Chapter 453: The Attack
Su Yaoxue's breakthrough had its perilous moments, but in the end she came through safely.
Practicing the Primordial Creation Art, she already had a forty- to fifty-percent chance of success, thanks to its upright, even-tempered nature.
Decades earlier, a Dao Artifact kept in the Nine Cauldrons Sect's storage had also been handed over to her, increasing her chances of success by another ten percent. On top of that, Yaoguang personally stood as her protector.
With his current Dao-Integration-level comprehension and his understanding of the Great Dao of void, although he could not guarantee her absolute safety, adding another thirty or forty percent to her odds of success was no trouble at all.
Under those conditions, Su Yaoxue naturally weathered the single greatest barrier on a cultivator's road, easily opening her grotto-heaven and reaching the Void-Piercing Realm.
The moment she reached that realm, the entire Nine Cauldrons Sect could not help but cheer. In that instant, she became the sect's most brilliant new star, marking the beginning of an entirely new chapter for the Nine Cauldrons Sect on the North Sea Star.
With Li Hanqiu and Wan Liugui as two Void-Piercing cultivators of the old generation, and now Su Yaoxue rising forcefully from the new, the sect could hold its ground in the southern domain even if certain matters drew Yaoguang away.
"Good! The Nine Cauldrons Sect has a third Void-Piercing cultivator. This is wonderful," Li Hanqiu said, his face all smiles.
Li Qingshan, Lou Yuyu, Murong Hui, Xu Qiexing, and Wu Qingying gathered around Su Yaoxue at once to congratulate her.
In theory, all these people belonged to Yaoguang's generation; some were even a generation older than him, but his talent was too high and his cultivation too swift. Back in the Great Cangwu World, he had already left everyone in the dust and stood at the summit of Cangwu; after coming to the North Sea Star, he had pulled so far ahead they could not even make out his shadow, given how great the distance between them had become.
Su Yaoxue was another matter. Her talent was ordinary, but everyone had watched her work for what she had.
She had been born privileged, but she had nevertheless worked hard and earned everyone's respect and friendship; because of that, her relationships with the others had turned out remarkably warm.
Watching Su Yaoxue at the center of the crowd, Yaoguang considered things for a moment, then turned to Li Hanqiu and Wan Liugui. "Let Su Yaoxue cultivate at my side for a while."
"Hmm?" Li Hanqiu and Wan Liugui were startled, then delighted and astonished. "Sect Master Yaoguang, you want to instruct her personally?"
"That's right." Yaoguang nodded slightly. "I am the Heavenly Dao Sect's sect master now, after all. I could still oversee the southern domain the way Zong Wenxian administered it in his day, but that wouldn't really hold up. With Su Yaoxue at my side, as long as I can guide her cultivation, within a hundred years she'll be able to take another step and reach the Void-Refining Realm. Then she can serve as deputy sect master of the southern domain, and the Nine Cauldrons Sect there will be able to keep its interests properly secured."
The Void-Refining Realm within a hundred years?!
Li Hanqiu and Wan Liugui were shaken by his words. Aside from a Dao Lord, who would dare claim absolute certainty of elevating a Void-Piercing cultivator to the Void-Refining Realm in such a short time?
Shaken as they were, though, neither of them doubted him in the slightest. What was a hundred years to the Void-Refining Realm, after all? The Penglai Dao Lord had once taken a mere hundred years to forcibly raise Shi Lin, a cultivator at the Golden Core Realm, all the way to the Void-Shattering Realm.
Compared to that Dao Lord, Yaoguang's goal of raising Su Yaoxue from Void-Piercing to Void-Refining in a century was rather modest.
"We'll follow your arrangement, Sect Master," Li Hanqiu and Wan Liugui said with a fist-and-palm salute.
"This is mainly because I've seen that Su Yaoxue gets along well with Li Qingshan and the others. If she manages the southern domain and the Nine Cauldrons Sect in the future, it shouldn't provoke much opposition," Yaoguang explained.
"The fact that you allow the Nine Cauldrons Sect to preserve our own Dao tradition inside the Heavenly Dao Sect is already the greatest generosity we could ask for," Li Hanqiu said quickly.
Yaoguang nodded and produced two volumes. "These are Void-Piercing Realm cultivation arts I've just compiled. Where the Golden Core Realm is almost one barrier per step, the road from the Void-Piercing Realm to the Void-Shattering Realm has virtually no bottlenecks. Instead, it demands comprehension and resources. We don't lack any resources, and as for comprehension, these two volumes are quite thorough."
Li Hanqiu accepted the volumes. They were the Void Dao Scripture and the Origin Dao Scripture, and their titles alone made their directions plain.
"The reason the Dao of void is so fiercely contested comes down to it being the Great Dao cultivators encounter earliest and most easily," Yaoguang said. "So those of lesser perception and talent can walk the Great Dao of void, while those with higher perception and talent walk the Great Dao of origin."
He had written down these two arts based on the many scriptures held in his mind. Each came with more than ten Dao Techniques, from which a cultivator could choose according to preference.
"This art... seems to be an advanced version of the Primordial Creation Art?" Li Hanqiu said in surprise.
"I was only worried that something too profound would be hard to fathom, so I wrote it a little more plainly," Yaoguang said with a smile. "The two of you have reached the Void-Piercing Realm as well. You can switch to this art. With enough time, it's not impossible for you to reach the threshold of Dao Integration."
"Thank you for bestowing these arts, Sect Master," Li Hanqiu said emotionally. "With these two scriptures, the Nine Cauldrons Sect may truly have a shot at becoming a top-tier faction one day."
