Daoshengzi's Scripture of Passing a Thousand Tribulations to Attain Reincarnation originated from Tianjing. While the manual expounded upon the profundities of reincarnation, Daoshengzi had built upon its foundation to cultivate numerous ingenious applications.
No matter how Xu Ying attempted to slay him, he could never truly strike him down; the one who died was always the Daoshengzi of the past. That was one of the scripture's marvelous arts.
Even if a Grand Dao Master were to simultaneously erase all of Daoshengzi's lineages throughout the great thousand universes, put every single one of his disciples and inheritors to the sword, and then execute him, he still would not die.
For the one who perished would forever remain only his past self, while his future self endured.
Yet now, the baby-faced girl had pierced the skulls of all his future iterations in the very same instant with her finger force, annihilating both his Primordial Spirit and his mortal flesh!
This was equivalent to countless Daoshengzis forming a spacetime reincarnation that constituted the Great Dao of Reincarnation itself.
It was as if the baby-faced girl had manifested simultaneously in every single corner of his spacetime reincarnation, seeking out every version of him.
Where there were hundreds of millions of Daoshengzis, there were hundreds of millions of her.
Abruptly, reincarnation collapsed. Daoshengzi's body tumbled downward into the sea, and his half-shattered tower ship sank along with him into the Chaos Sea, vanishing from sight.
With Daoshengzi's demise, the Reincarnation Cave Abysses in the darkness behind him crumbled one by one, ceasing to exist.
Yet those cultivators across the great thousand universes who practiced his version of the reincarnation scripture were not wiped out; instead, they survived.
Though they no longer had Reincarnation Cave Abysses at their disposal, they were also freed from their reaper—a blessing of the highest order.
Rousing his spirits, Xu Ying seized the opportunity to retrieve his chaos lotus and Hongyuan. The big bell also flew back toward him, whispering, "Ah Ying, what's her background? Didn't you say she didn't have the face of an expert? She seems vastly more terrifying than us!"
Xu Ying looked at the baby-faced girl. No matter how one looked at her, she did not resemble a supreme expert in the slightest.
He took to the air, reclaiming the various Daos Daoshengzi had stripped from him.
Through the art of reincarnation, Daoshengzi had transmuted all of these Daos into the Dao of Wind—three hundred and forty-nine variations of wind in total.
Xu Ying cultivated three hundred and fifty Daos altogether, and only his Martial Dao had resisted Daoshengzi's transmutation into the Dao of Wind. Even the Great Dao of Reincarnation had been reincarnated into the Dao of Wind by Daoshengzi!
Restoring these Daos to their original states would have been an intractable dilemma for anyone else, but for Xu Ying, it presented no great difficulty.
He mobilized his Martial Dao Cave Abyss and stimulated the Ginseng Fruit Tree, drawing every one of those Daos into the cave abyss.
The moment these winds entered the Martial Dao Cave Abyss, they dissolved into a structureless, essence-free state. One by one, they flowed into the Ginseng Fruit Tree, absorbed through its roots, passing through the trunk and boughs to stream into his Dao fruits.
These Dao fruits were the crystallizations of his Daos—precisely three hundred and forty-nine fruits, corresponding to three hundred and forty-nine Great Daos of heaven and earth.
Upon his Dao tree also hung thousands of Dao flowers corresponding to the three thousand Great Daos, though they had yet to bear fruit.
These flowers had blossomed from his contemplation of Hongyuan. Because Hongyuan had not yet matured into a complete universe, Xu Ying could not comprehend the fully realized Great Daos of heaven and earth, leaving the flowers unable to ripen into fruits.
By purging Xu Ying's cultivation and transmuting his Daos into wind, Daoshengzi had unwittingly resolved a major hurdle for him.
Xu Ying had long been unable to incorporate his Indestructible-grade Daos—such as Taiyi, Chaos, Hongmeng, and Karma—into his Martial Dao Cave Abyss. Yet by employing his unfathomable reincarnation arts to force these supreme Daos into the form of wind, Daoshengzi had enabled them to enter the Martial Dao Cave Abyss, fall under the dominion of the Ginseng Fruit Tree, and become part of his Martial Dao.
This stroke of good fortune born of misfortune quietly elevated his Dao attainment, causing his Martial Dao to advance by leaps and bounds, far eclipsing his other Daos!
