Essence

"It worked!" Yaoguang was filled with both shock and delight. It had truly worked! He had actually used a method bordering on reversing spacetime to resurrect a Dao Lord—a Dao Lord who had already perished—from the "spacetime" of death. Although the process had depleted some of his "chaos" essence, which would likely take several decades or even a century of rest to recover, nevertheless… He had done it. He had brought the dead back to life, resurrecting a fallen soul in the flesh. The resurrected Dao Lord stood briefly in dazed disbelief before quickly steadying his mind. He examined himself, his divine sense wafting outward incessantly, his eyes overflowing with shock. Clearly, he retained the memories from before his death. "How do you feel?" At that moment, Yaoguang's divine sense reached him. Only then did the Dao Lord realize that another terrifying figure was standing right beside him. Inferring from the fact that he had not sensed the slightest trace of an aura beforehand, the person before him had to be an existence vastly more powerful than himself. Immediately, the Dao Lord bowed deeply in salute. "Lanshuo pays his respects to Senior. I thank Dao Sovereign for saving my life." "Tell me how you feel." Yaoguang did not respond to the pleasantry, simply repeating his question. Dao Lord Lanshuo dared not hide anything and hurriedly answered, "I… I feel quite fine…" With that, he looked at Yaoguang. "I must have suffered an attack by some Void Dao Lord, or even a Void Dao Sovereign. By all rights, my chances of survival were non-existent. I can even… still remember the scene of my body being crushed and my consciousness completely extinguished. Dao Sovereign, was it you who just saved my life?" Hearing this, Yaoguang gained some insight. So this Dao Lord's thoughts and memories were frozen at the moment of his demise? Yaoguang turned his gaze once more toward the Ancient Immortal Realm's river of time, which seemed stretched into a long thread, and an idea welled up in his mind. *Right now, this Dao Lord Lanshuo exists. What would happen if I pulled another Dao Lord Lanshuo from a different point in time?* With a mere thought, Yaoguang was about to put it into action. Yet the moment he made a slight attempt, he immediately felt an insurmountable difficulty. Resurrecting the dead Lanshuo was no longer difficult for him in his current state. However, if he tried to revive a Dao Lord Lanshuo from another temporal node, granting him rebirth, it would cause an error in the operational logic of the entire Ancient Immortal Realm. When that happened, the entire Ancient Immortal Realm would completely collapse and fall into destruction due to that logical contradiction. For that very reason, the Ancient Immortal Realm spared no effort in prohibiting such an act. In other words, if he truly wished to do so, he would need the power to destroy the Ancient Immortal Realm. Moreover, even if he possessed such strength, he might not necessarily succeed in resurrecting this Dao Lord Lanshuo in the end. Nine times out of ten, it would simply obliterate the entire Ancient Immortal Realm directly. *A logical contradiction would emerge? In other words, a spacetime paradox?* Yaoguang sensed it for a moment, then halted. He lacked the strength to destroy the entire Ancient Immortal Realm. Never mind him—even the Lord of Yuanxi could not do it. The Lord of Yuanxi was merely corroding the Ancient Immortal Realm, slowly devouring and digesting it, rather than destroying it in one fell swoop. The two concepts were not to be mentioned in the same breath. "Dao… Dao Sovereign saved my life, and Lanshuo has nothing with which to repay you. From this day forward, I am willing to follow and serve at Dao Sovereign's side," Dao Lord Lanshuo spoke once again. Yaoguang glanced at him. He was quite tempted to test whether killing Lanshuo right now would grant an increase in "experience." Or perhaps, resurrecting Lanshuo when there was no remaining share of the Grand Dao would cause a share outside the ten thousand shares to appear. Yet after dwelling on the thought for a moment, he suppressed it. *A single resurrection expends a substantial amount of my strength, an expenditure that in some sense already exceeds the share of a single Dao Lord. In other words… if I truly resurrect him when Lanshuo has no share available, it would be roughly equivalent to converting a portion of my own power into a share of the Ancient Immortal Realm, allowing the Ancient Immortal Realm to surpass its own upper limit and thereby bringing about the birth of Dao Lord Lanshuo…* Realizing this, Yaoguang shook his head inwardly. This was plainly a losing bargain. The price was far too high. "My apologies. That was merely an experiment," Yaoguang said. Dao Lord Lanshuo blinked, not yet understanding what Yaoguang meant by those words. The void trembled. A Great Void Art manifested in an instant, sweeping downward. "Dao Sovereign!?" Dao Lord Lanshuo was stunned. In the next second, he pulled back in retreat, his eyes filled with disbelief. "Dao Sovereign, why must you go this far…" *Rumble!* The Great Void Art swept over him. This cultivator, who possessed only the strength of an ordinary Dao Lord, was once again pulverized into ash. Likely up to the moment of his death, he could not fathom how he had offended this mysterious Dao Sovereign to make the man insist on killing him twice. Following the Dao Lord's fall, Yaoguang quietly sensed the changes within himself. This Dao Lord… also yielded an increase in energy. *So, I can already produce and consume my own supply?* Yaoguang was slightly surprised. He then turned his gaze toward his somewhat weakened "chaos" essence. Gaining an intuitive grasp, he directly operated this essential power stemming from "existence," gradually channeling it toward the Glazed Treasure Tree. Under this essence, the precious radiance of the Glazed Treasure Tree was utterly subdued. Yet as Yaoguang controlled his "chaos" essence and permitted the Glazed Treasure Tree to take root within it and absorb energy… Before long, energy was circulating across the Glazed Treasure Tree. Seeing this, Yaoguang was somewhat surprised, yet found it entirely reasonable. *My 'chaos' essence is currently only in the 'newborn' stage. Since it is newborn, that means it can continue to grow… With this rate of growth… in roughly a hundred years, it can generate energy equivalent to a Dao Lord. In a million years, the accumulated energy would match a Dao Ancestor!