"Wherever intelligent life exists, there will be war. Every war represents a new redistribution of interests, utterly destroying everything that came before and dragging intelligent beings from their comfort zones into peril until one side is completely dead."
Across the cosmic starry sky, Yaoguang steered the Grand Dao Pagoda, utilizing the Grand Daos of the Void, Time, and Flowing Light within it to shuttle swiftly through space. "And what all intelligent life seeks is survival. War is merely using such inhuman conduct to redistribute interests anew."
During his journey, he also gazed from time to time at the civilizations he encountered along the way.
The universe was vast.
For many mortals and Level 1 civilizations that had yet to step beyond their home planets, a single light-year was likely a distance they could never cross in their entire lifetimes.
He recalled that in the Yaoguang Realm, the average living space per person was close to one kilometer, whereas for ants, their entire lives were spent within that single kilometer.
Thus, to those sub-Level 1 civilizations, the light-year in their perception was no different from an ant's kilometer.
As a result, many ants went their whole lives without ever seeing a single human.
Yet if that range were expanded from one kilometer to ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand kilometers, the ants would realize there were actually so many humans in the world.
Likewise, if the scale of distance was raised from one light-year to tens of thousands of light-years, these sub-Level 1 civilizations would discover that countless civilizations existed across the cosmos.
It was only because most of these civilizations were of such low levels—so low that they could never make contact with another civilization across their entire existence—that they developed the illusion of being alone in the world.
Furthermore, traces of many civilizations lasted only a few thousand years, or tens of thousands of years at most.
On the vast cosmic scale, such an amount of time was utterly insignificant.
A Dao Lord like Yaoguang could effortlessly watch civilization after civilization on a planet collapse and be reborn, cycling through several iterations.
If this held true even for a Dao Lord, it was even more so for the immortals, Immortal Venerables, and Immortal Kings said to have attained immortality and eternity.
...
After traversing space for a time, Yaoguang came to a halt above a planet less than thirty thousand kilometers in diameter.
This planet's environment...
From a human perspective, it was exceptionally picturesque.
Everywhere the eye could see, lush greenery abounded, teeming with life.
Amidst the endless trees and dense woodlands nestled cities that relied entirely on colossal trees.
Living in these cities were beings standing one and a half meters tall, who fed on sweet dew and clothed themselves in leaves.
They possessed smooth, flowing green hair and features that aligned well with human aesthetics. Their slender frames held considerable strength, allowing them to leap and dart through the branches with nimble grace as though walking on flat ground.
The architecture of this civilization was steeped in artistic grace, blending harmoniously with verdant hills, clear streams, and sprawling woods.
Yaoguang glanced over the scenery before fixing his gaze directly upon the grandest forest city, which was home to over ten million of these creatures.
At the city's heart stood a colossal temple.
Enshrined within the temple was the deity of this race—and indeed, of this entire planet.
The god's power was boundless and vast, supposedly rivaling the sun in the sky...
Well, judging solely from how this civilization described their deity, she ought to have been a cultivator at the Crimson Golden Core level, or at most the Radiant Sun Golden Core level. Yet nobody would ever imagine that this being—depicted as merely at the seventh layer of the Golden Core—was actually a Dao Lord.
A Void Dao Lord.
The moment Yaoguang flickered and appeared above the palace, the Void Dao Lord inside, who was playing at being a goddess, sensed something amiss. She lazily raised her head, seemingly curious to see who was foolish enough to offend her. But the next instant...
Her expression froze.
A Void Sword plummeted from the sky, shattering the temple to pieces.
"No!"
Terrified, the Void Dao Lord tried to resist, but because the Grand Dao of the Void was utterly suppressed, in her haste she could not stir Dao resonance at all. In the end, she could only watch helplessly as the Void Sword tore her apart.
Fortunately, Yaoguang kept his power from spilling over.
After sundering the temple with a single strike and slaying this Void Dao Lord, he locked down the surrounding space, took away her remains along with the area she occupied, and then flickered, vanishing from the planet.
It was only dozens of breaths after the temple's destruction and the Void Dao Lord's demise that the numerous high priests, bishops, and holy maidens inside recovered their senses.
Panic-stricken cries echoed across every corner of the ruins.
Months later, news spread that divine punishment had descended from the heavens, and the Forest God, who had guarded the Forest Empire for a millennium, had fallen.
Following this, the Forest Empire's thousand-year rule collapsed, plunging the world into a turbulent era of rival warlords vying for supremacy.
This ancient civilization, unchanged for a millennium, turned a new page, gradually shifting from a theocracy toward a feudal society.
...
Yaoguang continued shuttling through the cosmos.
Relying on his perception of Void Dao Lords, before long, he appeared above another planet.
Compared to the previous forest civilization, this one was far more advanced, surpassing even the Yaoguang Realm.
Yet thirty years ago, this civilization had suffered a catastrophic disaster.
A being calling himself a "god" had descended upon the planet, digitizing the entire world and turning it into a game. One portion of living beings became Guardians, while another became monsters. Slaying monsters allowed Guardians to level up and grow stronger by the day, while killing Guardians enabled monsters to grow and evolve.
