Ashes Across Ten Thousand Stars

As the Age of Declining Dharma crumbles, spiritual energy turns to ash. Clinging to the remnants of the old ways, cultivators use their bodies as vessels and beg the heavens for whatever blessings remain, only to perish with the rotting earth.

In such a desperate situation, should one wait for death or forge a new path? When the old vessels decay, how can civilization carry on and evolve? The human body is a universe in itself. Why rely on the heavens? Evolve chaos to bring forth the primordial, derive the Four Symbols and Eight Trigrams, arrange the stars, and build a world within the body.

The struggle over the Dao begins. The old guard cries, “Slay the heavens,” sacrificing living beings to flee into illusion, while the pioneers manifest projections of the universe, devouring heaven and earth and turning their power against them. As heaven and earth collapse, he leads the survivors into a universe of their own making. In the Return to Ruin, he discovers traces of the multiverse.

From borrowing the laws of nature to becoming a world unto himself, from drifting alone in a small boat to bringing myriad dimensions back to the Dao, he ultimately declares, “The Daoist tradition must not be a shackle. It should open the heavens for all living things.” In the darkness beyond the multiverse, he establishes a new order of coexistence across all dimensions and becomes an eternal beacon of the Dao.