Chapter 1576: Ascension (II)

It was out of consideration for his teacher’s future needs that Li Hao chose emptiness and revitalization, despite the five elements having the same effect. He could make them a supplemental dao instead, as they were necessary components of his cultivation at the end of the day. They just could not be the major dao that propelled him from fourth to sixth rank.

Li Hao also had some dealings when it came to darkness and light. He’d studied the dao foundation of the eighth rank dark envoy and Void had shared some reflections when it came to light. Li Hao had also trained in the Light Sword method with Auntie Light Sword for a while. Although the auntie was very weak, one couldn’t say that her dao was entirely wrong.

It was just... one was better off forgetting that course of action.

He was on good terms with Void now. What if he had to kill someone when he reached a bottleneck in cultivating the dao of light? When his first thoughts were to take a spin around Light major world and kill a few exalted emperors for the thrill of it, wouldn't that clash with this friendship?

After taking all of those considerations into account, Li Hao ultimately chose emptiness and revitalization as his major dao.

The strength of those great daos was secondary. The main point was to take more dao into consideration and understand more. The stilling of a world, its awakening... The quieting of dao and its recovery... All of these were resources in Li Hao’s path of ascension.

Various notions came to mind as Li Hao’s river of life and death materialized. Stars hovered within its waters and the star of life and death hung high overhead.

This was his strongest dao, the dao of life and death.

“Emptiness...” Li Hao murmured to himself. Although he knew this dao, he was yet to coalesce the star of emptiness. A certain... timing might be required for that.

What kind of timing?

He studied his river for a long time and smiled. “Senior Number Two, as well as the sword tree, sword stone, and sword seal, please remove yourselves from my river!”

The void trembled.

“What do you want to do now?” grumped the cat.

This is so annoying! I just want to sleep for a while.

The three spirits from Sword City floated out of the river. They’d been consolidating Li Hao’s river of life and death all this time. As such, they were much stronger than before.

While the three had not entered the exalted emperor level alongside Li Hao’s continued improvement, they were the equivalent of the sky, earth, and spirit of the river of life and death.

“The great silence!” proclaimed Li Hao. “I am going to cultivate the dao of emptiness and am going to turn the river silent. The world will go silent! I’m also going to reforge the river of life and death while I’m at it.”

Number Two blinked. “Again?” It wasn’t Li Hao’s first time knocking everything down and starting over.

The overthrowing of some previous daos and re-cultivation accompanied each of this guy’s major leaps forward. This was both good and bad.

It was good in that the stronger his comprehension of dao became, the more perfect his re-cultivation was. But the bad was that this expended a large sum of cultivation resources each time.

It also was an enormous delay in the young man’s progress.

“I’ve come to many new reflections in Skyward,” Li Hao nodded. “But I’ve yet to integrate them into my own cultivation system. I can utilize the body dao of the dragon daoist as the world barrier and the five elements as the domain...

“Although I’m going to cultivate emptiness this time, I wish to quiet the river and world in preparation for giving birth to the real dao universe and dao world!”

Number Two didn’t say anything; neither did the three spirits in the air.

Li Hao, however, remembered what he’d originally fobbed the trio off with—er, promised. He decided to address the sword tree.

“Senior Sword Tree, when I brought you out of the city, I said that you would form a world of your own one day, that you wouldn’t be eternally at the bottom of my river!

“This might be that chance to! I’d like to try utilizing the body as the wall and great dao as the foundation. I’m going to create an imperfect world. That will enable the seniors to break free from the river of life and death.”

Break free? Form their own world?

The trio had thought of this with immense anticipation back in the day, but now that they’d seen much more of the world with Li Hao and witnessed the harsh reality of the chaos...

To be honest, they might really have a chance to form a minor world without dao if Li Hao gave them the chance to. The three of them could complete the forging of a small world or a desolate backwater.

And yet... how low would that starting point be!

“Are you abandoning us?” The sword tree cut straight to the chase.

“......”

What?

Li Hao nearly rolled his eyes.

I’m returning your freedom to you! You’re actually imprisoned in my river and can’t move around. Fog Mountain said that he wished most for freedom. He wanted it so much that he’s willing to violate the Skycloud master’s orders!

And so, the young man felt that the trio must be in a miserable position as well. Life was hard as they were tormented again and again in his river. He could pay a small price to set them free. While he could make no promises as to what the future would hold there was a high chance that he could craft a small world for them, so long as he was willing to pay the price.

The three would be masters of their world then—or spirits or heavenly wills of the world.

The three of them would rule jointly!

A minor world could tolerate exalted emperors. The three of them would be the overlords of their own world and their own masters.

Is that abandonment? Life is... very hard with me. I like to get up to all manner of nonsense and you guys are struck with thunderbolts at random measures in my river. Is that supposed to be fun?

“What do the Senior Stone and Senior Sword Seal think?”

The stone transformed into a foolishly simple muscular man and said hazily, “I’ll do whatever the sword tree says.”

“......” Was this the story of a stone devoutly following a tree?

