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Immortal dao had traversed the chief worlds and become the mainstream great dao of the realm. Its guardians—God and Pangu—had left. Their whereabouts were unknown.
Hongjun remained at Mount Buzhou and looked out over the realms. Lu Yun didn’t take the time to meet him. The young man continued to sit at Mount Xuanhuang and contemplated his future.
Qing Yu was right, he did need to continuously increase his strength. It’d always come from the Tome of Life and Death, and while they were one and the same now, what the treasure bestowed was passive improvement.
It was a vastly different concept to Lu Yun proactively cultivating and seeking out improvement. He’d reached the maximum capabilities of the treasure’s passive progression, so there was nothing further than he could glean from the Tome of Life and Death.
If he sought out improvement, he’d not only be able to pull strength from his own body, but also propel the Tome of Life and Death into evolving further. While he contemplated his next steps, he also considered how to raise his strength.
Cultivate immortal dao?
In his current state, he was stronger than the immortal dao. He’d even taken the mantle of Dao Sovereign from Qing Yu’s shoulders and hauled the great dao forward on his back. The stronger he grew, the stronger the immortal dao was.
He also didn’t dare utilize formula dao at the moment. It was very possible that he would prove unable to suppress the curiosity deep in his heart and turn it to analyzing the reality on the other side of nothing.
Of one thing Lu Yun knew for certain, and that was Chen Xiao, Qing Buyi, and the others knew that he’d left certain contingencies behind. The Dao King had purposefully spoken of the world outside nothing as a clear warning that Lu Yun could not employ formula dao on it.
Given his personality, he would certainly try to calculate affairs outside the nothing after the Fire God revealed them. However, the barrier of nothing was a taboo that separated the nothing and reality. Whoever ran afoul of it would die.
If Mo Yi and the Dao King possessed the method to exceed the nothing and return to reality, they would’ve left long ago. Why bother going to all this effort to nurture formula dao and create existence?
Lu Yun even suspected that the Dao King and Mo Yi had created the Tome of Life and Death in order to be a medium for formula dao. Perhaps it was formula dao that’d chosen him, not the Dao King, Mo Yi, or even the Tome of Life and Death.
……
“Stop thinking about it if you can’t come to an answer.” Fuxi suddenly appeared next to Lu Yun and handed him a wine gourd. “Drink with me.”
“Senior, are you from that reality as well?” Lu Yun chugged some wine.
“No,” Fuxi shook his head. “My home is the Three Thousand. We’re the first batch of people to surpass it and reach the nothing.”
He took a large mouthful as well. “The limit of nothing is nothing. You turn yourself into nonexistence with a poof! and all is no more.”
“What about beyond nihil?” Lu Yun blinked. The Fire God and the fire god envoy were both existence beyond nothing.
“The four divine palaces of the worlds, chaos, Hongmeng, and nothing were created to give shelter to beings who’d reached the end of cultivation, so that they could continue to walk their path,” Fuxi explained. “It is a pity that those of the four temples had already mutinied when the Three Thousand was born.
“Those who didn’t mutiny were beaten to death by those who did.”
“Did the four temple masters die too?” Lu Yun frowned.
“The temple master of the chaos died. Only a trace of the soul of the Sword of Chaos survived. Having received the sword’s heritage, Dongfang Hao is the new temple master.
“Of course,” Fuxi continued. “More than the great daos of the chaos are contained within the sword. The worlds, Hongmeng, and great daos of the nothing are also within.”
Lu Yun nodded without a word. He knew that Fuxi was here to discuss things that were appropriate for him to understand now.
“The temple master of the nothing is still alive. He was the first to betray God. Hongjun is the master of the Hongmeng. He was gravely injured and his status unknown…” Fuxi sighed.
“And the temple master of the worlds? Who is he?” Pangu’s name flashed through Lu Yun’s mind.
Pangu had created the heavens and earth, hewn the chaos, and manifested the worlds. He used more than the power of creation, but the power of heaven and earth.
In Lu Yun’s mind, Pangu must be the temple master of the worlds.
“The great god Pangu is a spirit of nothing born from the nothing. All life forms in the nothing are based off of him. He is a so-called dao form.” Fuxi knew what was on Lu Yun’s mind. “Pangu is the ancestor of humanity, not the temple master of the worlds.”
Pangu wasn’t a being born from existence, but a divine spirit born from the intersection of the nothing and existence after existence came to be. Based on what Lu Yun knew before, that was Mo Yi’s identity as well.
But Mo Yi had already connected herself to the nothing and replaced Pangu’s position, so Pangu wasn’t constrained by the nothing. At the same time, the existence within nothing would continue to expand until it eventually occupied all of nothing. This was due to the fact that reality was present beyond the nihil.
But when the Three Thousand occupied all of the nothing, that meant annihilation of all life. Nothing could withstand the destructive force of the Three Thousand colliding with the barrier of nothing, even the existence that’d expanded to the extreme of possibility.
Find the original at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.
At that time, the patch of reality—the Three Thousand—would also return to the nothing.
Mo Yi had connected herself to the nothing and linked their survival together because she wanted to somehow resolve the dilemma. However, she wasn’t strong enough to prevent the final outcome by herself.
Hence, the demon god guards of the four divine temples connected themselves to the nothing as well and transformed into existences similar to connate demon gods. Yet, the four divine temples and their gods betrayed God all those years ago, resulting in heavy injuries to Mo Yi. She was forced to cross the river of time to travel to the present so she could recover.
The demon god guards who’d melded into the nothing were slowly cleared out after rounds of battle until only three hundred and sixty-five remained.
“Who is the real temple master of the worlds then?” Lu Yun asked.
“She just died,” Fuxi sighed.
“…Yun Yi,” Lu Yun said.
“Correct.” Fuxi inclined his head. “But she passed on the temple’s legacy.”
“To Chu Xingran?” The name came to mind. Chu Xingran had once been the Curse King and who Lu Yun thought would be his greatest enemy in life.
“Mmhmm,” Fuxi nodded. “Chu Xingran has gone to other realms to temper himself and is attempting to activate the legacy within him. God created the four divine temples so they could pierce through the barrier of nothing.”