Chapter 459: Queue Position
"Phew!"
It took Yaoguang three whole days to digest everything he had learned about the tiers and ranks of the Immortal Realm.
Yet, looking at that progress figure of 81/10000, he didn't feel relieved at all.
Not far from one percent, and one percent means stepping into the domain of an immortal venerable. Yaoguang thought.
Records concerning the Immortal Realm inevitably surfaced between the lines of that information.
Piecing it together, and combining it with the Primordial Creation Art from the Creation Group, he understood that beings born in the Immortal Realm possessed Foundation Building Realm cultivation almost from birth and reached the Core Formation Realm upon coming of age; if physically strong, they could even reach the Heavenly Fire Realm. Above that lay the Golden Core Realm and the Void-Refining Realm.
Becoming a Dao Lord was everyone's lifelong pursuit. As for true immortals, those born in the Immortal Realm saw them as great figures who could decide the life and death of countless millions across an entire domain.
An ordinary being from the Immortal Realm might live a whole life without ever encountering a true immortal. And an immortal venerable lay well beyond ordinary comprehension entirely.
In terms of realm progress, Yaoguang had now come close to the level of an immortal venerable. In theory, attempting Dao Integration should have been effortless. Except for one thing.
Dao Integration... comes down to your place in a queue. Yaoguang was at a loss for words.
Unless a vacancy opened up in the Great Dao Laws of void, no level of cultivation guaranteed success.
A cultivator's Dao Integration amounted to finding a vacancy within the Great Dao of void and taking that spot for oneself.
With no vacancy, the cultivator could only sink deeper into the Great Dao of void until he was fully transformed into the Dao. Nothing about that could be reversed, no matter how deep his prior understanding of the Great Dao of void.
"The Immortal Realm," Yaoguang said, turning the words over.
Then, reluctantly, he passed an order. "Have Peak Master Yue Kuhai bring me every record we have on Dao Lords achieving the Dao."
"Yes," Tang Fenghua, who had been waiting outside Heaven-Forsaken Valley, answered immediately.
Before long, the former Dao lineage leader appeared at the valley entrance.
Seeing Yaoguang already waiting for him in the reception area, Yue Kuhai bowed at once, his manner stiff with caution. "Sect Master."
He had been the Dao lineage leader personally appointed by Zong Wenxian, after all. As someone who had been part of the previous sect master's tenure, facing the new sect master naturally left him uneasy.
"Did you bring the records?" Yaoguang asked.
"I did." Yue Kuhai promptly produced several dozen jade talismans. "Our Heavenly Dao Sect was founded by the Primordial Chaos Dao Venerable and counts as one of the oldest inheritances on the North Sea Star, and our Dao tradition has never once been broken. The records we collected are very detailed. Across all these years, the accounts of Dao Lords achieving Dao Integration number 1,096, and they're sorted here according to the opening cycles of the Gate of the Immortal Realm."
Yaoguang picked up the talismans and worked through them one by one.
The further he read, the closer his suspicion came to confirmation. And the darker his expression grew.
Watching this, Yue Kuhai trembled, terrified that the new sect master meant to settle old scores by sending him to the front line against the Yin Lunar Sect and letting someone else's blade do the work.
The ordeal lasted a full day.
At last Yaoguang set down the final talisman. He glanced at the anxious Yue Kuhai and waved a hand. "You may go."
"I take my leave," Yue Kuhai said, letting out a breath as though a weight had lifted, and left quickly.
Once he was gone, Yaoguang's gaze returned to the talismans.
"1,096 records of achieving the Dao passed down through the Heavenly Dao Sect's history. And of those, more than seventy percent of the Dao Lords achieved it shortly after a Dao contest ended, or even during one," Yaoguang murmured.
In that moment, he finally understood why, when a Dao contest came around and everyone knew the North Sea Star would turn into a terrifying battlefield, the peak Void-Shattering cultivators refused to hide in the starry sky for a few hundred or a few thousand years and let the danger pass.
For many of them, a Dao contest meant both peril and opportunity. Only the opportunity they spoke of was not the one he had understood.
For a Void-Shattering cultivator, a Dao contest offered far more chances to witness Dao Lords in person and to comprehend the Dao resonance spilling off them. There was even a real possibility of observing life-or-death battles between Dao Lords and touching the Dao Lord's domain more deeply that way.
Moreover, an environment of extreme danger—where many barely had a sliver of a chance to survive—stimulated the mind and sharpened their thinking. And when a Dao Lord fell, the treasures and inheritances left behind became the foundation and reserves for their own later rise.
Fortune favors the daring! That was these cultivators' creed.
What's more, anyone who really dared to stay through a Dao contest was, almost without exception, the sort with resolve and conviction, and had far better odds of advancement than those who fled the North Sea Star because they couldn't bear the pressure.
Given all that, each Dao contest and its aftermath would trigger a wave of Void-Shattering cultivators achieving Dao Integration, reshuffling the North Sea Star's balance of power within a mere thousand years.
All of it made perfect sense. And no one ever suspected the truth; the real reason breakthroughs were apparently easier right after a Dao Contest was that so many Dao Integration cultivators had fallen during the contest, leaving many slots empty.
