Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

"So, you've come to that conclusion as well," Bai Jingshen said. "Do you think it is possible?"

"I… I don't know," Alex said. "But since we're speaking hypothetically, yes."

Bai Jingshen grinned. "Are we?" he asked.

"We have to be. Otherwise, I don't see such a thing being possible at all," Alex said.

"We don't believe it is," Bai Jingshen said. "But you've seen the mural."

"The mural? What does this have to do with the mural?" Alex asked with a frown.

"We came up here so you would understand the mural better. I told you; you were getting a context to the mural that you couldn't by just seeing it," the White Tiger said.

Alex lowered his head in thought, his mind going back to the mural on the wall. He saw the figures again: the separate objects in a cluster, them gathering together, and then finally becoming a single whole thing.

The circle.

The sphere.

The planet.

Alex's mind reeled in thought, his eyes widening at the realization of what it could all mean.

"You spoke of a prophecy," he said to Bai Jingshen. "What is the prophecy?"

Bai Jingshen looked toward Alex. "It appears you have already figured it out," he said.

"No… that can't be," Alex said. "How is that possible?"

"So you know what the objects were on the first part of the mural, do you not?" Bai Jingshen asked.

"The realms. The many realms," Alex said with bated breath. "The realms come together, piecing themselves to become one whole, forming a planet. Is that the prophecy?"

"Not come together. Brought together," Bai Jingshen said. "You seem to forget who was on that mural."

Alex sucked in a deep breath. "The Sun God," he said slowly. "Then… is the prophecy that the Sun God will bring the world together and form it into a single planet?"

Bai Jingshen nodded rather enthusiastically. "You now know about as much as the rest of the White Tigers and the other three clans know. The prophecy, passed down through just the murals in every family, speaks of a future where the Sun God will come again and bring the world together."

Alex looked out at the world again, finding it hard to believe that such a thing was even possible.

"But the Sun God can't do that. I can't do that," Alex said, his voice laden with disbelief and doubt. "Even if I could, why would I do that? What would be the point of doing such a nonsensical thing in the first place?"

"The worlds are fine on their own. Each one has been its own since forever and has been doing alright until now. Why would I want to change that, even if I could?"

"The humans and demons already pillage and loot from each other despite being so far away. Why would I ever want to bring such a conflict to each other's doorsteps? That makes no sense."

"Why would you?" Bai Jingshen asked.

Alex shook his head. "I wouldn't. Even if I could, there would be no reason to do such a thing just to make the world spherical. It makes no sense."

Bai Jingshen shrugged. "I never said it made sense. And I also said, that is what the others believe."

Alex paused for a moment, his eyes narrowing. "Do you mean you don't believe the prophecy to be the truth?" he asked.

"No," Pearl said from the side. "Grandpa, you said it wasn't a prophecy, didn't you?"

Bai Jingshen nodded. "As per my master, the mural isn't a prophecy, but rather a piece of forgotten history."

"A history?" Alex asked with even more confusion than before. "Do you mean that this has already been attempted in the past? Did the Sun God try to bring together the world into a single planet?"

"That was the exact same question I asked my master as well," Bai Jingshen said.

Alex got curious. "What did he say?"

"That we were stupid," Bai Jingshen said. "Every single one of us."

"That's… not very helpful," Alex said.

"No, but my master did explain why," Bai Jingshen added. "He said that we were so used to reading things in one direction that we sometimes forgot that the other direction exists as well. He said, that we kept looking at the mural from left to right, when instead, we should've looked at it from right to left."

"Right… to left?" Alex asked, suddenly lost in thought.

From left to right, the mural was that of the many worlds being brought together by the Sun God to form a single planet.

From right to left, the mural was that of the Sun God breaking a single planet apart, shattering it into many pieces.

Alex felt his spine go cold as the understanding of what that meant sank into him.

His eyes snapped back toward the world down below that had now turned even further away, revealing its giant curved surface. And beneath that, it revealed the jagged underbelly of the world like rocks torn apart, like mounds taken out of one location to float freely on top of this world.

It was a piece of a giant puzzle to be put together to form a planet.

"This… this used to be part of a planet," he said slowly.

"Not just this," Bai Jingshen said. "Everything. Every piece of land you see floating around the sky, with or without life upon it, used to once be a part of something bigger."

"However, something happened in the past, a cataclysmic event, that caused the planet to break apart into fragments that floated around like pieces that could no longer come together," Bai Jingshen said.

"And that was the Sun God," Alex said. "The Sun God did this?"

"The Sun God was the one who blessed the five original beasts, so he is the only one that is mostly talked about," Bai Jingshen said. "But, he was not alone. He was never alone. There was another one there, the same as him."

"The Moon Goddess," Alex said.

Bai Jingshen nodded. "So, it would be more accurate to say that according to the mural, it was the two gods that broke this world apart."