What was real, and what was fake?
The countless worlds he had experienced.
Those vivid faces, those stirring tales of triumph and tragedy.
Rivers, lakes, and seas; the fresh mountain breeze.
Love, hatred, passions, and vendettas; the obsession with longevity.
Heroes and cowards; saints and sinners.
...
Were all of these fake?
In the beginning, Qiao Sidao had been at a loss.
He felt that since everything in the world was an illusion, what meaning was there in the lives of the deluded masses?
The divine arts, magical treasures, and cultivation realms they yearned for and painstakingly pursued—once space and time reset, all of it would have to start over from scratch.
The death they so feared was no longer life's end, but merely another beginning.
In this lifetime, two people might be sworn friends who would die for each other, yet in the next, they became complete strangers.
How bleak was that?
During that period of bewildering despair, Qiao Sidao seemed to lose interest in everything.
In his utter despondency, he even began actively spreading the truth to others: that this world was an illusion.
He had thought it would draw the attention of the "observers" from the outside world, finally bringing him release.
Yet what Qiao Sidao never expected was that no one believed him at all.
Instead, they mocked him as a madman.
Qiao Sidao did everything he could to tell people the truth, but all he received in return were impatient reprimands.
"Then why don't you see if my sword is real!"
When he annoyed someone too much, a flash of sword light swept past and sliced both of his legs clean off.
In that moment, Qiao Sidao looked into the eyes of the onlookers and saw not a shred of pity.
There was only gloating and schadenfreude.
There were countless lunatics in the world; why would the observer beyond the vault of heaven care about another one?
From then on, Qiao Sidao sobered up and abandoned all thought of exposing this earth-shattering conspiracy.
He pulled himself together and tried to blend into the world as best he could in every lifetime.
He gave up on the notion of playing the savior, seeking only to carve out a path of survival for himself.
As a denizen of a false world, escaping from it was destined to be unimaginably difficult.
At first, Qiao Sidao was at his wits' end.
Soon, however, he found a way. He no longer loudly proclaimed to everyone that the world was fake.
Instead, he penned storybooks describing how countless fleeting, illusory cultivation worlds existed inside an immortal's magical artifact, the [Revolving Lantern].
With the breadth of experience gained from countless civilizations, the scenes he depicted were naturally vast and magnificent, quickly drawing the interest of many cultivators.
As the stories gradually spread, Qiao Sidao discovered that some cultivators actually began to actively debate whether the world they lived in was real.
Naturally, the topic of "what should one do if the world truly turned out to be an illusion" also became a subject of discussion within small circles.
"If an illusion can be indistinguishable from reality, then the operating laws of this false world must be copied directly from the real world outside."
"Rebuilding a flawless world architecture from scratch..."
"To achieve that is practically no different from creating a world. At that point, 'real' and 'fake' cease to have any meaningful distinction."
"Indeed. There is truth within falsehood. Even if the living beings of this world are illusions, the underlying foundation governing the world's operation might not be!"
"Speaking of which, that reminds me of the Taiyan Sect's Dao Transformation Stone. It is said that in every fleeting instant, countless worlds evolve within it on their own. I wonder what wonders lie within those transient worlds."
...
Pooling their collective wisdom.
The discussions among the many cultivators pointed Qiao Sidao toward a clear path.
From that point forward, his goal became clear.
In each lifetime, he no longer chased after cultivation realms, but instead threw himself into auxiliary arts like formations, restrictions, and deduction techniques.
Cultivation could not be retained through reincarnation, but memories could.
In Qiao Sidao's plan, by accumulating knowledge bit by bit, the day would come when he knew enough to locate the flaws in this false world.
The ideal was magnificent, but putting it into practice was fraught with difficulty.
Initially, Qiao Sidao's auxiliary skills advanced by leaps and bounds.
He swiftly went from knowing nothing to grasping the fundamentals.
Yet when he sought to attain true mastery, he discovered just how tightly the cultivation world monopolized this knowledge.
What ordinary sects taught was merely the most elementary basics. In the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, records concerning such topics were even scarcer.
To truly acquire the core essentials, one had to go to the Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao.
Yet how could someone of mediocre talent enter such immortal sects?
If that was the case in the ancient era, it was even worse in the cultivation wasteland left behind after the sects fell.
Only a handful of worlds—such as those where the Immortal Net descended or where the Alliance unified everything—provided fertile ground for study.
If that were all, Qiao Sidao felt he was still making continuous progress.
Given enough time, it wasn't impossible that he would eventually discover a way to break through the world.
However...
After Qiao Sidao completed his 9,999th world,
he was not reborn into a new world. Instead, he found himself amidst an azure ocean.
There, Qiao Sidao witnessed a sight he would never forget for the rest of his existence.
Countless divine souls were crammed together in staggering density.
From them, one could faintly discern faces that appeared to be in deep slumber.
A whirlpool stirred in the vast sea, sending millions of divine souls churning and tumbling through the waters.
