Chapter 200 - 193: The Dao Contention
The very moment Qi Yun successfully established the Daluo Ten Thousand Laws Dao Foundation in the Innate Qi Pool!
RUMBLE!
Above Xinglin, the once-clear celestial vault was seemingly ripped open by an invisible, colossal force, creating a fissure.
A wisp of energy, both pure and turbid, descended abruptly. Like a silken ribbon stretching across the sky, it plunged into the Innate Qi Pool, coiled around Qi Yun—who was still meditating with his eyes closed—and immediately shot off into the distance.
"This is not good!"
Elder Master Deng Yin’s pupils contracted. His withered frame erupted with a heaven-shaking aura that belied his appearance as he growled:
"The boy just finished forming his Daluo Ten Thousand Laws Dao Foundation, and the Land of Enlightenment has sensed it.
It’s trying to snatch him away and forcibly trigger the final tribulation of the Dao Contention!"
His voice carried a rare trace of urgency.
Right now, Qi Yun was like a newly forged Divine Soldier that had yet to be quenched and tempered. Though his Dao Foundation was complete, it was far from stable.
Myriad profound insights flooded his Sea of Consciousness like a tangled mess, leaving him no time to sort through and absorb them.
To be dragged into the treacherous Land of Enlightenment at a time like this, to face the lingering resentment of the previous Daoist Master completely unprepared... the outcome was obvious: certain death!
"Stop it!"
Beside him, Nan Dou Master’s hair and beard bristled. A fierce glint flashed in his murky eyes as he snorted, slamming his emerald Bamboo Staff into the ground.
"A dead man dares to run rampant within my Holy Sect?!"
Before the words even left his lips, two terrifying auras—powerful enough to drain the color from the mountains and rivers and blot out the sun and moon—erupted violently!
VMMMM—!!!
To the left, a boundless, viscous Blood Sea materialized from nothing, its furious waves churning in a glaring, crimson tide!
Within the Blood Sea, countless tormented, writhing phantoms wailed and shrieked, emitting a monstrous Evil Qi that could corrode all creation and defile every living soul!
SHIIING—!!!
To the right, deathly cold, black snowflakes drifted down, filling the sky. Each one was imbued with a terrifying killing intent meant to pass judgment on all creation and bring everything to an end!
The snowflakes converged, forming a storm of death that swept across the firmament. Space itself whined under the pressure of this absolute killing intent, as if unable to bear the strain!
Two veteran Masters!
Now holding nothing back, they unleashed their full power!
Two Realm Heavens, utterly different in nature yet equally majestic and vast, fused together, transforming into a brilliant sea of light that covered an eight-hundred-li radius!
This sea of light was half crimson and foul, half pitch-black and murderous. The two sides intertwined, emitting a terrifying aura capable of destroying heaven and earth.
Like the sharpest of guillotines, it stretched directly across the path of the pure and turbid wisp, intending to intercept and suppress it completely—along with Qi Yun, who was trapped within!
The next instant!
The seemingly delicate wisp of pure and turbid energy collided head-on with the terrifying, eight-hundred-li sea of light!
BOOM—!!!!!
A cataclysmic sound, impossible to describe with words, erupted!
It was as if two stars had violently collided at point-blank range!
At the center of the collision, the Cosmic Jade of space shattered piece by piece like fragile glass, revealing a twisted, chaotic void behind it!
A visible shockwave rippled madly outward in all directions.
Wherever it passed, the void trembled and the Dao Principles themselves seemed to cry out in mourning!
The barrier formed by the sea of light, jointly erected by the two veteran Masters, began to tremble violently.
The crimson and pitch-black lights flickered erratically, blinking in and out of existence, clearly under unimaginable pressure.
The wisp of pure and turbid energy seemed faint, but it contained the Power of Dao Intent from the Land of Enlightenment, making it incomparably resilient.
It managed to resist the crushing force of the two Realm Heavens, holding its ground in a stalemate in mid-air!
Just as the wisp’s light began to dim and its speed fell sharply under the corrosive pressure of the light sea,
It seemed on the verge of being completely suppressed...
But just at that critical moment—
VMM!
An indescribable Venerable Dao Intent—one that transcended all things, as if born to hold dominion over the world and Command All Skills—erupted with sudden force!
This Daoist Intent wasn’t vast, but it carried an absolute suppression of "Status"!
