Chapter 1512: Fishing in the Dao Annihilation
In the central region of the Guangwu Xinghai, encircled by a hundred celestial pillars, all was pitch black. Yet, dark undercurrents surged, and the Dao Annihilation rose and fell like waves.
But this small-scale Dao Annihilation was held firmly at bay by the dense array of True Immortal pillars surrounding it, which acted like a formidable breakwater.
From time to time, faint specks of light would drift out from the depths of the central Dao Annihilation abyss.
The hundred pillars would suddenly blaze in unison, shooting out countless threads like ropes to entangle the points of light.
Then, they would slowly drag them out from the vortex.
...
Watching this spectacular scene, Li Fan couldn't help but nod in approval. "Whether the True Immortals within these hundred pillars are here willingly or not, to have constructed such a monumental project is an extraordinary feat in itself."
"Besides..." Li Fan mused, his thoughts turning to the Shuo Shu Xian he had just encountered.
"Even if I weren't a match for that Shuo Shu Xian, I could have retreated unscathed without any trouble. The people of Guangwu Xinghai wouldn't have been ignorant of that. Yet they sent such a decayed Immortal Emperor over for nothing..." Li Fan's face was a mask of confusion.
"At first, I was also a little perplexed by that," Cheng Dao said, stroking his beard with a smile. "However, I found the answer within the memories of that Shuo Shu Xian."
He then proceeded to clear up Li Fan's confusion.
The scene returned to the central area of the pillars, the vortex of Dao Annihilation.
For some unknown reason, the immortal coffin that housed the Shuo Shu Xian had been brought back here by the Guangwu Xinghai.
The hundred celestial pillars once again formed a net of light, supporting the immortal coffin and slowly lowering it into the Dao Annihilation vortex.
This time, however, they did not allow it to be swallowed by the surging tide of annihilation. Instead, they held the coffin fast with their threads of light.
It hovered precariously close, right over the surface of the Dao Annihilation.
The presence of the immortal coffin caused the vortex to churn with even greater ferocity.
After an unknown amount of time, something from within the invisible, imperceptible darkness below seemed to be drawn to the coffin.
It was about to surge forth!
The cultivators of Guangwu Xinghai were on high alert, as if facing a formidable enemy. It seemed the entity about to emerge from the vortex was of immense importance to them. Not only did the light from the hundred pillars grow ever more brilliant, but numerous living True Immortals arrived in person, their gazes fixed on the center of the pillars.
Boom!
Like a colossal ocean wave crashing against a dike, the impact sent violent tremors through the hundred pillars and the entire star sea under their protection.
Yet, the True Immortals of Guangwu Xinghai were not alarmed; on the contrary, they were delighted.
"It can really be lured out!"
"Everyone, remain calm! Proceed according to the plan!"
As the massive waves relentlessly battered them, the hundred pillars began to tilt at varying degrees, looking as if they might come crashing down at any moment.
The immortals of Guangwu Xinghai, however, paid them no heed.
More and more figures rushed in from the periphery of the pillars.
But their objective was not to save the teetering pillars. It was for the thing that lurked beneath the Dao Annihilation vortex!
Threads of radiant light shot out from these True Immortals as well.
They forcefully pinned the immortal coffin, the bait, in place.
Perhaps the prolonged failure to capture its prey had exhausted the patience of the unknown existence below. Finally, it leaped out from beneath the Dao Annihilation with a thunderous roar.
"Activate the array!"
A dignified, commanding shout rang out at the same instant the figure emerged from the depths.
The hundred celestial pillars simultaneously turned ethereal, revealing a hundred different faces.
It was as if the sealed Nameless True Immortals had been resurrected, all of them glaring with fury at the enemy that had so abruptly appeared in their midst.
The pillars, once of varying heights—short in the middle, tall on the outside—instantly became level.
The dark vortex at the center was severed from the outside world.
The intruder's path of retreat was cut off. There was no way for it to escape back into the great tide of Dao Annihilation in a short time!
After being exposed to the star sea for a prolonged period, the strange power enshrouding the figure slowly dissipated, allowing others to finally see its true form.
It was another immortal coffin!
This one, however, was even more decayed and dilapidated than the one the Shuo Shu Xian had occupied.
Only the barest outline of a coffin remained.
In its center, a figure that was neither rat nor human lay like a heap of sludge upon the coffin's remnants.
It seemed to have lost all consciousness. Faced with the assembled hunters of Guangwu Xinghai, it neither tried to escape nor fought back.
It merely continued to stare at the Shuo Shu Xian who had lured it into this deadly trap.
What happened next was a direct confirmation of the Shuo Shu Xian's dying words.
He who devours others will, in the end, be devoured himself.