Yaoguang smiled faintly. If circumstances allowed, once he became a Dao Lord, he wouldn't mind conquering all of the Yin Lunar Sect's territory and giving it to the Nine Cauldrons Sect as its foundation.
Just how far he went would depend on how much the sect had developed by the day the Gate of the Immortal Realm opened. If they had the foundation of a top-tier great sect, he would gladly lend a hand. If the sect could not put together more than a handful of Void-Shattering cultivators, then it could only continue using the Heavenly Dao Sect as a shelter.
Where the ability wasn't there, Yaoguang would not pull at the seedlings to make them grow.
Having just broken through to the Void-Piercing Realm, Su Yaoxue would spend three years consolidating her cultivation, and Yaoguang intended to keep his promise and preside over her Void-Piercing Realm celebration himself once those three years were up.
Since it was only a celebration for reaching the Void-Piercing Realm, he had no intention of making a grand affair of it. The scale would stay within the Heavenly Dao Sect. For the other sects, sending a Void-Piercing disciple or two would be enough of a courtesy.
After staying with the people of the Nine Cauldrons Sect for a while, Yaoguang wasted no more time and returned to the Heaven-Forsaken Valley, throwing himself back into the painstaking work of refining the two top-tier Dao Artifacts, the Endless Tower and the Human Emperor Sword.
"Another decade or so and these two should take shape and enter the final stage of refinement," he judged, keeping precise track of their progress amid all the labor.
Then, less than two years after Su Yaoxue reached the Void-Piercing Realm, on a day when Yaoguang had just finished nurturing a top-tier Dao Artifact material and was fusing it into the Human Emperor Sword with the Treasure Refinement Technique, he felt the communication jade talisman on him tremble.
He swept it with his psychic thought, and the moment he saw who the sender was, his expression turned grave. "The Penglai Dao Lord?!"
Her message was extremely blunt. "While hunting Jade Scale, I was surrounded by the Light Divine Kingdom and the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign. A Dao Lord is almost certainly planning to move against you! Give me the time it takes a stick of incense to burn, and I will reach the Heavenly Dao Sect!"
Immediately after receiving that message, Yaoguang felt the power of the Great Dao of void being pulled away by a force so overwhelming he could not resist it at all. It felt like the sea drawing back before a tsunami.
"Attack!" Yaoguang barked, immediately pulling out the sect master's sigil and trying to activate the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array as fast as he could while simultaneously reaching out to the Golden Book Venerable!
The whole thing took less than half a breath. Yet in that sliver of time, the situation in the Heavenly Dao Sect changed completely.
An abyss seemed to surface across the sky, fifty thousand kilometers from end to end, and came crashing down with enough momentum to annihilate heaven and earth.
Before the abyss even descended, its manifestation alone made the surrounding spiritual power shudder under shockwaves of void power and form a spiritual qi storm of unspeakable violence, tearing apart every trace of spiritual power for over a hundred thousand kilometers and reducing the whole region to vacuum on the spot. The sheer, overwhelming force of that display rippled outward for half a million kilometers, stunning every top-tier great sect that possessed a perception technique.
"A Dao Lord!"
"That's the power of a Dao Lord! Is one making a move?!"
"A Dao Lord is attacking the Heavenly Dao Sect!"
Amid cries of alarm and horror, the Golden Book Venerable swiftly sent a projection into the sky above the Heavenly Dao Sect. A vast scroll unfurled above him, as though it meant to swallow the entire collapsing abyss with a force that could devour heaven and earth.
"Abyssal Ruins! You want to go to war with the Heavenly Dao Sect?" A mighty psychic thought surged straight into the heavens.
Within the abyss, a figure took shape. He seemed to have fully merged with it, and even as he drove the abyss down on the Heavenly Dao Sect, his powerful psychic thought spread across the entire sect.
"I have come for Yaoguang alone. He offended me out in the starry sky, and today he will answer for it. If the Heavenly Dao Sect dares shelter him, don't blame me for razing it to the ground!"
"Nonsense!" the Golden Book Venerable said, his expression unchanged.
Nor were the supreme elders within the sect stirred in the least by such words.
The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord! A being who had lived nearly 120,000 years and had killed, directly or indirectly, more than a few dozen void Dao geniuses standing at the threshold of Dao Integration. A madman through and through.
His move against Yaoguang was nothing but jealousy, though Yaoguang's recent prominence and display of enormous wealth were significant factors too.
But whatever the reason, when someone stormed the Heavenly Dao Sect to kill the Heavenly Dao Sect's sect master, the sect had to show that it would fight back. Otherwise, what meaning was there in the Heavenly Dao Sect existing at all?
"That miserable old undying thing!" Yaoguang had grasped the gravity of the situation too.
Long ago, when he first displayed enough talent and wealth to stand out, he realized he might draw the attention of some narrow-minded void Dao Lord looking to deal with him before he could grow. That was why he had used every opportunity and coincidence he could to secure the Penglai Dao Lord as his protector.
What he had not expected was that this Dao Lord would find a way to keep her tied up for a while as he made his move.
The Jade Scale Demon Paragon, the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign, and the Light Divine Kingdom?
Backlash of fate? Thoughts turned over in Yaoguang's mind, but his hands kept moving, not slowing in the slightest.[1]
Seizing the precious window while the Golden Book Venerable met the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's attack, he swiftly merged with the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array and brought the array, strengthened to level 15 over the past few decades, fully to life.
1. Backlash of fate is a concept in wuxia/xianxia novels. It refers to someone forcefully taking fate that does not belong to them, leading to the rejection of the heavens and karma and bringing divine punishment upon themselves. ☜