The scenery changed. Suddenly, at once, as if erased by the heavens themselves, as if the very fabric of reality had been rewritten in an instant, Len Fang suddenly saw himself in a completely different place.
The crystalline chamber was gone. The darkness was gone. Everything he had known just moments before had vanished like morning mist under the rising sun.
"Thi...This...is...!" His pupils instantly shrank to pin size, contracting so sharply that it was almost painful. His heart struggled to beat, each pulse feeling like it might be his last as shock overwhelmed his system.
All around Len Fang, stretching out in every direction as far as his consciousness could perceive, was water. An endless sea of water that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
But this was no ordinary water.
This was liquid time itself—shimmering, flowing, existing in all states simultaneously. Past, present, and future all merged together in this impossible river.
In this place, suspended between moments and eternities, all Len Fang could feel was himself being carried away by this river, his soul-body drifting like a leaf caught in an unstoppable current.
His physical form had been left behind, transcended. What traveled now was something more fundamental—his essence, his consciousness, his very existence stripped down to its purest form.
"The endless River of Time, the eternal stream that sees the future and past, the flow that connects all moments!" His voice rose in shock, trembling with awe and disbelief. He sucked in a cold breath—though whether he was truly breathing or simply experiencing the memory of breathing, he could not say. "To think that I would ever see this with my own eyes! That I, Len Fang, would ever witness this mythical place!"
A sense of achievement, profound and overwhelming, rose in this middle-aged man's heart like the sun cresting the horizon.
It was an emotion he had almost forgotten he could feel—pride mixed with wonder, accomplishment mingled with disbelief.
From an early age, even before the terrible arrival of the monsters and gods that had transformed the world into a nightmare, this man named Len Fang had experienced all sorts of misfortunes that would have broken lesser souls.
Tragedy had followed him like a shadow he could never escape, no matter how far he ran or how hard he tried.
From losing his parents to a terrible accident when he was merely eight years old—watching helplessly as the vehicle they were in careened off the road and burst into flames—to hearing his little brother, his only remaining family, got brutally killed by a low-level demon during the early days of the apocalypse, what terrible fate hasn't Len Fang experienced?
What suffering hasn't been carved into his very bones?
His wife had left him, taking everything. His friends had betrayed him for power. His colleagues had abandoned him when he needed them most.
He had known hunger that gnawed at his belly for weeks. He had known cold that froze his blood and made each breath agony. He had known despair so deep that death seemed like a mercy.
Well, one would say with certainty, the River of Time itself!
To enter the River of Time, to actually set foot—or soul—in this legendary place, according to all the ancient legends and modern system lore, was almost impossible. It was a feat that transcended mortal capability.
Not even gods could freely come here. Not even the most powerful entities in existence could navigate these waters without proper authority or preparation.
The Time Watchers themselves guarded the entrances jealously, and the river rejected all but those it deemed worthy or those who possessed the proper keys.
But it seemed that the artifact of regression, the Time Stone: Jurdel, really had possessed the incredible power to take him here, to grant him passage through barriers that should have been insurmountable.
This is truly superb! Truly miraculous! Truly beyond anything he had dared to hope for!
"Thank goodness for the protection of the artifact. If not for its divine blessing shielding me, who is to say I would even be here right now? Who is to say I wouldn't have been obliterated by the gods' attacks or erased from existence by the temporal forces?" Len Fang let out a shaky breath, his soul-form trembling with residual fear and relief.
The curses that had been sent to him by the gods were truly something else—truly terrifying and absurd in equal measure.
What kind of divine punishment was that? "I curse you to constantly lay eggs?" Did they want him to die from sheer humiliation? Did they want to transform him into some kind of bizarre creature?
Even though he had never had the fortune to be a father, to hold a child of his own and know that joy, that did not mean he wanted to experience parenthood in such a grotesque and unnatural manner!
At that moment of hearing that particular curse, only the heavens themselves could even know the profound fear that had assaulted his heart, the existential dread that had gripped his very soul.
It was only after hearing the reassuring voice of the system, announcing that the Time Stone was protecting him from all harm, that his frantically beating heart had finally calmed down to something approaching normal.
"Now... where am I going?" Len Fang's concern rose like a tide within him, replacing the temporary relief with new uncertainty.
His soul-eyes gazed around at the infinite river, trying to discern some destination, some indication of where this current was taking him.
He does not have any knowledge of how the artifact of regression truly works, not in any detailed or practical sense. No one does, really.
Such knowledge has been lost to time, if it ever existed in accessible form at all.
All he knows is what was written in the fragmentary records he'd discovered—to touch it and break it, and then wait for it to take you wherever it deems appropriate. Now he had done exactly that, following the instructions to the letter, but where was he going now? What point in time was he being carried toward?
