Chapter 1681: Emerging from Seclusion (III)

As much as the shadow grumbled, it didn’t voice its skepticism aloud. It only adopted a solemn tone, “Spatial dao is a complicated dao! Real space can upend time. There is no heaven and earth, and no void when that happens! It is not one of those fissures in a minor world. One can create a world with a wave of their hand and possess a full bevy of daos...”

Li Hao blinked, then nodded. He knew that spatial dao was impressive, but based on the shadow’s words... it was so much more than that. Cultivators could create worlds with a wave of their hand!

Would that world possess a world origin?

It would be less terrifying if it didn’t. While that was still fearsome to outsiders, Li Hao would be able to accept the feat. But if one could create a world with life with a wave of a hand, it wouldn’t just be terrifying. It would be

horrifying!

It would be quite normal for a ninth rank to reach such heights, but far from normal if they were able to create life with a simple wave. That would make them a true creator! They would be able to create all things, living beings, and even the chaos with a quick gesture!

“Senior,” Li Hao interrupted when the shadow wanted to speak on. “Can they create life with that wave of their hand?”

“......”

Is that the point of what I was saying?

The shadow harrumphed after a while, “I don’t know.”

My point wasn’t this! The point is, did you gain some new comprehension of spatial dao or not?

“They probably can’t!” Li Hao answered his own question. “If they could, that would mean Skyward could’ve produced numerous exalted emperors back in the day. There could’ve been at least 9,999 of them!”

“......”

I don’t understand what you’re saying.

Fine, maybe I do, a little.

Do you really think that the Skyward master can randomly create 9,999 worlds of dao?

𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Ugh, I can’t belittle my own world master. ...but it’s not a good idea to exaggerate his accomplishments either.

“Void has entered the 5,400th square,” was all that the shadow could say. “You’re one thousand squares behind him now!”

Void had been at three thousand before, and Li Hao at two thousand. That had been one thousand as well!

The fact that it was still one thousand meant that Li Hao had slowed down by a lot.

“It’s fine,” Li Hao chuckled. “I’ll try to make it past five thousand. There can be a prolonged gap between us. It’s not necessarily a good thing to take in too much at once.

“Void needs to comprehend life and death, emptiness and revitalization, light and dark. He needs to walk further to grasp the core of what he needs. I don’t need to do that.”

Li Hao was also pursuing daos of two extremes, but those weren’t the heart of his great dao. That remained the power of a myriad daos.

The shadow was speechless.

You’re really freaking...

Forget it, it didn’t want to curse out someone. It shouldn’t!

I have high hopes for you, but you don’t show me any face!

Li Hao laughed and reentered dao chess.

“I can tell that you’ve reaped a great harvest from your attempt,” the shadow couldn’t help but ask. “Are you still unable to set foot into fifth rank?”

Li Hao’s gains were tremendous. In the shadow’s eyes, fifth rank should be easy. That was a terrifying rate of improvement, but also quite run-of-the-mill to it.

“Whether it is fifth rank or sixth rank, what stumps me now isn’t enlightenment, but dao strength!” Li Hao shook his head.

“Are you short on dao crystals?” mused the shadow. “There is a great deal of energy within dao chess...”

“Thank you senior, but that is not what I need,” sighed Li Hao.

Not what you need?

“I’ve estimated how much I need to perfect my dao and take me into fifth rank...” continued the young man.

Each of his minor worlds needed at least ten million dao crystals to perfect. That was the value of a minor world! So he’d need... at least four billion dao crystals to break through?

Maybe a little less, since he’d perfected a small portion of it himself. He could round that down to three billion dao crystals. A mid world was worth more than one hundred million, so this would be several dozens of mid worlds.

It was one thing before he made these calculations. But now that he had...

Li Hao sighed at his findings. Fifth rank was so hard. How could he need so much?

“I’ll need about three billion dao crystals!”

“What??” The shadow froze.

Are you joking?! How many?? Three billion?!

I would understand it if you need so much to enter seventh rank, but you’re just... ascending to fifth rank!

“Senior, needing a lot of resources means that my foundation is strong,” explained Li Hao. “I wouldn’t dare say that I’d overpower all mid ranks once I’m a fifth rank, but there aren’t many who would be able to match me...”

The strength of four hundred worlds should put him close to, if not on par with the current Sword Sovereign. However, Li Hao still didn’t dare say that he’d be able to smash a seventh rank’s face in. Hence, he needed to plan some more.

Only an eighth rank major world will satisfy my requirements.

