47: A new path

At the summit of Jade Capital Mountain, the sea of clouds churned.

Hongjun sat cross-legged atop a Golden Light Prayer Mat.

This prayer mat was something he had found by chance, and it aided him in his cultivation and comprehension.

Utilizing this prayer mat, he could vaguely glimpse some of the future trends of the Honghuang World.

Above his head, the creation jade plate hung down Three Thousand Dao Principles, enveloping him like a canopy of jewelry.

Each strand of Dao principle reflected the evolution of Honghuang's Heavenly Secrets, sometimes transforming into surging rivers of stars, and at other times condensing into the veins of mountains and rivers.

The golden light of the prayer mat resonated with the creation jade plate, gradually enveloping him and allowing him to enter a new Realm, gaining a fresh understanding of this Primordial World.

“The Great Dao recedes, and the Heavenly Dao finally manifests. Will our path of Dao undergo a change?”

Holding this question in mind, Hongjun's fingers never stopped calculating.

On the Golden Light Prayer Mat, Hongjun's Primordial Spirit, guided by the creation jade plate, gradually touched upon the most fundamental mysteries of Honghuang.

Three Thousand Dao Principles flowed around him, each containing a completely different ultimate truth of heaven and earth.

The Great Dao is formless and substanceless; it is the beginning of all things and the end of all things.

It is the rules themselves, yet it transcends above all rules.

As the Honghuang World took shape, the Great Dao gradually receded, and the Heavenly Dao emerged as required by fate.

The Heavenly Dao is essentially a subsystem stripped from the Great Dao, specifically designed to maintain the operation of Honghuang.

If the Great Dao is the vast ocean, the Heavenly Dao is the river channel dug to irrigate the fields.

When the Heavenly Dao had not yet fully manifested, the aftershocks of the battles during the Beast Calamity almost shattered Honghuang.

Now that the Heavenly Dao is gradually becoming complete, any clash between existences above the Grand Unity Golden Immortal Realm will be subject to invisible suppression.

This may seem like a constraint, but it is actually protection.

It protects both Honghuang and the Cultivators from suffering backlash.

More subtly, the Heavenly Dao is obscurely guiding the cultivation path of all living beings.

Hongjun began to try calculating along a direction given by the Heavenly Dao, and a hazy path of Dao that shouldn't have existed seemed to appear before his eyes.

“By conforming to the Heavenly Dao's trend of 'discarding the false and retaining the true,' it seems possible to create a new path of Dao!”

In his pleasant surprise, Hongjun continued to push the deduction forward according to the trend.

The creation jade plate and the Heavenly Dao prayer mat resonated with each other, giving him new insights from time to time.

After an unknown amount of time, Hongjun suddenly opened his eyes.

In a previously chaotic area at the core of the jade plate, three tangled strands of Qi clearly manifested at this moment.

Those were precisely the three original forms of the Heavenly Dao's Laws: Good, Evil, and Obsession.

Even more miraculously, these three strands of Qi actually resonated with his own Primordial Spirit, yet they also hindered his affinity with the Heavenly Dao.

“So that's how it is...” With a slight thought from Hongjun, three phantom images of azure lotuses appeared in the Void Realm.

“The Great Dao is simple; the Three Corpses are me.”

“No need to seek externally; one must sever from within.”

Hongjun brushed over the creation jade plate suspended above his head. The jade plate's aura was infinite and its deductions endless, changing into infinite forms each time—it was truly the best treasure for Slaying the Corpses.

The path of Dao had been revealed, and with a supreme treasure to protect him, what reason was there to hesitate?

Hongjun continuously formed profound hand seals, and the creation jade plate suddenly burst forth with a blinding clear light.

All the compassionate and good thoughts within his Primordial Spirit were forcibly extracted, transforming into a hazy phantom.

The phantom's features were identical to Hongjun's, yet it radiated a gentle aura of delivering all living beings from suffering.

“Sever!”

With a shout of the Dao, the aura of the creation jade plate spilled down, wrapping around that strand of good thought and merging into it.

When the clear light dissipated, a Daoist in white was already sitting on the lotus platform, bowing to Hongjun with a smile.

At this moment, heaven and earth underwent a transformation.

The Spiritual Qi within a radius of hundreds of millions of miles around Jade Capital Mountain suddenly boiled, turning into golden flowers and auspicious rain falling from the sky.

Hongjun's aura suddenly became ethereal; though he was clearly right before one's eyes, he seemed to have merged as one with the entire world.

Hongjun sensed the changes within his body. His magic power had not increased, but his comprehension of the Heavenly Dao was more than ten times clearer.

The originally obscure long river of Heavenly Secrets was now as clear as the lines on his palm, and the shackled path ahead had already extended forward...

He knew that he had stepped into an unprecedented Realm.

Current him had already embarked on a path different from that of many Chaos Gods and Demons.

