Chapter 1746: A Missed Opportunity (I)

“He Yong, you’ll be the first third rank among us. Congratulations and work hard!” chortled Deputy Zhou.

He Yong’s temper rose and he cursed loudly, “And I wish for you to be peak third rank immediately!”

What a vicious curse that was! Peak third rank was their current limit. In the absence of further ascension, they would absolutely explode from the onslaught of energy!

The smile slid off the deputy’s face. That response was too vicious!

All of Skyward seemed to be under the erupting world origin’s control. This process was turning out to be much more of a hassle than they’d imagined. And the Skyward master hadn’t even appeared yet! Once he did, it was over for all of them!

......

Everyone focused on defending themselves from the shadows—their enemies were so numerous that they blotted out the sun. Li Hao, however, did not look at his people. He remained seated cross-legged in the depths of the dao universe, light emanating from his eyes as he studied the world origin that was shaped like a heart.

It beat!

The world revitalized according to each of its heartbeats. Meanwhile, the poor bugger Void was nearly dying to his own strength of emptiness. Perhaps he would set a record and be the first to do so.

“So many dao crystals!” Li Hao murmured. He saw entirely too many dao crystals.

How many were there?

Several billion? Or several tens of billions?

The young man’s most pressing question was suddenly how many dao crystals there were. And so, his voice rang out from the center of the dao universe. “Martial Uncle He Yong, count for me how many dao crystals there are.”

The fuck?!

He Yong nearly cursed out loud.

Do you realize the situation we’re in?? Can you do something useful instead?

“Get down here and count them yourself!” he roared. “Come down, kill this thing, and it’ll all be yours!”

Who the hell would be interested in counting dao crystals at a time like this?? They would want nothing more than to swallow them whole in ordinary times, but the dao crystals were a disgusting sight today.

They were highly irritating as there were too many of them. The dense energy was about to make them all pop!

How would I have the time to count them?? I’m not in the

mood

to count them! My hand will cramp from counting them, and I have to survive everything first!

I feel like I’m about to die—I really am going to hit third rank soon! Once I do that and swiftly climb to peak third rank, I might be the first exalted emperor in history who explodes from too much energy.

How tragic!

This is what people want more than anything, but it’s going to be the death of me.

And the key was, he could not escape. All of Skyward seemed to be under the dragon daoist’s watch. This was also a precaution to forestall powerhouses from breaking through and attacking the world origin.

The dragon daoist of Coiling Dragon Well was a seventh rank that specialized in body dao. It sat in residence at this site to prevent any unexpected developments. Thus, since the Sword Sovereign and others were imprisoned to their positions, they could not offer any help.

“Count them!” echoed Li Hao’s voice again. The loudly cursing He Yong sent out his consciousness and began to count the dao crystals one by one...

Deputy Zhou rolled his eyes when he saw that He Yong really was counting them up in such a manner. He quickly probed the dao crystals and responded, “There should be eight billion of them, if we’re basing the number off the size of the pieces you gave us before.”

Eight billion! That’s a lot!

Li Hao nodded. Eight billion was a good sum. Granted, his horizons were also greatly broadened by now; they’d consumed ten billion dao crystals if he counted the worlds and resources he’d invested into Silver Moon.

Hence, he wasn’t that surprised by the number. Sitting in residence at the dao universe, he sent his mind around the premises and asked, “Deputy Zhou, help me estimate how much energy the world origin absorbs and converts from the chaos per minute!”

The deputy frowned, but didn’t say a word. He quickly went to work. The world origin must be absorbing energy from the chaos all along—it wouldn’t have been able to maintain a ninth rank world otherwise.

A minute was too long!

It took Deputy Zhou ten seconds to complete his estimation before he swiftly said, “It’s not absorbing strength at a fast pace. Perhaps I can’t sense it all, but I think it’s producing one dao crystal every ten seconds...”

A first rank would need a day to do so, but this was the world origin of a ninth rank world. Forming one dao crystal every ten seconds was not that fast.

Li Hao quickly ran through some calculations. “So that makes a little over three million dao crystals a year? I once read that it takes about one million dao crystals to maintain the operations of a ninth rank world for a year. That does not include what cultivators need.

“There were many exalted emperors in the forty minor regions before. They probably consumed one million dao crystals a year by themselves...” murmured Li Hao. “So this means to say that there’s about one million dao crystals left over each year?”

That was a conservative estimate. If that could be maintained, the world origin would accumulate ten billion dao crystals after ten thousand years.

Skyward had vanished for one million years. Shouldn’t it have a trillion dao crystals?

