Chapter 1606: The Embryos of a Myriad Worlds (I)

“We’re just the advance guard,” said the Pagoda King. “We shouldn’t get it in our heads to do anything. But if the Silver Moon king comes, then we might be able to do something.”

He used Li Hao’s title with great humbleness, clearly highly respectful of this junior. His attitude immensely satisfied the Silver Moon cultivators.

They were beginning to feel that the New Martial rumors about the Pagoda King were overblown. Whether it was the Pagoda King or Celestial Pole, they were hardly infamous! These were obviously very nice New Martial exalted emperors!

The Pagoda King’s smile brightened when he saw how the rest regarded him. He’d completed the initial integration. All he needed to do now was to curry the proper favor—ahem, show enough friendliness—to smoothly assimilate into the Silver Moon clique.

The rest would be easy to handle, but Gan Wuliang... was a master of dao and didn’t seem that amenable toward him!

Meanwhile, Gan Wuliang looked at the other with some resignation.

This guy really knows how to flatter people, huh? He’s a New Martial exalted emperor at the end of the day, the senior of those of us from Silver Moon! How is he so shameless??

This was my role before!

Gan Wuliang suddenly felt gravely threatened after the arrival of the Pagoda King. He would be replaced sooner or later by this one if he didn’t show up more. What a tragic life this was!

The group didn’t linger for too long. They quickly took stock of the situation and sought out a Red Moon cultivator. After slipping him one thousand dao crystals, the Red Moon cultivator really did come up with a way for them to stow away to Orchid Forest. Everything proceeded according to what the Pagoda King had surmised.

Thanks to Red Moon cultivator, the group and a few other chaos wanderers snuck into Orchid Forest. They naturally wouldn’t say that Red Moon had helped them with the deed. The supposed heavyweight behind the shadows was a powerful chaos beast.

As Li Hao’s trio busied themselves with furiously digging holes, the Silver Moon group made themselves part of Orchid Forest. Exalted emperors abounded within the world. They were common in a major world to begin with. Although Orchid Forest didn’t measure up to other seventh rank worlds, it boasted of a dozen or so exalted emperors as well.

But given recent happenings, a hundred exalted emperors had congregated at Orchid Forest in a very short period of time.

Its master of the world had a splitting headache.

Under such circumstances, the Sword Sovereign’s first choice was also this world. They dug many holes, ending up near Orchid Forest with their last one.

When Lin Hongyu and the rest entered Orchid Forest, Li Hao’s trio was also starting their final base of operations outside the world.

At the same time.

More exalted emperors were congregating near Skyward. Light and Skycloud even showed inclinations of wanting to move their worlds straight over. The Skyward and Red Moon Regions were abruptly hotbeds of activity throughout the chaos.

......

Outside Orchid Forest, the final hole.

It began to stabilize. Instead of the Sword Sovereign being the center point for this hole, it was Li Hao and Void. The two had worked on it together while the Sword Sovereign relaxed on the side. Just as he thought, these two were good at hard work!

Well done! They can work on their own after a month or so of practice. Although their efforts aren’t the most complete, it still frees me up a bit. What a pity that I didn’t bring a pipe with me. If I can take a pull on that and hold a little leather whip in my hand, I’d feel like an overseer!

Inside the hole, Li Hao breathed out softly. He’d depleted quite a bit of his resources for the endeavor. Void was stronger than him and thus wasn’t as fatigued from his exertions. He also felt that he’d gained a great deal from the experience.

Li Hao paused and breathed out heavily, glancing at the slightly unstable hole. He then observed his river of dao. It was as muddled as ever. He’d reorganized it many times, each time implementing different ideas.

The month that he’d spent on digging holes had also been one of organizing and weaving dao. He was learning from the New Martial seniors and coming to a new understanding and structuring of great dao.

Void had also held many conversations with him regarding the dao of emptiness and revitalization over the past month. It had been a period of systematic learning for Li Hao recently.

The Sword Sovereign came from New Martial and the civilization possessed seventh ranks. The Sword Sovereign himself was infinitely close to seventh rank. Void was a sixth rank, but had an eighth rank father and had himself started anew in his cultivation once.

The two before Li Hao were the cream of the crop when it came to sixth ranks. Whether it was knowledge or understanding of dao, they were of the most premier level.

Li Hao, on the other hand, had risen to his peak too quickly. Silver Moon lacked these things, even its dao universe originated from the Sword Sovereign—the Sword Sovereign of fifty years ago. That meant to say that the dao contained within the dao universe might not measure up to the Sword Sovereign.

This resulted in a dramatic lack of systematic training methods and cultivation paths for Li Hao and the rest from Silver Moon. It was why he’d felt that it was increasingly hard to comprehend dao after entering fourth rank. The path ahead was indistinct.

Today, it sharpened with more clarity and he had some ideas of his own.

