Essence Devouring Art

[Physique: Human Perfection]

[Extraordinary: Essence Devouring Art (100% Potential Release) +

Three-Phase Divine Punishment Fist (30,000-Year Mastery, Nine Fist Transformations Perfection) +

Holy Spirit Transformation (30,000-Year Mastery, Horizontal Refining Ninth Gate, Eighteen Extreme Yang Heavens, Limit) +]

[Great Divine Techniques:

Primordial Magnetic Celestial Saber, Ten Directions Divine Slaughter, Primordial Magnetic Tribulation Finger, Celestial Essence Magnetic Burst Fist, Primordial Magnetic Celestial Prison Cage, Primordial Magnetic Demon Embryo, Black Tortoise Incarnation, Qiongqi’s Karmic Fire, Juntian Sacred Armor, Chaos Heart Monkey, Wind and Thunder Roar]

[Great All Heavens Divine Techniques: Immune to All Laws (Nine Transformations Perfection) +]

[Celestial Treasure: Bitter Dust Robe (Eight Transformations Royal Artifact 60%)

Celestial Treasure Advancement Ceremony: Suffering Dust Mortal Transformation.

Celestial Treasure Law: Concealing Celestial Secret, Cause and Effect Immunity.]

[Teleportation Points: 932,150]

"Two years..."

At the very end of the dreamlike Star Sea.

Wu Dao felt the unprecedented, immense power contained within every particle of his being. His consciousness swept over his attribute panel, noting the 100% released Essence Devouring Art, and for the first time, he sighed with deep emotion.

In his previous life.

It had taken him a full twenty years to reach this stage!

In this life, retracing the path of the Essence Devourer.

It had taken less than two years!

A tenfold difference in time!

It was the same 100% Human Potential Release.

What was different was...

The Extraordinary environment in this life was simply too good.

In just two years.

With the boons of Transverse Cultivation and Soul Cultivation.

Each of his Potential Liberation Domains was far stronger than in his previous life.

It was no exaggeration to say it.

The him of now.

With a flick of his wrist, he could reduce the version of himself from his past life—despite also having 100% potential release—to fine ash, irrevocably dead.

The difference in their environments.

The same path of growth.

And yet the miracles they produced were worlds apart.

It was because he had understood this principle long ago.

That Wu Dao was so incredibly wary of the Tribulation Descenders from the Hongyuan Great World.

The environments of the two worlds.

Were like comparing an Immortal Realm to an era of the End of the Dharma.

If the cultivators of the Divine Wilderness were like him in his previous life, then the Hongyuan Cultivators were like his current self—the student who had surpassed the master.

This gap.

He had experienced it firsthand.

No wonder the Divine Desolate Cultivators were mostly pessimistic about the Great Tribulation.

’The world as a prison cage... it has its pros and cons.’

Wu Dao’s consciousness focused on his three paths of Cultivation—the Main Path, Soul Cultivation, and Transverse Cultivation—and he felt a faint sense of regret.

At this moment, all three paths had reached the upper limit of the Divine Wilderness.

The next step was Above Divine Techniques.

At the same time.

The Teleportation Points required for all three paths had also unified—1.2 million.

But even if he gathered the remaining 300,000.

Wu Dao wouldn’t dare to advance while in the Divine Wilderness.

The attribute panel was, in the end, an inanimate object.

He was the one in control.

The decision to advance was his alone.

The panel had no built-in function to seek advantages and avoid harm for its host.

He didn’t dare to gamble.

He couldn’t bet on whether advancing would violate the Dao Rules of the Divine Wilderness’s Tenth Tribulation, triggering a calamitous backlash from the Dao.

Now.

Although he had achieved much.

When faced with the Great Dao—the sacred, magnificent source of everything, no matter the world—he still didn’t dare to be the slightest bit arrogant or rely on luck.

’Never bet your life on luck.’

This was the rule of survival he taught Yaya, and it was also one of the ironclad principles he lived by.

’However, while I daren’t take a full step forward, half a step—or even a specious one—is still within the rules.’

He thought of the Great Li Ancestor’s Pseudo Dharma Aspect.

Wu Dao breathed a small sigh of relief, retracted the attribute panel, and let his consciousness sweep over the less than ten percent of Postnatal Old Blood remaining in his body.

To put it bluntly.

Although he now possessed the complete Holy Spirit Technique, he was, in essence, still a ’mongrel.’

Only by completely eliminating that last ten percent of his postnatal roots and opening the Tenth Daoist Sect could he fully achieve an Innate Holy Spirit Root and step into the Yang God Realm.

After that.

It would be a step-by-step evolution.

To become a perfect Primordial Ancestor of life.

’The path ahead is clear. All I need to do is take the step. One month... that’s enough.’

Wu Dao focused his mind, his divine light gleaming brightly.