The baby-faced girl drifted before him. Seeing that Xu Ying still appeared somewhat dejected, she asked in bewilderment, "Your battle with Daoshengzi was spectacular. You grasped his method of governing Daos through reincarnation the instant you saw it. What's more, as an eighth-layer Dao Realm cultivator fighting a ninth-layer Dao Lord, you slaughtered over a hundred of his past incarnations. Though you suffered defeat in the end, it was an honorable display. Why do you still look so downcast?"
Xu Ying glanced at her, still melancholy, and said, "Someone once told me that the highest Great Daos in the universe are divided into nine paths: Taiyi, Chaos, Hongmeng, Reincarnation, Karma, Wuji, Extinction, Tribulation Fortune, and Slaughter. Each of these nine Daos possesses its own unique supremacy."
Upon hearing this, the baby-faced girl remarked, "Whoever told you that possessed remarkable insight! These nine Daos are indeed extraordinary. Chaos is the primal origin of the cosmos; Hongmeng is the inception of the Dao's transformations; Taiyi is the fountainhead of the myriad Daos; Wuji is the process of transformation from the origin into the myriad; Reincarnation is the evolution of all things in the universe; and Karma is the immutable relational web governing all phenomena and cosmic change. Extinction marks the end of all Daos; Tribulation Fortune is the process of that end; and Slaughter is the instrument through which that end is wrought. Arising from Chaos and concluding in Extinction, they are undeniably the nine supreme Great Daos."
Xu Ying's eyes lit up. Previously, he had only half-understood the relationship among these nine Daos, sensing that some intrinsic thread connected them without ever being able to fathom it.
He had not anticipated that this baby-faced girl would unravel their mysteries in a single breath, revealing an understanding so profound it left him filled with awe.
The baby-faced girl continued, "In order of precedence, their sequence is Chaos, Hongmeng, Wuji, Taiyi, Reincarnation, Karma, Tribulation Fortune, Slaughter, and Extinction. However, if you hope to cultivate all nine Daos and achieve grand mastery in every one, that is pure fantasy."
Adopting a solemn expression, she did her best to put on an air of worldly experience. "Every single one of these nine Daos, when cultivated to the utmost, yields achievements beyond reach and grants the power to traverse the Chaos Sea unhindered! Grand Dao Lord Taiyi is formidable, isn't he? Yet even Grand Dao Lord Taiyi has long struggled to break through and become a Dao Master. If he were to achieve that realm, his strength would instantly rival the three great Dao Masters of the other shore—Hua, Lin, and Luo! Give him a few more years, and his achievements would even eclipse all three of them! To cultivate all nine Daos simultaneously... do you really think it could be so simple?"
Xu Ying answered, "I do not merely wish to cultivate all nine Daos. When I first heard of them, I resolved to train every one of them to the Indestructible realm, and then use my Martial Dao to unify them as one."
The worldly pretension vanished from the girl's face, replaced by pure stupor.
In her eyes, this went beyond mere pipe dreams; it was completely unfounded lunacy!
Xu Ying continued, "My reasoning is that the Nine Innate Daos, despite bearing the name 'innate,' are in truth merely human comprehension of those innate paths. The moment mortals comprehend them, they cease to be innate and become acquired."
Unable to mask the shock on her face, the baby-faced girl gave a vague murmur of agreement before saying, "A cultivator's contemplation of the Great Daos of heaven and earth is, by its very nature, an acquired process of proving the innate. In this progression, one first comprehends, and then undergoes the three verifications. The process of comprehension is the journey of cultivating immortality."
Beginning from qi gathering up to the seventh layer of the Dao Realm, a cultivator could commence the first verification: imprinting their cultivated Dao onto heaven and earth to verify that their comprehension had not strayed from the true Dao of heaven and earth.
The second verification was the Dao equal to the body—the body and the Dao becoming one.
The third verification was the Dao without structure, unified into a seamless, primal whole.
Upon reaching the third verification, one's personal Dao was indistinguishable from the Great Dao of heaven and earth, while still retaining one's individual consciousness. Thus, one became a sovereign of the Great Dao.
This path progressed from cultivating the Dao to proving the Dao, attaining the Dao, and ultimately possessing the Dao.
Fundamentally, possessing the Dao was the process of evolving from the acquired into the innate.