For a split second, time itself seemed to freeze.
The roaring, churning eight-hundred-li sea of light, enveloped by this Venerable Dao Intent, faltered for a brief, almost imperceptible moment!
It was like a raging river suddenly encountering an insurmountable chasm.
Though it was only for an instant, its unstoppable momentum had been shattered!
In that fleeting moment, faster than the speed of thought,
the wisp of pure and turbid energy, which had already dimmed, suddenly flared brightly again. It broke free from the sea of light’s bindings and transformed into a streak of Flowing Light that moved beyond the limits of perception.
With a WHOOSH, it shot past the barrier erected by the two Masters.
It left a long, pure and turbid trail in the void before instantly disappearing into the distant sky!
Left behind was only the slowly mending, shattered space, and two Foundation Establishment Masters with grim expressions and slightly unsettled auras.
Veins stood out on the hand Nan Dou Master used to grip his Bamboo Staff, while a deep worry flashed in the depths of Elder Master Deng Yin’s murky eyes.
They failed to stop it...
...
The wisp of pure and turbid energy carried Qi Yun along its path.
In the blink of an eye, it returned to the Land of Enlightenment hidden within the mountain cavern!
The moment his feet touched solid ground, Qi Yun’s eyes snapped open. A sharp glint flashed within them and vanished as he surveyed his surroundings.
This was the fragmented Daluo Dao Formation Land the Elder Master had spoken of.
The sky was shattered, like broken colored glass, revealing a twisted, chaotic maelstrom of constantly shifting colors.
There were no sun, moon, or stars—only countless fragments of broken Dao Principles that flowed and collided across the heavens like an aurora.
They would at times be annihilated, and at others be born anew.
The land was barren, a deathly shade of greyish-white, and crisscrossed with deep fissures, as if it had suffered an unimaginable catastrophe.
In the distance, one could faintly make out the phantoms of toppled mountains and a severed Star River.
Everything exuded an aura of desolate decay, a feeling of grandeur faded and all things returned to silence.
The air was thick with an ancient Daoist Intent, so dense it felt impossible to disperse.
But this Daoist Intent was not pure.
It was tainted by a bitterness as deep as an abyss, a bone-chilling resentment.
Like a cancer clinging to bone, it corroded the Heart and Spirit of any intruder.
Merely by standing here, Qi Yun could feel his newly formed Daluo Ten Thousand Laws Dao Foundation trembling faintly.
It was as if it were both resonating with the place and resisting the omnipresent, resentful pressure.
And just as he steadied his Heart and Spirit and extended his Divine Sense,
ahead, in the center of the barren and shattered land,
space began to ripple like the surface of water.
A figure materialized from the void, slowly taking a single step forward.
He wore an archaic Daoist Robe, his figure tall and straight. His face was indistinct, shrouded in a layer of mist.
Yet the eyes that pierced through the mist to stare at him were perfectly clear.
And what eyes they were.
They seemed to hold an ancient desolation, the birth and death of all things, and...
...the monstrous, venomous hatred of one whose path to the Dao was severed, who had everything stolen from him—a hatred so vast that all the waters in the world could not wash it away!
He merely stood there, and the Daoist Intent of Daluo flowed naturally from his being.
But this Dao Rhyme was filled with a deathly stillness and cold, forming an irreconcilable opposition to the nascent, vibrant, and infinitely potential Daluo Ten Thousand Laws Dao Foundation within Qi Yun.
He was the previous wielder of the Daluo Ten Thousand Laws Dao Foundation.
The previous Daluo Master... who was struck down by Qi Yun’s own grandmaster and forced to shed his mortal coil right here!
"Successor..."
A hoarse, cold voice, as if formed from the echoes of countless extinctions, reverberated deep within Qi Yun’s Sea of Consciousness, carrying a chill that could freeze one’s very Divine Soul.
"Thief of the Dao... you think yourself worthy of aspiring to Daluo?"
The previous Daluo Master slowly raised his hand. He wasn’t forming a Sealing Technique, nor was he casting any specific Magic.
He simply pointed at Qi Yun from a distance.
"The Dao Contention... begins."
His words were law!
In an instant, the entire fragmented Land of Enlightenment began to shake violently!
Qi Yun felt the scene before him suddenly blur and distort.
He was no longer standing on the barren land, but had been dragged into an invisible battlefield constructed from pure "principles" and "rules"!