Would he return to his childhood? To the moment before his parents' death? To the day the world changed? Or to some other pivotal moment in his life?
The uncertainty was maddening.
Len Fang's body—his soul-body, ethereal and translucent—continued to drift through the vast River of Time, carried by currents that flowed in directions that had no meaning in conventional space.
His form sometimes crashed violently into the rocks of the river, strange crystalline formations that jutted up from the riverbed like frozen moments, solidified points in history that refused to be worn away.
Each impact sent shockwaves through his essence, painful reminders that even in this transcendent state, he was not invulnerable.
Anytime that would happen, whenever he collided with one of these temporal rocks, his body would let out a faint protective light—the lingering power of the Time Stone still shielding him even in this place—but that was it.
The light would flare, the impact would be absorbed, and he would continue drifting onward.
Time passed—or perhaps it didn't. In this place, such concepts became meaningless. Seconds might be centuries. Hours might be heartbeats.
Soon enough, however, Len Fang noticed something changing. His soul's speed at drifting seemed to slow, the current's grip on him weakening incrementally.
"Huh? My speed has greatly reduced?" He thought with growing confusion, his consciousness focusing on this anomaly. "But the river is still flowing freely and as wildly as ever, its current unchanged. Why am I slowing down?"
Suspicion arose in his heart, mixing with anticipation and a hint of fear.
Was this normal? Was something wrong? Had the gods found a way to interfere after all?
Then suddenly, without any further warning, the system notifications appeared before his consciousness once more.
{ Regression has reached the breaking point! }
{ Optimal temporal destination has been calculated! }
{ You will be returned back to the world of the living! }
{ Your soul will be reintegrated with your past self! }
{ Your regression is now complete! }
The messages appeared in rapid succession, each one burning with finality.
{ Please rate our services and your journey on our official app! }
{ Your feedback helps us improve the regression experience! }
{ Goodbye! }
{ May your second chance bring you the fortune you seek! }
Before Len Fang's heart could take on another beat, before he could even process the absurdity of being asked to rate his experience like some kind of cosmic customer, suddenly he felt a pull.
Not a gentle tug, but a violent yanking sensation that gripped his entire being.
Woooosh!
All of a sudden, Len Fang felt himself dropping from what seemed like the peak of the highest mountain in existence, plummeting down at incredible speed toward something below—toward reality, toward life, toward his past.
The sensation was indescribable—like falling through layers of existence itself, passing through veils of causality and probability.
He felt strange sensations rippling through his soul-body as it began to reconnect with physicality, with flesh and bone and blood.
"Could this be my cultivation dropping?" A sense of wisdom and understanding flashed in his heart like lightning illuminating a dark night.
He understood it now with perfect clarity. His cultivation base, the power he had painstakingly accumulated over twenty years of struggle and survival, was now dropping rapidly due to him regressing through time.
Every realm he had achieved was being stripped away, every breakthrough he had fought for was being reversed.
Not only that, but his body's hard-earned experiences and scars were now disappearing one by one like words being erased from a page.
The scar on his left arm from the demon attack—gone.
The calluses on his hands from wielding weapons—fading.
The old injuries that had never quite healed properly—vanishing as if they had never existed.
He was truly getting regressed, returned to a younger version of himself, a version that hadn't yet endured all the suffering that was to come.
"To think this is how it feels like!" He marveled internally, his consciousness observing the process with fascination despite the disorientation. A pause as another wave of sensation washed over him. "It is truly divine! Truly a power that transcends mortal understanding!"
The fall continued, faster and faster, reality solidifying around him with each passing moment.
He could feel weight returning to his existence. He could feel the boundaries of a physical body forming around his consciousness.
At that moment, Len Fang's body—now fully physical once more, fully real—came to a landing and a final drop!
Thud!
The impact wasn't as harsh as he'd expected, cushioned somehow by the lingering temporal energies.
His eyes snapped open.
He was lying on his back, staring up at a ceiling he recognized instantly—a ceiling he hadn't seen in years.
His breathing was ragged, his heart pounding in his chest—a chest that felt different, younger, less burdened by old wounds.
Slowly, trembling with emotion, Len Fang raised his hands before his face.
They were smooth. Unmarked. The hands of someone in their twenties, not their forties.
Tears suddenly welled up in his eyes, blurring his vision.
"I really did it," he whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. "I really went back."
He had been given his second chance.
And this time, he would not waste it.
This time, he would change everything.
.....
Author here. Another chapter completed. Hard in truth not to lie, but your comments and reviews give me strength. I wont lie it has been perfect, but i will say, this is pushing me forward. I made a promise to myself to actually finish this and i intend to, so please continue reading and commenting and ofcourse tap that add button and drop those powerstones.