“Even the Skyward master didn’t expend so many resources at this point,” frowned the shadow. “He was strong too! Have you deviated onto a wrong path?”

It wasn’t that the greater the consumption, the better!

Was the Skyward master strong? Of course! But he hadn’t expended this many resources during this time period.

Li Hao smiled and said nothing else. He and the Skyward master didn’t walk the same path. He collected a myriad of worlds to create a miniature chaos. He wasn’t imitating the chaos or purely creating domains, but actual worlds!

It would be so much easier if he was just crafting domains.

What the young man hoped to do was to produce real worlds. It was fine even if he wasn’t able to create world origins. He had to create a foundation, at the very least. It would be a very interesting endeavor.

If the river still existed after his death many years later, a visitor might think they’d entered the chaos and an era of a myriad worlds!

If he scooped up a minor world from the chaos and placed it into the river before exalted emperors came to be, would that exalted emperor walk out of their world and mistake the river for a silent chaos? All worlds would be silent, without life!

What an interesting proposition! He really wanted to try this experiment!

However, Li Hao set it aside upon further thought since he didn’t have the ability to do so at present. The river was also in a very nascent stage for now.

Li Hao continued to comprehend dao in the dao chess. The more daos he imitated as he perfected his comprehension of imitation dao, the more understanding he came to regarding spatial dao. With the dao of hiding in hand as well, he could now become a silently killer that abruptly popped up to deliver a fatal blow!

This was a good method to have in his arsenal.

He was in excellent spirits from his rich harvest. Dao chess was such a treasure that imparted different wealth to him each time he attempted it.

The young man set a small goal for himself—he wanted to establish another one hundred worlds after this foray! It wouldn’t be hard and he’d have five hundred worlds at the end of it.

He would be able to complete one thousand daos when taking into account the corporeal and immaterial aspects. And with this as the foundation, he might not need to strengthen all five hundred. Perhaps only a portion would be sufficient to propel him to fifth rank?

Truth be told, there wasn’t much of a difference between fourth and sixth rank. It was just a difference in comprehension of a dao and slight differences in strength. Once his strength reached the appropriate threshold, it was up to him to define whether he was a fourth or fifth rank!

What difference was there if he said he was a fifth rank now?

It was just that in the eyes of outsiders, his core dao and dao star of life and death, emptiness and revitalization had not yet individually reached fifth rank!

Li Hao suddenly understood that outsiders did not look at a cultivator holistically, just the part that stood out the most. His strongest dao was the star of life and death, emptiness and revitalization. Those was on par with fourth rank. His other minor worlds were yet to reach even first rank.

Hence, outsiders could not see the accumulation within and his incomplete dao net. They only assessed his strongest dao.

“I see!” Li Hao’s understanding deepened. So this meant to say that if ninth ranks obscured their strongest dao, leaving the second strongest for outsiders to see, then they would be declared a first rank if that dao was of first rank!

“How interesting!” grinned the young man.

In that case, if my star of life and death isn’t strong enough, even if I have a myriad of daos, all they will see is a fourth rank if I do not build a true dao net?

This is a good way of naturally hiding my real strength!

It’s also beyond the reach of normal people because even if they cultivate multiple daos, the combined effect won’t be as good as they think. They’ll need several hundred major daos to create the effect they want, right?

A happy Li Hao devoted himself to comprehending great dao again, whereas the shadow sank into contemplation.

On Li Hao’s first foray through dao chess, all that the shadow saw was deploying strength against strength. It’d been very worried then, feeling that if the young man continued down this cycle, immensely undesirable effects would develop and he’d ultimately die within time!

But this time, there was almost no time to be found on the young man. He seemed to have sealed it away.

Even if he hadn’t, there was almost no sign of time to be seen on him. He’d barely used it during this period of time and even when he did, he didn’t use it to borrow strength without restraint as he had before.

Had he sensed the inherent danger, or had he changed his mind about time and broken free from it?

Time posed an immense temptation! Could one break free of it?

Just think about it. If a first rank could borrow a seventh rank’s strength, then under the influence of infinitely expanding desire and ego... Perhaps one might think that they would borrow the strength of a ninth rank and conquer the chaos!

Would they still put themselves through the rigors of cultivation then? Desire was a very frightening construct!

Li Hao may have broken free of this cycle as ordinary desires could no longer hold sway over him. As strong as the Red Moon master might be as an eighth rank, could his dao of desire really affect Li Hao?

Could he influence someone who’d broken free of time? Even if that someone was only a fourth rank?

Humans all had desires. Someone who could control his was the most frightening of all.