The first contention: a debate of principles!
Countless questions aimed at the very origin of the Great Dao exploded in his Divine Soul like a billion bolts of thunder:
"What is Daluo?"
"What are the Ten Thousand Laws?"
"By what right do you command the myriad paths?"
"How can the path of a thief ever be lasting?"
Each question contained the previous Daoist Master’s lifetime of insights and doubts regarding Daluo.
Like the sharpest of chisels, they hammered against Qi Yun’s still-unstable Dao Foundation, threatening to shatter his convictions completely!
Faced with those thunderous questions striking at the core of his being and exploding within his Divine Soul,
Qi Yun’s body swayed, his face growing even paler.
But his eyes only grew brighter.
He did not retreat, nor did he attempt to use brute force to overcome the challenge. Instead, he took a deep breath.
His newly formed Daluo Ten Thousand Laws Dao Foundation trembled within him, emitting a clear chime of the Dao, transforming his own insights and convictions about Daluo into intangible words of the Dao to meet the assault head-on!
"What is Daluo?" the Dao Evil’s voice was cold, filled with condescending interrogation.
Qi Yun’s gaze was calm, but his voice was clear and firm, as if carved into Golden Stone:
"’Da’ means supreme. ’Luo’ means without obstruction.
Wherever I stand, that is Daluo!"
He spoke not of heaven, nor of earth, but only of himself.
He dragged Daluo from an ethereal, supreme concept down to the realm reached by his own Heart Thought, an answer brimming with solipsistic dominance.
"What are the Ten Thousand Laws?" the Dao Evil asked again, as phantoms of countless Laws seemed to manifest behind him.
A rebellious smile touched the corners of Qi Yun’s lips:
"The heart births the Ten Thousand Laws; a single thought births the Dao.
The Ten Thousand Laws are not external things, but the ripples within my own heart!"
He attributed the source of the Ten Thousand Laws to his own heart, rather than seeking them externally.
"By what right do you command the myriad paths?" the Dao Evil’s voice grew stern, as if the myriad paths themselves fell silent to apply pressure.
Qi Yun laughed heartily, his voice shaking this land:
"Right? Heaven and Earth are not benevolent; they treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs!
The Great Dao is unfeeling, yet it moves the sun and moon!
My actions and my thoughts are my right, and they are the law!
Why should I need to seek any other right?"
His words were heretical, yet they carried a sharp edge that shattered shackles and pierced directly to the essence of things.
"How can the path of a thief ever be lasting?" The Dao Evil delivered his most piercing question, his venomous resentment almost taking physical form.
Qi Yun’s gaze suddenly became as sharp as a blade. He stared directly at the figure in the mist and spoke, word by word:
"Even Heaven and Earth cannot last forever, so how can a person?
The Dao has no constant; it adapts only through change!
Your path is already rotten; my path is just being born!
Theft?
Hah. That is merely your own jealousy speaking!"
This exchange, a seemingly calm volley of questions and answers, was in truth fraught with extreme danger.
With every word, their Daoist Intents clashed.
Their clash of words caused countless wondrous phenomena to manifest in this land, like a rain of celestial flowers.
Although the former Dao Evil was merely a being of resentment, his understanding of Daluo was indeed incomparably profound.
Each question struck at the very core, containing the culmination of his lifelong exploration of this path.
However, what made his Heart and Spirit grow heavy was that the young Daoist opposite him—who had just forged his Dao Foundation and should, by all rights, have only a shallow understanding of "Daluo"—was not only holding his own.
Instead, he consistently approached the questions from unexpected angles.
Within his calm composure, the implication that "My Dao is the Celestial Dao" made him feel an unprecedented... pressure!
He had a faint feeling that the Daluo this successor understood was on a different path from the one he had always adhered to.
It was a path that was more self-centered, more domineering, and also... far more uncertain.
For the first time, the deathly still Dao Rhyme flowing around the Daluo Master’s resentful spirit showed a subtle, unstable fluctuation.
In the depths of those venomous eyes, a trace of ineffable shock and doubt mingled with the hatred.
"You..." He spoke again, his voice now laced with a barely perceptible hitch.
Qi Yun stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Though his complexion was poor, his aura grew ever more vibrant.
He knew this debate of principles was nearing its end.
The true victor would soon be decided.
...