* Extrapolating from this, Yaoguang thought: *Given three billion years of evolution, could I grow to become as vast as the Ancient Immortal Realm!?* Although he did not know whether this "newborn" state had a ceiling or whether such growth was subject to certain restrictions… rivaling the Ancient Immortal Realm in three billion years was by no means empty talk. "Three billion years." Yaoguang muttered the figure under his breath. That… would truly be an incomparably vast stretch of time. Moreover, three billion years was only under the most optimal circumstances. If he suffered expenditures during that period—such as resurrecting Dao Lords of the Ancient Immortal Realm or using his "chaos" essence in combat—the time needed to grow to a level rivaling the Ancient Immortal Realm would only be far longer than three billion years. Such a timescale left Yaoguang, who had lived for only a little over three thousand years in total, taking quite a while to regain his composure. "Truly… incredible." He glanced at the remaining energy within the Glazed Treasure Tree and poured it all into the Grand Dao of Karma, advancing its progress to 385/10,000. Next, he cast a glance in the direction of Beihai Star… On Beihai Star, the Nine Cauldrons Sect was thriving. With the immortal artifacts and immortal formations he had left behind, even genuine Dao Lords would not dare withhold respect from the Nine Cauldrons Sect. In particular… Everyone could sense that becoming a Dao Lord had grown increasingly difficult of late. The oldest batch of True Monarchs on Beihai Star, such as True Monarch Jinghong and his peers, had all fallen along the path to attaining Dao Lord status. This cycle of the Dao Contention was an exceedingly rare one: two thousand years without a single new Dao Lord being born. With so few Dao Lords around, cultivators at the Void Piercing, Void Refinement, and Void Shattering levels naturally had even less nerve to act insolently before the deeply entrenched Nine Cauldrons Sect. Yaoguang observed for a time, lingering his gaze especially on Su Yaoyu for a moment, yet ultimately chose not to reveal himself. He produced a jade talisman and tossed it toward Beihai Star. The jade talisman would find Su Yaoxue and inform her, under the identity of a "friend of Yaoguang," that the crisis had been resolved. Having done this, Yaoguang did not step foot onto Beihai Star again. His figure flashed as he headed straight for the Dao Lord nearest to the planet. He needed only to clear out the Dao Lords in the vicinity of Beihai Star—or rather… as long as there were no Dao Lords left in the lower realm, Beihai Star would never have to worry about facing a crisis like today's ever again. *** Immortal Realm. Fortune Immortal City. Inside Immortal King Yuxiao's cultivation abode, a peculiar look surfaced in Yaoguang's eyes. "Resurrecting the dead." He checked his chaos essence. It was reasonably abundant. Although resurrecting a Dao Lord caused some exhaustion, if he braced himself, reviving True Immortals and Immortal Venerables was not out of reach. If he did not mind suffering a severe blow to his vitality, even resurrecting an Immortal King was not entirely impossible. *If I want to resurrect Immortal Venerables and Immortal Kings with ease, either my chaos origin must become ten or dozens of times more abundant, or…* Yaoguang pondered briefly. *I could forge a Grand Dao Divine Artifact centered around my 'chaos' essence, similar to the Grand Dao of Origin, bolstering my foundation to be used exclusively for reviving immortals.* At the thought, his eyes lit up. *If I could infinitely resurrect fallen Immortal Kings, even without an exceptional entity like the 'Lord of Yuanxi' to coordinate all that power, we could still grind the Hunyuan Realm to death through sheer attrition.* Yet immediately afterward, he laughed in self-mockery. If his chaos origin were ten or dozens of times more abundant, why would he need to bother with such convoluted methods? Reviving Immortal Kings again and again? He could simply charge straight into the Hunyuan Realm and slaughter everything in his path. Shaking his head, Yaoguang sensed his two Dao fruits. Void and Time. *A Thousand Years in a Great Dream… aside from Fate and Karma, the most vital components are Soul, Mind, Phantasm, Fortune, Reincarnation…* After a moment of contemplation, Yaoguang decided to proceed according to the original plan. Slay Immortal King Tianyu. On one hand, back when he was in the lower realm, Immortal King Tianyu had chased him across the cosmos; he held a grudge. On the other hand, by slaying Immortal King Tianyu and becoming the strongest Immortal King of the Void Dao, he would arouse no suspicion from the Hunyuan Realm—including the Lord of Yuanxi—even if he displayed power that surpassed any Void Immortal King in the future. This would be of immense help for his next step: approaching the Gate of Fate and the Gate of Karma, which were ringed by the Nine Great Conglomerates. With this thought in mind, Yaoguang immediately transmitted a message to Chairman Xuanqing: "When are we striking against Immortal King Tianyu?" "Infighting among immortal spirits is a grave taboo. We must strike when the Lord of Yuanxi is unable to react in time, and that window will be when the Lord of Yuanxi formally begins spreading his power toward the lower realm," Xuanqing replied solemnly. Hearing this, Yaoguang felt no surprise. He gave a reminder: "I expect that moment will arrive very soon. Make your preparations." "Everything that needs to be prepared is nearly ready. We are merely waiting on the Lord of Yuanxi's decision," Xuanqing said, before advising, "You should also familiarize yourself with the powers of Time and the Void as quickly as possible." "I understand," Yaoguang replied. Sensing his true body down in the lower realm… He needed to be more proactive in his actions. Only by slaying enough Rank 17 and Rank 18 immortal spirits as quickly as possible could he force the Lord of Yuanxi to enter the fray prematurely. Once the Lord of Yuanxi's attention was dispersed across the far vaster expanse of the lower realm's starry sky, Yaoguang would be able to display his full prowess in the Immortal Realm.