Both sides slaughtered each other. In just thirty years, a class of practitioners had emerged among the Guardians. The weaker practitioners were equivalent to Martial Artists, while the strongest were on par with Heavenly Fire realm cultivators, possessing strength comparable to nuclear detonations in every gesture.
Wielding this power, they had supplanted the previous system built upon science and technology, becoming the world's new rulers.
Meanwhile, beings rivaling Beast Kings and Beast Emperors arose within the monster faction, contesting against these Heavenly Fire realm cultivators.
Unfortunately...
The game ended here.
As Yaoguang descended from the sky and executed this Dao Lord, the entire world was restored from its "digitized" state.
Having dispatched this Void Dao Lord along the way, Yaoguang set off once more.
During this journey, whenever he encountered a Dao Lord—regardless of their type—he showed no mercy.
He knew very well that if these figures ascended to the Immortal Realm, they would immediately become nutrients for the Nine Great Conglomerates, serving as fuel for the Hunyuan Realm's annexation of the Ancient Immortal Realm.
Under these circumstances, even though he knew his actions could be called slaughtering the innocent, he did not hesitate in the slightest.
Besides, could anyone who managed to cultivate to the Dao Lord level truly claim to be innocent?
Even Yaoguang did not deny the mistakes and sins he had accumulated along the way.
Yet none of that mattered.
Using human moral standards to weigh the good and evil of beings as magnificent as Dao Lords was itself an absurdity.
Just like a sheep's worldview: whether looking upon a tiger or a human, it found them thoroughly wicked.
Yet would any human care about a sheep's perspective, or deem what they did to sheep to be an unpardonable atrocity?
...
Such a vast distance of twenty billion light-years was crossed by Yaoguang in a mere hundred and fifty years.
And this was despite having taken detours numerous times to eliminate nearby Dao Lords and purge surrounding factions.
Otherwise, traversing a mere twenty billion light-years would never have taken a hundred and fifty years; sixty or seventy would have sufficed.
Compared to the sphere of influence of the Xingri Sect, the Yongsheng Sect's rule over this starry sky was far more entrenched.
This sect had also been founded 3.3 million years ago, and throughout these 3.3 million years, it had remained the sole ruler of this expanse of space.
Across long epochs and through generations of Dao Lords, they had fortified the three-billion-light-year expanse centered around the Yongsheng Sect into an impregnable iron barrel.
Every void node had been scouted out.
Fifteenth-level formations were erected over every single void node to ensure that any Dao Lord...
including Void Dao Lords, would be detected upon passing through, thereby securing the Yongsheng Sect's total surveillance over this starfield.
Naturally, some Void Dao Lords could choose to travel without using the Star Gates built atop spatial nodes, but...
Across three billion light-years, relying solely on a Void Dao Lord's own flight, they could never hope to cross it in a lifetime.
In addition, the Yongsheng Sect maintained detection arrays distributed across various planets and crucial strategic locations.
Any Dao Lord who entered Yongsheng Sect territory without passing through a border Star Gate would be detected the moment they appeared in a gathering place for cultivators, drawing the interrogation and inspection of Yongsheng Sect Dao Lords.
Yes!
Inspection!
For the Yongsheng Sect, which possessed a hundred and thirty-six Dao Lords out in the open alone, any Dao Lord who failed to follow their rules by securing entry clearance at the border and rashly ventured into their domain would be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.
If one had only strayed into Yongsheng Sect territory by accident, it might not be severe.
Yet if one was discovered deep inside Yongsheng Sect territory...
They might be deemed invaders by the special operations squads patrolling the borders—led by Dao Lords comparable to Qianjie or Wanjie—and captured on the spot, or summarily executed in serious cases.
"The Yongsheng Sect."
Yaoguang gazed at the Star Gate ahead marking the Yongsheng Sect's border.
This was the largest starport the Yongsheng Sect maintained for external transit.
Through the Star Gate in this starport, one could quickly teleport into the Yongsheng Sect's heartland.
After passing through a few more direct Star Gates from there, one would reach the Yongsheng Sect headquarters.
Because this Star Gate was of paramount importance, a Dao Lord was stationed there in person.
The formation shrouding the Star Gate was formed by intertwining six fifteenth-level formations, possessing might rivaling that of an immortal formation.
"On Beihai Star, the Gate of the Immortal Realm will fully open in another three years. When the time comes, my time avatar will choose to ascend to the Immortal Realm, formally stepping onto immortal soil. Yet right now, while I know the Immortal Realm is perilous, I have no idea how perilous it truly is. As an organization at the center of the cosmos that has maintained constant contact with the Changsheng Group, the Yongsheng Sect is bound to know something."
Yaoguang steered his flying boat slowly forward. "In that case... I shall take down the Yongsheng Sect first and extract the intelligence on the Immortal Realm that I lack most, ensuring that Shaohua will not be left bewildered and thrown into disarray after ascending."
With this thought, he executed a Void Flicker, arriving directly outside the Star Gate. The Dao resonance unique to a Dao Lord surged outward, instantly alerting the entire starport.
Chapter 541