363: The system's confession: I am the "will" of the previous universe.

Tian Yuan Realm, Command Hall.

Lin Fan's figure quietly coalesced.

He walked straight to the commander's seat without a word, casually scattering the handful of ashes from the karma grafting puppet into the void.

The moment the ashes touched the air, they were completely annihilated, leaving no trace behind.

Li Hanyue had been waiting there quietly.

She saw Lin Fan return, but from his face—so calm it was almost indifferent—she read a hint of unprecedented heaviness.

It wasn't the gravity of facing a powerful enemy, but rather... a deathly silence after glimpsing some cruel truth.

"I need to enter seclusion for a while, perhaps for a long time."

Lin Fan sat down, his voice flat yet carrying an unquestionable decisiveness.

"Everything in the Tian Yuan Realm is entrusted to you."

Li Hanyue nodded, asking neither what he had seen nor how long he would be gone.

She simply said softly,

"I will wait for your return."

Lin Fan looked at her, and the icy silence on his face finally melted slightly. He gave a hum of affirmation, and his figure vanished from the seat.

The entire process was so quiet it seemed like a mere hallucination... deep within the Tian Yuan Realm.

This was the core of the entire Star Domain and the location of the formation eye for the Lesser Myriad Dao Reincarnation Array.

Countless Laws of the Great Dao manifested here, weaving into a brilliant and deadly ocean of rules.

Lin Fan's figure appeared in the center of this ocean.

He sat cross-legged, his eyes slowly closing.

In the next moment, the entire Lesser Myriad Dao Reincarnation Array let out a low rumble.

Infinite energy was drawn from across the Tian Yuan Realm, turning into visible rainbow-colored torrents that surged frantically into Lin Fan's body.

He was here to break through the prerequisites mentioned by the System.

To Cultivate the Undying Heavenly Merit to the Great Perfection of the True Immortal Chapter.

To completely master 'All Daos Return to One'.

As his Cultivation deepened, Lin Fan's consciousness gradually sank to the lowest level of his Sea of Consciousness.

Everything around him began to fade.

The boundary between light and dark vanished.

He was dragged into a void Heart Demon illusion.

Buzz.

In the illusion, the first figure coalesced.

It was Xiao Chen.

His face was distorted, carrying a sky-toppling resentment and unwillingness as he roared and lunged at Lin Fan.

"Lin Fan! You destroyed everything I had! I want you dead!"

Lin Fan didn't even lift an eyelid.

The moment Xiao Chen's figure came within three feet of him, it dissipated silently like green smoke.

Immediately after, a second, a third... countless familiar or strange faces began to emerge in the void.

Enemies he had killed with his own hands, rivals he had schemed against, and souls who had died under Heavenly Tribulation.

They converged into a torrent of resentment, carrying a hatred sufficient to pollute a True Immortal's Dao Heart, roaring and cursing as they tried to tear Lin Fan's Divine Soul to shreds.

Lin Fan remained sitting motionless, his expression without a single ripple.

These things could not even cause a stir in the lake of his heart.

At that moment, all the vengeful souls suddenly froze, then retreated in terror as if they had encountered some supreme Dominator.

The entire Heart Demon illusion was shrouded in an indescribable majesty.

A giant, cold, emotionless gray eye slowly opened at the end of the void.

The eye of the heavenly dao of the Immortal Realm.

It was merely a phantom, the deepest imprint of a threat in Lin Fan's memory.

But the will it radiated was purer and more terrifying than the one he had actually encountered before.

"Anomaly..."

A grand voice, neither male nor female, neither living nor dead, sounding like the friction of the Universe's rules themselves, echoed in Lin Fan's Sea of Consciousness.

"No matter where you flee, no matter how you struggle..."

"Your existence is itself an error."

"Obliteration is your only destination."

Within that giant eye, a terrifying power capable of conceptually erasing a True Immortal began to gather.

Right then.

Lin Fan, who had been silent and motionless, finally moved.

He slowly raised his head, looking at the giant gray eye that dominated all, and a brilliant smile suddenly bloomed on his face.

He burst into loud laughter.

His laughter was filled with disdain, filled with extreme contempt.

"A mere phantom of a defeated foe dares to clamor before me?"

He stood up.

"In the past, you lot could at least drop some gold coins for me, serving as decent experience packs."

He raised his hand and clenched it into a fist.

"Now, you don't even have the qualification to be my experience packs!"

The moment his words fell, he threw a punch.

There was no earth-shaking might, no phenomenon of Law manifestation.

It was just a very ordinary punch.

However, the moment this punch landed.

The pupils of the Immortal Realm's eye of the heavenly dao, which represented the ultimate threat, suddenly constricted. Within that cold rule-based will, for the first time, an emotion called 'fear' emerged.

Crack.

A crisp sound, like a mirror shattering, rang out.

The giant gray eye, along with the entire Heart Demon illusion and all the vengeful souls within, collapsed under this punch, turning into points of light that danced across the sky.

Lin Fan's Sea of Consciousness returned to a state of clarity.

A sense of unprecedented transparency welled up in his heart.

The final shackle obstructing his progress had been punched through by him in the most violent manner.

'All Daos Return to One' was suddenly mastered at this moment.

His Cultivation, his Divine Soul, and his Physical Body all reached the theoretical limit of his current Realm, becoming perfectly harmonious and flawless.

And in that very instant.

The System panel in his Sea of Consciousness automatically appeared.

The Core Protocol unlock progress bar, which had previously only ticked to 1%, began to soar upward at a frantic speed.

10%... 30%... 70%... Finally, under Lin Fan's gaze, it came to a steady stop at 100%.

Buzz—

The pale blue light on the entire System panel began to shift into a color that was ancient, profound, and seemed to have been washed by hundreds of millions of years of time.

The text on the panel was no longer a cold mechanical font.

They seemed to come alive, each stroke carrying the weight of an epoch.

A line of brand-new text slowly emerged.

[I am the largest fragment of the supreme rules that shattered at the end of the previous cosmic epoch.]

[And also, the final 'will' of the previous cosmic civilization.]

Lin Fan's breathing hitched.

[The Universe you know is in a constant cycle.]

[Birth, prosperity, and then towards inevitable destruction, turning into the 'Tomb of the Epoch' and becoming the nourishment for the birth of a new Universe, repeating endlessly.]

[In every epoch, seekers of the Dao like those in the 'Anomaly Elimination Alliance' are born. They spend their entire lives trying to jump out of this cage to obtain true eternity and transcendence.]

[But they all failed.]

[Because they themselves are part of the cycle, programs within a server. No matter how they struggle, they cannot escape the fate of being 'formatted'.]

[But you, Host...]

[A 'Variable' from outside the cycle, one who should not have appeared in this server.]

[You are me, and also the only chance to break this endless destiny.]

Lin Fan looked at those lines of text, speechless for a long time.

Shock, absurdity, and confusion all eventually turned into a heavy sense of destiny.

He finally understood the meaning of his existence.

He also understood the true origin of this System.

After a long while.

The text on the panel changed again.

[As the chosen 'Variable', in order to give you the ability to overturn the chessboard...]

[You will obtain one of the supreme permissions to interfere with reality.]

[Permission: Tamper with Low-Level Rules, Unlocked.]

A final line of blood-red warning, carrying unprecedented seriousness, was branded at the very bottom of the panel.

[Warning: Every use of this permission will consume your 'existence' itself as the price.]