Confounding

“*Phew!*” Yaoguang let out a long breath. Looking at Immortal King Yuxiao, who was completely trapped within the composite immortal art A Thousand Years of Dreams, he could finally ease his mind. The century of effort he had poured into preparing for this battle had not been in vain. Yet, although he currently held the upper hand, it did not mean he could rest easy from now on. As time went by, or if any absurd anomaly occurred within the dream, the Immortal King would inevitably notice something amiss and snap awake. Once the Immortal King woke up, it would no longer be easy to trap him in the immortal art of A Thousand Years of Dreams again. “Now it just depends on how long I can sustain it. For A Thousand Years of Dreams, keeping it going for a few thousand years should be enough.” As Yaoguang spoke, a thought stirred in his mind. The next instant, within the dream, Immortal King Yuxiao erupted with peerless, transcendent combat prowess. Relying on the power of his Level 18 immortal spirit, he forcefully suppressed and killed “Yaoguang” amid the latter's desperate cries of “This is impossible!” After crushing Yaoguang, Immortal King Yuxiao swiftly claimed the legacies left behind belonging to the Time Dao Ancestor and the Void Dao Ancestor. Throughout this entire process... Yaoguang closely observed Immortal King Yuxiao’s reactions. A Thousand Years of Dreams was a dream world Yaoguang had constructed for Immortal King Yuxiao, built around the Grand Dao of the Soul, the Grand Dao of the Mind, the Grand Dao of Illusion, the Grand Dao of Creation, and the Grand Dao of the Void. Many of the shifts within this dream world actually depended on Immortal King Yuxiao himself. Just like now: the legacies of the Time Dao Ancestor and the Void Dao Ancestor that Immortal King Yuxiao obtained manifested as two forms of clearance. Two clearances capable of knocking open the doors to the Ancient Immortal Realm’s Three Thousand Grand Daos. *The Grand Dao of Time and the Grand Dao of the Void are two of the Four Supreme Grand Daos. Their importance is completely incomparable to other ordinary Daos, or even core Daos. The defining characteristic of a Supreme Grand Dao is its ability to link with the other two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Grand Daos. Yet after obtaining these two Daos... the very first thing Immortal King Yuxiao thought of was actually to use them to trigger a chain reaction with the other two thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight Daos so he could unify the entire Ancient Immortal Realm?* Yaoguang looked at Immortal King Yuxiao “comprehending” these two Daos. From his actions, it was clear that the Hunyuan Realm had long understood that the Three Thousand Grand Daos functioned as an integrated whole. Then again, having already developed composite immortal arts, they naturally grasped this principle long ago. The passage of time within a dream could not be measured by conventional standards. Through manipulating the composite immortal art A Thousand Years of Dreams, Yaoguang could enact a series of temporal accelerations. Just as he was doing now, he sped up the flow of time in Immortal King Yuxiao’s dream, wanting to see what the Immortal King could ultimately comprehend. Yet before long, he discovered... Immortal King Yuxiao had ascended. After acquiring the legacies of the Time Dao Ancestor and Void Dao Ancestor, he completely looked down on the campaign the Lord of Yuanxi would soon launch to open the lower cosmic realm. He directly shattered the barrier between the lower cosmic realm and the Immortal Realm, ascending straight to the Immortal Realm. This sight took Yaoguang somewhat by surprise. However, he soon understood why the Immortal King had done so. Upon ascending to the Immortal Realm, Yuxiao immediately contacted the Lord of Yuanxi and reported the news of obtaining the legacies left behind by the Time Dao Ancestor and Void Dao Ancestor. Even though he had merely reported the information without surrendering the Grand Dao of Time or the Grand Dao of the Void, resolving a potential hidden threat for the Hunyuan Realm still caused his clearance to skyrocket to Level 19. Relying on the power of Level 19 clearance, he rapidly deduced the realms beyond Immortal King. Although one's power grew greater the more shares of an immortal dao they refined after reaching the Dao Lord realm, such refinement was not unlimited; the cultivator’s own realm had to keep pace. If their realm was insufficient, even if ten thousand shares were laid before them, a Dao Lord could only stare helplessly. It was just like Yaoguang: if he were given three thousand shares of the Grand Dao of the Void, more than