Lu Yun wasn’t the only change in this loop—the three brushes were also new. Most importantly was that his presence had caused minute changes to the thirty-three eras before the great devastation.

There’d previously been only one of his future selves at that critical moment, but as he journeyed through historic eras with his other future selves, some slight changes filtered into those periods too. For instance, his future self of the era before learned of everything from his future self in this lifetime. They then brought that knowledge to a second future self, a third, all the way to the thirty-fourth one.

The endless looping of static cycles was thus broken.

If...