Tome of Troubled Times
Chapter 813 (1): Time and Karma

Chapter 813 (1): Time and Karma

Zhao Changhe did not dare to touch this final page of the Heavenly Tome.

Ye Wuming lacked only this one. No one knew what would happen if he came into direct contact with it. Would it count as her having completed the set of nine? Even if, in theory, the page still belonged to Ye Jiuyou, the risk was too great.

All he dared to do was extend his divine sense toward it, maintaining a cautious distance, trying to see if he could glimpse anything without physically making contact.

Far away, Ye Wuming watched silently with closed eyes. She told herself she should not be feeling anything, that she had no reason to feel anything, but she did not realize that her right hand had clenched into a tight fist at some point.

Ye Jiuyou, sensing something, lifted her head to peer into the distance, only to find that Ye Wuming had vanished.

Ye Jiuyou had not seen anything, and yet her lips curled upward in a quiet, knowing smile. Then, she shifted her gaze back to Zhao Changhe to check his expression, wondering if he had gleaned anything from this page of the Heavenly Tome, only to be startled. Zhao Changhe had already fallen into deep meditation.

This was the page of time and space. They were inseparable, two sides of the same coin. The same space, viewed at different times, could be a thriving forest or a desolate wasteland. And at the same time, in different spaces, completely different things would happen.

When Zhao Changhe had glimpsed Ye Wuming’s garden before, he had felt a strange stillness, something beyond stasis, as though time itself had been halted. That was the only way ancient flora could bloom as if untouched by the passage of time, only to be plucked and used by Ying Five for pill refinement.

In hindsight, he remembered a similar sensation on Skyrim Island. Yet Skyrim Island was not a secret realm—secret realms were fragments of the heavenly realm, while Skyrim Island belonged to the mortal realm...

If that’s the case, then perhaps Skyrim Island is actually a place where the heavenly realm intersects with the mortal realm?

He made a mental note to revisit it one day. Perception shapes experience, and returning with new understanding might reveal entirely different truths.

At the very least, this page of the Heavenly Tome, in combination with the one of light and shadow, offered profound insights into the relationship between light and time.

He knew that in the real world, there were theories about light and time being interconnected, relativity and whatnot. He could not remember the exact explanations, if he’d ever even known them, but that was not particularly important right now. The page of light and shadow could provide relevant insights, which could then be mutually verified with this page of time and space. Added to that was karma, void and reality... all forming a deepening web of mutual verification.

As he had guessed, the pages were all interconnected. Every new page did not just add information but expanded and completed the understanding of the ones before it. And as he perused them, his comprehension of the laws of the universe became sharper and more refined.

The place where he sat now was the mountains just outside the Abyss of Jiuyou. Logic told him that this abyss was the place where Ye Jiuyou herself had first emerged.

Drifting deeper into the flow of insight, Zhao Changhe reached into the past. His surroundings began to shift and blur. The world dissolved into a hazy current, as though he were drifting upstream through the river of time, chasing the origins of everything. And then he saw it: a scene from the age before the collapse of the previous era.

As expected, she was there.

The long-absent, long-dreaded blind woman, captured in the chaotic images of a titanic battle fought here, long ago, by her and Jiuyou.

This was the first time Zhao Changhe had ever seen Ye Wuming with her eyes open... The thing that had haunted his curiosity for so long, the mystery that had scratched at the back of his mind, was suddenly revealed without warning. And for a moment, he found himself utterly dazed. She was, indeed, beautiful. Her eyes bore an eerily strong resemblance to Ye Jiuyou’s, but unsurprisingly, they were cold. No, not just cold, but outright terrifying. There was that kind of iciness within them that makes you instinctively flinch. The kind of chill that crawls down your spine and clutches your heart with invisible hands.

Just days ago, he had mocked the Frost Chi for being too reverent toward Ye Wuming. But now, even Zhao Changhe felt that quiet dread curling in his chest.

These two women, nearly identical in appearance and otherworldly allure, were locked in combat. And as they fought, they were far from being alluring or otherworldly. The sight made him feel like an icy wind was pressing his back against a sharp cliff.

He could not track their movements, nor could he even understand the laws they wielded. All he could sense was that with every clash of their energies, the surrounding space itself seemed on the verge of being shredded apart. If he, the current number one on the Ranking of Heaven, had been standing at the center of that battlefield, he probably would not have lasted three seconds before being torn to shreds.

But that was not what made his eyebrows rise. What struck him most was that neither of them looked anything like how he knew them now. Instead, both wore expressions of absolute detachment. Their eyes held not even a sliver of human emotion. In their gaze, each saw not an enemy but a corpse. It was as if, in their eyes, their opponent was already dead. Even hatred had no meaning here.