half would simply be wasted on him. Right now, Immortal King Yuxiao was utilizing the power of Level 19 clearance to drive the elevation of his own realm, and his efficiency... Was astonishingly fast! In merely ten thousand years, his realm caught up with his greatest rival in the Void Dao, Immortal King Tianyu. Moreover, he did not stop at the Void Dao; he also meditated upon the Dao of Time, stepping into the Immortal King realm in the Grand Dao of Time as well. Furthermore, through the deductions granted by Level 19 clearance, he continuously and painstakingly cultivated composite immortal arts. Because he simultaneously commanded two Supreme Grand Daos, the breadth of Daos he could mobilize was far wider than that of other Immortal Kings. Yaoguang had already learned earlier that the composite immortal arts mastered by Immortal Venerables typically consisted of three to five Daos, while an Immortal King’s composite immortal arts involved ten or more. Yet as his realm steadily advanced and his horizons broadened accordingly, he became increasingly aware of the difference between Supreme Grand Daos and ordinary Daos. The greatest advantage lay in the upper limit. Many Daos could only leverage dozens or at most a hundred other Daos. However, as the bedrock of all Daos, each of the Supreme Grand Daos could theoretically leverage the other two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Yet... The greater the number of Daos leveraged, the heavier the burden placed on an Immortal Venerable or Immortal King. The composite immortal arts of Immortal Venerables mobilized three to five Daos, while those of Immortal Kings engaged only ten to twenty. However, there was an exception. And that was mastering a Supreme Grand Dao. Just as every additional descriptive keyword entered into a search engine multiplied the precision of the results dozens of times over, four Supreme Grand Daos were essentially enough to construct the entire framework of a cosmos. The remaining two thousand nine hundred and ninety-six Daos were merely there to fill in and complete it. Under these circumstances, training an ordinary Dao or a core Dao to the Immortal King level allowed one to cultivate composite immortal arts that mobilized only ten to twenty Daos. But with a Supreme Grand Dao, that number could reach thirty, forty, or even fifty. If two Supreme Grand Daos worked in tandem, they could push the upper limit of Daos mobilized by a composite immortal art to over a hundred. At this moment, relying on the combined might of the Void and Time Grand Daos, Immortal King Yuxiao was painstakingly training in a composite immortal art capable of mobilizing ninety-nine Daos—an art named the Five Declines of Heaven and Man. *Ordinary composite immortal arts are known as high-grade immortal arts in the Immortal Realm. Those that mobilize between ten and thirty Daos are top-tier immortal arts, and above them are paramount immortal arts, which mobilize between thirty and a hundred Daos. The Five Declines of Heaven and Man that Immortal King Yuxiao is cultivating sits at the pinnacle of paramount immortal arts, second only to supreme immortal arts that mobilize over a hundred Daos.* Watching Immortal King Yuxiao strive with immense dedication, Yaoguang could not help but sigh with emotion. *For native Dao Integration experts or even Immortal Kings, mastering such an immortal art theoretically takes hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. Yet bolstered by Level 19 clearance, Immortal King Yuxiao is confident he can compress the time needed to master it to within ten thousand years...* There was simply no contest. Although diminishing returns meant a paramount immortal art mobilizing thirty Daos was not necessarily ten times stronger than a high-grade immortal art mobilizing three, an Immortal King who had mastered a paramount immortal art facing a native Immortal King who knew only high-grade arts could slaughter them effortlessly, like sweeping away minor minions. And the reason Immortal King Yuxiao was cultivating this immortal art so diligently was to slay Immortal King Tianyu and seize the shares of the Grand Dao of the Void that Tianyu possessed. If he succeeded... The Dao shares he held would surge past five thousand, making him one of the strongest Immortal Kings in the entire Immortal Realm. Within the Creation Group, he would even have a chance to make a bid for the chairman’s seat. *That's getting a bit ahead of things,* Yaoguang murmured to himself. He quickly stimulated A Thousand Years of Dreams, blurring the imagery of ten thousand years of cultivation and painstaking mastery over the Five Declines of Heaven and Man into merely Yuxiao’s visions of the