Xu Ying said, "Yet as I see it, all of that is merely an imitation of the Daos of heaven and earth. What one ultimately achieves are only the Daos that already exist within the cosmos. Even a sovereign of the Great Dao has not brought forth the slightest trace of a new Great Dao into the world. It is nothing more than a parrot mimicking speech, or copying the Handan gait. How can such people be deemed grandmasters?"
The corner of the baby-faced girl's mouth twitched. She desperately wanted to scold him for his utter sacrilege, yet her temperament held her back.
"What is copying the Handan gait?" she asked after a moment's thought, humbly seeking clarification.
Xu Ying himself was rather hazy on the idiom, having only picked it up loosely from Seventh Master. He glossed over it: "Roughly the same as a parrot mimicking speech. It doesn't matter. I am a rather dull person with narrow horizons, and I haven't seen many wondrous things. Years ago, when I was being hunted down, I could not utilize a shred of magic power, cultivation, or divine powers. A man came to see me. He plucked a pear twig in his hand, and in a flash, pear blossoms bloomed and the branch grew, turning into a sapling. He planted it into the soil, and within moments it grew into a towering tree, blooming and bearing sweet pears. I was utterly awestruck, taking him for a heavenly being."
The girl laughed. "That is nothing more than the Dao of Creation."
Xu Ying shook his head. "It was not the Dao of Creation. It was a Dao I had never encountered before—a purely acquired Dao. A group of brawny men and women were cultivating it, and they called it the Martial Dao."
The girl was astonished. This bore no resemblance to the Martial Dao in her impressions.
Wasn't the Martial Dao supposed to be about tempering physical strength, trading blows, and brawling at close quarters?
How could it exhibit the hallmarks of the Dao of Creation?
"From that moment on, I formed a bond with this acquired Dao," Xu Ying reminisced. "It accompanied me as I grew, though it never displayed anything particularly marvelous.
"Until one day, my body died and my Dao dissolved. Yet from that very death, a sliver of vitality sprang forth. Clinging to that thread of life, I clawed my way out of my own grave, only to discover I had been reduced to a cripple, unable to cultivate. Thus, I picked up the Martial Dao once more, and through it, I forged back everything I had lost. From then on, I realized this acquired Dao possessed something truly extraordinary. It is inherently structureless; neither Dao patterns, principles, primal runes, nor talismans can give it form. It can only be comprehended through repeated slaughter and brushes with death."
The baby-faced girl was still pondering how an acquired Dao could exhibit traits of the Dao of Creation. Hearing this, she said, "Acquired Daos often display structureless characteristics. The Sword Dao, for example, is also an acquired Dao. Yet if one wishes to accomplish anything in the Sword Dao, one must study other innate Daos and integrate them into it—such as mastering the Dao of Thunder to make sword strikes crash like lightning... Ah, I understand!"
She exclaimed excitedly, "The person who introduced you to the Martial Dao must have simultaneously been an expert in the Dao of Creation!"
Xu Ying shook his head. "The world he inhabited possessed no heaven-and-earth qi whatsoever; cultivation was impossible there. He had no means to comprehend the Dao of Creation. He carved out the properties of the Dao of Creation entirely from within the Martial Dao itself."
The baby-faced girl froze, shaking her head vigorously. "The acquired giving birth to the innate? Impossible, absolutely impossible! The innate can only give birth to the acquired! If the acquired could birth the innate, wouldn't that be an egg laying a chicken? Preposterous!"
Xu Ying said, "For the Martial Dao to birth the innate through purely acquired means is indeed far too difficult. So I thought to myself: practicing the way they did, they might never prove, attain, or possess the Dao. That method of cultivation is simply too slow—spending every day tempering physical power and honing martial stances while overlooking the true essence of birthing the innate from the acquired. The real shortcut is to take the initiative: study the innate Daos, and fuse them into the Martial Dao."
Looking into the girl's bright eyes and noticing her knitted brows, he said, "The so-called innate Daos are merely what mortals have understood through acquired means. In essence, they too have become acquired Daos, constrained by Dao patterns and principles, making them inferior in structure to the Martial Dao. Thus, integrating the innate into the acquired became entirely feasible."
The baby-faced girl gradually grasped his line of thinking. "So the moment you learned of the nine most formidable Daos in existence, you resolved to master them all and fuse them into your Martial Dao. You intend to use the Martial Dao to unify the nine supreme innate Daos—is that it?"
