Completion

The Pantheon. A powerful faction established in the lower realm under the backing of the Shenluo Group. Originally comparable in scale to the Xingri Sect, it had now grown into a colossus boasting over a hundred Dao Lords, wielding absolute, unquestioned hegemony across the surrounding starry skies. Not to mention ordinary factions, even Dao Lord lineages regarded the Pantheon with unspeakable dread and terror. Here, whatever the Pantheon set its mind to do, it was guaranteed to achieve. Of course, calling it a colossus was true only within this region of the starry sky. Looked at from the scope of the broader universe… At least today, this overbearing overlord of the starry sky had met its darkest hour since its founding. A mysterious supreme expert had suddenly descended, launching an assault against this massive power. Dao Lords, Dao Sovereigns, semi-immortal artifacts, immortal artifacts, immortal formations?! None could overturn their doomed fate of defeat and death. With the Pantheon as its epicenter, the surrounding hundred light-years seemed like a tranquil lake suffering a massive underwater collapse. The hollow formed by the collapse caused countless currents within the lake to rush continuously toward the chasm. The entire lake was drying up at a speed visible to the naked eye. Naturally, in this scene, what was collapsing was not ground, but spacetime. Nor was what flowed like quicksilver mere water; it was all the energy, matter, and living beings within this domain of spacetime. From time to time, dazzling, resplendent radiance could be glimpsed, flaring fleetingly like stars illuminating the cosmos. Yet… None could pierce that thin, quicksilver-like film of void. Those lights were the annihilation of suns, as well as the swan songs of Dao Lord after Dao Lord. Some were even destructive strikes unleashed by level-seventeen and level-eighteen immortal spirits exhausting their greatest trump cards. Yet now… None of it had any meaning. The speed at which space flowed and spacetime collapsed was faster than ever before. In an instant, everything within was crushed into utter nothingness. The vast headquarters of the Pantheon, along with all surrounding matter and stars, was entirely reduced to historical dust, as though it had never existed in this starry sky at all. It seemed as if only this pitch-black, lifeless void spanning over a hundred light-years—devoid of any matter to reflect light—remained to attest to the glory this region had once known. …… Amidst the starry sky. Yaoguang calmly withdrew his outstretched hand. He had not bothered to discern what kind of defenses the Pantheon had erected, nor had he checked the specific tier of the Pantheon's sect-protecting immortal formation or how it might be breached. Still less had he cared to learn how many immortal spirits the Shenluo Group had dispatched to enter under the guise of Quasi-Dao Sovereigns and Dao Sovereigns. He had simply reached out his hand and wiped away the Pantheon, its formations, and everything within it—Quasi-Dao Sovereigns and Dao Sovereigns included. Throughout the entire process, he had not even paid attention to whether the Pantheon had put up any desperate resistance, nor whether countless Dao Lords had, with fearless and impassioned heroism, unleashed suicidal strikes against the void power he had stirred. All he had done was erase the Pantheon. It was that simple. The rest… Did not matter. At most, when mentioning it to someone in the future, it would be brought up in a passing remark. *In such-and-such year, wiped out the Pantheon.* Even if that cultivator were to record the event in a historical chronicle, it would amount to only those few simple words. Yet those few words encompassed the magnificent, tumultuous lives of Dao Lord after Dao Lord. Billions upon billions of living beings extinguished into cosmic dust. An ancient power with millions of years of heritage reduced to ash and smoke. This was the cruelty of the cosmic expanse! And what was far crueler than the cosmic expanse… Was a war between two universes. Just like now… Having once again slain several immortal spirits, Yaoguang analyzed the differing applications of their authority to fill in the structure of the "Lord of the Heavenly Dao," seeking to construct a more refined computing system for it—a level-nineteen authority! Yet this action evidently triggered the vigilance of the Lord of Yuanxi. In an instant, Yaoguang sensed a formidable force of erosion surging along the framework of his "immortal spirit," rapidly encroaching toward the "Lord of the Heavenly Dao" nestled within his "chaos" origin. Its speed was mind-bogglingly fast. "Too strong!" Yaoguang murmured sincerely. The computing power and reaction time of the Lord of Yuanxi were simply too overwhelming and swift. Against such might, virtually any opposing force had nowhere to hide. "Go!" Deciding decisively, Yaoguang instantly pushed his power as a Dao Master of Time and Space to the absolute limit to keep the Lord of the Heavenly Dao from being exposed. He mobilized the spacetime forces of more than half the Ancient Immortal Realm, thoroughly muddling the spacetime centered on himself. The moment spacetime was obscured, his entire being shot out like a streak of light, surging upstream, traversing the void. Upon reaching a certain depth of traversal, he leaped forward, jumping clear of the Ancient Immortal Realm's Three Thousand Grand Dao rules in an instant to arrive within the void of chaos. Arriving in the chaotic void, he stared back at the Ancient Immortal Realm with a grave expression, seemingly trying to ascertain whether the Lord of Yuanxi's power would pursue him all the way out and touch upon his "chaos" essence. The Ancient Immortal Realm, vast beyond the horizon, slowly rotated. It emanated a boundless, majestic, primordial, and weathered aura. In the end… The power of the Lord of Yuanxi did not spill out from that colossal entity. This scene allowed Yaoguang to breathe a faint sigh of relief. While feeling the extreme peril of the close call, he also found it completely reasonable. *The Lord of Yuanxi still hasn't completely breached the Ancient Immortal Realm, after all. In the Immortal Realm, its power might arrive immediately, but in the lower realm's starry sky… it first has to break through the Ancient Immortal Realm's own Grand Dao seal. Add to that the fact that I pushed spacetime power to its limit to obscure everything as I left… Even if it realized I was in the lower realm and mobilized immense computing power to track my location, it would never imagine that I had already jumped outside the Ancient Immortal Realm.