Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 1141: I’m Aurora

Xu Qing smiled. He had many questions. He had many suspicions.

For example, why had Grandmaster Bai been in Revered Ancient? Why had Grandmaster Bai actually died? And also… how had he become a medicinal decocting pot in the thoughts of Immortal Lord Aurora? What was more… how could it be that Grandmaster Bai’s memories and will from Revered Ancient were in a world that formed when Immortal Lord Aurora died?

There were no answers to such questions. Nor was that important right now.

What was important… was that the voice had said the same thing that had been said so many years ago. ‘As long as we don’t die, we’ll meet again.’

Today, in this world, they had met again.

As a result, Xu Qing was very happy. In fact, it had been a very long time since he felt this happy. It was as if he had unintentionally abandoned the emotion of happiness a long time ago….

Feeling very comfortable, he laughed and ‘looked’ around. He suddenly realized that the concepts of left and right were now permitted. As a result, even in his low state of existence, he could sense what was around him.

And yet… all he could ‘see’ was distorted chaos. That was because although the world had the concepts of left and right, everything was still flat. When being flat and looking at flatness, all one will see is a haze. There was no concept of height.

But the emotion of happiness kept getting stronger, bolstering his perceptions and becoming the totality of everything.

Something is off about this….

As happiness filled him, Xu Qing realized that something unusual was going on. He wanted to suppress the emotion, but it didn’t seem like the world would permit it. Therefore, all he could do was be immersed in happiness as he tried to restrain it. In the end… Xu Qing chose to activate his space-time canon.

He wanted to see this world clearly. Only in that manner could he understand it and find a way to leave. An instant later, his eighth extreme erupted.

It was like a mist had been cleared, and Xu Qing rose to a higher level. His thoughts had been upgraded. The world entered Xu Qing’s thoughts and became incomparably clear.

It was a white world inside the mirror. The black dots entering the mirror from outside were rapidly growing bigger. They were no longer dots or a thread. They were returning to their original state, which meant that they had… torsos, limbs, and heads. They were becoming… shadows.

And they were not pure black. Although the world was white as far as the eye could see, there were also colors within that world. They were colorful shadows that made the world resplendent.

All of the shadows in this world seemed to be brimming with happiness. It was as if they had no anger in them at all. No sadness. They were completely free and at ease. Some were singing. Some were crying out in joy. Some were sleeping. Some were running around. Interestingly, there were no orange shadows.[1]

Yet that didn’t seem to bother any of the shadows, who were simply immersed in happiness. The world had no mountains, rivers, or any other things…. There were only the innumerable colorful shadows.

Upon seeing this, Xu Qing checked himself to see what color he was. He was green.[2]

The first world has countless black dots making a thread, with no concept of left, right, up, or down. This second world has left and right, which makes it seem freer. However… it doesn’t have the concepts of up and down. And that’s because this world is a mirror. And mirrors… are flat.

It’s like a scroll painting. And I’m in the painting. When inside the painting, if I look around, everything seems like a blur. But if I look at the painting from outside, it looks like a world.

Only the emotion of happiness is permitted, presumably because of the style of the painting. The theme is happiness, so all the living beings here are endlessly happy. In that case… how do I leave?

After a while, he made a decision. He dispelled his space-time state, and his thoughts returned to that of a green shadow. And he immersed himself in the world of happiness.

He was waiting. Waiting for orange to appear.

Time passed, although it was impossible to say how much. As his happiness grew greater, the number of shadows in the world seemed to reach a critical point. Xu Qing was waiting for orange.

“The monster is coming!” a shrill voice shrieked. All of a sudden, deafening rumbling hit the world with mountain-toppling, sea-draining force. All of the shadows felt it. At that moment, the theme of the painting was altered, and happiness turned into terror.

Orange was coming. It spread without end.

Xu Qing’s emotions flipped on end, and he felt terror filling him. Without any hesitation, he activated his space-time canon so that he could ‘see’ again. What he saw… was that a huge shadow had come to this world of white. The shadow was wearing an orange robe and had a vicious-looking mask. It seemed boundlessly wicked and evil.

In one hand it held a bucket, and in the other hand it held a paintbrush. The bucket was orange, and was full of orange paint. The brush was colorless.

It suddenly lunged at the nearby shadows. It moved so fast that the shadows couldn’t react or fight back. The monster swished the paint brush, and the color was extracted from the shadows.

As a result, the shadows became blank. They then seemed to fuse with the world. Countless dots were disappearing. Apparently… they were going back to the first world!

From the perspective of the world, this really was a monster. He came, took away the color, took away the life, and sent everything back to the beginning.

But it didn’t happen to all the shadows. Occasionally… some of the shadows had unique characteristics, and their color wasn’t extracted by the monster. Instead, he would dip the paintbrush into the orange paint and… would paint those specific shadows orange. Next, the orange shadows would fall into the bucket.

Xu Qing was one of them. The moment he was painted… his space-time canon was suppressed! He could not fight back or resist. But he was permitted to exist.

What happened next shook Xu Qing deeply.

