth phase!"

"Yes, time! If it takes an even longer time to grow to that extent, then I will find a way to accelerate our life's time!"

He began to traverse one, two, and three dimensions, also wandering through chaotic temporal zones. Like an ascetic monk of the universe, he continuously sought enlightenment within them, searching for a way to accelerate the time within his body.

Day after day, year after year.

Ten thousand years later, already over thirty thousand years old, he returned to his clan once more. He found that the Great Expansion Era had passed, and the population had grown sparse, leaving almost exclusively the younger generation.

"Alas!"

He sighed and ventured out again, seeking a vital opportunity. He felt he was very close.

A method to accelerate his life's growth through some special means...

One day, as he drifted through two-dimensional space-time, a thin sheet floating in the universe, he suddenly felt his soul leap across dimensions, an unburdened sensation akin to a fish leaping out of water.

His entire being accelerated rapidly, as if he were traversing time itself.

He clearly perceived his transformation: from the three dimensions of length, width, and height, an additional dimension had emerged—time.

He had become a four-dimensional being.

Four-dimensional space-time comprised length, width, height, and time.

He felt as if he had leaped out of the temporal flow like a fish, transforming into a four-dimensional being capable of arbitrarily adjusting his own timeline.

This sensation was profound and mysterious.

He could freely adjust his temporal lifeline, moving through past and future lives.

The length of his life was like a movie.

He was only a fraction through it, but he could arbitrarily adjust the progress bar, making the movie's timeline accelerate, decelerate, or even rewind!

He manipulated his timeline, and his life, like a film, fast-forwarded at an astonishing rate—a thousand times, ten thousand times...

When he reversed the timeline, his life rewound rapidly, as if on fast-forward in reverse. His cultivation swiftly diminished, returning him to youth, then to childhood.

"I have finally reached the next growth phase!"

The next moment, a surge of energy arose; the entire universe rapidly transformed, blazing with brilliant light. All the immense phenomena reverberated across the galaxy, countless times greater than his previous breakthrough.

At this moment, Yi Mang transformed into a true four-dimensional being of the entire universe, transcending three-dimensional space, an eternal cosmic life traversing the timeline!

"I see my entire life."

He laughed aloud, his memories clearer than ever, permeating his entire being. All ancient memories surged forth; he even saw the very first moment of his life.

It was the dawn of the universe, still in its initial Big Bang phase. A hazy, colossal figure gently lifted him with one hand.

"What... was that?"