Xu Ying nodded. "This ambition of mine is indeed immense, but I must achieve it before reaching the Indestructible realm. Because after the Indestructible realm, the next step is proving oneself a Dao Master."
The girl hunched her back, clasped her hands behind her, and assumed an austere expression. "At the Dao Master realm, the Great Dao is structureless, and the nine innate Daos all exist in a structureless state. For a structureless Martial Dao to swallow nine structureless innate Daos would be unimaginably difficult—utterly impossible! Therefore, unifying the nine Daos through the Martial Dao before reaching the Indestructible realm is your only critical window! Hmph, you do have a bit of cleverness in you..."
Like an old man in his seventies or eighties, she paced back and forth, pondering for a long while before remarking, "According to your deductions, the possibility does exist. But still..."
She still felt it was utterly preposterous.
Using an acquired Dao to assimilate innate Daos—and supreme ones like Chaos, Hongmeng, and Taiyi at that—sounded entirely absurd.
Yet theoretically, it worked!
Because the Martial Dao was naturally structureless, inherently operating at the tier of a Dao Master, whereas other innate Daos still relied on Dao patterns and principles for their framework, placing them an entire tier below the Martial Dao!
Therefore, fusing other Daos into the Martial Dao to grant it the attributes of Chaos, Taiyi, Hongmeng, Tribulation Fortune, Slaughter, and Extinction was genuinely within the realm of possibility!
Xu Ying let out a sigh. "It sounds absurd, doesn't it? Yet I have already obtained the true transmissions of Chaos, Hongmeng, Karma, Reincarnation, Slaughter, and Taiyi. I only need to master Wuji, Extinction, and Tribulation Fortune to prove whether the Martial Dao can truly unify the innate. In fact, I've already done it."
"Done it your ass!"
Abandoning all pretense of worldly maturity, the baby-faced girl leaped up in fury. "What have you done?! You've done jack shi—good heavens, you really did it!"
Xu Ying unveiled the Martial Dao Cave Abyss concealed within his flesh.
The six Great Daos of heaven and earth—Chaos, Hongmeng, Taiyi, Reincarnation, Karma, and Slaughter—had already been unified within his Martial Dao Cave Abyss, forged into integral facets of his Martial Dao!
The girl stared blankly at the spectacle, murmuring, "This is impossible... this makes no sense..."
Xu Ying looked downcast. "Yet in that clash with Daoshengzi, I suddenly realized a flaw I had overlooked all along."
Rousing herself, the girl asked, "What flaw?"
Xu Ying's expression grew increasingly bleak, laden with a sense of loss. "Even though I cultivated these six Daos to the eighth and ninth layers of the Dao Realm, Daoshengzi was still able to wield his Great Dao of Reincarnation to strip them from my body."
Daoshengzi had been slain by Xu Ying over a hundred times, yet he needed only a single opening to strike Xu Ying with his reincarnation divine power.
From that single blow, Xu Ying had plunged into reincarnation, his various Daos forcibly torn away, including the Taiyi, Chaos, and Hongmeng Daos he had painstakingly cultivated.
Yet what dealt him the heaviest blow was that the lower Daos he had already assimilated into his Martial Dao—such as wind, rain, thunder, lightning, the five elements, the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise—had likewise been extracted from his Martial Dao Cave Abyss by Daoshengzi.
"I integrated these Daos into my Martial Dao, believing that by rendering them structureless and natureless, no one could ever touch me. Yet who would have thought Daoshengzi would still unravel it?"
Xu Ying looked utterly dispirited. "Daoshengzi was merely a minor figure cultivating the Great Dao of Reincarnation, yet he could shatter my innate Martial Dao. Could it be that the path I chose was wrong from the start..."
*Thump!*
The baby-faced girl drove a fist into the back of his head, knocking him flat onto the ground, unconscious.
Both shocked and furious, Master Bell sprang out of Xu Ying's Martial Dao Cave Abyss, crying out, "Venerable Aunt, why strike Ying-zi?"
The girl hoisted Xu Ying onto the bell's flank and said, "Carry him and keep up with me. I need to study this Martial Dao of his—it makes no damn sense..."
"Right away!" Master Bell agreed briskly. "How should I address you, Venerable Aunt?"
Chapter 782