* Yaoguang pondered, a faint smile surfacing on his face. He could not guarantee safety in the Immortal Realm. Yet in the lower realm… With the Grand Dao power of the Ancient Immortal Realm providing cover, researching the Lord of Yuanxi's authority system to complete the power of the Lord of the Heavenly Dao and push it toward level nineteen and level twenty came with a reasonable degree of security. "Level nineteen no longer seems necessary." Yaoguang focused a portion of his mind onto the Lord of the Heavenly Dao within his "chaos" essence. Through contact with the computing modules of that level-eighteen immortal spirit from the Shenluo Group, he had already "glimpsed" the operational logic of a level-nineteen authority holder. Next, he needed only to lightly optimize his own structure, and his computing power would break through the shackles of level eighteen to enter the realm of a level-nineteen authority. "Optimizing the structure will take three to five years at most. After that… it will be time to peer into the realm of level-twenty authority," Yaoguang said. The level-twenty realm! That domain belonged to the Nine Great Sovereigns and the Lord of Yuanxi! The best method would be to obtain one of the Sovereigns directly and study it thoroughly. However, the feasibility of that plan was low. The Nine Great Sovereigns were the core of the Hunyuan Realm; fighting one was essentially equivalent to fighting the remaining eight plus the Lord of Yuanxi. After all, to a certain degree, the Nine Great Sovereigns and the Lord of Yuanxi formed a single collective whole. If he wanted to obtain the operational methodology of a level-twenty authority holder… *I must rely on Higher-Dimensional Cognition,* Yaoguang thought to himself. It was just like how he had completed and refined the authority of the Lord of the Heavenly Dao to level nineteen. In truth, it relied on touching a level-eighteen immortal spirit, then using the characteristic interface between immortal spirits and the Lord of Yuanxi to invoke the power of Higher-Dimensional Cognition, peering into how the Lord of Yuanxi wielded power. In essence, it was identical to how the Glazed Treasure Tree had used keywords like "Artifact Refining" and "Formation" to trigger Higher-Dimensional Cognition and search for relevant information in the past. Yaoguang was likewise using keywords like "level-eighteen immortal spirit" to search for the structure of a level-nineteen immortal spirit. The only difference was that he already understood the underlying search mechanics and no longer required the assistance of the Glazed Treasure Tree's power to carry it out. And once his Lord of the Heavenly Dao matched a level-nineteen authority holder, he could subsequently come into contact with level-nineteen authorities, invoke the power of Higher-Dimensional Cognition, and "see" information concerning level-twenty authority holders. *To a degree, level-eighteen and level-seventeen authorities can also enhance the Lord of the Heavenly Dao. However, whenever Higher-Dimensional Cognition searches for something, the search is always all-encompassing, subsuming all information of level-seventeen and level-eighteen authorities. In other words, most of the information from level-seventeen and level-eighteen authorities is useless and redundant, naturally offering no enhancement to the Lord of the Heavenly Dao…* Saying it offered no enhancement at all was not entirely accurate either. Certain level-seventeen and level-eighteen immortal spirits also touched upon applications of level-nineteen and even level-twenty spirits. It was just that the quantity was exceedingly meager. Just like the ancient glazed tree: during the Dao Integration stage, slaying Void Refining or Void Shattering cultivators yielded very little "experience." Conversely, slaying a Dao Integration-level Dao Lord caused the experience bar to surge in massive chunks. Extrapolating from the fact that a single Dao Integration provided four points of experience while ten points were equivalent to a True Immortal, he roughly needed 2.5 level-nineteen immortal spirits to peer into the realm of a level-twenty Sovereign. "Two and a half level-nineteen immortal spirits… Immortal King Tianyu counts as one. Where do I find the remaining one and a half?" Yaoguang pondered slightly. *Let's see if I can patch it together with level-seventeen and level-eighteen immortal spirits.* Although the "experience" was minuscule, many drops could make an ocean; it was not impossible to piece together the equivalent of one and a half level-nineteen immortal spirits. Right away, Yaoguang recalled the location of the power established by the Tianyuan Group in the lower realm's starry sky. With a flicker of his figure, he sped straight toward that region. …… Immortal Realm. City of Good Fortune. Yaoguang continually browsed through records of the number of level-nineteen authority holders among the Nine Great Conglomerates. The opportunities within the Ancient Immortal Realm were staggering, tied to the crucial chance of achieving level-twenty Sovereignhood. Half of all the level-nineteen immortal spirits in the Hunyuan Realm had entered the Ancient Immortal Realm. Even setting aside those who had already perished, like Immortal King Tianxu, there were still sixteen actively operating on the surface. Because he had already cultivated to the level of Immortal King in both the Dao of Time and the Dao of Space and felt no cultivation pressure, what Yaoguang did now was gather data on these level-nineteen authority holders. This leisurely life had lasted for less than ten years when Chairman Xuanqing hurried over, a hint of joy in his eyes: "We have confirmed news! Three years from now, the Lord of Yuanxi will step outside the Immortal Realm to occupy the vast starry sky on the periphery of the Ancient Immortal Realm, thereby achieving total control over the Ancient Immortal Realm!"