He didn’t immerse himself in the power of his advancement. Instead, he launched a new assault on his limits.

He took a step!

Nineteen thousand, eight hundred and fifty zhang!

BOOM—

His flawless, starlit body.

Without an ounce of self-pity.

Once again shattered into pieces, exploding into countless microscopic particles. Resplendent, ancient starlight, saturated with the pressure of a Sacred Spirit, illuminated the world for ten thousand li.

’The Demon Suppression Emperor could step into the Pseudo-Dharma Realm. I, Wu Dao, am certainly no less than him. In fact, I must become even stronger, even more perfect—’

’A Half-step Yang God!’

’A Quan Dao Pseudo-Phenomenon!’

’Only by being truly and eternally unparalleled within the same realm!’

’Can I face any enemy in this place without fear!’

...

Wu Dao’s advancement.

Occurring in the vast emptiness beyond the domain.

Did not attract anyone’s attention.

Except for...

That old man in the sea of bamboo.

"Hm? The Fourth Step..."

In a thatched cottage within the bamboo sea.

On a bamboo chair, an old man whose physique resembled cracked porcelain, covered in countless fissures, suddenly opened his feigning-sleep eyes. Divine light flowed through them as he gazed toward a certain direction beyond the domain.

At his level of cultivation.

Divine Techniques evolved into a Dharma Aspect.

Dharma Aspect, Dharma Aspect.

Heavenly Law and Earthly Appearance.

It was not a simple Growth Technique.

It was the Celestial Technique, the Law of the Earth.

A Divine Communication Technique formed its own small world, imitating the operational laws of the universe in the greater world. A single move could affect the workings of heaven and earth.

Human Law of Heaven and Earth, Heaven and Earth Dao, Daoist Natural Law.

The Enlightenment Technique.

Was nothing more than these three steps.

The Dharma Realm.

Was the first point of contact with the Dao.

Or, one could say, it was the forging of the Dao Foundation.

By comprehending the Laws of Heaven and Earth and using them as a model to construct a personal small world, one could achieve all sorts of incredible feats.

For example.

Now, within the not-so-large greater world of the Divine Wilderness, the Demon Suppression Emperor could clearly sense all sorts of changes in the world’s energy, and with a quick divination, he could know the cause.

Wu Dao’s path of Divine Techniques had reached perfection.

Even though it happened beyond the domain.

The change reverberated throughout the world.

Like dropping a large stone into a pond.

The ripples spread.

It had a considerable effect on the various energies of this world.

After tracing it back to its source.

The Demon Suppression Emperor clapped his hands and sighed in admiration.

"Remarkable, Wu Dao! In just two months, you’ve crossed a path that took this old man several hundred years. Truly incredible!"

He was just about to carefully perceive Wu Dao’s changes.

After all, he was so lonely in this realm.

A fellow traveler had finally appeared, after great difficulty.

Naturally, he intended to exchange knowledge.

BUZZ~

But it seemed Wu Dao had sensed the prying gaze. All the energies in his location suddenly blurred and distorted, making it impossible to divine anything further.

"It seems this old man has overstepped."

Zhou Yuan let out a helpless laugh, shook his head, and paid it no mind.

A secret technique isn’t for prying ears.

Let alone one’s own foundational Dao.

It could not be easily spied upon by outsiders.

"At most one month, and perhaps he can truly... A pity. I won’t be there to see that day."

The bamboo chair swayed gently.

The cold wind drifted by.

The verdant green at the edge of the bamboo sea began to wither into a grayish-white.

DING~

Upon the porcelain body covered in fissures.

The first shard began to fall away.

The divine golden light flowing from the cracks grew steadily more incandescent.

...

「Another half a month later.」

The crack in the sky was only fifty li wide.

As if looking at flowers in a fog, one could already see the blurry image of the Dragon Mud Cave Heaven beyond the passage.

The contraction of the world’s prison cage.

Had accelerated.

Beyond Central Earth.

Only a few tens of thousands of li of uninhabited Wilderness remained.

A Great Divine Power User, standing in the sky at the border of Central Earth and using their Dharma Eye, could see a white curtain of rumbling wind and thunder at the edge of the world, constantly contracting and annihilating mountains and rivers.

In the Five Central Plains.

The situation was not the least bit optimistic.

With fortune gone, heaven and earth decayed.

Frequent natural disasters and calamities ran rampant.

Ordinary living beings had no ability to resist. Tens of millions of creatures died every day. Cries of grief filled the land, all beings lamented, and the entire world was shrouded in darkness, without a single glimmer of light.

It wasn’t just the Mortal Realm.

The disaster in the Extraordinary Realm was just as terrifying.

After the paths across the entire realm were severed.

A new round of Dao calamities had descended a month ago.

The four stages of Foundation Establishment!

All Extraordinary Life in the world at this level began to devolve into mortals!

That’s right!

Devolving!