“The river, heaven and earth, the worlds...” The young man looked at the stars. These were the medium for dao.

His development of the river remained at too low a level. It was the amalgamation of dao, but there was so much more that he could do with it. His newest thoughts were that the operations of his river were too inefficient. They shouldn’t be this way.

His river of dao was very powerful and a dense current of dao strength swirled within. But each time he fought an opponent, he most often used the river to... gather time!

That wasn’t right!

“Chaos, the weaving of great dao, these embryos of the world... A myriad of daos can coexist if I imitate the chaos!” Li Hao glanced at the hole that’d just finished stabilizing, then considered his two companions. “If you guys aren’t in a hurry, I’d like to rest for a moment and complete some dao methods. What do you think?”

“Cultivation?” laughed the Sword Sovereign. “We can do that... but we present too big a target when we’re gathered together. Someone needs to be the advance guard. Why don’t you stay here and we’ll head over first?”

Orchid Forest would be easy to handle, Red Moon would not. They could not easily make a move without thoroughly understanding the enemy. The Sword Sovereign was not the Human King—prone to run after he killed someone. He needed to be on guard against Red Moon tracking him down.

It was also to be expected that Li Hao needed to spend some time in meditation. He’d just ascended to fourth rank and had likely gained many new understandings of dao lately.

“Just don’t provoke the chaos tribulation while you’re here,” reminded the Sword Sovereign. “The disturbance will be too great then for a small hole to conceal!”

Li Hao nodded. “Then I’ll see you two off!”

“Are you going to break through to fifth rank?” Void paused with a question.

“......” the young man laughed ruefully.

You definitely think highly of me, eh? I’ve only just entered fourth rank! Who ascends that quickly?

Not to mention, he might need to modify his path to fifth rank. How could he set foot in it so quickly?

This was both Li Hao’s advantage and drawback. He didn’t have any sophisticated cultivation methods. The young man had made it to his current heights through taking one step at a time. Only at fourth rank did he consider fifth rank.

His situation was different from Void—his friend could make it straight to seventh rank with his eyes closed. Granted, the caveat there was that it needed to be a dao of light. He just needed to walk forward!

Li Hao, on the other hand, needed to test and probe each step he took. He had to feel his way across the stepping stones in the river. Setting one foot wrong might mean starting over anew. Despite having just set foot into fourth rank and reorganizing his dao then, he’d come across some new ideas after meeting the Sword Sovereign. That meant he had to organize his dao again.

He wasn’t just doing so for himself, but also for the future of Silver Moon denizens. He was laying a foundation for them.

“I thought you were going to enter fifth rank already.” Void smiled when he saw that that wasn’t Li Hao’s aim. “If that was the case, I would have to doubt my very existence.”

He was well aware of how old Li Hao was. It would be such a blow to his ego if the young man was ready for fifth rank already. “Then Senior Sword Sovereign and I will head to Orchid Forest first...”

𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Orchid Forest’s dao universe had been shaken once before this when its master of dao died. Its great dao might be in a half silent state; its master of the world would be most preoccupied with stabilizing and revitalizing the world’s great dao.

That was a chance for Void. The silencing and revitalizing of a dao universe was a perfect observation target.

“Brother Hao Moon, we’ll wait for you as long as possible,” Void said before they left. “If you don’t show yourself for a very long period of time... we might have to take action ourselves first. Try not to miss it.”

“I hope I won’t!” laughed Li Hao.

The Sword Sovereign chuckled to see the two obviously loathe to part from each other.

Too bad you guys are both male or I’d play matchmaker!

Well, actually, two men can get hitched, can’t they?

With a final cackle and shrouded by Void’s world of emptiness, the two immediately vanished amid the chaos when they set foot outside the hole.

......

Li Hao summoned the river after the two left. He looked at the star-studded sky above, then at the teeming waters of the river below. The young man sank into deep thought.

Number Two hadn’t said a word when the Sword Sovereign was still present; it didn’t show itself either. It was incredibly angry when the supreme’s replica hauled it out and seemed to be sulking ever since.

It’d finally recovered somewhat.

“Don’t hang out with these guys all the time,” it grumbled upon seeing that the Sword Sovereign had left. “They’re all bad people and bad influences! They led Big Cat down a bad path! Big Cat either kills people or catches fish now. It doesn't comprehend dao anymore, it just eats and sleeps, sleep and eats...”

Aren’t you the same?

Li Hao couldn’t help a grin.

“I’m not the same...” Number Two seemed to know what was on his mind. “I’m.. not a real living being... after all.”

“Who says you’re not?” refuted Li Hao.

Number Two didn’t make a sound. It really wasn’t.

It didn’t want Li Hao to be in too much contact with New Martial for a mixture of reasons. Those of New Martial were strong, Li Hao would learn much from them. They could also protect Li Hao.

But if the young man really stayed with New Martial... he would easily become one of them! They were very good at assimilating others!