162 A Different Future

162 A Different Future

162 A Different Future

I had seen a thousand strange things in my life since coming to this world. I had watched my game character come to life, spoken to a sentient skull fluent in profanity and linguistics, and traveled through realms painted with the dreams of gods and the nightmares of men. But nothing prepared me for the first time I truly entered the Heavenly Eye.

The world didn’t shift… it fractured. The moment my feet touched the boundary of the memory, reality twisted. Every color bled into others, and time folded into itself like a lotus spiraling in reverse. I saw light from the sides, not the sun from above, and my perception split into too many angles. In one moment, I stood to the left of a child. In the same breath, I was to his right. In another instant, I was the child.

I heard Nongmin’s voice before I could even orient myself.

“I was five years old,” he murmured beside me. “That’s when Mother left.”

I turned and saw him, watching the boy he once was stumble through the vision with unfocused eyes and trembling lips. There was no glory in what I saw. No golden talent, no effortless mastery. Just a sick child suffering, drowning in truth he wasn’t ready for.

“I couldn’t break through to Mind Enlightenment,” Nongmin continued quietly. “I was stuck at Martial Tempering… and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t make it. I was dying. I knew I was dying.”

I watched the five-year-old version of him collapse after another failed breakthrough. Blood streamed from his nose, his mouth. His little hands trembled as he clutched his chest. He gasped for air that wouldn’t come. And each time he failed, the world restarted, like a needle dragging across a cracked record. Time looped. Again. And again. And again.

“I thought if I just looked hard enough, if I searched in my dreams, in the visions… maybe there would be an answer.” Nongmin sounded older now. More distant. “So I left.”

In the shattered memory, the boy gathered his few belongings and walked out the door, leaving his father behind. The scenery directed by the Heavenly Eye followed from every angle… above, below, sideways, and heart-side. He wandered into the world, no longer a son, and not yet a man.

“I searched for her,” he said softly. “I thought… she abandoned us. I thought if I could just see her again, everything would make sense.”

What followed was not sense.

I saw him in deserts, on streets, among crowds who never looked at him. His face aged, sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once. He fought monsters. He fought men. He fought starvation. And more than anything else, he fought death. But no matter how strong he got, and no matter what skill he unlocked, the ending never changed.

The boy didn’t live past ten.

In one vision, he was impaled by a corrupted cultivator who mistook him for a thief. In another, he died choking on herbs he couldn’t identify. In another, it was frostbite. Or fever. Or simply giving up.

It wasn’t one tragic life. It was hundreds. Each one a different thread, all ending in pain.

Eventually, Nongmin gave up.

“I remember this one,” he said, quieter than a whisper. “This was the life I stopped running.”

The memory faded, and we were back in his childhood home. The boy sat on the porch with dull eyes, staring at the horizon. His face was blank. His aura was just as dim.

“I chose to live what little time I had left with my father,” Nongmin said. “I stopped looking for her. I stopped hoping.”

He looked at me then, his gaze neither ashamed nor proud.

“To be honest, I resented her back then. She was gone for what felt like centuries. I hated her for that. But now…”

He trailed off. We both looked at the memory as the child version of him sat in silence, swaying in the wind like a leaf that no longer cared where it fell.

“…I realize,” he said. “I just missed her.”

The memory shifted again.

I turned my head and saw her… Xin Yune. Not the imperial figure I had once met, but a shadow of a woman scarred by her journey. Her robes were torn. Her spirit was fractured. But her presence, even tattered, radiated something fierce and gentle all at once.

She limped forward, calling her son’s name with a shaking voice.

And for the first time in hundreds of lifetimes, he looked up.

He didn’t run to her. He didn’t cry. He just stared.

Nongmin stood beside me, smiling bitterly.

“Fate is truly cruel and strange,” he said. “The moment I gave up looking for her… that’s when she came back.”

In the memory, Xin Yune collapsed into her son’s arms. And from her robes, she pulled a single jade vial. I recognized it immediately. The sensation it gave off couldn’t be mistaken.

Quintessence.

“She came back with a strange power,” Nongmin whispered, “something in a bottle. And with it, she healed me… she pushed me past Martial Tempering. Into Mind Enlightenment.”

In the memory, the boy… now nine… took in the power. His cultivation surged. His eyes glowed. The torment that once crippled him now stabilized into understanding. He didn’t tremble anymore. He stood.

And then… his mother fell.

The vial shattered at her side.

“She died the moment I crossed the threshold,” Nongmin said. “She held on just long enough.”

Lightning cracked across the vision. Thunder followed. A man descended from the heavens… wearing immaculate white robes, eyes filled with fury and judgment.

