After the Great Dao Died

The Absolute Perception Divine Chamber shattered inch by inch, like colored glaze crashing to the ground.

An ancient verse drifted through the fracturing gaps.

”Steal the spiritual perception of heaven and earth, seize the spirit mechanism of past and present.”

Chen Lingxi kept his eyes locked onto a streak of clear qi deep within the divine consciousness clouds.

The Ancestral Mountain Mother Qi.

Chen Lingxi took a deep breath, barely suppressing the excitement surging in his chest.

Absolute Perception had concluded, and the Mother Qi was right in front of him.

Raising a hand, he silently recited the ancient verse.

Then, he chose that streak of clear qi.

In an instant, the Absolute Perception Divine Chamber completely faded away.The lingering traces of light and the churning fog dissolved into nothingness. Caught by an unimaginable force, Chen Lingxi’s consciousness was swept back from the fragmented void and plunged into his physical body.

His eyes snapped open.

The King of the East’s Traveling Palace at Cuojin Mountain stretched out before him.

The moment his consciousness returned, Chen Lingxi ignored everything else, immediately shutting his eyes and sinking his awareness back into the Divine Chamber deep within his mind.

Within the void of the Divine Chamber, the thick fog churned as usual.

The line of golden tadpole text still drifted slowly through the empty space, radiating a warm, bright glow.

But Chen Lingxi wasn’t looking at those words.

His gaze fell on the churning clouds in the very center of the Divine Chamber’s void.

A streak of clear qi hovered there.

It hung quietly amid the clouds like a tiny, bright moon.

Its brilliance illuminated the surrounding fog until it was completely transparent, as if someone had lit an eternal lamp within the gray sea of mist.

Chen Lingxi stared blankly at the clear qi for a long time before exhaling a breath of stale air. ”The Ancestral Mountain Mother Qi. It’s finally mine.”

He reached out and retrieved the Mother Qi from the Divine Chamber.

The moment the clear qi landed in his palm, all the apertures across his body felt instantly purified.

Bathed in its aura, the pool of spiritual liquid within his sea of qi rejoiced. It began circulating on its own, greedily devouring the few traces of spirit mechanism that flowed in.

His one hundred and eight vital apertures felt as though they were welcoming a long-awaited rain.

He stared down at the clear qi in his hand for a long time, then slowly curled his fingers to grip it tightly.

It felt as warm and smooth as jade, yet weightless, like holding a tuft of cloud soaked in moonlight.

”Swallow the Mother Qi to form the Spiritual Aperture Aptitude!”

Without hesitating any longer, he tossed the Mother Qi into his mouth.

Chen Lingxi shuddered violently the moment the Mother Qi slid down his throat.

The spirit mechanism was simply too vast. It felt as if he had swallowed a roaring river of raw energy.

The spirit mechanism rushed straight down his throat, flooding into his sea of qi, his meridians, his limbs and bones, and every vital aperture in his body. His sea of qi instantly boiled over.

The spiritual liquid within the pool churned violently. Struck by the massive influx of spirit mechanism, the boundaries of the spiritual pool expanded outward over and over. Piercing agony accompanied each expansion, as though someone were taking a heavy iron hammer to his sea of qi, widening and compacting it inch by inch.

Yet mixed within that intense pain was an indescribable sense of pleasure.

It was like a blocked riverbed finally bursting open under a spring flood. The vast waters roared downward, washing away all the old silt and grime until nothing but absolute purity remained!

”How profound,” Chen Lingxi marveled.

He closed his eyes and circulated the Six Qi True Method, gathering, refining, and drawing every single trace of the invading spirit mechanism into his spiritual pool.

This refinement process lasted a full day.

For an entire day, Chen Lingxi sat perfectly still, cross-legged inside the King of the East’s Traveling Palace.

His breaths were incredibly long and steady. With each inhalation and exhalation, his chest rose and fell like the tide. Spiritual qi surged through his meridians like a river, producing a faint, continuous hum.

Outside the palace, the sun set and the moon rose.

Finally, Chen Lingxi let out a long breath of stale air.

Then, he stood up. Beneath his skin, a very faint, soft, jade-like luster faintly circulated. This glow was deeper and more restrained than before, like a rough gemstone that had been polished countless times and had finally revealed its true quality.

”The Ancestral Mountain Mother Qi remolded my body. I broke through to Jade Qi Peak Completion without even needing to circulate my blood energy. And very soon, I will break into the Realm of Qi and Blood Nine Revolutions.”

A smile graced Chen Lingxi’s lips. ”But this Jade Qi Peak Completion cultivation is only on the surface. The real earth-shattering changes are inside me.”

He closed his eyes and looked inward.

Within his sea of qi, the spiritual pool was several times larger than it had been a day ago.

