561: Chapter 561 Ten Years of Star Journey, Central Galaxy

Ten years.

To a Mortal, it is half a lifetime; to a Cultivator, it is but a brief secluded meditation.

But for Shen Yuanmo, not a single day of these ten years was wasted.

The Chaos Dao Palace had traversed through uninhabited Star Domains for three thousand six hundred and fifty-two days.

During this period, it encountered two small-scale Law storms; one was withstood by the primordial immortal crystal's energy shield.

For the other, Shen Yuanmo personally took action, using the Chaos Dao Palace to swallow the entire storm zone.

Aside from that, the journey was peaceful to the point of being boring.

However, over these ten years, the deductions within Shen Yuanmo's Sea of Consciousness never ceased, continuing without rest.

The immortal dao heritage accumulated by the Tian Yuan Divine Hall over tens of millions of years—seventy-two volumes of immortal dao classics and three thousand six hundred Jade Slips inscribed with immortal characters.

Along with the memory fragments remaining after refining the Origins of four True Immortals, were dismantled, digested, and categorized by him one by one.

These things were incredible treasures in the Tian Yuan Star Domain, but after Shen Yuanmo scanned them with Insight into Origin, he discovered something.

The so-called immortal dao Legacy of the Tian Yuan Divine Hall was, to put it bluntly, a collection of crude works produced by a group of True Immortals working behind closed doors in a remote corner.

The system was incomplete, the theories were rough, and many parts were even self-contradictory.

It wasn't entirely useless; among the seventy-two volumes of classics, three involved the methods for condensing the Profound Truths of the immortal dao.

Though they were fragmented and incomplete, they provided an extremely important piece of information.

The grade of an immortal dao Profound Truth depends on the completeness of the dao foundation before becoming a True Immortal.

The more complete the dao foundation, the higher the grade of the condensed immortal dao Profound Truth.

Ninth grade is the lowest, and first grade is the highest.

The immortal dao Profound Truths of the successive Hall Masters of the Tian Yuan Divine Hall were, at most, sixth grade.

Sixth grade was already legendary in the Tian Yuan Star Domain.

Yet, on Shen Yuanmo's chaos dao embryo, ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Law divine runes were branded, along with a Yuan Character General Outline.

Theoretically, it was first grade.

Shen Yuanmo remembered very clearly that the word 'theoretically' was spoken by the tower spirit of the Tongtian Pagoda in the Canglan Realm.

A first grade that had never appeared before.

No predecessor had walked this path, there was no experience to follow, and no reference whatsoever.

Even Shen Yuanmo himself couldn't guarantee whether this path could actually be completed.

But whether one walks it is one thing; whether it is possible is another.

What truly benefited him the most during these ten years was the knowledge base stored by the ship spirit.

The Heavenly Meteor was an Immortal King battleship, and the ship spirit's memory core preserved the complete immortal dao cultivation system under the Immortal King Beichen.

Although at least sixty percent of the data was destroyed due to battle damage, the remaining forty percent was enough.

Within that forty percent of data, there was an extremely detailed explanation of the Profound Truths of the immortal dao.

From condensation and transformation to final stabilization, the precautions for every stage were written clearly.

The Immortal King Beichen's own immortal dao Profound Truth was third grade.

A third-grade immortal dao Profound Truth was already enough for him to be ranked in the upper-middle tier among Immortal Kings.

Shen Yuanmo spent a full three years cross-referencing and deducing this system with his own Chaos Myriad Dao Returning Origin Scripture.

His Sea of Consciousness suffered intense pain over a hundred times, and on two occasions, the deduction even overloaded, causing cracks in his Divine Soul, which he forcibly repaired using the Nine Revolutions Spirit Refining Art.

The tenth year, the seventh month.

The ship spirit's voice echoed in the core cabin.

"My Lord, a large-scale Law fusion reaction has been detected ahead."

Shen Yuanmo opened his eyes from meditation. These ten years of bitter cultivation had made his aura deep and restrained, revealing nothing.

Sitting on the throne, if he didn't actively release his Divine Sense, one wouldn't even be able to perceive any difference between him and an ordinary Mortal.

"How large is the scale?"

"Unable to estimate." The ship spirit's tone held a rare hesitation.

"My Lord, the maximum coverage of my detection array is thirty million miles, but the boundary of this Law fusion zone ahead exceeds the detection limit."

"Even at thirty million miles, you can't find the edge?"

"Yes."

Shen Yuanmo stood up and walked to the front of the sensory array.

In the projected image, the starry sky directly in front of the Chaos Dao Palace had undergone a qualitative change.

The distant void was no longer pure darkness, but was tinged with an extremely faint silver glimmer.

That glimmer was not a reflection from stars, but the glow of the Laws themselves, with a concentration so high it was visible to the naked eye.

In the Tian Yuan Star Domain, Laws were thin and dormant; Cultivators needed to actively comprehend them to touch them.

But in the space ahead, the Laws were so intense they were practically overflowing.

"Central Star River World," Shen Yuanmo murmured the name.

The ship spirit was silent for two seconds.

"My Lord, coordinate comparison complete. The destination of the route has been reached."

Another pause.

"We have arrived."

The Chaos Dao Palace decelerated.

As the hull crossed the final stretch of empty space between Star Domains, the projected image suddenly opened up.

Shen Yuanmo saw a sight that made even him—someone accustomed to the severing of heaven and earth and who had understood the Immortal King's Legacy—feel shocked.