“Shouquan,” said the Nongmin beside me.

I turned to him, unsure of what expression to wear.

“He came like a god,” Nongmin muttered. “He was furious. My mother had stolen that vial from one of his disciples. It was his treasure. He came to punish her.”

My fists clenched.

But Nongmin shook his head.

“He looked at me once. Just once.”

In the vision, Shouquan’s glare shifted from Xin Yune’s corpse to the boy trembling behind her. A pause. A long one.

Then… an offer.

“Become my disciple,” Shouquan said. "And I shall raise her."

The memory froze.

Nongmin beside me looked tired, but peaceful.

“That’s how it started,” he said. “That was the day I began walking the path of cultivation in the truest sense of the word.”

“So… you accepted?”

We entered the Heavenly Eye again… just deeper. Nongmin and I. As before, the world shifted around us: light fell like mist, time bent without protest, and memory dressed itself in living color. There was no warning, no count-in. Just one breath in the present… and the next in the past.

“Yes,” Nongmin said beside me. “I agreed to follow him.”

But before he could explain further, the vision interrupted us.

In front of us, his father… weaker, smaller, broken by time and grief… fell to his knees before Shouquan. “I beg you,” his father gasped, hands pressing against the ground. “Please… don’t take him from me.”

His voice cracked. He wept openly and shamelessly. “The world took my wife… now it wants my son?” He wasn’t dressed like a cultivator, or even a wealthy man. Just an old farmer in well-worn robes. A mortal clinging to the last of what mattered to him.

Nongmin stood silently, his younger self unmoved.

“I started to hate him at that moment,” the real Nongmin said beside me, watching the scene unfold. “It’s childish, I know. But I guess even with a hundred years of wisdom, I still am a child to him.”

I turned to look at him, but he didn’t meet my eyes. His gaze was fixed on the memory.

“I hated how he cried. How he begged. I hated how he looked like every pitiful mortal I’d ever passed. I wanted to rise above that. Rise above him.”

In the memory, the boy’s voice finally rang out. “If you’re really an immortal…” he said to Shouquan, “then bring her back. Bring back my mother!”

There was no trace of innocence in the demand… only fury, desperation, and something darker.

“I’ll become your disciple,” he said. “If you can do that.”

Shouquan didn’t respond immediately. He merely turned his gaze to the body lying behind the old man… Xin Yune, her skin pale, her chest unmoving, death clinging to her like a veil.

Then he lifted his hand.

I’d seen healing techniques and even some forbidden revivals just like the one with the strange Black Forest, but this was different. This was a command to reality. A law rewritten by a being too powerful to be denied.

“So this is what resurrection spells look like from cultivators, huh?”

Light gathered like fog, and Xin Yune inhaled. One breath. Then two. Color returned to her skin as her eyes fluttered open. Life reclaimed her. I exhaled. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath.

“I thought,” Nongmin said softly, “that if someone could bring back the dead, then following him was the only path that mattered.”

The years passed quickly in the Heavenly Eye. A blur of training, battles, lectures, and trials. I saw Nongmin under waterfalls, climbing storm peaks, meditating beneath stars that shimmered like veins in the sky.

Shouquan was everywhere… watching, instructing, always distant but never absent.

“I learned everything from him,” Nongmin said. “Qi control, energy compression. Law comprehension. But more than that… I learned about the Outsiders.”

The memory shifted. Nongmin stood beside his master, watching the void. Far beyond the atmosphere, beyond what mortals called space, there was something else… them.

“They weren’t from this world,” he continued. “They didn’t belong to this reality. They came from the Greater Universe… beings to whom we were less than ants. Not enemies. Not even prey. Just… noise.”

He became strong. He joined Ward. His title changed. Guardian of the Arch Gate. Master’s Heir. Centuries folded into millennia. His father passed quietly, naturally, long before Nongmin reached his peak. His mother, still alive, never advanced in cultivation.

She came to visit him one final time.

The memory slowed again. Xin Yune, now old but dignified, walked through the halls of the Arch Gate. She sat beside Nongmin, holding his hand, telling him stories… not about power, or war, but about his childhood, about small moments, about laughter.

She smiled. He did not.

“I knew she wouldn’t last much longer,” he said, voice low. “And I couldn’t bring myself to try reviving her again. She didn’t want it. She was ready. Considering her cultivation at that time and her meeting the natural end of her life span, I don't think I would even be able to use any resurrection techniques to raise her back.”

The memory ended.

I blinked… and the void stretched around us again, vast and still.

“I lived,” Nongmin whispered. “So I should be happy, right?”

He looked down at his hands. “But I wasn’t.”

And then the vision changed again.