future. In reality, Yuxiao had only just stepped into the Immortal Realm. Throughout this process, Yaoguang acted with extreme caution, terrified that any flaw might startle Immortal King Yuxiao awake. Yet the result... Went astonishingly smoothly. Looking at Immortal King Yuxiao’s dream, he felt an uncanny familiarity with this operation. Confounding time and space and partitioning worlds felt like an innate instinct to him. It was just that he had never thought of doing it this way before. “Higher-Dimensional Cognition,” Yaoguang whispered. This was an ability derived from Higher-Dimensional Cognition. For now, this ability could only be applied to dream worlds and illusory realms like A Thousand Years of Dreams, rather than to the actual reality of the physical world. Yet the underlying principles between the two appeared quite interlinked. As a result, Yaoguang found confounding Immortal King Yuxiao’s perception of space and time in the dream world effortless, navigating it with consummate ease. *Since I have this kind of ability, should I specialize in A Thousand Years of Dreams... or similar immortal arts? Until one day, I can use the power of A Thousand Years of Dreams to envelop the entire Ancient Immortal Realm and the Hunyuan Realm completely, and then, just as I am confounding Immortal King Yuxiao’s concept of time right now, freely alter the space-time, karma, and cyclic reincarnation of the entire world?* This idea sprang to life in Yaoguang’s mind. After only a moment of thought, he felt that this approach was highly viable. However, to affect the real world, relying solely on the Grand Dao of the Soul, Grand Dao of the Mind, Grand Dao of Illusion, Grand Dao of Creation, and Grand Dao of the Void was clearly not enough. Karma had to be added, Fate had to be added, Time had to be added, Reincarnation had to be added... As Yaoguang pondered, a mental list gradually took shape. The list involved over a hundred Daos. Yet he could “find” all of these hundred-plus Daos in the lower realms, including the Grand Dao of Reincarnation, the most mysterious and difficult to cultivate among the core Daos. The true linchpins were Fate and Karma. *If the Glazed Treasure Tree really is the legacy of the Space-Time Dao Ancestor... then activating its power before the Gate of Fate and the Gate of Karma should allow me to resonate with both Daos. However, the Gate of Fate and Gate of Karma are surrounded by the Nine Great Groups. Ordinary cultivators cannot even get close; doing so would immediately draw a coordinated assault from the Nine Great Groups. One must at least reach the director level of the Nine Great Groups to touch them.* Thinking up to this point, Yaoguang’s gaze fell once more upon Immortal King Yuxiao. Here, he would assemble the other Daos required for the brand-new “A Thousand Years of Dreams” he planned to create. Meanwhile, his Shaohua avatar would use Immortal King Yuxiao’s identity to enter the Creation Group, become a director of the Creation Group, and then... Openly approach the Gate of Fate and Gate of Karma to bring the creation of that entirely new immortal art to completion. If his “Higher-Dimensional Cognition” truly was as formidable as he guessed... He could overturn the board entirely! Both the Hunyuan Realm and the Ancient Immortal Realm would be swept into his newly created immortal-art world resembling A Thousand Years of Dreams, allowing the two realms to coexist peacefully from then on. “Perfect.” Yaoguang clapped his hands. Although the idea seemed wildly imaginative and bordering on absurd, considering the profound mystery of Higher-Dimensional Cognition, he still intended to see it through. *Even if an unexpected mishap occurs and the immortal art fails to deploy, it will still grant me a deeper understanding of how to wield Higher-Dimensional Cognition. When that time comes, I should still possess the power to protect myself in the war between the two realms.* Then the next step was to impersonate Immortal King Yuxiao, join the Creation Group, and become a director. As for how to carry out the disguise... Yaoguang settled his mind and turned his attention back to Immortal King Yuxiao. *I’ll just have the real Immortal King Yuxiao rehearse it for me. Whatever he does upon reaching the Immortal Realm and joining the Creation Group, I will have my Shaohua avatar follow suit. If any step goes wrong and risks serious consequences...* Yaoguang looked at Immortal King Yuxiao inside the Grand Dao Pagoda. *I can simply rewind the timeline, use the Grand Dao of the Soul and Grand Dao of the Mind to blur his perception, put him in the exact same predicament my Shaohua avatar faces, and then copy his actions accordingly.* Foolproof.