Gazing upon the ghastly, terrifying, and utterly inhuman decayed rat, the faces on the hundred pillars revealed looks of undisguised greed, as if they were beholding some priceless delicacy.
Completely ignoring its grotesque appearance, they swarmed forward and devoured it.
A chorus of satisfied sounds echoed through the void, the contented sighs of a full meal.
On the pillars, the faces vanished, and they returned to their ordinary appearance.
As the central pillars slowly retracted, the Dao Annihilation vortex reappeared.
The immortals of Guangwu Xinghai did not act again. They first dragged the immortal coffin away and began to assess the safety of the surrounding area.
The next hunt did not take place until three years later.
The creature lured and salvaged this time was another mutated True Immortal from a coffin. It was not rat-like in appearance, but a long worm covered in human mouths and eyes.
The mouths hurled insults at one another, but the countless eyes were strangely unified, their expressions a mixture of tranquility, sorrow, and despair—perhaps the last emotions they had felt in life.
Regardless, once this mutated being was drawn out, its fate was the same: to be divided and devoured.
...
Li Fan looked back at Cheng Dao, still perplexed. "Brother, a Nameless True Immortal's body becomes one with the Dao. Under normal circumstances, can they not cultivate only a single path?"
"Why then were the immortals of Guangwu Xinghai able to absorb the remnant Dao paths from the Shuo Shu Xian's body? Could it be that they are all geniuses capable of cultivating multiple Daos at once?"
"Of course not," Cheng Dao replied with a smile.
"Ordinary Great Daos cannot be cultivated simultaneously. However, the Dao principles within the Shuo Shu Xian's body were different. In the process of devouring them, the Shuo Shu Xian had already attempted to fuse the various Daos once. Then, he drifted within the great tide of Dao Annihilation..."
"To avoid being erased by the Dao Annihilation, the only option was to aggregate. Even the Dao itself possesses a primal instinct for continuation. Thus, if an immortal coffin drifts within the Mountain and Sea for a sufficiently long time, the unimaginable pressure will cause the remnant Great Daos to fuse to some degree on their own..."
"And that gives other True Immortals a chance to devour them."
"It's like trying to swallow a hard rock; normally, it's impossible. But if you grind it into a fine powder, you might just be able to force it down. As for the consequences..." Cheng Dao shook his head slightly.
"Taking shortcuts is, ultimately, not the righteous path."
"But what does that have to do with Guangwu Xinghai sending the Shuo Shu Xian to test me? Logically, shouldn't they have held on to such a valuable piece of bait? Unless..."
A sudden realization dawned on Li Fan. He jerked his head up and looked at the sky.
At some point, the Dark Star Sea outside the Primordial Desolation Immortal Realm had become shrouded in what looked like dense, dark clouds.
"The Dao Annihilation Calamity?"
Focusing his senses, Li Fan could feel through Shou Qiu Gong's phantom that the pressure of the Dao Annihilation bearing down on the Dark Star Sea was steadily increasing.
This was profoundly abnormal.
"Is it because we killed the Shuo Shu Xian?" Li Fan asked, looking at Cheng Dao.
"Perhaps Guangwu Xinghai's target was never you, brother. After all, there could be many explanations for how you suppressed the Dao Sword and Dao Saber. They just happened to need an expert powerful enough to kill the Shuo Shu Xian. I suspect what they truly wanted was to redirect a disaster." Though the calamity was imminent, Cheng Dao still wore a smile.
"If it were only my master's phantom within the High Wall, it might not have been able to withstand this. But with you, this new variable, it is just enough. How truly marvelous! It's a good thing I didn't rashly release them before..."
The "them" Cheng Dao referred to were, of course, the Hunger Immortal and the others sealed within the pillars.
"Brother, to face this tide, I'm afraid we will need to join forces."
"That is my wish, though I would not have dared to ask!"
The more Shou Qiu Gong's phantom relied on Cheng Dao for support, the less power Li Fan could draw from it.
As the dark clouds pressed in, Li Fan had no choice but to return the power of all the other pillars to prevent the Dark Star Sea from suddenly collapsing.
However, even this was not enough to hold back the Dao Annihilation tide that had appeared from nowhere.
It seemed to have precisely locked onto the location of the Primordial Desolation Immortal Realm, where the Shuo Shu Xian had fallen. Wave after wave crashed down, one after another.
The assault was relentless.
The situation changed in the blink of an eye.
If they couldn't hold on, the destruction of the lower realm would be a matter of moments. Li Fan would likely be forced to use [Truth] to save his own life.
Fortunately, seeing that Cheng Dao remained calm, Li Fan managed to compose himself.
"Brother, give me a moment."
Before the words had even left his mouth, Cheng Dao's form shifted from that of a withered old man back to a blue figure. He had clearly completed a swap between his true self and the phantom.