This time, it wasn’t a memory.

It was a possibility.

Or maybe… a warning.

Across from us stood a man… battered, bloodstained, draped in ruined armor. He was tall, lean, and dark-haired. A long sword rested on his shoulder, its edge dark with gore. It was... Silver Steel. My sword. My body. But this wasn’t me… This was a different me. This was David in every sense of the word, the other me. The version from the worst timeline. A different David_69, soul of Earth, born of a game, shaped by cruelty and obsession. His eyes were dull, but his gaze was sharp and razor-focused.

In one hand, he held a head.

Shouquan’s.

He tossed it without a care in the world. The head rolled and stopped at Nongmin’s feet.

“Step out of the way,” he said. His voice sounded like mine. “I’m going home.”

They fought.

The other me, and the other Nongmin.

It wasn’t the elegant clash of sword versus spell that I might have expected. No. This was brutal and visceral, like two beasts. At first, I thought Nongmin might win. His puppets danced like shadows, too fast for even me to follow without slowing time inside the Heavenly Eye. Each one bore fragments of the Heavenly Eye’s vision, tracing possibilities in midair, adjusting in real time. His attacks weren’t just fast… they were optimized. Strategic. Cold!

He kept his distance. Sent his constructs forward in waves. Sought the cleanest, safest path to victory.

But the other me… he didn’t care about safety.

That version of me had neither cultivation nor spiritual foundation. But his Paladin Legacy had… mutated. That’s the only word for it.

Where I had carefully read flavor texts and teased out the truth of each skill’s ideal manifestation, miracles made real through understanding, he had twisted them. Taken the meanings and perverted them.

He used Blessed Regeneration in himself, not to heal, but to create an internal battlefield of accelerated, cursed cell growth… a supercancer that ate everything in its path and rebuilt it faster, nastier, and stronger. Then, with Reflect, he mirrored that torment onto Nongmin’s puppets, spreading disease like wildfire.

It was disgusting, brilliant, and horrifying.

I couldn’t believe I was saying this, but the other me had created something new. A custom build… something darker than anything I’d ever dared attempt. A Dark Paladin, born not of shadow, but of curse-nurturing and self-punishing cruelty. This David had spent years, maybe centuries, feeding off afflictions, hoarding suffering inside himself like a dragon curled atop gold. And now, he wielded it all like a blade.

Nongmin fought back with everything he had. Cleansing waves of divine light poured from his hands, his eyes, and his very breath. I saw techniques meant to purge spirit-devouring fiends reduced to little more than delay tactics.

The other me laughed as his flesh sloughed off and regrew. He smiled with cracked lips as the curse tumors burst and bloomed again. He walked through the light like it was rain.

And then… just like that… he closed the distance.

One swing was all it took.

It was a clean beheading.

Nongmin’s head hit the ground with a dull thud, eyes still burning with resistance and with disbelief. The other me didn’t gloat. He simply turned and walked toward the Arch Gate. A few minutes later, as the dying memory of Nongmin clung to awareness in his crumbling body, the entire world began to tremble.

The sky fractured.

The earth came undone like dry sand underfoot.

Reality screamed as it was torn apart at the seams.

And the world… his world… ended.

Shattered into fragments.

Just like that.

The Heavenly Eye recoiled. I felt its walls pull back from that future, as if it, too, wanted no part in witnessing what came next.

And then…

We were back. The light dimmed. The air stilled. We stood once more in that long-forgotten courtyard, where a boy named Nongmin stood before a man in white robes.

Shouquan.

“Become my disciple,” the old man offered.

In the other timeline, Nongmin had said yes.

But now, now that he had seen what that path would cost, he hesitated. I saw the fear in his younger self’s eyes. Saw the way he shook, saw the breath catch in his throat. And then he said it.

“No.”

His voice wasn’t loud.

But it was final.

Shouquan blinked, visibly surprised.

In the same moment, the Heavenly Eye rippled with unseen force, and Nongmin's cultivation rose. In a single breath, he ascended into the Spirit Mystery Realm, a feat so ridiculous even I felt my knees go weak just watching it.

To Shouquan’s eyes, it must have seemed impossible.

“...Heaven-defying,” the old man murmured. “Such a pity. Hmmm... I guess I can only leave you to your devices...”

He glanced once more at the lifeless body of Xin Yune.

And then, without another word, he turned and left. In the background, Nongmin’s father cried: broken, confused, and cradling his dead wife’s body like a child refusing to let go of a favorite toy.

Beside me, the real Nongmin spoke softly.

“At the Spirit Mystery Realm,” he said, “one gains a unique ability tied to their nature. For me… it was this.”

