Immortal Gate

Half a day later. Sensing the two pinnacle Dao artifacts still thriving and growing, Yaoguang let out a soft sigh of relief. "All is well, after all." Of the two Dao artifacts, the Human Emperor Sword needed to be delivered to Dao Lord Penglai! She was the greatest fighting strength on his side. In the future, when he attempted Dao Integration, he would need her strength to help withstand his mortal tribulation. As for the other Dao artifact, the Endless Tower... Needless to say, it would be merged into his flesh, replacing his current grotto-heaven body's lifebound Dao artifact. Having confirmed that the two pinnacle Dao artifacts were unharmed, Yaoguang turned his attention toward the ancient tree in his mental world, which shimmered with radiant, glazed light. Looking at the surge of energy accumulated upon the [Demon Hunting] branch, Yaoguang smiled faintly. A Dao Lord! This level of energy was vastly superior to that of a God Emperor. His gaze lingered briefly on the [Artifact Crafting] branch, but he still chose without hesitation to pour all of the energy into the [Dao Integration: Void] branch. He was soon to make his breakthrough into Dao Integration. At this juncture, the further his realm advanced, the greater the aid it would provide him in achieving a smooth integration. As the energy infused the branch representing [Dao Integration: Void], it began to grow at a rapid pace. The branch seemed poised to pierce through the layer of mist atop the tree canopy, allowing him to truly "see" the world enveloped within that fog. Although he could not yet directly behold the scene shrouded in the canopy's mist, the insights gathered through the branch that had already penetrated it provided him with a wealth of information. Cultivation methods. Immortal arts. Experiences and insights into Dao Integration. Insights and understanding regarding higher realms of Dao Integration. All manner of knowledge flowed through his mind without pause. Among them, however, the experiences and insights concerning Dao Integration caused his brow to furrow. "There are only cultivation experiences from after achieving Dao Integration. Not a single method or record clearly explains the actual process of integration itself." He paused, then mused, "Could it be... that even the practitioners themselves have no clear idea how they managed to endure Dao assimilation?" Having no precedent to draw upon left him feeling unsettled. "I have already forged a path as a Human Immortal. Relying on the three pinnacle Dao artifacts that anchor essence, energy, and spirit along the Human Immortal path, I possess far greater resilience than ordinary cultivators attempting Dao Integration. Even if I truly face Dao assimilation, I shouldn't be entirely unable to pull myself back." Pondering this, Yaoguang redirected his thoughts toward the subsequent cultivation along the Human Immortal path. Cultivating as a Human Immortal... It was a process of continuously strengthening and elevating one's essence, energy, and spirit—or rather, constantly enhancing the quality of the three pinnacle Dao artifacts—so that one could leverage even greater power of the Grand Dao. It was fundamentally different from Ghost Immortals, Earth Immortals, Divine Immortals, and Heavenly Immortals. "These insights actually provide an objective description of the five classes of immortals. Among them, Ghost Immortals take the easiest shortcut, but unless one possesses an extraordinary background, that path is nearly impossible to carry through to the end. Hence, they make up less than twenty percent. Divine Immortals increase their strength by deepening their fusion with the Grand Dao, which is also a comparatively straightforward road to power. Yet they rise and fall by the Grand Dao: immortals who hold exceptionally deep comprehension of that same Dao can even manipulate it to command Divine Immortals to do their bidding... Due to this fatal flaw, Divine Immortals are equally sparse, numbering around fifteen percent." Reading this, Yaoguang exhaled softly. Earth Immortals and Human Immortals were the true mainstream. These two classes accounted for nearly seventy percent of all immortals in the Immortal Realm! "No wonder the techniques I found during my first brush with Dao Integration were overwhelmingly Earth Immortal and Human Immortal methods." While digesting this information, his attention turned toward "Heavenly Immortals." This path... Was the most arduous! And the rarest! It could not even be measured in terms of ten or five percent. In the Immortal Realm, not even one out of a hundred might be a Heavenly Immortal. Furthermore, Heavenly Immortals mostly congregated together in isolated, lofty retreats. In the wider world, very few ever encountered a true Heavenly Immortal. Because of their extreme rarity, paired with their boundless dharmic powers and vast divine abilities, those who attained notable achievements along this path were revered as beings of great divine ability and boundless dharmic might. "Ghost Immortals, Human Immortals, Earth Immortals, and Divine Immortals all borrow external power to attain the Dao. Ghost Immortals plunder the cultivation of others; Human Immortals anchor their essence, energy, and spirit within immortal artifacts; Earth Immortals claim a territory to forge a grotto-heaven or blessed land; and Divine Immortals merge directly into the Grand Dao, their seven emotions and six desires fading until they resemble mere puppets of the Dao... No wonder only those who achieve success along the path of Heavenly Immortals are honored as masters of great divine ability and boundless dharmic might." Yaoguang sighed with emotion. Even so, things had already progressed to this point, and he harbored no thought of switching paths. Although the newly gained progress had yielded two additional Heavenly Immortal methods, neither was a Heavenly Immortal canon of the Void. Yaoguang found this entirely understandable. Heavenly Immortals were already one in a hundred. To precisely obtain a Heavenly Immortal method of the Void was harder still. After all, the Grand Dao of the Void was one of the four supreme Grand Daos. To this day, he had not even encountered Dao arts of Karma or Destiny, had he? As he digested the information, the branches of the ancient tree gradually ceased their growth. Yaoguang glanced at his final progress. "A whole Dao Lord only granted four points of progress?" This outcome took him by surprise. It was far less than he had anticipated. At this