Myriad Paths

The Deng-burning Buddha and the Death Demon have been facing each other for a long time in the past.

No one knows how long it has been.

All living beings are like dust, and one dust lasts for one kalpa. According to Buddhist calculations, one kalpa lasts about 1.2 billion years.

Then, a living being will live for 1.2 billion years and will be reincarnated. Every living being will be subjected to hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutasamkhya kalpas by the demon of death.

How many creatures are there in the universe?

One living being, hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutas and asamkhya kalpas, one can imagine how long this struggle lasted in the past.

"What's the point?" The Deng Deng Buddha said with a smile: "In the past, I was beyond the sea of ​​life and death for eight kalpas. Now, no matter how many times I repeat it, it is just a waste of your time."

"Time? As long as I let you retreat, I can immediately return to the time I want to go without delaying for a second." The Death Demon said.

"That's not necessarily the case. No one from the world, including humans, witches, gods, and Tianyan will let you go to that point in time. It took a lot of effort and huge losses for them to finally push the status quo to this level. If you want to change it, it's not that easy. Simple." Ran Deng Buddha replied easily.

"Oh, that is to say, they are indeed advancing, right? You stopped me here just to create an established fact? Then you don't care about the demon?" said the dead demon.

As they spoke, countless, indescribable 'events' were happening around them.

There is eternity involved in these events, and there is true infinity.

But there are a large number of time sequences in eternity that are clearly demarcated from each other.

All time appears in eternity, infinite in power, flawless, and has even reached the full fulfillment of all possible creation.

This is incredible, for none of this would have been possible unless the Infinite Absolute Spirit had conceived and executed the entire series of creation within a finite, temporary mode of creation.

But it happened. In order to create, the eternal and infinite spirit added time to eternity, including this long series of creations.

Such a wonderful reality, yet...

Destruction is coming too.

All 'events' are isolated, like stones that cannot affect each other.

Because all change ceases, so does time in the strict sense of every desolate universe.

This should be the stationary and eternal end point. Even eternity will be exhausting.

Unimaginable, incomprehensible power.

What kind of existence can give rise to such a scene?

Death?

Impossible, how could a mere death create such infinity? The power of the Death Demon is definitely not death.

In other words... the death demon's goal is death, but his existence is not sustained by death.

Death is just a small footnote to him, not his true foundation.

What about the Lantern Buddha? Where does his power come from?

Incomprehensible, unimaginable.

But it exists and affects enough things.

However, at this moment, the power of the Lantern Buddha gradually faded.

Silent death engulfed everything around it.

There was no fanfare, no big noise or light.

Some just... fell into sluggishness and confusion one by one, and finally fell into sleep without exception, which is what we call death.

The devil is out of trouble.

He leaves the past and returns to the 'present'.

Although for him, in fact, he just came from one place to another.

For beings of level three or above, there is no time in the universe. There is only one independent event after another. Although these events are related, there is no fixed cause and effect sequence.

Something happened in the past. I know the coordinates of that thing, so I will go to the place where that thing is.

The so-called 'time' is nothing more than an axis on the space-time diagram.

Once you know the coordinate axis of the space orientation and the coordinate axis of the time orientation, you can just go to that place, just like going to a certain store while shopping.

Go there and do what you want to do.

It's that simple. The so-called traveling through time and space is not mysterious at all. If it is drawn like a map, there will be an extra T-axis on the map.

It's just an extra time axis added to the coordinate axis, which is no different from the previous three axes of XYZ. Different events are distributed on this space-time diagram at different points defined by the four axes.

You go to any point and you can witness what happened at that point, and then if you do something, it changes it.

Now that you have made changes, corresponding changes will naturally occur, just like if you push a cup off the table, the cup will naturally fall. It is normal and everything goes as planned.

There is no metaphysical part at all.

All 'events' are distributed simultaneously on the same space-time diagram, and each event is established independently, just like the cup and the table.

The cup is standing on the table, so aren't the cup and the table independent of each other? I don’t think anyone would say that a cup cannot exist independently from the table, right?

Although if the table disappears, the cup will fall and break, but this thing also exists independently. No one will think that "the cup is broken", so the complete cup does not exist, right?

Everything exists independently, which is a way of being, especially for beings with reality.

The Death Demon has returned to the world again.

She looked at her hands.

Tender and fair.

He looked down at his body again.

The body of the human race in the world is only twelve or thirteen years old. It looks pitiful and looks like it is about to cry anytime and anywhere. However, paired with the indifferent expression of the death demon, it gives a different feeling.

Her relationship with the demon was not good, but the demon made a very tempting condition. As long as she put on this body, the demon would help him.

It's all for nothing.

The demon always does these inexplicable things, but it doesn't matter, the demon of death doesn't care about its affairs.

The Death Demon himself feels that there is nothing meaningful in this world.

Emptiness and silence are the essence of this world.

It is meaningless to argue about good and evil, right and wrong, Tao and non-Tao.

Without a stance, there is no distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. Nothing is right or wrong, good or evil, but with a stance, there is right and wrong.

Things just exist. Are mountains, water, wind, stars, and the sun good or evil? Is it good or bad?

meaningless.

Everything in this world is meaningless.

Meaning is given to things by subjective will, and subjective will is the source of everything.

The devil has many ways to prove that this world originates from the subjective will itself, and the same is naturally true for death demons.

All meaning in this world is given by ‘I’, so is there any need to pursue ‘Tao’?

If the truth, or...the ultimate way exists, then the meaning of the existence of the ultimate way must also be given by 'I'.