The spiritual liquid was as clear as jade and impossibly deep.

Every drop of spiritual liquid had been condensed to the absolute limit. They hovered in the pool like hair-thin spiritual needles, pulsing with a faint, icy gleam.

The Nine-Return Spirit Mechanism.

Under the tempering of the Mother Qi, his spiritual qi had unknowingly been compressed multiple times over.

Every drop of spiritual liquid had been tempered repeatedly. All impurities were purged, achieving a level of purity that even he found hard to believe.

But what shocked him even more was his cultivation speed.

Chen Lingxi tried circulating the Six Qi True Method to drive the spiritual pool in his sea of qi. The moment the thought crossed his mind, the spiritual qi surged out from the pool like the arm commanding the fingers. It flowed along his meridians at an astonishingly fast and smooth pace.

”After the nine returns... I finally reached the Seventh Floor.”

A sharp gleam flashed in Chen Lingxi’s eyes.

This Ancestral Mountain Mother Qi hadn’t just transformed his body; it had forcefully pushed his spiritual qi cultivation all the way to the Qi Circulation 7th Floor.

And it had only been a few dozen days since he stepped onto the Qi Circulation 6th Floor.

Such speed was unimaginable. If Chen Lingxi had relied solely on his own cultivation, even with ample spiritual qi, it would have taken him a year or two.

The Qi Circulation 7th Floor.

The threshold to the Upper Three Floors.

Lin Suri, Lu Baizhong, and Xi Yuan—these peerless prodigies who had stirred up the winds and clouds in the Ancestral Mountain—were only at this level.

And he, a local cultivator with no backing, had also stepped into this tier.

He took a deep breath, suppressing the swelling excitement in his heart, then closed his eyes to focus and carefully sense the various changes brought by the Qi Circulation 7th Floor.

On the Qi Circulation 7th Floor, aside from the qualitative transformation of spiritual qi, the most important aspects were two profound mechanisms. The first was called the [Sea of Consciousness].

It meant opening up a sea of consciousness to brew divine consciousness.

Divine consciousness was formless and intangible, but it could leave the physical shell to perceive the outside world. Within a radius of dozens of zhang, the swaying of every blade of grass and tree, and the chirp of every insect and bird could not escape its perception.

Keeping his eyes closed, Chen Lingxi attempted to channel his newly born divine consciousness.

The spot between his eyebrows warmed slightly, and an invisible fluctuation spread outward from his brow, rippling layer by layer.

The ripples pierced through the King of the East’s Traveling Palace, reflecting his entire surroundings crystal clear into his mind.

Every single detail was flawlessly rendered, as if he were seeing it with his own eyes—in fact, it was even clearer than natural sight.

Chen Lingxi slowly retracted his divine consciousness and opened his eyes, a flicker of enlightenment passing through them.

’With this profound mechanism, I now have an invisible pair of eyes for combat. Enemies hiding in the shadows or spells striking from behind will no longer escape my perception,’ he thought.

The second profound mechanism was called [Refined Thought].

Refined Thought allowed for extremely precise control over divine consciousness.

Divine consciousness could attach itself to objects like an invisible hand, simultaneously manipulating dozens of flying needles or knives to execute intricate maneuvers. With a slight thought, Chen Lingxi extended his divine consciousness from his brow. It formed an invisible thread that landed on a small piece of crushed stone nearby.

The stone was about the size of a thumb, dull gray and entirely inconspicuous.

But when his divine consciousness attached to it, the crushed stone gave a slight tremble and slowly floated up from the ground.

One piece, two pieces, three pieces.

He split his divine consciousness, attaching it to several pieces of crushed stone all at once.

The stones lifted off the ground simultaneously, hovering in the air before him to form a perfectly neat row.

”I could do this before by relying on spiritual qi, but never this easily.”

With another thought, the stones moved in unison.

They zipped through the air, weaving and crisscrossing along complex, precise trajectories without ever colliding with each other.

He practiced arranging them into a tiny circle, then a tiny square. Finally, he let them drop to the ground. Their landing points were absolutely flawless, forming a perfectly straight line right at his feet.

Looking down at the straight line of stones by his feet, a smile finally appeared on Chen Lingxi’s face.

”Weaving, carving, setting arrays, dismantling arrays—I can do it all with effortless ease,” he murmured to himself, the delight in his eyes deepening. ”With such precision, I can set up the second layer of the Pure Wondrous Qi Pivot Array Formation.” He had laid down the first layer of the Pure Wondrous Qi Pivot Array several times already and knew it completely by heart.

But the second layer was far more intricate. It required more array cores and much finer hand seals, placing extreme demands on the array master’s ability to manipulate divine consciousness.