There was a city inside the bucket. An orange city. There were shadows inside, all of them orange like Xu Qing.

The moment Xu Qing entered, he became a resident of the city. At the same time, he realized he felt very sleepy. That sensation surpassed his canon, thus making it impossible to sustain his space-time canon state. And he also couldn’t resist the sleepiness.

That was because… in this orange-colored city, the shadows were only permitted to do one thing. Sleep, and then dream. There were different dreams, all of them like fairy tales. And they combined to create a complete world of fairy tales.

Xu Qing was no exception. Within that orange city, he closed his eyes and began to dream. The dreams came and left one after another within his thoughts. It was a cycle with no end. There was no true awakening.

But occasionally, Xu Qing was able to think about why all of this was happening. Gradually, he managed to imagine Immortal Lord Aurora, and try to look at things from his perspective. He tried to think about why a world like this would have been created as he died.

Eventually, he developed a theory. The orange city was probably a metaphor representing the Immortal Capital. In that case, who was the monster….?

Now he had a goal. Time passed. It was hard to say how much. Nor was it possible to say which spring of which year had come to the timescape. But within Xu Qing’s dream, a white-colored imp appeared. The imp’s body was made of threads. He had a very large head that made up half of his entire body. There were three words written on his head.[3]

Other than that, his body was very simplistic. He was carrying some five-colored paint as he carefully snuck into Xu Qing’s dream. He said nothing. He just stood in front of Xu Qing and snapped his fingers.

CRACK!

A thunderous boom filled Xu Qing’s mind. Xu Qing’s will stirred, and he woke up briefly.

Seeing that, the imp grinned and then pointed at the words on his face. Then he pointed off into the distance before pointing at the five-colored paint. Finally… he looked at Xu Qing in anticipation.

Xu Qing took advantage of the temporary lucidity to analyze the imp’s facial expressions and actions. An explanation quickly became clear to him.

I’d say there’s an eighty to ninety percent chance that this big-headed imp is the last surviving scrap of will left behind by Immortal Lord Aurora before he died.

Xu Qing looked at the three words on the imp’s big head.

I am Aurora. [4]

Has it shown up because I have space-time canon? Or does it appear to everyone who makes it to the second world? Regardless, Immortal Lord Aurora made this second world, and now he’s explained how to leave it. It’s all about that five-colored paint. Using a color that’s different from this world amounts to … an act of rebellion!

The imp seemed to sense what Xu Qing was thinking, as the anticipation on his face grew more intense.

Xu Qing inwardly shook his head.

If this is really Immortal Lord Aurora, then… he would definitely hate the Immortal Paragon. And that means that when he created this world, the exit method is going to reflect his choice back then…. That said, I don’t seem to have any other options right now.

Eyes narrowing, he reached out, grabbed the five-colored paint, and began to paint himself with it. All of a sudden, he shivered as he changed from orange. He was now covered with five different colors. The city filled with rumbling sounds, as a powerful howl rippled through it. All the light dimed.

And then, the endless orangeness turned into a massive hand that shot down from the sky toward Xu Qing!

The excited imp finally spoke in a shriek, “The monster’s coming, son. RUN!”

As the words left the imp’s mouth, he whipped his hand out in front of him, drawing a circle that he jumped into. Xu Qing didn’t hesitate for a moment. He jumped right in after the imp. The circle disappeared.

An instant after they were gone, the huge orange hand arrived and snatched down onto the spot Xu Qing had occupied. A howl of rage echoed out.

All of the sleeping orange shadows in the city woke up, startled. An instant later, they were all flying out of the orange bucket to the outside world, where they scattered.

The whole world was being painted orange!

And the chase had begun!

1. There are different Chinese characters for the color orange. In this case, the character used is the most common one. Just like in English, it’s exactly the same character from the fruit of the same name (except that the character for ‘color’ is added to it). ☜

2. The Chinese character used here to describe his color is the same character from his name. This character can be interpreted in different ways. It can be green, blue, cyan, blue-green, and sometimes even black depending on the context. Based on translating thousands of Er Gen chapters, I can tell you that he most often uses this character to describe green things. There is another character more commonly used for the color green, but he very, very rarely uses that character. For instance, when he describes rainbows, and lists all of the primary and secondary colors in them, he will use this character as the color between yellow and blue. He also uses this character to describe the green color of plants and vegetation. As such, I default to translating this character as green, although I’ll use other interpretations in other circumstances, for instance Violet and Cyan from this novel. ☜

3. In Chinese it says there are four characters, but they work out to three English words. ☜

4. In Chinese, ‘aurora’ is made of two characters. I haven’t mentioned it up to this point because it isn’t really relevant but aurora is literally “extreme light.” That’s the same “extreme” character from the Eight Extreme Daos. As for “light,” the interesting thing is that this same character is in the term I’m translating as “timescape.” Again, there is no indication this is relevant in any way. There are only a few thousand Chinese characters that can be used to make a vastly larger amount of words, terms, idioms, etc. so having shared characters between different words is nothing unusual. ☜