That was not just a world.

That was a Universe.

Endless stars spread out, their density far exceeding that of the Tian Yuan Star Domain.

The volume of every star was comparable to a Major Thousand World.

And between these massive stars, there actually existed countless smaller celestial bodies.

Layer upon layer, they formed an incredibly brilliant star river network.

Silver Law light diffused from every corner of the star river, weaving into visible streams of light.

Those light streams pierced through Star Domains, connecting stars one by one, forming a circulatory system so vast it had no boundaries.

Shen Yuanmo roughly sensed the Law density at the outermost edge and then calculated a ratio.

More than four hundred times that of the Tian Yuan Star Domain.

And this was only the periphery.

He didn't even dare to imagine what the core region would be like.

"No wonder the True Immortals of the Tian Yuan Star Domain are the ceiling."

Shen Yuanmo leaned back into the throne and spoke to himself.

"The Law concentration differs by four hundred times. In such a barren environment, no matter how high one's Comprehension Ability is, even the cleverest housewife cannot cook without rice."

"My Lord, shall we enter?"

"Wait a moment."

Shen Yuanmo was in no hurry to rush in.

He closed his eyes, and the sensory tendrils of the chaos dao embryo extended out, tentatively touching a wisp of the silver Law light from the outermost edge.

The moment they touched, the ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Law divine runes on the dao embryo lit up simultaneously.

It wasn't a passive lighting; it was an active resonance.

Those Laws that he couldn't touch at a deeper level no matter how he tried to comprehend them in the Tian Yuan Star Domain, after contacting the Law concentration of the Central Star River World...

Actually began to operate spontaneously, transforming toward a higher level.

Shen Yuanmo's breathing faltered for a moment.

This feeling was like a person who had been thirsty in a desert for ten years suddenly being thrown into a vast ocean.

What his Chaos Myriad Dao Returning Origin Scripture needed was not more types of Laws; ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine was already the theoretical limit.

What it needed was more concentrated, purer, and higher-level Law energy to nourish it, to push those already branded Law divine runes to complete the leap from quantity to quality.

The Law concentration of the Central Star River World perfectly met this condition.

"I've come to the right place."

Shen Yuanmo withdrew his Divine Sense, forcibly suppressing the glow of those newly lit divine runes on the chaos dao embryo.

This was someone else's territory; the fluctuations from an abnormal change in cultivation could easily attract unnecessary attention.

"ship spirit, contract the Dao Palace's volume to its minimum, switch all immortal dao Restrictions to stealth mode, and suppress the primordial immortal crystal's energy fluctuations to below ten percent."

"My Lord, if suppressed to ten percent, the sailing speed will decrease by seventy percent."

"It doesn't matter. Speed isn't the goal; not being targeted is."

An Immortal King battleship, even if it was just a wreck, appearing at the edge of the Central Star River World was itself something that could trigger an uproar.

Who knows how many millions of years had passed since that Immortal Emperor Dao struggle, but Shen Yuanmo wouldn't be so naive as to think the enemies of the ancient Taichu Immortal Court had also disappeared.

He had to keep a low profile.

The Chaos Dao Palace rapidly shrank, transforming from a colossal object that blotted out the sky into a gray flying boat no more than a thousand feet long.

The immortal dao runes on the exterior were all extinguished, and the shields were switched to a minimum-level passive mode.

The entire battleship looked no different from an ordinary Void-Crossing Ancient Ship.

The ship spirit even thoughtfully covered the hull with a dust-textured camouflage; the wind erosion marks left by the long-drawn-out interstellar travel were aged quite convincingly.

"Good job."

"You flatter me, My Lord."

The gray flying boat silently sailed into the outermost edge of the Central Star River World.

No one noticed this unremarkable flying boat.

There were quite a few Cultivator shuttles coming and going in the peripheral Star Domains.

Most were Loose Cultivators of the Void-Returning and Dao-Combining stages traveling in spirit boats.

Occasionally, one or two Mahayana stage Cultivators could be seen flying past on swords.

But what truly concerned Shen Yuanmo were the few distant star worlds he had scanned with Insight into Origin.

On the surface of every massive star, there was an aura of a True Immortal level presiding over it.

On the nearest star, he detected at least three True Immortal auras.

"Three."

In the Tian Yuan Star Domain, the six great True Immortal factions had fought for tens of millions of years, and there were only those few True Immortals in total.

Here, there were three on a single planet, and this was only the periphery.

Shen Yuanmo reined in his Divine Sense even tighter.

Don't rush.

First settle down, first observe, and first thoroughly understand the rule system of this unfamiliar Universe.

The transformation of the chaos dao embryo required time; the transformation from a half-step True Immortal to a True Immortal level dao embryo required the absorption of a massive amount of high-concentration Law energy.

At the same time, the ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Law divine runes needed to be raised from a branded state to a fused state.

Finally, he would condense that legendary first-grade immortal dao Profound Truth that had never appeared before.

Breaking through to the True Immortal realm.

The road was long.

But the first step beneath his feet had already been planted firmly.

The gray flying boat followed the direction of the Law light streams and slowly delved deeper, vanishing among the billions of stars in the vast and boundless Central Star River World.

Shen Yuanmo closed his eyes again within the cabin of the flying boat, the chaos dao embryo operating silently.

The ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Law divine runes greedily absorbed the dense Law power pouring in from the outside, beginning a long and terrifying transformation.