Editing the Heavenly Dao: You Survive Tribulations While I Tweak the Settings

While cultivators across the city trembled beneath the lightning tribulation, Chen Jin saw the draft of the Heavenly Dao in a museum storeroom. It was a set of rules written by a higher-dimensional civilization. Heavenly tribulations weren’t divine punishment, but scheduled audits: lightning tribulations were purges, inner demons were scans, and ascension was being struck off the records. The venerable Xuantian Ancestor, who had ruled supreme for three thousand years, was erased in front of everyone over a single line: “Maximum energy output: zero.” No one remembered him. Chen Jin was the only anomaly in this system. He remembered the world before each “revision”: the vanished soy milk stall, the relatives who had appeared out of nowhere, the photographs that had turned around. On the roster of three thousand boys and girls who had sailed out to seek immortality, the names of those who had been erased were densely crossed out. Only his name had been missed. That day, they forced his head down to make him undergo the tribulation. The lightning scoured the registers but couldn’t find him. It circled three times and still didn’t dare strike. He raised his hand and changed a single parameter that determined life and death. The thunderclouds overhead fell silent on the spot. Across the long street, the gray-robed editor’s expression changed for the first time. “What you changed is the question for the next exam.” From then on, he made the world his examination hall, matched accounts with the editors, exposed loopholes in the rules, and followed the coordinates of Xu Fu’s voyage east, fighting his way from city streets into the vast sea of stars. And there was one person who always stayed by his side. Xu Qingzhao, a restorer of ancient books, kept to the rule “where the scrolls are, I am.” She lit lamps and turned pages for him, and broke tradition by carrying a scroll out of her studio. He shielded her from invisible blades. Two people who remembered one another had no intention of being the first to let go. If fate is only a parameter that has yet to be rewritten, why shouldn’t I be the one holding the brush? He wanted to protect not only the truth, but also the one amid the lights of countless homes,