257: Fifth Incarnation: Heavenly Physician (49)

In the unseen depths, there seemed to be the sound of chains breaking.

The Laws of the Spiritless World were violently disturbed; the backlash had begun!

Dark clouds in the sky began to swirl, and low thunder rolled through the cloud layers—not natural thunder, but a hum carrying the wrath of the Laws.

An invisible pressure descended from the heavens, as if the weight of the entire world were pressing down on Xu Yuan and the hundreds of death soldiers around him. Several of the weaker warriors immediately bled from their noses and mouths, falling unconscious.

Xu Yuan's body shook violently, blood seeping from his seven orifices, his Divine Soul feeling as if it were being pierced by ten thousand needles.

That was not just pain, but a clear warning and rejection from the underlying rules of the entire Small World.

It was as if he were not a Disciple participating in 'Deducing the Law,' but a madman attempting to ignite a fire in an absolute vacuum.

In a Spiritless World, 'Spirit' was taboo.

By forcibly gathering the collective mental power of the people to strike the earth veins and disturb the Luck, he was essentially using the transcendent perspective of 'Karmic Web Perception' and his own Divine Soul's characteristics to exploit a loophole in the rules, simulating an effect similar to 'channeling Spiritual Qi.'

The Small World had its own ironclad Laws of operation.

The invisible pressure grew heavier, becoming not just physical oppression, but a repulsive force at the level of the Laws.

Xu Yuan felt the connection between his consciousness and this Incarnation becoming unstable, as if an irresistible force wanted to 'eject' him, this 'illegal' existence, from this world.

His vision began to blur, and a continuous, sharp humming sounded in his ears—the expulsion alarm issued by the Laws of the world.

The figures of the surrounding Yellow Turban death soldiers twisted and swayed, their shouts becoming distant and distorted.

In the center of the swirling dark clouds in the sky, a cold and ruthless giant eye seemed to open, staring fixedly at him.

The sense of expulsion grew stronger and stronger.

Like a tide, it sought to drown him and sweep him away.

"As expected... the backlash is here."

Xu Yuan's mind was cold and clear.

This was within his expectations; he just hadn't expected it to be so violent and direct.

Forcibly performing a nearly 'transcendent' method in a Small World came with the price of being judged as an 'anomaly' by the world itself and being purged.

He could feel that his time in this Small World had entered a countdown.

Perhaps there were a few breaths left, or perhaps only an instant.

"Is it going to end like this?"

A trace of unwillingness flickered like a weak flame in the depths of his nearly frozen consciousness.

He had slashed out that 'sword,' gathering the resentment of the people and the desire for change that he had sown and guided for years, turning it into a 'Humanity Torrent' to strike down the Dragon Vein.

He had heard the shattering of 'chains' symbolizing the collapse of the old order and seen the phantom of the Dragon Qi dissipating.

But... he hadn't had time to see the specific changes in the world with his own eyes after this 'sword' fell.

When the old web disintegrates, how will the new web sprout?

What will be the fate of the Yellow Turban Army?

Where will those who followed and trusted him go?

Was this expulsion, this backlash, really the end of his search for this Dao?

No!

Just as his consciousness was about to be completely squeezed out of this shell and his Divine Soul was about to be forcibly dragged from the Small World, Xu Yuan's indestructible will, tempered through Reincarnation, erupted with a final radiance!

He did not try to fight the irresistible expulsion force—that would be to make an enemy of the world, a futile effort.

He did not try to stabilize his connection with the Incarnation—that connection had already been judged illegal by the Laws and was about to break.

He took all his remaining mental focus, all his will, and all his perception of the 'Karmic Web,' and instead of fighting outward, he condensed them inward, tracing back to the lingering resonance of the 'Sword of Humanity' that had just slashed the Dragon Qi!

He didn't want to see the result; he wanted to see the process! He wanted to see how that 'sword,' which gathered the mental power of hundreds of millions, specifically 'severed' that ethereal yet real 'National Fortune Dragon Qi'!

In the final instant before his Divine Soul was completely pulled away, his 'Karmic Web Perception' was elevated to the limit, even surpassing it.

He no longer 'looked' at the network as a whole, but focused all his perception on the 'point' where the 'Humanity Torrent' and the 'Purple-Gold Dragon Qi' collided and annihilated each other—a 'convergence of Laws' that transcended matter and lay between the virtual and the real.

Time seemed to be stretched infinitely.

He 'saw' it:

The so-called 'Purple-Gold Dragon Qi' was not a tangible dragon, but a polymer of countless fine, complex, and interwoven 'threads of Law' and 'collective consciousness imprints.'

Some of these 'threads' connected to specific mountains and earth veins, some to imperial palaces, and even more to conceptual recognition nodes scattered across the world, whether overt or covert, such as 'loyalty to the monarch,' 'orthodoxy,' and 'Mandate of Heaven.'

It was the continuous 'sustenance' from these nodes that allowed this Dragon Qi to linger on even after the substantial collapse of the Dynasty.

And the 'Humanity Torrent' he had gathered and unleashed was an even more complex, chaotic, yet destructive 'flow of consciousness and emotional energy' carrying an intent of negation.

It had no fine structure of its own, but because of its pure negation of 'everything old' and its longing for rebirth, it possessed a tyrannical 'formatting' attribute.

When this 'torrent' struck the 'Dragon Qi polymer,' it was not a simple collision and annihilation of energy.

The countless individual thoughts of 'unwillingness,' 'anger,' and 'survival' contained within the 'torrent' were like hundreds of millions of tiny, invisible carving knives, precisely slashing at the threads of Law within the Dragon Qi polymer that connected those 'human recognition nodes'!

With every thread severed, a tiny 'recognition node' lost its connection to the core of the old order, the Dragon Qi polymer weakened by a fraction, and its power to maintain the 'legitimacy' of the old order dissipated slightly.

At the same time, the longing for a 'new order' contained within the 'torrent' acted like a form of 'information pollution,' invading those 'recognition nodes' in reverse along the connections that hadn't been fully severed, shaking, overriding, and rewriting the lingering old conceptual imprints within them.

This was not accomplished in one go, but rather, in the instant of collision, hundreds of millions of microscopic 'confrontations of Laws' and 'overrides of consciousness' occurred.

The dissipation of Dragon Qi was essentially the 'human consensus Foundation' that maintained it being washed away and disintegrated from the bottom up by a more powerful and fundamental 'torrent of consensus for survival and change.'

The dispersion of the Earth Vein Spiritual Qi was merely a physical manifestation that followed the collapse of this consensus Foundation.

National Fortune is truly the fortune directed by the hearts of the people.

The Mandate of Heaven is truly the mandate of the collective consensus of all living beings.

Slaying the dragon is not about slaying a tangible thing, but about severing invisible contracts and overturning ancient covenants!

"So that's how it is... This is the essence of the power of 'Humanity' acting upon the 'Mandate of Heaven'..."

A final trace of realization rose in Xu Yuan's heart, incomparably clear and profound.

This 'Humanity' was not gentle enlightenment, nor was it simple mutual aid.

It was the manifestation of the most fundamental and primitive life force and collective will.

Its source of power lay not in individual cultivation, but in the unity of purpose; its target was directed at the collective consciousness Foundation and the consensus of rules that maintained the old order.

Using Humanity to strike the Mandate of Heaven!

Using the will of all beings to change the order of heaven and earth!

This was the direction of the 'Dao' that he had vaguely perceived!

This Dao: perhaps it could be called... Human!