“There’s no rush to establish a world,” the sword seal said solemnly. “We’re not that familiar with the chaos and might be destroyed by another if we leave, given the current layout of the chaos. It would be better for us to remain rooted in the river and take in more experience.”

“That’s just as well,” Li Hao nodded after some thought. “Since the seniors are unwilling to leave, you can stay here. However, you should leave the waters for now. My river isn’t complete enough, I’d like to continue improving it!”

When he was weak, he thought that the river was the be all and end all. It was the heavens, the world, the universe.

Only now did Li Hao understand that the river was just a river. There was an unbridgeable gap between it and a real world. The difference lay in... the creation of life.

Even a minor world gave birth to its own life forms; this was something his river could never do. After wielding the strength of a high rank, Li Hao had certain thoughts on the matter as well. Perhaps he’d be able to create some life forms in his world only after he reached seventh rank.

Even then, it was only a hope. A dream to craft a complete system, one that included life.

This was beyond the abilities of the current Li Hao.

So if he created a world for the stone and others, it would be an empty world. It would contain some dao at most, but not life. This was something that he was yet to be able to accomplish.

He herded the beings out of the river. Those yet to reach exalted emperor such as the sword tree were immediately ill at ease. It felt like the chaos was going to suffocate them. Thankfully, their prolonged exposure to the river helped them to stay on their feet.

And since they were next to Li Hao, there wasn’t much of a problem. Otherwise, regular cultivators that were yet to become exalted emperors might’ve been spontaneously devoured by the chaos.

The chaos seemed quiet, but it was very dangerous in actuality.

The young man ignored them and looked at the river. He fished a star out from it and snapped his eyes to Gan Wuliang. The latter was quite aware of what he should do. The dao universe was inaccessible to him since he’d left Silver Moon, but he could manifest his dao river.

His river appeared to surround the star. Gan Wuliang didn’t dare let other energies touch it because he knew who it belonged to. He created a separate pocket of water for it because it was the only dao star in Li Hao’s river of life and death that belonged to someone else.

After retrieving Lin Hongyu’s star of life and death, Li Hao glanced at the river. It rippled unsteadily with the departure of the three spirits, but did not collapse. This pointed to one conclusion—the three spirits were no longer the core of the river.

The young man had been stabilizing the river all along, adding much of his own dao and body strength into the world barrier. It no longer relied on the three spirits. Otherwise, three cultivators who were yet to reach exalted emperor would not be able to support the current river of life and death.

Li Hao closed his eyes in thought for a while as he faced the somewhat lonely river. A bridge of life and death suddenly collapsed in the void!

It was a bridge that’d been constructed with heartfelt effort, but the young man destroyed it without second thought. It transformed into the most basic energy as two stars—corporeal and intangible—abruptly extinguished on the two sides of the bridge!

The emptiness was not destruction or a shattering. It was simply a freezing of all presences, heritage, and dao strength. In that regard, it was similar to the power of time freezing things. However, energy was still active when time froze things.

In the moment, energy was no longer active.

Panther and Gan Wuliang watched him intently. The three spirits were no exception, as was Number Two.

The power of destruction!

Li Hao continued to sink more bridges into silence, turning them into the most primitive of energy and sinking them into the bottom of the river. Star upon star fell silent and the river seemed to cease operations.

Bit by bit, unlike when Void silenced everything in one instant, Li Hao dismantled everything in quick succession and caused their associated dao star to churn to a halt.

Apart from the star of life and death possessing some luster still in the sky, all of the other stars were dim. It rather resembled Skyward’s dao universe now. The river continued to flow—large sums of dao strength dissipated. Li Hao ignored it.

After a careful glance at the young man, Gan Wuliang carefully absorbed it all. That drew a sidelong glance from Li Hao.

Gan Wuliang smiled sheepishly back. The marquis’ standards are high and found this energy a messy disarray, but... it had all come from exalted emperors! Li Hao had also distilled it many times. No matter how much of a jumbled pile it was, it was purer than what regular exalted emperors commanded.

The marquis turns up his nose at it, I don’t! What a waste it would be if it just drifted off!

Li Hao didn’t say anything. The dao river further purified energy, but for energy that he’d expelled to be absorbed by another... It was similar to someone eating his shit...

Ahem!

He quickly corralled his thoughts. It wasn’t like Gan Wuliang would mind if he really said that aloud. That guy had an extremely thick face and was incredibly shameless.

Having silenced the stars and expelled some energy, there was still a lot of dark energy within. That was the result of absorbing too much energy from Demon Summit.

Li Hao began to silence the river at this time, slowly commanding it to halt. The stars over it began to freeze as well.

Bit by bit, the river of life and death entered hibernation. It seemed congealed in the chaos and Li Hao’s presence abruptly free fell. Panther looked warily at Gan Wuliang; the man stared with resignation back at the dog.

What you looking at me for?? Do you think I’ll ambush him? What’s going on in that dog brain of yours?? There’s a lot of people who want to kill him, but not me, alright!

I haven’t dared to act against him since Silver Moon! It’s usually exalted emperors living in a world overseen by a master of dao, but Silver Moon is the exact opposite, alright??