The bookshelf there was completely empty, holding only a stone pedestal. Upon the pedestal rested an object covered by white silk. Qian Renxue had never noticed this place before, but today, she was drawn toward it by an indescribable instinct.
She lifted the silk, revealing an ancient bronze mirror.
The mirror was not large, roughly a foot in diameter. Its surface was dark and dull, as if coated with the dust of ages. The frame was carved with intricate patterns—neither the common motifs of the God Realm, nor anything belonging to any civilization Qian Renxue had ever seen. These patterns seemed alive, slowly flowing and shifting forms in the light.
Qian Renxue reached out and touched the mirror's surface.
The instant her fingertips made contact, the mirror suddenly lit up. The dark surface became as clear as water, but it did not reflect Qian Renxue's current appearance. Instead, it showed a rapid succession of flashing images—
She saw her younger self, undergoing the Angel God's trial in the halls of the Spirit Hall. Sweat soaked her golden hair, yet an inextinguishable flame burned in her eyes.
She saw herself disguised as Xue Qinghe, maneuvering through the courts of the Heaven Dou Empire. Every smile was precisely calculated, and every decision impacted the empire's future.
She saw the moment she inherited the Angel God throne. Golden light pierced the heavens and the earth, and six wings unfurled behind her back—holy, yet utterly lonely.
She saw the final battle against Tang San, saw her divine throne shattering, saw herself falling from the sky. Then, over long years, she saw herself slowly piecing her divine core back together and reclaiming her strength.
She saw her first encounter with Tang Wulin, saw the pure light in that child's eyes, and saw how she had unwittingly transformed from a cold guardian into a true mentor and friend.
The images flashed faster and faster, finally merging into a flowing golden radiance. Within the light, a voice echoed in Qian Renxue's mind. It was not spoken in any language, but transmitted as a direct, pure understanding:
"Time is like water, flowing endlessly away. Yet within the water lies gold, precipitating into solidity. Existence is not a fleeting flash of light, but the gold precipitated by the years. Your path is not to seek outward, but to seek inward. Find your gold, forge your solidity, and become an indestructible existence."
The mirror's surface reverted to its dark state, and the flowing patterns on the frame came to a standstill.
Qian Renxue stood before the mirror, motionless for a long time. The revelation from the mirror pointed directly to the path she had just grasped—condensation and precipitation. But what did the voice mean by "the gold precipitated by the years"? Was it memory? Was it experience? Or something even deeper?
She stared at the mirror, suddenly struck by a question: why did this mirror react to her Dao of Existence?
Qian Renxue closely examined the patterns on the frame. Though motionless now, she could identify some of the symbols—they were markers of time, the "Chrono-Seals" occasionally mentioned in the ancient texts of the God Realm. This mirror was very likely tied to the very essence of time.
"The precipitation of time," she mused thoughtfully.
Existence and time were inherently inseparable concepts. A mortal's existence flowed away within time, while a god's existence endured through it. For the Eye of Annihilation to erase an existence, it didn't just have to erase their current state; it had to erase all their traces along the timeline—that was true, absolute nothingness.
If her existence was "the gold precipitated by the years," then to resist annihilation, she not only needed to be solid in the present moment, but solid at every increment of time. Her past, present, and future had to become an indivisible whole—a "reality" that could not be scrubbed from the timeline.
This realization accelerated the changes deep within Qian Renxue's soul. She felt her memories were no longer just images in her mind; they had gained "substance." Those crucial moments—her mother's embrace, her grandfather's teachings, the enlightenment upon inheriting the divine throne, the instants of fighting alongside Tang Wulin—all seemed to have transformed into golden granules. They settled at the very depths of her soul, constructing a sturdy foundation.
"I understand," Qian Renxue whispered. "My existence is the result of time's accumulation. Every experience, every choice, every moment of perseverance has added to the 'weight' of this existence. When the weight is great enough, it becomes difficult to erase; when the precipitation is deep enough, it becomes impossible to dissolve."
But how could she translate this understanding into actual power to fight the Void?
Qian Renxue left the library, but instead of returning to the Serenity Garden, she headed to another location within the God Realm—the Corridor of Time.
It was a place where very few deities ever set foot, for it was filled with chaotic currents of time. A single misstep could cause one to become lost within time itself. But Qian Renxue had an intuition that she absolutely had to go there.
Located at the edge of the God Realm, the Corridor of Time was a series of ring-shaped structures suspended in the void, connected to one another by bridges of light. The rules of space and time here differed from the outside world; the flow of time would suddenly accelerate or decelerate, and sometimes, "echoes of time" would even appear—residual shadows of past events replaying themselves over and over.
The moment Qian Renxue stepped into the first corridor, she felt the power of time. She saw a shadow of herself from hundreds of years ago walk right past her. It was her from just after she had reformed her divine core, her eyes still carrying a lingering confusion and pain. That shadow did not see her current self; it walked straight across the light bridge and vanished into the next corridor.
"Echoes of time," Qian Renxue murmured thoughtfully.
She pressed deeper, walking through one corridor after another. Each corridor reflected a specific fragment of her life: training in the Spirit Hall during her childhood, maneuvering among courtiers as Xue Qinghe, the grueling trials of the Angel God assessment, the battle with Tang San, the endless restoration after her divine core shattered, and the little moments spent guiding Tang Wulin...
These echoes were not arranged in chronological order, but jumbled and intertwined, like a scrambled timeline. Qian Renxue walked among them, watching countless versions of "herself" acting out their respective scenes all around her. The experience was bizarre yet profoundly awe-inspiring.
"If I can integrate these fragments," she suddenly thought, "if I can condense the existence of every 'me' across the timeline into a single entity... just how powerful of a 'reality' would that be?"
The thought brought her to a halt. She stood in the center of a corridor, surrounded by dozens of versions of herself from different eras—the child, the youth, the newly ascended deity, the shattered god, the reborn soul. They were living, fighting, thinking, and feeling within their respective slices of time.
Qian Renxue closed her eyes, no longer looking with her physical eyes, but feeling with her soul.
She sensed the power of time flowing here, like an invisible river carrying countless possibilities. Every "her" was a wave in this river—fleeting, yet undeniably real. If existence was a continuum within time, then to become an indestructible existence, one had to permeate the entire timeline, becoming the river itself, rather than just a single wave within it.
"But I am not the God of Time," Qian Renxue opened her eyes. "I cannot control time. I can only become an anchor within it."
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