Chapter 1650: The Dao Annihilation Ends All
However, Rinsing Moon Bai was not forced to make a choice.
Soon after, an event occurred that sent ripples through the Shuo Xinghai, which had been peaceful for a thousand years, as turmoil began to stir.
At first, Rinsing Moon Bai felt as if the entire Shuo Xinghai was being violently shaken, trembling ceaselessly.
The Dao Net quivered, and the sea of stars boiled.
If the Shuo Xinghai's Dao Net hadn't been continuously reinforced over the past millennium, its strength greatly increased, a tremor of this magnitude would have been a terrifying catastrophe. It might not have collapsed entirely, but the Dao Net would have been torn asunder, and a third of all life would have instantly perished—an unavoidable fate.
"The direction this tremor is coming from..."
"The Guangwu Xinghai? What on earth happened?"
Rinsing Moon Bai's gaze leaped across the Shuo Xinghai. Standing within the Dao Net, she peered into the distant, void-like darkness. A powerful sense of unease suddenly surged in her heart.
This feeling... it was exactly the same as in her last life, when she was swallowed by the magnificent Dao Annihilation!
She immediately contacted the various organizations of the Shuo Xinghai Administrative Council with her divine sense, warning them to be on high alert.
In truth, even without her warning, the various parts of the Dao Net were already abuzz with activity.
A group of a thousand cultivators collectively executed the Great Dao Befalling Body Art, taking the pressure off the Dao Net and absorbing it into themselves.
Four Nameless True Immortals took their positions at the four corners of the Dao Net, complementing the four pillars suppressed at its core, further reinforcing its stability.
Thousands of flags of different colors soared into the sky, flying to every corner of the Shuo Xinghai. The angle and speed of their flight varied, changing drastically. These were the artifacts developed over the past millennium to monitor the arrival of the Dao Annihilation.
The Dao Annihilation itself cannot be seen or perceived, but the destruction it wreaks upon the physical world can be observed. This artifact was based on that very principle.
At this moment, all the flags whipped and snapped violently in the unseen wind. Many couldn't withstand the Dao pressure and disintegrated outright. This alone revealed the intensity of the coming tidal wave of Dao Annihilation.
"Activate the Myriad Immortals Array!"
As the core controller of the Dao Net, Rinsing Moon Bai made a swift decision and issued the command.
Only a few breaths later, it was as if thousands of stars were rising from all over the Shuo Xinghai.
Looking closely, the bodies of these "stars" were merely mortals. Yet the aura emanating from each of them was akin to that of a True Immortal!
Ten thousand immortals stood in formation, ascending above the Dao Net.
They formed countless slender pillars.
As if they had rehearsed it countless times, in a mere instant, the Shuo Xinghai was filled with a dense forest of celestial pillars.
The star sea, which had been teetering on the brink of collapse under the impact of the Dao Annihilation's waves, finally began to stabilize under these combined efforts.
However, Rinsing Moon Bai knew this was no time to relax.
The truly terrifying tide had not yet arrived. What was reaching them now were merely the aftershocks.
"All units, hold your positions! No one is to act without my command!"
The so-called Myriad Immortals Array was an experiment born from a sudden inspiration during Rinsing Moon Bai's thousand years of Dao enlightenment.
By studying the principles of the black mountains and white waters left by Cheng Dao, she had come to faintly grasp some of the Mountain and Sea Great Dao.
The high potential of the mountains, the infinity of the sea.
To master both is to become a True Immortal.
After a thousand years of cultivation and enlightenment, although Rinsing Moon Bai had not taken that final step, she was infinitely close. Only a single threshold remained.
If she were willing, or rather, if she could break free from her role suppressing the Dao Net's core and touch the divine power of the Mountain and Sea, ascending directly to the realm of a True Immortal would not be difficult for her at all.
Of course, without the protection of a Saint, it was hard to say how long she would live after becoming an immortal.
Although no one protected her, Rinsing Moon Bai could protect others.
She made all her years of insights into the Mountain and Sea public.
Any cultivator within the Shuo Xinghai could observe and learn from them.
This world is never short of geniuses, especially when a genius is defined as someone with the potential to become a True Immortal. Just a few short years after Rinsing Moon Bai shared her insights...
...there were already more than ten thousand individuals in the Shuo Xinghai who had achieved minor success!
"Minor success," simply put, meant they could touch the boundaries of the Mountain and Sea's power on their own. But lacking protection and guidance, they were unable to wield that divine power for themselves and did not possess the authority of a True Immortal.
One could perhaps call them demi-immortals.
However, these ten thousand-odd demi-immortals, with the support of the Dao Net—and especially the black mountains and white waters left by Cheng Dao—could temporarily ascend to the state of pseudo-True Immortals.
If an ordinary True Immortal could effortlessly command infinite power alone, then these pseudo-immortals often needed to work in groups of ten, helping one another, just to barely manipulate that same power.