The other Nongmin stepped forward. Then, with tears streaming down his face, he whispered a technique. He didn’t chant. Didn’t build a formation. Didn’t even use Qi. He simply remembered.

“I sacrificed the memory of the revival technique Shouquan used,” he said, “in the timeline where I said yes.”

Golden light bloomed from his palm. Gentler than before. Warmer! It flowed into Xin Yune’s chest like sunlight into frost. And once again… her eyes opened.

"It's the special ability to express a 'power' by expending the memory of me seeing the aforementioned power, whether I saw it from the future, past, or the present," explained Nongmin. "To borrow your words, it is an overpowered special ability."

The memory didn’t end with her revival. It continued, flowing like a river through time, through the centuries that followed. Nongmin tried to live his life, tried to give meaning to the power he had inherited, but there was never any rest for him.

“I used to wonder,” the Nongmin beside me said softly, “if it was punishment. Or if Heaven made a mistake.”

His expression was tired, but not defeated.

“I was born with too much power and too much foresight, yet still helpless at the end of it all,” he continued. “Sometimes I confuse the future with the present. Sometimes I wept at a death that hadn’t happened yet… or smiled at a reunion I would never live to see. It broke me more than once.”

We stood at the edge of a scene frozen in motion… another life, another cycle. Another Nongmin. Another me.

And then it played.

A thousand years passed in minutes, each iteration bleeding into the next like paint in water. Over and over, I saw him try. And over and over, I slaughtered him. It didn’t matter if he was a scholar or a king, a warrior or a hermit. Every path, every version of him ended the same way: facing me.

Or rather… facing him.

The other me.

The one who had become something else. A weapon. A monster. A man-shaped calamity.

“I called you the God of War when we met,” Nongmin said, “because by then I’d seen a hundred timelines where that’s all you were.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

Because he was right.

And what was worse… that version of me… he looked miserable. Not enraged. Not triumphant. Just hollow. Like he’d been losing something every time he fought and didn’t even know what anymore.

Then, one iteration stood out.

A battlefield. Endless. Broken!

The sky was bruised with smoke and Qi residue, the clouds torn open by flying swords and spirit cannons. The ruins of a Martial Alliance fortress smoldered behind a dying line of defenders. Nongmin stood at the head of them. No puppets. No war machines. Just him, and a battered sword that barely looked worth lifting.

His left arm hung limp. His robes were scorched through.

But he stood.

Facing me.

The other me.

That Da Wei wore shattered armor, his helm missing, exposing tired eyes and a face caked in blood. He panted.

“Where,” he rasped, “is the Arch Gate?”

His healing magic flickered along his skin, barely keeping up with the wounds reopening as fast as they closed.

Nongmin didn’t answer. Not at first.

Instead, he asked, “Why do you persist?”

His voice was low but clear. “Why does it always end like this?”

The other me looked at him like the question was absurd.

“Because you got in my way.”

Then he charged.

Nongmin parried once. Twice. He stepped back, gave ground, buying seconds more.

Then I saw him fall.

Again.

The sword pierced his chest.

And as he crumpled to the ground, a red-haired man appeared behind him… screaming in fury, far too late.

Time passed. Another thousand years' worth of memory.

Then another.

Each time, Nongmin tried something different. He’d join the Union to gain leverage. Or defect to the Heavenly Temple. He’d try to reach me early… talk to me before the madness began. Once, he even tried to befriend me.

It didn’t work.

Every time, the other me would lose it. Snap. Burn bridges. Destroy nations.

I didn’t know what hurt more… watching myself fall into violence, or watching Nongmin keep trying.

He never gave up.

Even when I did.

“Eventually, I learned the truth,” the real Nongmin said beside me. “About you. Or at least, about him… the other David.”

He didn’t look at me when he spoke.

“When he fell into this world, he was… not in the right state of mind. To say he was vulnerable would be an overstatement, but it was a fact that he was at his weakest in this period. Imagine what your reaction is like when the first thing you see when you come to this world is… evil. Then it just kept happening. Injustice after injustice. The strong are hurting the weak. Systems so rigged they didn’t even bother pretending. And each time, you have to choose between what was right and what would help you survive.”

Another iteration played before us, flickering like an old film reel.

This time, Da Wei was bound. Shackled.

An auction stage.

A collar glowing with ancient runes latched around his neck… something old, forbidden.

“He fell to slavery in this one,” Nongmin whispered. “Ancient Qi techniques. It’s not common, but it exists. They call it ‘soul sealing.’”

From the sound of it, even an ‘Immortal Soul’ could be hindered with the right techniques. I watched that version of me kneel in chains, eyes dead, as nobles placed bids for the ‘cursed outsider.’ And then he broke through his binds and began another round of slaughter.