Perhaps this would be the place of transcendence for Honghuang in the future... Meanwhile, in Hurricane Canyon, the Lord of All Birds, who mastered the supreme Law of Lightning and was born with the Purple Cloud Phenomena, the Thunderbird Ling Ming, was also at the critical moment of attempting to Breakthrough to the Hunyuan Golden Immortal Realm.

He was so urgent only because he did not want to be constantly overshadowed by Yuan Feng.

To the myriad spirits of Honghuang, he was the high and mighty Lord of All Birds.

But only he himself knew that the members of his tribe frequently compared him to Yuan Feng.

Furthermore, most people believed he was no match for her.

It was as if his position as the Lord of All Birds had been yielded to him by the other party.

The brilliance of the Phoenix Lord was like a persistent haze shrouding his head.

Now, as long as he completed the Breakthrough first, he could shatter this prejudice.

He would become the true Lord of All Birds.

Above Hurricane Canyon, dark clouds rolled like ink, and hundreds of millions of lightning snakes darted through the cloud layers.

Ling Ming spread his purple wings that blotted out the sun, every feather bursting with blinding lightning.

He let out a long cry toward the sky, the sound waves shattering the clouds for tens of millions of miles, as he actively triggered the descent of the Hunyuan Lightning Tribulation.

This divine lightning, which ordinary Grand Unity Golden Immortals would avoid at all costs, he intended to withstand with his own body.

He wanted to use this to break through the shackles and complete his Breakthrough in one fell swoop.

Ling Ming spread his wings in fury, and all the lightning essence accumulated in Hurricane Canyon for ten thousand years was drained by him, condensing into a Purple Cloud Lightning Sphere ten thousand zhang in diameter above his head.

He actually intended to substitute defense with offense, using the strongest lightning technique to counter the Hunyuan Lightning Tribulation!

This mad act left the watching Honghuang powerhouses terrified.

When the first bolt of the Hunyuan Lightning Tribulation struck down, the entire Honghuang continent trembled for it.

That lightning was not the usual blue-white, but a chaotic purple-black that radiated an aura of destruction.

Ling Ming did not dodge or avoid it; the lightning sphere above his head rose against the trend and collided with it head-on.

BOOM—

The shockwave generated by the explosion leveled the cliffs on both sides of Hurricane Canyon.

The watching birds saw in horror that their supreme king was swallowed by the lightning, the feathers on his purple wings turning charred and falling off piece by piece.

But in the next moment, the blood-soaked Ling Ming actually charged out from the lightning storm, with new lightning runes spreading between his broken wings!

He roared, blood overflowing from his mouth yet he laughed wildly, flapping his wings upward once more to meet the Lightning Tribulation.

The second bolt... the third... by the time the sixth bolt of the Lightning Tribulation was arduously endured, Ling Ming's aura had climbed to the critical point.

A Hunyuan Dao Fruit was vaguely condensing between his broken crest feathers.

However, the seventh bolt of the Lightning Tribulation suddenly changed color—amidst the originally purple-black lightning, a trace of eerie blood-red was actually mixed in.

The power of the Lightning Tribulation increased again, and Ling Ming was also extremely alarmed; he was not sure if he could take it.

Ling Ming's eyes nearly split as he injected his lifeblood essence into the lightning sphere.

He could not lose, especially not under the gaze of all living beings in Honghuang!

At the moment the blood-red Lightning Tribulation struck down, time seemed to stand still.

The observers saw Ling Ming's lightning sphere shatter like a bubble, saw his proud purple wings bend repeatedly in the karmic fire, and saw cracks appear on the nearly formed Hunyuan Dao Fruit between his brows... The living beings withdrew their gazes; there was no longer any need, this Breakthrough was certainly a failure.

If you want to be the bird that sticks its head out, you don't realize that you're the one who gets hit.

If one is not tough enough, they can only be swatted to the ground.

Above Hurricane Canyon, when the last bolt of Karmic Fire Red Lightning dissipated, the entire world fell into an eerie silence.

Ling Ming had already retreated from the Lightning Tribulation area; at this moment, he couldn't care less about the blood-red lightning still surging around his body.

A pair of burning eyes looked toward the direction of the Immortal Volcano, his eyes flickering with complex emotions.

Still couldn't do it? He was afraid he would be another large step behind again.

Although this forced Breakthrough allowed him to take half a step beyond the Grand Unity Perfection and touch the threshold of the Hunyuan Golden Immortal Realm,

just like the Beast Emperor Shen Ni back then, he ultimately failed to take that final step to achieve the Hunyuan Golden Immortal Realm.

Furthermore, in this Lightning Tribulation, his Origin was wounded and his Dao body damaged; to repair them, he would likely have to spend countless years.

By then, he feared Yuan Feng would have long since completed her Breakthrough.

And he would be overshadowed once again.

This is all fate...