But they had, after all, truly touched upon the word "immortal"!
With the Myriad Immortals Array active, it was as if over a thousand True Immortals stood guard.
The Shuo Xinghai's Dao Net had reached an unprecedented state of resilience.
But...
When the terrifying tide of Dao Annihilation truly struck from the other side of the darkness...
...the seemingly unbreakable Dao Net, in an instant, became like a thin sheet of paper, whipped by the wind until it was tattered and torn!
A world-shattering hum resonated through the void.
Rinsing Moon Bai watched with her own eyes as more than half of the Dao Net's strings, under the brutal lashing of the Dao Annihilation, vanished into thin air.
The remaining strings were bent to their absolute limit, looking as if they would completely disintegrate at any moment and be lost to the annihilation.
A single sweep of her consciousness was enough for Rinsing Moon Bai to estimate the number of lives lost in the Shuo Xinghai.
Nearly ninety percent of all living beings had simply vanished.
Such a devastating blow almost instantly shattered the will of the survivors to continue resisting.
Fear seized their minds, their thoughts turning to blank static.
But Rinsing Moon Bai did not panic. Instead, she continued to issue commands with extreme calm.
"Contract the Dao Net. Cut our losses and survive."
"Anyone who does not reach the central region within one hundred breaths will be abandoned."
A ruthless command was given, meaning countless more beings had just lost all hope of survival.
But at a time when everyone was lost and bewildered, Rinsing Moon Bai's composed and fearless demeanor instantly gave the survivors of Shuo Xinghai a pillar to rally around.
Shaking off their daze, they quickly began to act again.
Contracting the Dao Net was a contingency they had anticipated for a thousand years. But it had only ever been a theoretical exercise, never put into practice. The cultivators who had laughed and joked about their fate when they were "abandoned" in drills now cursed with instinctual despair when it truly happened.
But no matter what they did, they were doomed; they could not affect the Dao Net's desperate gambit for survival.
One hundred breaths passed. The Dao Net, which had once covered nearly the entire Shuo Xinghai, had shrunk to one percent of its original size.
The number of survivors within was not even one in a thousand.
But its ability to resist the tide of Dao Annihilation had not decreased; it had risen!
The True Immortals and Nameless True Immortals supporting the Dao Net were mostly unharmed.
The core forces of the Immortal Hunt were also largely intact.
Their overall strength had not been diminished much, but the area they needed to protect had shrunk a hundredfold.
Naturally, the Dao Net's ability to resist the annihilation climbed rapidly.
However, it was only enough to protect this tiny patch of existence.
And only temporarily.
Rinsing Moon Bai watched as the rest of the Shuo Xinghai, now without the Dao Net's protection, disappeared into the annihilation.
And her home, the Darkest Star Sea, had unexpectedly survived.
It was as if a power similar to the Dao Net was there, supporting it against the tide.
Rinsing Moon Bai gazed into the distance, her expression grave. "It seems there are still secrets hidden there."
The Dao Annihilation surged, sweeping everything away.
The remnant Dao Net could only drift with the current, and soon, the Darkest Star Sea could no longer be seen.
The silent, desolate space seemed to have been torn open with countless rifts.
Some of them were pitch black, while others offered faint glimpses of a continuous landscape of mountains and seas!
The mountains and seas were magnificent and grand, but they also carried a deadly peril.
"The world has been completely swallowed by the Dao Annihilation, torn to pieces."
"We are completely exposed to the Mountain and Sea."
Rinsing Moon Bai sighed.
"The destruction in this life was caused by the Guangwu Xinghai and spread from there. It even caused the destruction of the entire possibility."
Although she didn't know what had happened in the Guangwu Xinghai, Rinsing Moon Bai had a faint suspicion it was related to the immortal coffin they had been trying to contact her about and send over.
"Even though I refused them and sealed off the star sea, I still couldn't prevent this final, destructive fate."
Rinsing Moon Bai slowly began to form her own understanding of Cheng Dao's words: "unrelated to the final outcome."
Around the Dao Net, the encroachment of the Dao Annihilation seemed to be slowly subsiding.
But she knew that soon, it would launch wave after wave of seemingly endless attacks.
And the Dao Net, too, would likely be unable to escape the fate of being consumed in the end.
"Unless we can find another place to settle before we're completely exhausted," Xuanyuan Fusheng said with a bitter smile.
Only a few core members of the Xuanyuan family had survived this calamity.
What pained Xuanyuan Fusheng even more was that the thousand-man Great Dao Befalling Body group he led had also suffered extremely heavy losses in this battle.
The Great Dao Befalling Body group used their physically trained bodies to share the Dao Net's pressure. When the disaster struck, they were the first to be hit.
Of the thousand, only nine had survived by a stroke of luck.
And all of them were people Xuanyuan Fusheng had personally instructed and mentored.
They were like both his disciples and his sons.