rate, would he need twenty-five hundred Dao Lords to reach the ten-thousand-point mark? "I wonder how vast the gap between a Dao Lord and a true immortal really is? If the gap is massive, hunting twenty-five hundred Dao Lords... wouldn't be impossible. But if the difference between a Dao Lord and an immortal is negligible..." Yaoguang pondered this for a moment, then quickly dismissed the thought. From the Martial Path Human Immortal Secret Trove in his possession alone, he could deduce that the gap between a Dao Lord and a true immortal was no smaller than that between Void Piercing and Void Shattering. Though not quite as dramatic as the leap from Void Shattering to Dao Lord, such an advantage would still allow him to hunt down twenty-five hundred alien Dao Lords with relative ease. "Of course, that is merely the ideal scenario. Theoretically, hunting lower-tier targets from a higher realm yields diminishing returns. I wonder how the [Demon Hunting] branch defines 'diminishing returns.'" After assessing the situation, Yaoguang withdrew his gaze from the [Demon Hunting] and [Dao Integration: Void] branches and turned his attention to the [Merchant] branch. Dao Lord Penglai had handed over all of Dao Lord Yuanxu's spoils of war to him. Setting aside the sheer scale of that fortune... "Huh!?" Yaoguang paused in astonishment. Incredulity welled up in his heart. So much! Far too much. Upon the [Merchant] branch, a thin mist of energy almost completely blanketed the entire bough. Only because this energy was far more rarefied than the dense concentration of [Demon Hunting] had Yaoguang failed to notice it upon his first glance. "What is going on!?" Staring at this diffuse yet immense sea of energy, Yaoguang was baffled. He swiftly withdrew a portion of his mind and probed into the remnants of Dao Lord Yuanxu's grotto-heaven. There were plenty of fine items. Yet... An ancient Dao Lord who had lived for a hundred and twenty thousand years would have spent whatever resources he had to prolong his lifespan, sustain his spiritual vitality, or bolster his own strength. With the Five Decays of Heaven and Man looming over his head at any moment, how could he hoard valuable treasures on his person without using them? Consequently, the total value of the treasures here did not even measure up to what Dao Lord Zhuanlun had possessed. It amounted to around forty or fifty billion at best. "There's nothing extraordinary here." Yaoguang rummaged through the collection again and again. Yet if there were no extraordinary treasures, it could not explain the anomaly on the [Merchant] branch. Refusing to give up, Yaoguang turned his gaze once more to the various artifacts Yuanxu had collected, inspecting them one by one with utmost care. This careful screening continued for some time until, upon examining an entirely unremarkable star map, an unusual sensation suddenly gripped his heart. Involuntarily, his eyes locked onto that star map once more. He unfurled it. Depicted inside was the stellar cartography Dao Lord Yuanxu had charted across his hundred and twenty thousand years of life, journey after journey through the starry expanse. One had to admit that this Dao Lord had traversed many regions during his long existence. The farthest boundary marked upon it spanned an astonishing three billion light-years! However, across this marked expanse of three billion light-years, there were many vast blanks. Yaoguang deduced that Yuanxu must have discovered special void nodes that allowed him to cross spans of tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, of light-years in an instant, enabling him to journey three billion light-years away. In most cases, the Dao Lord's roamings remained within a radius of one billion light-years centered on Beihai Star. Often, he stayed within three hundred million light-years. This was the sensible radius chosen by most Dao Lords. Within this perimeter, should anything happen on Beihai Star, they would have ample time to rush back and provide reinforcement. Otherwise, wandering more than a billion or several billion light-years away meant that if their sects on Beihai Star encountered disaster, it would take them hundreds or even thousands of years just to return. By then, their sects would have been razed to the ground, reduced to dust in the wind. Alternatively, should an exceedingly wealthy Dao Lord invest immense quantities of high-energy materials to open the Gate of the Immortal Realm ahead of schedule, anyone traveling too far would miss the chance entirely, grieving in vain and wasting ten thousand years of waiting. "Was this star region newly discovered by Dao Lord Yuanxu during this ten-thousand-year cycle? It marks numerous high-energy regions he had yet to explore... But with the opening of Beihai Star's Gate of the Immortal Realm drawing near, he must have worried about hindrances on the return journey and set off early, leaving him no time to explore further..." Guided by a gut feeling, Yaoguang's gaze shifted to a high-energy region marked three billion light-years away from Beihai Star. "What is this?" he murmured to himself. Immediately, he directed a portion of his mind toward the [Merchant] branch. More specifically, toward a talent derived beneath it: Merchant Intuition—the ability to roughly gauge the value of an item or material, even if one had never seen it before. "To think this ability would prove so useful." It was precisely because of this talent that he had singled out the star map from countless items, and upon unfolding it, had zeroed in on that high-energy locus three billion light-years away. "So, what on earth is located there?" Yaoguang mused inwardly, intending to test the limits of his Merchant Intuition. "An immortal art inheritance? A material for an immortal artifact? The resting place of a deceased Dao Lord? A pinnacle grotto-heaven blessed land? It couldn't be a true immortal artifact, could it?" Yaoguang ran through possibilities one by one. Yet as he reassessed the sheer scale of the energy resting upon the [Merchant] branch... "Even a true immortal artifact might not generate such an immense volume of energy... Then..." His intuition sparked, and a bold hypothesis took shape: "A Gate of the Immortal Realm!?" Almost the instant he defined the potential value of that high-energy region, the vast, diffuse energy upon the [Merchant] branch abruptly coalesced and condensed. Its sheer magnitude... Even compared to what he had gained from slaying Dao Lord Yuanxu, it was dozens of times greater!