It made his image of Ye Jiuyou—playful, emotional, and expressive—feel all the more surreal. Ye Wuming’s transformation, at least, had been gradual over the past three years. Jiuyou’s, by contrast, was sudden. From Chang’an onward, something had changed dramatically. Zhao Changhe truly had no idea what had happened to her in those few months, but it had to be something tectonic, a shift not of personality but of nature itself. Anyone who knew her would ask: Since when did Ye Jiuyou have so many expressions?

The truth was, even Ye Jiuyou herself did not know.

In the same vein, the sisters’ confrontation had not been anything like it was now. There had been no biting remarks, no sarcastic banter. It had been nothing but silent, relentless combat. Zhao Changhe watched for a long time but did not hear even a single word exchanged between them.

Well, not until much later, when blood finally began to trickle from Ye Jiuyou’s lips.

Only then did she retreat a step and casually wipe the corner of her mouth with her slender fingers. It was only now that she spoke up. “You can’t kill me, Big Sister... And don’t use that destroyer of eras excuse as a pretense to execute me. Sure, I did a few things, but none were even close to enough to cause the end of an era. If I had, I wouldn’t deny it. But don’t pin that on me. Take that to your clueless followers.”

Zhao Changhe’s heart stirred.

That’s right... Jiuyou’s name carried weight, and many who knew even a little of the old world might assume the collapse of the last era was her doing. But why had he never once thought that? Because from the moment Ye Wuming introduced Jiuyou, she never hinted in that direction. Had she so much as nudged his perception, he likely would have drawn the same conclusion.

It showed that Ye Wuming disdained manipulation through lies. Even when it came to a mortal enemy, she refused to resort to slander.

Ye Wuming answered flatly, “Your slaughter and destruction were indeed contributing factors. But that’s not why I’ve come to end you.”

Jiuyou did not deny her part. “Then why waste your time?”

“There’s no grand reason.” Ye Wuming’s voice was emotionless. “Simply put, there is no longer any reason for you to exist.”

“Well, I’m sorry to let you know, but you can’t remove me from existence. At least not unless the entire world collapses into nothing, and we all perish together. And despite knowing that, you still try to preserve the mortal realm. And you say this is not self-deception? Please. How could the fall of the heavenly realm alone kill me? Forget about me, even if you killed Piaomiao, it’d be for nothing.”

Ye Wuming replied simply, “A frog in a well speaks of the sea.”

Zhao Changhe: “...”

What a pretentious line, Blindie. But in the end, isn’t your little sister exactly right? And didn’t you get slapped in the face for it, hard?

Oh right, you’re not on my side anymore, so why should I care how badly you’re humiliated? The worse you’re humiliated, the better.

As expected, the battle ended in mutual destruction. Ye Jiuyou sustained the heavier injuries, and when the collapse of the era followed, she could not withstand it. She dragged her battered body into the abyss, barely clinging to life. It took thirty years for her to awaken from her slumber and another thirty to recover to the state she was in now.

Thirty years... That would place her awakening just around the time Xia Longyuan was sweeping across the world, which also means that Ye Wuming’s own awakening likely had not preceded that by much. She must have recovered just enough before heading to Earth to “gather reinforcements.”

Everything fits. The pieces fit together and the timeline makes sense.

But Zhao Changhe still felt something was off.

What about the Frost Chi? What role did it play in all of this? Isn’t it supposed to be crucial? So why does it seem as if all these grand events seemed to proceed without its involvement. Even the feud between the Ye sisters unfolded as if the Frost Chi didn’t exist. Could there really be events of a higher tier than that? If it was that vital, why was it so... disconnected?

He pushed the doubts aside and kept tracing further back, following Ye Jiuyou’s karma. There were still answers to be found. He could feel it.

The scene shifted again. He now saw Ye Jiuyou in a meditative pose, just as she had been earlier, suspended above a dark, bottomless abyss. Wails echoed through the distance, winds howled with malice, and all manner of twisted, shadowy creatures flickered in and out of view.

Ye Jiuyou snapped her fingers.

Tens of thousands of li away, an unknown demon god abruptly died on the spot. Moments later, its vacant eyes opened, and it began to walk slowly toward the Abyss of Jiuyou, becoming her most loyal corpse puppet.

All around the abyss, other dead beings began to rise, one after another. Corpses littered the mountains, and ghostly flames drifted through the air. The sight was eerie and overwhelming, grand and terrifying all at once.

Yes... this is how it should be. Zhao Changhe’s eyes were damp with awe. This is the boss-level Jiuyou I imagined... But wait...