Resonance

"Everyone?" Hearing Yaoguang's words, not only the Immortal Kings of the four conglomerates who were fleeing in all directions and Immortal King Yuantu, but even Immortal King Tianming, Immortal King Nizhuan, Immortal King Taiyi, and the others froze on the spot. For a moment, they were utterly dumbfounded. After a brief pause, an Immortal King from the Dusk Group, who had arrived as reinforcements, couldn't help being the first to snap, "Yuxiao, have you lost your mind?!" "Immortal King Yuxiao, stop saying such nonsense! Let us first eradicate all these enemies from the Ancient Immortal Alliance!" Immortal King Taiyi unleashed his divine sense, sending shockwaves through the surrounding void. "You wouldn't want to become the primary target hunted down by the Lord of Yuanxi, would you? The Lord of Yuanxi will restore surveillance over this void very soon. If you cut yourself off from the Hunyuan Realm, then no matter where you hide, you won't escape the judgment that awaits you!" Immortal King Tianming said nothing, but secretly issued an order to disengage from the Nine Great Conglomerates. In this battle, they had directly and indirectly slain more than a dozen Immortal Kings from the Nine Great Conglomerates, dealing them catastrophic losses. Although the Nine Great Conglomerates still held a numerical advantage in Immortal Kings for the moment, they were not united like the Ancient Immortal Alliance. As a result, the alliance's predicament had improved substantially compared to before. Perhaps it wouldn't be long before they could step out into the open in broad daylight. Having reaped such massive gains, the Ancient Immortal Alliance would still have profited immensely even if they retreated right now. Weighing the pros and cons, Immortal King Tianming, as the leader of the Ancient Immortal Alliance, was already entertaining the thought of withdrawing. Unfortunately... Yaoguang gave them no such chance. He clenched his hand in the empty air. The Immortal Kings of the four conglomerates who were scattering in flight, as well as the several Ancient Immortal Alliance kings led by Immortal King Yuantu, were all dragged toward him. At the same time, the Dao fruit of the Grand Dao of Time within his body trembled unceasingly! Even as he absorbed the Ancient Immortal Realm's shares in the Grand Dao of the Void, he was forcefully reclaiming the shares of the Grand Dao of Time. Reclaiming all the shares in the Void Dao across the Ancient Immortal Realm was already causing a massive commotion anyway, so he didn't mind making it even bigger. Moreover... Compared to the Grand Dao of the Void, the Grand Dao of Time was actually easier to recover. This Grand Dao was one of the very few whose total shares had never been fully occupied. Were it not for the fact that Yaoguang's personal share of the Grand Dao of Time was smaller than that of the Void Dao, making the leverage-based absorption somewhat slow, the Dao of Time might have fully condensed within a few dozen breaths, truly elevating him to the position of Time Dao Ancestor. The powers of Time and the Void intertwined across his person, relentlessly propelling him toward the domain of a true "Dao Ancestor"! The crushing pressure—which left every Immortal King on the field trembling in shock—quickly breached the psychological safety threshold of several kings. Immortal King Tianming, who had already contemplated retreating, immediately ordered, "The situation has changed! Fall back first!" Though Immortal King Taiyi wished to pursue and wipe out all these alliance kings who had mobilized in full force, looking at Yaoguang... An intense sense of danger and insecurity battered his soul relentlessly. He could no longer spare the thought of commanding his Immortal Kings to stop the Ancient Immortal Alliance from fleeing. Instead, he broadcasted his divine sense: "Break away from this area and summon the power of the Lord of Yuanxi! Deadlocking with the Ancient Immortal Alliance's kings right now is meaningless—we can barely tap sixty to seventy percent of our full strength! Once the Lord of Yuanxi's power arrives, taking them on two-to-one will be effortless. That is when their true day of doom will arrive!" With that order given, the more than twenty Immortal Kings from the Creation Group, Xiyu Group, and Dusk Group, as well as the Ancient Immortal Alliance, ceased fighting in unspoken accord and rapidly