I had no words.

It was like looking into a cracked mirror that reached infinity.

“Do you want to stop?” Nongmin asked gently.

I shook my head. “No.”

Because, as awful as it was… I had to see. I had to understand what I could become. The memory slowed down. The countless iterations of bloodshed, broken trust, and collapsing worlds faded like smoke in the wind. What remained was one… just one.

The most recent thousand years!

The one Nongmin chose.

It was quieter somehow, not in the absence of war, but in the presence of intention. This iteration had been shaped differently. Deliberately. I turned to the Nongmin beside me. He felt older than before, not in appearance but in weight. As if the cost of narrowing infinite timelines into a single one had carved scars into his soul.

“You chose this one,” I said, not as a question.

“I did.”

The memory moved.

And there he was… younger, but already hollowed out. Not emotionless, not exactly, but emptied of the volatility that had once made him human. The spark was gone. What remained was purpose.

“I couldn’t save everyone,” he said quietly beside me, “but I thought… maybe I could save enough. Even just a small amount. And maybe that would be enough to justify it all.”

The vision showed him in long halls of marble and gold, where advisors whispered, soldiers trained, and peasants bowed their heads in hope. The Grand Ascension Empire.

“So, that’s why you built the Empire?” I asked. “To protect people?”

He shook his head.

“That was only part of it.”

He looked at me then, really looked.

“I realized, eventually, that I could never save this world through force or foresight. The only way to save it… was to make you love it.”

The silence that followed was heavy.

I didn’t know what to say.

The memory shifted again… his younger self arguing with a stern man I assumed was his father, while his mother watched in silence.

“She was from the Empire before it fell,” Nongmin explained. “I convinced her to return. My father hated the idea, but he came anyway. He tried.”

I watched it all unfold… their return to crumbling cities and scorched lands. How Nongmin studied, climbed the ranks, and earned his influence not through bloodline or fate, but merit.

“How young were you?” I asked. “At least physically at the time?”

“Ten, when I truly realized the world was broken. Thirteen, when I started building it back. Sixteen, when I had political weight. Twenty, when I raised the banner of war to claim the Empire for myself. The world was already crumbling by then… the Age of Calamity had begun.”

In the memory, I saw a young man who moved with the certainty of someone who no longer feared death… but didn’t welcome it either. He fought like a warrior and ruled like a true monarch in the same night. There would be wars. A lot of them. Never-ending fights to claim a place of his own in the slowly crumbling world.

He won.

He always did.

“He met people. He lost them. Gained others. Conquered, ruled, and unified,” said Nongmin as the scenes played out. "To build a strong Empire, the Emperor must be strong too. To build a kind Empire, the Emperor must be kind too, but I don't know how to be kind, even if I can replicate acts of kindness, but I tried... I really tried, David."

And then… I saw it.

Riverfall Realm.

My beginning.

He scryed from afar, his Heavenly Eye shimmering like glass dipped in starlight. And there I was… standing in Yellow Dragon City, arguing with vendors, sharing food with street kids, bickering with Jiang Zhen and sometimes Ren Jin.

I sighed.

“So… Ren Jin being governor there… that wasn’t a coincidence, huh?”

Nongmin smiled faintly. “No. I placed him there on purpose. I always knew he had a kind soul. Among my children, he’s always been the better leader.”

That made me laugh. A deep, nostalgic laugh.

“Can’t believe it,” I said. “I was manipulated into being a kind person. You just saved my damn soul, man. I mean… I’d hate to be the other guy.”

He didn’t laugh.

“This isn’t a laughing matter, David.”

I stopped, the smile still tugging at the corners of my mouth. "I am not laughing..."

Nongmin’s gaze was level. “Is it really manipulation if this kindness was already in you?”

I blinked.

He continued. “I don’t think so. What truly nailed the coffin… if anything… was when you met your first disciple. Gu Jie.”

The memory shifted again. There she was, standing awkwardly before me, looking thin but proud, with that spark in her eye she never let go of. I watched the moment we met. I remembered how I interrogated her, and how she clung to me.

“Fate,” I murmured, “is truly mysterious.”

Nongmin nodded. “No matter how strange. Or cruel.”

I couldn’t look away. He kept raising it, strange and cruel...

Gu Jie clung to my leg in the memory. I smiled. And I knew… no matter how many iterations had come before… this one mattered the most. This one might work. However, I couldn't find it in myself to feel enthused or hopeful as I stared at Nongmin's evidently sad eyes. There was more. I could tell. The narrative wasn't complete.

"So... I am going to end the world today, isn't it? How?"