Devouring the Dao: Key to the Azure Firmament Time Abyss

At the lowest level of the Ninefold Abyss lay the Eternal Night Realm, where time was a shattered spiral.

On the thirty-second day after the Spirit-Devouring Chains pierced Ye Han's shoulder blades, he uncovered the ultimate secret of this world: what flowed through the so-called spiritual energy was not the essence of heaven and earth, but Dao-Devouring Insects that fed on the heart of the Dao. The ascension pursued by cultivators all their lives was nothing more than meeting data benchmarks under the surveillance of a higher civilization. And the twelve chains of law floating above the cultivation world were actually anti-entropy devices that kept the experimental field in balance.

Bearing the Eye of Time and Space and a broken key, he witnessed the truth behind the cycles of cultivation civilization as time rewound:

The ancient corpse in the bronze coffin, with a shard of the key embedded in it, was himself, three hundred years ago, when he had tried to sever the chains.

The chip code flashing inside the spine of the Holy Maiden of the Profound Heaven was labeled [Hungry Ghost Realm Vessel: Seventh-Generation Experimental Subject].

And when the Netherworld Blood River reflected the emblem of a star-ring-shaped Space-Time Administration, Ye Han finally understood:

The cultivation world was nothing more than an ecological pod where a higher civilization cultivated Dao-Devouring Insects. All cultivators were Hosts that nourished the swarm.