retreated in two different directions. Rumble! At this moment, Yaoguang was channeling the Spacetime Collapse Art to slaughter the Immortal Kings of the Tianyuan, Shenluo, Changsheng, and Star Sun Groups one after another. Seeing the two factions scattering in flight, he reached out with one hand, and the boundary of spatial contraction expanded rapidly, brashly enclosing all the Immortal Kings of both the Ancient Immortal Alliance and the four conglomerates. Seeing that Yaoguang had actually attacked them, the members of the Creation Group, Xiyu Group, and Dusk Group were finally infuriated. Even Immortal King Taiyi, who had always prioritized the bigger picture, could not hold back an outburst of divine sense: "Yuxiao, you really have lost your mind! How dare you attack us! Are you abandoning the permissions you worked so hard to acquire and betraying the Hunyuan Realm?!" Almost simultaneously, an explosion of Immortal King Tianming's divine sense swept across the void: "Yaoguang, do not forget your roots! The power of the Void and the power of Time you wield were both bestowed upon you by the Ancient Immortal Realm! What you are doing right now is betraying who and where you stand! You are betraying the Ancient Immortal Realm!" The two streams of divine sense intertwined, laden with a fury that seemed capable of incinerating the heavens. Yet a moment after their divine senses rang out, both Immortal Kings froze in unison. One accused Yuxiao of betraying the Hunyuan Realm. The other accused Yaoguang of betraying the Ancient Immortal Realm. Then... "Yuxiao (Yaoguang), what on earth are you trying to do?!" The fluctuations in both kings' divine senses were even tinged with a measure of grief and indignation. Yaoguang said nothing, but the increasingly immense force of spatial contraction and confinement made his stance abundantly clear. Especially as more and more shares of the Void and Time were forcefully stripped from all across the Ancient Immortal Realm—wrenched from Dao Lords, True Immortals, and Immortal Venerables alike—and subsequently refined by Yaoguang, he was not only able to bind the more than thirty Immortal Kings on the battlefield, but also spare the strength to cast the Great Void Art, hammering it down upon one conglomerate Immortal King after another. Almost every instant, an Immortal King fell. Likewise, at every moment, vast quantities of energy were absorbed by him, or rather... Absorbed by the Glazed Treasure Tree. And as these Immortal Kings of the four conglomerates perished, the bough of the "immortal spirit"—born from the Glazed Treasure Tree yet having surpassed it—trembled continuously. Peering through the fallen kings and their dissipating permission levels, it rapidly gleaned the truth of Level 19 and even Level 20 permissions. Even before his shares of the Void and Time had been completely reclaimed, deep within his soul's perception, something had already undergone an early metamorphosis. ... Far away in the chaotic nothingness beyond the Ancient Immortal Realm, a powerful consciousness was suddenly birthed within the rapidly evolving chaotic world. Theoretically, this consciousness should have been the will of all living beings. However, because the will of living beings did not exist in the chaotic world, the only active elements in the entire realm were over a hundred Grand Daos... No! As his avatar Shaohua slaughtered Immortal King after Immortal King in the Ancient Immortal Realm, the number of Grand Daos he had comprehended grew ever larger, already exceeding two hundred. Since that powerful consciousness could find no suitable vessel to bear it, in the end... The consciousness akin to the will of all living beings was bestowed upon the hundreds of Grand Daos, giving rise to what could be called the will of the Great Dao. Empowered by It, the evolutionary efficiency of the Grand Daos skyrocketed countless times over. A workload that originally would have taken hundreds of millions of years was swiftly compressed into tens of millions, millions, and even down to a mere hundred thousand years. "This kind of amplification... matches the computational assistance of Level 20 permissions!" Yaoguang murmured to himself. His "Lord of Heavenly Dao," modeled after the Lord of Yuanxi, had finally ascended to Level 20. At this moment, in terms of rank, his Lord of Heavenly Dao had caught up to the Nine Rulers and the Lord of Yuanxi. At