Chapter 1724 Pioneering a New Path
"Traditional paths, such as the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, the Five Elements and Yin-Yang... even the ethereal path of the Great Yin-Yang, are all paths that our predecessors have walked, and are positions attached to the existing network of the Great Dao Laws."
"Occupying one of them can certainly lead to a fusion, but it is ultimately following the rules and being limited by the framework of heaven and earth. At best, one can only be one of the best among the limited positions, how can one compare to even a fraction of a true immortal? Let alone... going upstream to the realm where the Candle Illuminates reside?"
His goal was never to become just another ordinary Nascent Soul cultivator.
His ambition was already evident when he drank that cup of Lao San Shao and said, "Can't I go upstream and reach the source of the Great Dao?"
Today, he will take advantage of the unprecedented opportunity provided by Zhang Xuan in this Sword Domain Star River to do something against the heavens!
"Sword Domain Star River, grant me the power of the Great Dao to shatter all shackles!"
"Illuminating the source of power, granting me the principle to create a new heaven!"
"With this power and this principle, I shall forge my own path and determine my own position!"
The old fox roared silently in his heart, and then he moved!
He did not guide the power to impact the barrier or sense the existing position as a typical impact fusion.
Instead, he held his hands in a loose embrace, encircling the Yin-Yang Tai Chi symbol, and forcefully squeezed and merged the Sword Domain Star River on the left and the Candlelight Source Power on the right towards the center!
"boom--"
The moment these two fundamentally different, even opposing, forces came into contact, what erupted was not a simple energy shock, but a violent conflict and annihilation at the level of the Great Dao!
Where the dazzling sword energy intertwined with the gentle halo, space did not shatter, but instead returned to nothingness, transforming into a primordial state that was neither existent nor nonexistent.
A terrifying surge of chaotic laws swept out, enough to instantly tear apart any unprepared Nascent Soul cultivator!
Zhang Xuan stood outside the void, his expression extremely solemn.
His body was filled with spiritual energy, and countless true meanings manifested, forming layer upon layer of solid barriers that completely sealed off this area.
At the same time, he used his supreme cultivation to forcibly stabilize the ever-spreading power of the Void, maintaining a relatively stable cultivation domain for the old oil-head.
"A madman... he's a complete madman!" Zhang Xuan was also shocked.
He knew the old man was steadfast in his beliefs, but he never expected his courage to be so great!
This is no longer proving the Way, but creating the Way!
Inside the training ground, the old oil-skinned man was enduring unimaginable pain.
His frail body was constantly disintegrating under the tearing force of the two forces, but it was also painstakingly reassembled under the vitality contained in the power of the Candlelight Source and the source of energy secretly supplied by Zhang Xuan.
His soul seemed to have been thrown into a meat grinder of laws, where the killing intent of the sword and the penetrating power of the candlelight clashed fiercely in his sea of consciousness.
Each collision blurred his consciousness, causing his Dao foundation to sway.
But he held fast to a sliver of clarity, which was the indomitable sword spirit he had honed over thousands of years, and the ultimate belief in going against the current!
"Not enough, not enough!" The old man bled from all seven orifices, his face contorted in a ferocious grimace. "Mere fusion cannot create a new path! We need... we need an absolute will!"
The Eye of Illumination manifests; it is the source of the Great Dao, the beginning of light and darkness, and the entity that defines all rules.
"I...will become the illumination of my own great path!"
He suddenly looked up, his once sharp eyes now revealed.
The sword domain of the left eye swirls like a river of stars, while the eye of the right eye manifests as a radiant candle!
With his supreme will, he forcibly imprinted the core imagery of these two powers into the deepest part of his own soul!
"My way is neither heaven nor earth, neither yin nor yang, neither the five elements nor the eight trigrams!"
"My way is—my way!"
"With the sword as the bone and the candle as the eye!"
"Today, I, Zhang Jianqiu, here—create the heavens!"
This was accompanied by his roar, which contained all his life's worth of Taoist beliefs.
The originally fiercely conflicting Sword Domain Star River and Candle Illumination Source Power revolved around the old oily man's divine soul origin, which had merged with the imagery of the two pupils.
Spinning wildly, intertwining, and reconstructing!
"Om-"
An unprecedented Great Dao Body was born from the center of that Ruins.
It spread with a bang!
The layers of barriers set up by Zhang Xuan trembled violently, almost collapsing.
His eyes flashed with a horrified light as he stared intently at the scene.
Within that chaotic void that had been forcibly frozen in time, a glimmer of light appeared.
That light was neither gold nor jade, neither black nor white.
The light rapidly expanded, dispelling the chaos and stabilizing the earth, fire, wind, and water.
The phantom of a tree slowly grows out from the light!
The trunk of this tree is formed from countless extremely fine sword runes.
Straight!
Sharp!
It exudes a sharp, all-consuming aura.
Its branches and leaves, however, are woven from the warm and bright light of candlelight, and each leaf exudes an aura of insight and creation.
There were no blossoms on the tree, only a hundred fruits of different shapes gathered deep in the canopy.
These fruits are equally extraordinary.
They are not physical entities, but rather formed from the pure principles of Tao.
Some fruits are shaped like sword pellets, and inside they seem to contain billions of sword energies that are constantly being generated and destroyed.
Some fruits are shaped like pupils, their gazes opening and closing as they see through the past and future, revealing the secrets of all things.
Some fruits resemble galaxies, their movement drawing upon the power of the universe.
……
There were a full one hundred fruits, each representing a unique law related to the old man's own path!
Together they constitute a completely new system independent of the existing laws of heaven and earth!
This is the brand-new path to fusion pioneered by the old fox!
And this tree is the manifestation of this path!
The one hundred fruits on the tree are the one hundred unique combined fruit positions on this path!
At this moment, these one hundred fruit positions shone with boundless light, their Daoist aura soaring to the heavens.
They do not need to evoke a resonance with heaven and earth, because they themselves are the source of the laws of a world!
They trembled together, emitting joyful Daoist sounds, and then transformed into a hundred streams of light, like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, all of which entered the old man's brow and completely merged with him!
"Rumble--"
The aura of a seasoned slick man began to surge wildly, in a way that defied description!
The barrier to his Void Refinement vanished instantly. His inner world expanded at an unprecedented speed!
The Palace of Destiny transforms into tree roots, taking root in chaos.
The Life Spring transformed into the source that nourishes the Dao Tree.
The life-giving fire then shone brightly alongside the hundred Dao fruits on the tree crown!
Early stage of fusion... Middle stage of fusion... Late stage of fusion... Peak stage of fusion!
His cultivation improved without any bottlenecks, progressing smoothly and directly to the pinnacle of the Integration Realm!
Moreover, because he does not occupy a single fruit position, but rather a hundred fruit positions along a complete path, the sheer amount of his accumulated power, the vastness of his magical strength, and the perfection of his Dao principles have completely surpassed the scope of the Integration Realm!
A terrifying pressure, pointing directly to the source of the Great Dao, swept out like a storm!
The barrier set up by Zhang Xuan finally couldn't hold on any longer and shattered with a crash!
This oppressive force instantly enveloped the entire Immortal Gourd Realm, and then spread outwards towards the endless sea of stars!
In the Nine Divine Realms, all cultivators at the Integration Stage and above, whether in seclusion or traveling, felt a sense of déjà vu and looked in astonishment toward the Immortal Gourd Realm!