"Slots," Yaoguang said, and his thoughts went at once to the newly fallen Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord. "With Abyssal Ruins dead, one Dao Lord slot on the void Dao should be open now. But..."
He weighed it for a while and in the end, settled on the road he had planned from the start.
He closed his eyes.
His comprehension of the void Dao flowed steadily through his mind. Comprehension approaching the level of an immortal venerable rendered every change of the Great Dao of void vividly clear for him, leaving not just Dao Lords but most immortals far behind.
With his comprehension, even relying only on the power of the Great Dao that he could call upon thanks to a top-tier Dao Artifact, he could achieve a lot with little effort.
Furthermore, he walked the human immortal path, and the top-tier Dao Artifacts he had refined used immortal artifact materials. On his own, he could likely trade blows with a Dao Lord for a while.
Of course, the gulf between a Dao Lord and a Void-Shattering cultivator was a chasm, and even at this stage he could not truly contend with a genuine Dao Lord. But adding a level 15 array to the equation...
Yaoguang's eyes snapped open, a flash of ferocity crossing them along with a trace of resolve.
"I'll go with my original plan," he said in a low voice. "Dao Integration brings about human tribulation. Once I make my attempt, a Dao Lord of the Great Dao of void will certainly come to obstruct me. When that happens, I will kill him, and the moment a slot opens up, I'll immediately break through and reach the Dao Integration Realm!"
With that, Yaoguang's mind settled.
In truth, the information at 81/10000 also covered certain unorthodox methods of achieving the Dao. But those methods demanded an extreme, obsessive form of "craft verging upon the Dao."
To use those methods, the cultivator would have to pour his entire psychic mind and all his energy into the Dao he studied. To such a person, everything in the mortal world, including his own life, wouldn't be worth a fraction of the path he pursued.
Given the chance to die willingly for the Dao in his heart, he would feel no grief or fear at all, only enormous joy and delight. Holding to that conviction, he would ultimately make the impossible possible, break past his own limits, and elevate himself.
And Yaoguang? His array work, artifact refinement, and alchemy had all reached level 16 at 0% progress, but to say he could pour every ounce of energy and heart's blood into those "paths," even lay down his life for them, was no more than empty talk.
His whole reason for cultivating in the first place had been to live better and feel safer. How could he really stake his life on some so-called Dao?
Unable to dedicate absolutely everything, including his life, heart, blood, and spirit, he would never be able to achieve that moment of transcendence, that instant when the impossible became possible, and shatter his limits... Because of that, he could never achieve the Dao by the unorthodox road of "craft verging upon the Dao."
A person's worth lies in knowing himself. Recognize what you are, and do what your abilities allow. I don't have that kind of conviction, so I'll have to proceed step by step, according to the plan I set.
Yaoguang's thoughts were clear. After acknowledging his shortcoming, he turned his attention back to the Human Emperor Sword and the Endless Tower and threw himself back into work.
He had been busy refining the artifacts for several more days when word reached him that the Penglai Dao Lord had arrived. As he directed the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array, her figure soon appeared in Heaven-Forsaken Valley.
"Are you the one who raised this array to level 15?" she asked.
"That's right."
"Not bad at all. With this thing guarding the place, even I can't slip into the Heavenly Dao Sect unnoticed. I have to send word ahead now," the Penglai Dao Lord said with a smile.
"You flatter me, Dao Lord." Then Yaoguang asked, "What about the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign and the Jade Scale Demon Paragon?"
"They ran." She let out a soft snort. "One day I'll cut my way into the Nine Demon Race Lineages and kill that demon paragon in front of the other Dao Integration cultivators of the demon race."
Then her gaze went to the two top-tier Dao Artifacts. Seeing the Human Emperor Sword already taking shape, she couldn't hide her delight. "You were serious when you said it was almost ready."
"I was about to send for you. I need your power for the final stage of refinement." Yaoguang nodded.
"I underestimated your skill in artifact refinement." The Penglai Dao Lord looked at the Endless Tower he was refining alongside it. "The title of the number one artifact paragon of the North Sea Star belongs to no one but you."
"You flatter me," Yaoguang said, and wasted no more time. "No reason to delay. Let's begin."
"Alright."
***
While Yaoguang and the Penglai Dao Lord worked together on the two top-tier Dao Artifacts, news of the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's death began spreading in every direction like a storm; as more people heard of it, many gradually pieced together the causes and consequences of the battle.
A clash between Dao Lords was far too conspicuous. On the North Sea Star, it was impossible to conceal something like that.
That battle was also where the Penglai Dao Lord stepped into the open, using a Dao Lord's death as a declaration and letting the world know that she was Yaoguang's new protector. Few found this surprising.
Yaoguang's relationship with the Penglai Immortal Sect had been ambiguous ever since he reached the Void-Piercing Realm, and several decades ago word had gotten out that the mysterious artifact paragon behind him would attempt to refine a top-tier Dao Artifact for the Penglai Dao Lord.
For that Dao Lord to come forward as protector for a genius like Yaoguang made perfect sense.
What surprised people was only the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's death.
That death signaled one thing beyond doubt.
The North Sea Star's once-in-ten-thousand-years Dao contest was about to begin.