most, its foundational depth could not yet compare to that of the Nine Rulers or the Lord of Yuanxi. However, though his Lord of Heavenly Dao had been formed by simulating the Lord of Yuanxi's computational power, because the chaotic world harbored no living masses, It neither resembled a Ruler nor the will of all living beings; instead, It was equivalent to a collective of the wills of three thousand Grand Daos. Or perhaps... A World Will? Shaking his head, Yaoguang chose not to dwell on it. Whatever kind of will it was, so long as it was sufficient and could properly maintain the operation and evolution of the chaotic world he had become, that was enough. Now possessing the Level 20 Lord of Heavenly Dao... Yaoguang turned his gaze back toward the Ancient Immortal Realm. He and his avatar Shaohua could not even be considered two souls in one body; rather, they were merely two different trains of thought belonging to a single person. With their souls and minds completely linked, he naturally knew everything taking place within the Ancient Immortal Realm with absolute clarity. He also knew... "Has the Destiny Dao Ancestor or the Lord of Yuanxi still not made a move? Is this a contest of strategic resolve?" Yaoguang murmured. In theory, neither the Destiny Dao Ancestor nor the Lord of Yuanxi could sit by and permit him to keep butchering like this. Although Immortal Kings were merely chess pieces to them, they could not truly allow him to wipe the board clean of all these pieces. Otherwise, whenever they wished to carry out a strategy in the future, they would have to step onto the board themselves. When that time came, should any conflict arise, the ones harmed would be the chess masters themselves. "It comes down to who can hold out longer. Whoever flinches first and enters the fray will fall into a disadvantaged position," Yaoguang realized inwardly. ... And precisely because he understood this, knowing that time was short, Yaoguang grew all the more efficient in eradicating the Immortal Kings of the four conglomerates. Accelerated and amplified by the Great Time Art, the Great Void Art formed something resembling a deluge of immortal arts, and not a single Immortal King could withstand it. In an instant, more than half of the four conglomerates' Immortal Kings had perished. Not only did the four conglomerates suffer catastrophic casualties, but the several Ancient Immortal Alliance kings brought by Immortal King Yuantu were wiped out entirely. Now, his gaze locked onto Immortal King Yuantu himself. The moment Yaoguang's mind locked onto him, the powers of the Grand Dao of the Void and the Grand Dao of Time compressed around him simultaneously. At this moment, Immortal King Yuantu felt as if he had become the enemy of the cosmos, subjected to the rejection of the entire Ancient Immortal Realm. Every shred of space and every fraction of time throughout the Ancient Immortal Realm cursed him, wishing nothing more than to grind his bones to powder and scatter his ashes. This suffocating pressure caused Immortal King Yuantu to let out a terrified, despairing roar: "Yaoguang!" He held aloft the supreme treasure in his hands, the Wheel of Karma, weaving the Daos together with the power of karma in an attempt to make Yaoguang's Void Dao and Time Dao mutually incompatible—hoping they would collide and consume each other from within. Yet... It was futile. Yaoguang pressed down with his empty hand, and the Great Void Art condensed under the amplification of the Great Time Art. At this stage, he didn't even need to use the Spacetime Collapse Art. Because by now, his mastery over both Daos exceeded eight thousand shares each. Simply hammering down with these two immortal arts proved far more devastating than using composite arts like Spacetime Collapse. And it was at the exact moment when Yaoguang once again channeled the Grand Dao of the Void and Grand Dao of Time with full force, condensing immortal arts to strike down Immortal King Yuantu, who had activated the Wheel of Karma in defiance, that the Gate of Karma—hanging high above the nine heavens like a bright moon, radiating stability across the Ancient Immortal Realm... Suddenly let out a faint sound. Hum! It sounded like the resonant blast of a colossal ocean liner's horn! In an instant, that great bell-like reverberation echoed deep within everyone's soul. Dao resonance! The Gate of Karma... Had been shaken!