Souls collided and crushed against one another; some shattered outright and dissolved into the ocean.
Others absorbed the remnant souls from the seawater, becoming purer and more refined through reconstitution.
It felt as if a long needle was violently churning inside Qiao Sidao's mind, spinning the world around in excruciating pain.
What was even more intolerable was his horrifying discovery that certain memories in his soul were gradually fading away amidst the waves of this sea of resentment.
Sinking into despair, Qiao Sidao slowly lost consciousness.
When the memories of his true self awakened once more, he had no idea how many cycles had elapsed.
Just like before, he snapped awake without warning or reason.
Although the vast majority of his memories had been lost, key information such as the False World and the Sea of Resentful Souls, along with scattered fragments of formation knowledge, remained deeply branded in the depths of his soul.
"It seems that to prevent other souls from awakening their memories across reincarnations like I did, a cleansing sweep is carried out against us at regular intervals."
"During this cleansing, I lose most of my memories."
"If I accumulate knowledge too slowly, I will never be able to master a way to escape this place."
After some calculation, Qiao Sidao arrived at this conclusion.
Even so, he did not give up easily.
Having seen so much, Qiao Sidao understood a fundamental truth: as long as there were enough iterations, any bizarre occurrence was possible.
Just like himself: it should have been impossible to retain his memories across every reincarnation,
yet it had happened nonetheless.
Qiao Sidao lay low and bided his time.
After an unknown number of cleansings in the Sea of Resentful Souls, he finally encountered an opportunity to break the stalemate.
It was a highly advanced world known as the [Eternal Immortal World].
Not only was the average lifespan extraordinarily long—even those who did not cultivate could live for thousands of years—but there was also a magnificent entity known as the [Immortal Spirit Tower].
Immortal Spirit Towers stood in every corner of the world, day and night endlessly releasing pure spiritual energy.
More importantly, all knowledge—
cultivation methods, formations, pill concoction, alchemy...
everything imaginable could be queried and studied within the Immortal Spirit Towers without restriction.
Beholding the stellar expanse of information within the Immortal Spirit Tower, Qiao Sidao could not stop shivering all over.
He knew that the method for his escape was hidden within.
Thus, Qiao Sidao studied night and day, forgetting food and sleep.
He lived in the Eternal Immortal World for three thousand six hundred and fifty-eight years, never stepping away from the Immortal Spirit Tower for even a moment.
Though he was still far from seeing through the false world,
Qiao Sidao finally saw hope.
After thousands more cycles of reincarnation, upon waking from yet another grand cleansing,
Qiao Sidao was pleasantly surprised to discover that, likely because his soul had grown more resilient, he had lost far fewer memories this time than in the past.
This bolstered his confidence even further.
He continued to amass knowledge and experience, waiting for the next arrival of the Eternal Immortal World.
...
When Qiao Sidao arrived in the Eternal Immortal World for the ninth time,
near the end of his lifespan, he finally saw through the secrets of the world he inhabited.
This was a false world molded around a certain wonder used for deduction.
The overwhelming majority of living beings in this world were simulated entities.
Only a small fraction possessed genuine divine souls.
And he, Qiao Sidao, was one among those million divine souls.
"Deduction has its limits."
"Which means there are gaps in the time of this world."
"Each infinitesimal interval is my chance to escape."
"Of course, to avoid detection by outsiders, the best time would be when the world resets."
Standing atop the Immortal Spirit Tower and gazing at the vault of heaven above, Qiao Sidao thought in silence.
He spent the remainder of his life making preparations.
When his lifespan ended and he sank into the abyss of darkness,
Qiao Sidao jolted awake from his slumber.
He sensed that fleeting opportunity and, like a sliver of thread, broke through the realm.
In his mind, he had imagined the sights of the outside world tens of thousands of times.
He had even imagined confronting those potential observers.
Yet Qiao Sidao could never have guessed that the so-called outside world would be so frigid and vast.
The divine soul he thought had grown extraordinarily powerful was in dire peril under the assault of the bitter chill.
It seemed poised to dissolve into ash and smoke at any second.
Worse still, an unusual noise rang out from the halo of light behind him from which he had just escaped.
It sounded like some kind of alarm.
Drifting aimlessly in the air, Qiao Sidao looked around at his surroundings.
"A museum...?"
He fell silent.
His world was merely an exhibition piece.
He could vaguely sense several powerful auras rushing toward this place.
The world was vast, yet there was nowhere for him to hide.
Qiao Sidao finally felt the meaning of true despair.
Right at that moment...
he saw a human skull in the center of the museum.
It rested there quietly, as if watching him.
From the skull, Qiao Sidao felt an immense warmth.
While the entire world rejected him, it radiated the greatest possible kindness toward him.
Like a mother's embrace, it moved Qiao Sidao to tears.
And so, on the verge of his soul scattering away,
Qiao Sidao mustered the last ounce of his strength and burrowed into the skull.
Chapter 606