Li Fan gazed beyond the High Wall and saw the Dao Net of Shuo Xinghai suddenly erupt with a blinding blue light.
It enveloped the entire star sea in its glow.
Then, it began to fly toward the High Wall.
"United, we stand; divided, we fall!"
Cheng Dao's voice carried to Li Fan from a great distance.
Li Fan was overjoyed. "I am willing to join my brother to resist the Dao Annihilation together."
Internally, he hesitated for a fraction of a second.
But he let none of it show on his face. He began to coordinate, initiating a simple merger of the Dao Net and the High Wall.
The Dao Net and the High Wall.
In essence, both structures used Nameless True Immortals to support the Great Dao.
The High Wall, which stood against the Dao Annihilation, was fundamentally composed of five phantoms of Shou Qiu Gong. The true creator of the Dao Net, meanwhile, was a Mountain and Sea spiritual stone personally enlightened by Shou Qiu Gong himself.
Consequently, the fusion of the Dao Net and the High Wall proceeded with remarkable smoothness.
The Shuo Xinghai was brutally torn from its original location and dragged into the vicinity of the High Wall.
However, the space outside the High Wall was a long, narrow annihilation zone, and the remaining patch of sky was not large enough to fully accommodate the Shuo Xinghai. From an outside perspective, it looked as if the star sea of the High Wall was violently piercing into the Shuo Xinghai during their contact and integration.
But this was merely a superficial appearance.
In Li Fan's eyes, standing beside the five towering phantoms of Shou Qiu were figures that only reached their waists. They had the appearance of Cheng Dao.
They stood with their heads bowed, positioned behind the phantoms of Shou Qiu Gong as a sign of respect.
And behind these figures of master and disciple, a series of diagonal Dao strings were stretched taut.
Though they were not true pillars capable of reaching into the Dao Annihilation, they nonetheless provided a form of support.
As the fusion deepened, the rope-like Dao strings grew increasingly dense.
With this ever-increasing support, Li Fan finally felt the dark clouds hovering over the Primordial Desolation Immortal Realm begin to slowly dissipate.
They had not vanished.
Rather, seeing that their efforts were futile, they had temporarily retreated.
They could return at any moment.
"Thank you for your help, brother," Li Fan said with solemnity.
Cheng Dao waved his hand. "In saving you, I was also saving myself. The Dao Net alone would likely not have been able to hold."
With that, Cheng Dao pointed toward the former location of the Shuo Xinghai.
The region had already been in a precarious state. With its supporting Dao Net now gone, the Dao Annihilation Calamity had instantly surged downward, swallowing everything.
That once-vibrant expanse of stars was now plunged into pitch-black silence.
The resulting zone of complete annihilation, like a cosmic landslide, utterly severed the combined Dao Net and High Wall from the outside world.
Li Fan's expression turned grim. "I fear your guess was correct, brother. Guangwu Xinghai's frequent use of immortal coffins to fish for things in the Dao Annihilation must have attracted some kind of attention. The Dao Annihilation Calamity erupts more violently wherever a coffin is present. Keeping one around is most certainly a hidden danger."
"And I just happened to display sufficient strength. So they used a scheme to toss this hot potato over to me."
Cheng Dao pondered for a moment before adding, "I believe it wasn't just about the frequency. It was because they fished up something truly special. That's what triggered the siege of the Dao Annihilation tide."
"After all, if there really is some existence within the Dao Annihilation tide, it wouldn't know that the immortals of Guangwu Xinghai were the ones orchestrating everything. All it would remember is the Shuo Shu Xian used as bait."
"Guangwu Xinghai must have tampered with the Shuo Shu Xian's body. The moment it died and its Dao vanished, the fluctuations it released must have attracted attention from beyond the Dao Annihilation tide..."
"It's a pity the path across the star sea is broken," Li Fan said, his voice laced with hatred. "Otherwise, I would go to their doorstep and kill them right now."
Cheng Dao narrowed his eyes. "Don't be hasty, brother."
"To attract the gaze of the Dao Annihilation tide and trigger such a tangible change in the calamity... this is no small matter."
"I will report this to Master."
Li Fan was taken aback. "We're going to trouble Master with this already? Is that wise? Won't it make us brothers appear incompetent?"
Cheng Dao shook his head. "This is no time for bravado. You have also studied the *Shou Qiu Prose*, so you should know that during the countless years Master spent keeping watch over the Mountain and Sea, he attempted to summarize its changes and laws."
"But he never succeeded."
"If Master were to learn that this so-called Guangwu Xinghai has discovered something that can induce fixed changes in the Dao Annihilation tide, I am certain he would be very interested..."
Without waiting for Li Fan to react, Cheng Dao sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes.
Li Fan sensed a mysterious connection pierce through the barrier between the mortal world and the Mountain and Sea.
(End of Chapter)
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