It was silent.

There was no pain.

They could only feel as if they were a breached bucket on the surface of the sea, their otherworldly Life Force rapidly flowing out through the gap and returning to the ocean.

Or rather...

It returned to the source of all things and all laws—

The Great Dao!

The Great Dao creates all living beings and all things.

What it can create, it can also dissolve.

The laws of birth, aging, sickness, death, prosperity, and decay.

In the midst of the Great Tribulation.

This process was rapidly accelerated.

If this were in Wu Dao’s previous life.

This phenomenon.

Could be called reverse entropy.

The tribulation the Great Dao brought upon the Divine Wilderness was, in essence, reverse entropy, returning the Divine Wilderness to its original state of nothingness, step by step.

It sounded incredibly unbelievable.

But before the supreme Great Dao, it was all perfectly natural.

The Great Dao is inherently without emotion.

Its only duty is to maintain the normal operation of all things that exist within it.

When a ’virus’ appears within the system.

The natural response is to eliminate it.

The Slaughter Emperor, who triggered the Hongyuan Dao Tribulation thirty thousand years ago, and the Divine Wilderness itself were that virus.

The Ten Tribulations.

Were the process of reverse entropy that cleared away the virus and chaos.

In just half a month.

Under the Great Dao’s reverse entropy.

All beings in the Divine Wilderness at the four stages of Foundation Establishment, without exception, devolved into mortals, and were then almost entirely wiped out by the various disasters.

After the four stages of Foundation Establishment.

Came the Rebirth realm.

Half a month ago.

Extraordinaries in this realm also began to devolve. Their Dantians vanished, their power faded, and one by one, they became mortals.

Hysterical despair.

Unwilling, resentful curses.

Had no effect whatsoever.

Subtly and silently, the final outcome had already been determined.

After Rebirth.

The Innate, the Celestial Beings...

After personally witnessing one Extraordinary after another undergo ’Mortal Transformation,’ they too fell into panic and despair.

But there was nothing they could do.

Death itself wasn’t frightening.

What was frightening was the process of waiting for death.

Amidst the extreme suppression and fear.

Many people went mad.

They wantonly unleashed their final dregs of power and the last glimmer of their lives...

The last vestiges of order collapsed.

The mortal world was plunged into utter darkness by the crazed rampages of one madman after another.

Even the Five Emperors couldn’t suppress it.

Because this was a disaster that affected the entire Extraordinary Realm, not caused by a single person or faction that could be endlessly killed.

They could only restrain the last batch of Divine Ability Users in the Divine Wilderness, listening to the roars of the Purgatory Evil Ghosts in the world outside as they silently continued to march forward.

Fifty li...

Forty li...

The Divine Wilderness continuously contracted and was annihilated.

The fissure in the sky, the passage between the two worlds, also continued to shrink.

All the Great Divine Power Users.

Gradually began to feel a sense of self-annihilation, of being about to ’return to heaven and earth,’ and an irrepressible panic.

Everyone knew.

What would happen in the future.

The Nine Tribulations of the Divine Wilderness served as a historical lesson.

For the debt collectors from outside the Divine Wilderness, the greatest gains, aside from the fortune absorbed in each tribulation, were the Peak Cultivators of the Divine Wilderness.

The Peak Domain.

No matter the world.

Only those with great fortune could achieve it.

In the eyes of the Hongyuan Cultivators.

The Peak Masters of each tribulation in the Divine Wilderness were walking human treasure troves.

Fight and destroy them.

The Great Dao would naturally transform the Peak Master’s fortune, cultivation, and even Celestial Treasures... everything into a treasure chest to reward the meritorious.

To put it vividly.

At the end of each tribulation.

The Divine Wilderness would turn into a ’game instance,’ and every Peak Master was a boss that would drop rewards when slain.

Using the rewards that dropped.

The Tribulation Descenders from Hongyuan could quickly cultivate another Peak Master within their factions. The benefits were immense.

In a sense.

It was a twisted form of grafting.

If not for this.

The lineage of inheritance within the Divine Wilderness wouldn’t have been almost completely severed, to the point where not even a single complete skeleton of an ancient expert could be found.

When the crack in the sky was only thirty li wide.

A thought stirred in Wu Dao, who was in his Pure White Punishment Domain. He sensed a drastic change in the world’s energy and cast his ’gaze’ toward Celestial Fate County in Central Earth.

Splendid light filled the sky as a sea of books rose and fell.

The Book Pavilion rose higher and higher, soaring into the Nine Heavens and shining in all eight directions.

Countless ink-wash characters flowed like rivers and tides.

They constructed the silhouette of a Saint in the world, one who held the Scripture Pavilion in his palm, reciting articles of law and principle, and whose every move influenced the order of all things.

The last Celestial Emperor of Dali, Zhou Heng.

Had also taken the Fourth Step.