It was a staggering number that boggled the mind, but there were only less than ten billion dao crystals left around the world origin. If no one had come to collect them during this time, no premier exalted emperor absorbed them, and the world hadn’t been silenced before...

Then where had the rest of the dao crystals gone?

After all, no local exalted emperors had been born in the world in a while. In the absence of new exalted emperors and a silenced dao universe, any dao strength produced should not vanish—apart from that which was used for daily maintenance and dissipation. It should all be stored near the world origin.

The people on the world below were struggling for life, but Li Hao was doing math problems up above.

Void felt that he teetered on being silenced himself, but he retained his calm.

“Hao Moon, what are you calculating? Skyward does have some additional consumption on top of that. People threw the world into disarray early on when they tried to seize it, so it defended itself then. Granted I’m not aware of the total consumption, but it should’ve been significant.”

“How significant? How much would it be in dao crystal terms?”

“At least ten billion...”

Li Hao nodded. The numbers still didn’t add up. Fending off invaders ten times would be an arbitrary high number. No one should try to conquer Skyward after so many attempts. Even if each defense cost ten billion dao crystals, ten times would consume only one hundred billion.

Where was the rest of the eight hundred billion?

A ninth rank world without inhabitants—or local denizens—and a silenced dao universe... The world was operating, but all of its dao crystals had disappeared. It was almost nine hundred billion dao crystals! That was an astronomical figure!

Yet no one seemed to find anything amiss because they didn’t know how many dao crystals a ninth rank world could produce. But with the emergence of the world origin, they could calculate its production rate given its energy absorption speed.

Regular people would long be overawed by the ten billion dao crystals they saw around the world origin. What would they care about the world origin’s absorption rate?

One dao crystal every ten seconds seemed so insignificant in the face of ten billion. Who would pay attention to that? And with how critical the situation was, He Yong and Deputy Zhou would have beaten Li Hao to the point in which his master wouldn’t recognize him, if it wasn’t for the authority that the young man exercised.

Anyone who paid attention to these details would notice the discrepancy. The difference was far too great!

The world origin continued to burn dao crystals and restrain the invaders. Void was about to die to the backlash, but Li Hao was still preoccupied with simple math problems.

How many exalted emperors could nine hundred billion dao crystals produce?

A lot!

How many dao crystals would a regular seventh rank consume from first to seventh rank?

Abnormalities such as Li Hao did not count. He had worlds to support, so his consumption was enormous. He’d consumed several billion to enter fifth rank, which meant that he would require a flabbergasting amount to become a seventh rank.

But for mainstream seventh ranks such as the Orchid Forest master... He could ignore the Sword Sovereign and the rest, since they were abnormalities too.

“Senior Orchid Forest, how many dao crystals would you say you’ve consumed since the start of your cultivation? Try to convert all of the resources into dao crystals.”

The Orchid Forest master was likewise struggling against the world origin. He blinked at the question. Who the hell... paid attention to that?

He hadn’t spent too much to ascend to seventh rank, just a few billion at most. But that was because he had the strength of the dao universe to help him. If not...

“At least ten billion!” he responded after some calculations.

“Then what about eighth rank? Just in terms of resource depletion, not dao enlightenment!”

“At least another ten billion!”

An eighth rank required at least twenty billion and a seventh rank at least ten billion. Sixth ranks likely needed only half of that amount since the threshold to seventh rank was significant. They could be estimated at five billion.

The ranks beneath that did not require that many resources.

Skyward likely had more than two eighth ranks at its peak. Perhaps it had three or four. All of the resources they’d consumed to reach that level might be at least one hundred billion.

Skyward also possessed at least ten seventh ranks, which was another one hundred billion. There was also a large number of sixth ranks.

𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

This world had too many exalted emperors—that was apparent from the number of dao foundation sites. Li Hao continued to observe the world and counted up the sites. Ignoring those that were still inactive or destroyed, the dao foundation sites visible now were in the hundreds.

Approximately five hundred billion dao crystals were required for so many exalted emperors to cultivate from scratch. That was fifty times what Silver Moon had consumed before. The latter didn’t have any powerful exalted emperors, just weaklings.

So the current estimate stood at seven hundred billion crystals. If one counted some random uses, as well as ninth rank exalted emperors...

Perhaps that would make up for the shortfall and explain where the nine hundred billion crystals had gone.

That meant to say, a batch of exalted emperors on par with Skyward’s number would have to be born somewhere in order to deplete all of this accumulation in one go. This option also removed the hassle of ascension from the equation.