Suppose a mortal thinks that the love between himself and his wife transcends everything, and he is willing to give up contact with the existence of the ‘ultimate way’ for ‘love’. Can you say that he is wrong?

Obviously, no.

As far as this example is concerned, because the ‘meaning’ is given by ‘I’, so for ‘I’, the ultimate way may not be more important than ‘love’.

Subjective will gives value to all existence in the world. In other words, it means that everything in the world is inherently worthless.

If the existence of subjective will is stripped away, then everything is equivalent.

A stone may not be cheaper than a piece of gold, because the value of both gold and stone is given by the subjective will. Only when the subjective will recognizes the value does it have value.

Therefore, "Tao" may not really be higher than other things. It is just the value given to "Tao" by those "subjective wills". It does not mean that "Tao" is really important.

So, in this case, does everything really have any value?

The answer is, no.

Since the value of existence is given by ‘I’, then if ‘I’ thinks there is none, then there is none.

If it doesn't exist, then destroying it is a matter of course.

If there is no meaning of existence, then there is no need to exist.

It is natural for things that do not need to exist to be destroyed.

The dead demon walked in the void space, looking around, wherever he looked -

Galaxies die and civilizations become extinct.

He didn't do anything, nor did he deliberately cast any spells, he was just passing by.

But inevitably, the decline of all things began.

In each world, the economy and production are becoming more and more difficult, and the population has to be reduced again and again. The population has dropped to a level that is not enough to maintain the collective world.

As we all know, there is such a number as the "minimum population of civilization". In order to maintain the normal operation of various systems such as medical care, energy, education, transportation, and industry, many workers are needed.

When the population is too low, the technological level of civilization itself will not only be locked at a certain level forever, but may even regress.

Just like the nerve center in the brain, if one link degenerates and can no longer undertake its developmental tasks, the entire brain will rapidly degenerate and become dementia.

This would not be the case originally. Civilization has a tendency to ‘self-sustain’ and will do its best to survive.

But somehow, they lost this thing.

These civilizations are no longer willing to 'reproduce', and they don't know why. Anyway, they feel that it doesn't matter if they perish.

In this way, civilization is dying step by step.

All the functions of the galaxies and observable universes that the Death Demon passed through were declining, and the declining society was seriously eroding their already declining courage.

There may be some pioneers or leaders in civilization who still have vague memories of their past history of enterprising efforts.

But they couldn't stop this from happening.

Just then——

Another girl who looked almost exactly the same, a pure white girl, hugged the Death Demon from behind affectionately, and said happily: "Oh, you are back?"

Almost instantly, the girl's body began to wither.

But it soon revived again.

If the world has no meaning...

Then wouldn’t it be enough for ‘I’ to give it meaning?

The meaning of this world is defined by ‘I’, and ‘I’ is the meaning of all existence, isn’t it?

It’s all ‘I’ as well.

However, the dead demon and the heavenly demon are like the two sides of yin and yang.

Starting from the same perspective, we came to completely opposite conclusions.

Tianmo does not think that this world is meaningless. On the contrary, she thinks that she is the whole meaning of this world. Of course she is very meaningful, so this world is also very meaningful.

The logic is completely smooth and completely consistent with the knowledge of magic.

In this respect, the Death Demon's 'apoptosis' has no effect on the Heavenly Demon's physical body.

But it was obvious that the Death Demon was not willing to let her hold him all the time, so the Death Demon pushed her away and said with an expressionless face: "I have been resurrected, so next, am I going to help you get out of trouble?"

"There's no need to help me get out of trouble. The one who suppressed me is World Honored Tathagata. I can't let him leave the Colorless Realm now. I still have a lot to say to him~, hum~." The demon snorted happily, Like a cat.

"Then what are you going to do? According to your nature, I should repay you, right?" said the Death Demon.

If possible, he didn't want to get too involved with the demon.

But if you agree in advance, when the demon comes to collect debts, even a first-class person will feel a headache.

Being both at the first level of the Demonic Path, the Death Demon is very aware of how difficult the Heavenly Demon is.

I have been 'killed' for so long, but the demon... has never died.

Demons are ‘enemies’.

He likes to use temptation, coercion, intimidation, inducement and other methods to try to hinder the path of spiritual practitioners.

He has unlimited power, and his image is changeable. He may appear in a ferocious form, or in a benevolent form, and sometimes in a seductive form. However, his purpose, regardless of threats or inducements, is It wants practitioners to deviate from their own path and fall into evil ways.

It doesn't have to be a demonic path, as long as it is separated from the original path. It doesn't matter if people become witches, demons become dragons, or Buddhas become demons.

She just thought it was fun.

Although it is actually quite difficult to meet the devil.

Those who are not great practitioners and have strong perseverance are actually not easily troubled by demons.

Ordinary ordinary people wallow in troubles and the five aggregates all day long, and are also in the cycle of life and death. How can they be attacked by the demons? It's not their turn for the demon to take action yet.

To put it bluntly, the demon only plays high-end games and only provokes powerful people.

The mere existence of demons has given countless practitioners headaches. No one knows whether their thoughts are their own.

Such a bad behavior, and the reason is even worse, so the heavenly demon has made many enemies, which is no worse than the dead demon.

But it has been living, making trouble, and has not been killed yet.

It shows how strong she is.

At this moment, this demon who was feared by even the dead demons let out a cute laugh and showed a mischievous face.

"Hmph, huh~, in terms of reward..."

"Then help me make a scene~."