Seeing his once lively and boisterous disciples reduced to just a scattered few, Xuanyuan Fusheng's heart was like dead ash.
Rinsing Moon Bai witnessed his tragic state and remained silent for a long time.
Looking at the Myriad Immortals Array, which had also lost more than half its members, she said slowly, "We'll hold on for as long as we can."
"Perhaps... a miracle will happen?"
But in the end, no miracle came.
Surviving the initial wave of Dao Annihilation seemed to have exhausted all their luck.
Afterward, the inhabitants of the Dao Net faced their doomsday, adrift in solitude and despair.
But even before the end arrived, the organization of the Dao Net had already collapsed.
Maddened by despair, they turned on each other...
Even Rinsing Moon Bai could no longer control the chaos.
She had made one last, desperate attempt: to ask Cheng Dao for help.
But until the white mountains and black waters also vanished into the annihilation, Cheng Dao gave no response.
"The Mountain and Sea is too vast, the Dao Annihilation too deep."
"There is no hope."
Silently, after holding on for another thirty-six years, the remnant Dao Net of the Shuo Xinghai was utterly destroyed.
Only Rinsing Moon Bai and the Immeasurable Wall, protected by an Eternal Rain Cape, barely survived.
"How can I be so unlucky? I haven't even taken form yet, and I've run into the Dao Annihilation Calamity again?"
"My great fortune!" the Immeasurable Wall wailed, wanting to cry but having no tears.
"Still thinking about your lucky chances? We can't even stay alive right now," Rinsing Moon Bai said, rather speechless.
Without the Dao Net's protection, directly exposed between the Dao Annihilation and the Mountain and Sea.
Rinsing Moon Bai felt an inexplicable darkness pressing in from all sides.
Her divine soul, her very thoughts, seemed about to be frozen by this bone-chilling darkness.
It was hard to breathe, hard to think. She could only maintain her focus by bantering with the Immeasurable Wall.
"I can't accept this! If I could just transform, I could definitely swim through the Dao Annihilation..."
The Immeasurable Wall's voice grew fainter and fainter.
Rinsing Moon Bai's consciousness, too, was growing dim.
In the final moments of her life, Rinsing Moon Bai thought she saw an immortal coffin, also adrift, in the distance.
Her heart stirred, and she struggled to get closer.
But just before she could reach it, the Eternal Rain Cape shattered, piece by piece.
Rinsing Moon Bai perished in the Dao Annihilation.
...
A figure appeared inexplicably beside the spot where Rinsing Moon Bai had fallen.
The waves of Dao Annihilation washed around him, yet they could not harm him in the slightest.
It was Li Fan!
With a wave of his hand, he beckoned the distant immortal coffin over and opened it.
But unexpectedly, it was empty inside.
"Not the one carrying the Great Rat Immortal."
"It's another, undamaged immortal coffin..."
After some observation, Li Fan reached a conclusion.
"No idea where it came from, or where it's going."
"But the material of this coffin is truly extraordinary. If Aunt had held on a little longer and hidden inside..."
"...she probably could have extended her life by quite a bit."
"A pity, she was just shy of it. Tsk, tsk, tsk..."
"Still, without a clear destination, just drifting aimlessly... the chances of reaching a safe zone are far too small, let alone the Other Shore."
"Junk time. Might as well skip it."
Li Fan closed the immortal coffin and tossed it back into the Dao Annihilation.
"Aunt nearly touched the threshold of transcendence in this life. She's getting closer and closer to my goal. I just wonder, what method will she use to break the game next time?"
"Hehehe..."
Li Fan chuckled, his gaze profound.
He stood there, lost in thought.
After a long while, he finally recited silently in his mind.
"Return to Truth!"
The Saint-making project, another lifetime.
When Rinsing Moon Bai woke up, she looked around in a daze.
It took her a long time to realize that she had been reborn again.
Back to the very beginning.
The layout of the room was both strange and familiar.
A sudden impulse seized her, and she hurried to Li Fan's room.
She pulled the stunned Li Fan into a tight embrace.
And then began to sob softly.
"Aunt, what's wrong?" Li Fan asked cautiously.
Rinsing Moon Bai just wept silently, saying nothing.
After a long while, when her tears had run dry, she finally let go.
She forced a smile. "It's nothing. Aunt is just a little tired."
Li Fan asked with concern, "Are you worried about the village chief trying to take our land? Don't worry, Aunt. I'll risk my life to stop him!"
Seeing Li Fan's determined, oath-making expression, Rinsing Moon Bai finally laughed, a genuine smile gracing her lips.
Then, she froze slightly.
She had been reincarnating for so long.
The problems she had once exhausted herself trying to solve now seemed almost like a joke.
But...
What was the meaning of these reincarnations?
What was she being reborn for, over and over again?
And when would the end finally come?
Rinsing Moon Bai had almost forgotten what her original goal had been.
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