He had pondered over it for a long time previously but always felt he fell short. The transitions between the hand seals and the resonance between the array cores had always lacked that final touch.

But now, equipped with the profound mechanism of Refined Thought, those bottlenecks that had previously felt hopelessly obscure and beyond his reach were suddenly opening up to wide light.

He had a strong premonition that with just a little more time, he would be able to successfully lay out the second layer of the Pure Wondrous Qi Pivot Array.

When that happened, the array’s spirit-gathering effects would ascend to the next level, and his cultivation speed would experience yet another qualitative leap.

Chen Lingxi took a deep breath, setting these thoughts aside for now, and recalled four words.

Spiritual Aperture Aptitude.

His ability to step onto the Qi Circulation 7th Floor, to open his sea of consciousness, and to brew Refined Thought was entirely thanks to the Ancestral Mountain Mother Qi.

The spirit mechanism contained within the Mother Qi was astonishing. Not only had it forcefully pushed his cultivation to the Qi Circulation 7th Floor, but it had completely remolded his innate foundation and talent.

He now felt his spiritual qi turn incredibly profound, and his comprehension of the Six Qi True Method and various spells had deepened significantly.

Raising his right hand, he brought his index and middle fingers together like a sword. The azure edge of the Cyan Edge Method flickered unsteadily at his fingertips. He tried to condense the edge, making it thinner and more resilient, like a true sharp sword.

Previously, when he channeled the Cyan Edge Method, the edge was sharp but always slightly unfocused. It had been like an unsharpened sword blank—sufficiently sharp, but lacking true cohesion.

But now, the azure light flickering at his fingertips had completely solidified into physical substance. It looked like an ice sword polished from ten-thousand-year-old frost—sharp, fierce, and heavily condensed.

”Paired with my Profound Qi and possessing such enlightenment, I just need a bit more time to meditate on them, and I should be able to reach the Sublime stage for both the Cyan Edge Method and the Dragon Roar Technique.

”When that happens, these two spells will become true wondrous arts. Scarcely anyone in the same realm will be able to rival them.”

While Chen Lingxi pondered this, his divine consciousness dipped into his Vast Void Pouch.

The Dragon Qi Treasure Talisman and the Xi Yu Talisman had both been recovered and lay safely inside his Vast Void Pouch.

”At the Qi Circulation 7th Floor, I should be able to refine those two treasures.”

Chen Lingxi took out the ring he had acquired from Xi Mu and injected spiritual qi into it. Then, he frowned slightly. ”The arrays inside this ring are a bit complicated. Fully refining it will take four or five days.”

”The Ancestral Mountain is about to open. I don’t have time to refine it.”

With a quick thought, he pulled an item out of his Cosmos Bag instead.

It was a stone. Shaped like a throwing knife and roughly the length of a palm, it was freezing cold to the touch, like holding a block of solid ice.

The stone’s body was perfectly smooth without a single flaw, as if river currents had washed over it for tens of millions of years, wearing away all its sharp edges and leaving behind only this blunt, knife-like shape.

This was the mysterious stone he had dug up from the antique market in Yuanjiang Prefecture a long time ago for just a few pieces of broken silver.

Back then, when he had probed the stone with his spiritual qi, the energy had vanished completely, like a clay ox plunging into the sea, returning absolutely no feedback.

Later, when he stepped onto the Qi Circulation 4th Floor, he had tried probing it again, but still came up empty-handed.

The stone’s interior was like an abyss. His spiritual qi couldn’t advance a single inch, making it impossible to find its depths.

Now, he had entered the Qi Circulation 7th Floor.

Chen Lingxi cradled the stone in his palm, lowering his head to examine it for a moment.

The stone looked like a piece of rotting wood buried in an ancient tomb for who knew how many years. It didn’t seem magical in the slightest.

But he knew this was no ordinary item.

Anything among those antiques capable of causing a massive surge in Absolute Perception’s energy restoration progress could not be an ordinary object.

He slowly injected a strand of spiritual qi into the stone. The moment it entered, Chen Lingxi shuddered.

This time, his spiritual qi didn’t just vanish like a clay ox plunging into the sea.

The invisible barriers that had previously blocked his probing had completely disappeared.

Following the complex patterns within the stone, the spiritual qi surged forward, incredibly fast and remarkably smooth.

The stone vibrated slightly, emitting a very faint hum.

Amid the humming, an extremely faint, soft radiance began to spread across the stone’s surface.

At first, the light was barely a glimmer. In the blink of an eye, it blazed brightly, erupting from every crevice on the stone.

Wherever the light passed, the dull gray outer crust of the stone began to peel away inch by inch. Like a snake shedding its skin, it revealed the true appearance that had been hidden underneath for countless ages.

”It really is extraordinary.”