Chapter 697: The End of the Immortal Path, The One Who Paved The Way
"Why didn't you eradicate them completely?" After the small Solar Star Spirit followed the great Solar Star Spirit away, a head quietly emerged from Bai Mo's back.
In a patch of darkness within the scorching Sun, a head suddenly popped out—a scene of utter bizarreness.
Unfortunately, there was no third party present to witness this scene.
It was Xu Xuanling, who had proactively offered to observe the battle.
She had dispatched an avatar, attached to Bai Mo, witnessing the entire fierce battle between two life forms comparable to planets.
"Why would I?" Bai Mo countered.
In his faint tone, he seemed to dismiss the matter.
"Prudence. A cautious approach ensures long-term safety—eliminating any hostile life that could potentially threaten oneself in advance, grinding their bones to dust after killing them. Aren't these all extremely important things?"
"Moreover, I've discovered something very strange."
"Over the past few decades, you've almost never killed a single person. Even those old fogeys in the Federation who despise you to the bone were merely exiled.
If it were me, not a single one of them would have left Earth alive."
As a warrior hailing from the Manghuang Realm's era of bloody battles, she didn't know how to interpret Bai Mo's excessive benevolence.
To tolerate those one favors or is closely related to, that's still understandable. But to spare those who hate you to the bone—that's clearly being excessively sanctimonious.
The most important point was, he wasn't unable to defeat them, nor did he need to cower.
"Do you believe that not a single one of them, throughout their entire lives, could ever catch up to your shadow?" She could only draw this conclusion: that an overly proud Bai Mo disdained to act.
"You talk too much."
"Ten millennia flow by, and who can fully see through the turns of fate and destiny? No one can forever walk alone at the pinnacle of the world." Xu Xuanling continued.
"..."
Bai Mo saw through her intentions.
She actually wanted to kill with a borrowed knife, to incite Bai Mo to completely eliminate all the cultivators in the Federation's upper echelons who hated him.
As an outsider from the Manghuang Realm, even though Xu Xuanling was a seven-stage Celestial Immortal, she was still subtly ostracized by several other Dawn Council factions.
It wasn't that everything went smoothly, but there was just an uncomfortable feeling.
Her childhood experience of being ostracized for looking like a monster had shaped her into an extremely radical personality, unable to tolerate anyone isolating her in the slightest.
If Bai Mo were willing to go on a killing spree in the Federation, their forces would undoubtedly suffer devastating blows, and the encirclement targeting Xu Xuanling would collapse on its own.
That mention of the small Solar Star Spirit was merely an opening she used to segue into the topic.
...
"The Immortal Path has nine tribulations. Is your second tribulation ready?" Ignoring her attempt to provoke him, Bai Mo casually steered the conversation away.
According to the path he had designed, regardless of which one or how many of the Five Immortal Paths one used to ascend to immortality, one needed to undergo Reincarnation Tribulations, one after another, to strengthen their True Spirit Barrier and keep the power of Daoization at bay.
However, according to his deductions, after the ninth tribulation, the potential of using this method to construct a True Spirit Barrier would be exhausted, and it would no longer serve to block the erosion of Daoization.
If no solution was found by then, it would result in a complete collapse, leading to death and the perishing of one's Dao.
Of course, that was still a very distant future.
Given that each successive Reincarnation Tribulation was harder than the last, Bai Mo speculated that among a billion immortals, not even one might be able to reach the end of this immortal path.
Currently, there were only a handful of one-tribulation, seven-stage immortals—far from the point where one needed to worry about having no road ahead.
"My accumulation is still insufficient."
Seeing that her provocative tactic was useless, and with a rare opportunity to discuss cultivation with Bai Mo, the pioneer of the immortal path, Xu Xuanling temporarily put aside her small intentions.
After all, while killing with a borrowed knife was important, if her own cultivation didn't keep up, then killing would be useless. Even if one batch was killed, new challengers would catch up in just a few years.
"One hundred years. With another hundred years of accumulation, I should have the confidence to pass the tribulation." She stated her situation very candidly.
"One hundred years, you say? That's quite good."
One-tribulation immortals on the immortal path are normally estimated to live for nearly ten thousand years—a span of time long enough to traverse the entire history of human civilization.
From antiquity to space, from city-states to the solar system, immortals could truly become living historical encyclopedias.
As for the expected lifespan after the second tribulation, Bai Mo hadn't bothered to calculate it much further, as establishing a relatively accurate calculation model was extremely mentally taxing. And anyway, under the threat of Daoization, even the ten thousand years of a single tribulation were already beyond his reach.
After the True Spirit Barrier isolated the power of Daoization, every bit of an immortal's power came from their own arduous cultivation. Compared to Bai Mo, who was almost infinitely upgraded by the infusion of Daoization's power, their speeds were naturally incomparable.
Moreover, he had to bear the "original sin" of creating the immortal path; for every additional person who ascended to the immortal rank, an additional burden of pressure from the power of Daoization would be added to him.
Purely by relying on oneself, to cultivate to the completion of the first tribulation in a hundred years could absolutely be called a genius.
Of course, unique short-lived races like the Solar Star Spirits couldn't be included in this calculation.
"You... how many tribulations have you undergone?" Xu Xuanling asked a question that not only she, but all high-stage cultivators, were most curious about.
Everyone wanted to know what Bai Mo's current situation truly was and how far he had progressed.
"According to the standards I've set, my power should roughly be equivalent to your six tribulations? If converted into combat power, it would be late eight-stage, around level eighty-nine."
Although this question was quite sensitive—someone else would likely not have told the truth, fearing to expose their trump cards—Bai Mo did not shy away from discussing his power.
He spoke very plainly; since everyone combined wasn't his match anyway, there was naturally no need for concealment.
Trump cards were meant for evenly matched opponents.
"Eight-stage, level eighty-nine, how are these ratings derived?" She had once reviewed the Federation's combat power rating system, and it contained no description of the eight-stage at all.
"Three tribulations, one stage. So, one to three tribulations on the immortal path are seven-stage; four to six tribulations are eight-stage; and seven to nine tribulations are nine-stage."
"Why is it three tribulations per stage?"
"I just made it up. It's easy to remember." Bai Mo's words left Xu Xuanling utterly speechless.
"..."
"This is the privilege of pioneers, of those who forge the path. The rules and measurements of the cultivation system are all determined by us. Why is it three tribulations per stage? No particular reason, I just like it.
It's just like why the unit for electric current is amperes.
The unit for resistance is ohms.
The unit for electric charge is coulombs.
And the unit for voltage is volts.
Including the combat power rating system—why you are level seventy-two—is also a rule I formulated."
"..."
Xu Xuanling was different from some of the Federation's high-ranking officials, who were among Earth's first cultivators. She had received her education in the Manghuang Realm since childhood, following the path of inherited family traditions, and had never experienced Earth's era of arduous pioneering—the time when a cultivation system was built from scratch.
She was a descendant, a recipient of rules and systems.
"I still have one more question to ask: what lies at the end of the Immortal Path?" After undergoing a baptism of her worldview, Xu Xuanling quickly adjusted her mindset.
Comments