Essence Devouring Art

Chapter 537: Chapter 466: The Gatecrasher Great Emperor

A change in strategy.

After a temporary retreat to avoid a direct confrontation…

…the friction between the Primordial Sect and the Human World’s Dragon Hunting Tower alliance gradually subsided.

The price was…

…the Primordial Sect could only pick up the leftover worlds in the Border Wilderness that the Two Poison Alliance didn’t want, beginning to harvest Divine Souls for Wu Dao with all its might.

Fortunately…

…the Hongyuan Heavenly Realms were vast enough.

Even the most remote corners of the Border Wilderness contained countless worlds and living beings, making it easy to compensate for quality with quantity.

The consumption rate was much higher than before.

Every day, the Divine Souls of creatures from countless low-level worlds had to be burned, but at least it kept the many Primordial Dao Wheels from stopping and delaying his progress.

However…

…chaff and fine delicacies were, after all, two different concepts.

Once he broke through to the Second Tribulation…

…Wu Dao would definitely have to pursue high-quality energy for his Dao Wheels again. Otherwise, even if the Primordial Sect collected trash non-stop, it wouldn’t be able to satisfy the Dao Wheels’ energy demands.

As for now…

…he would have to make do for the time being.

He had to increase his strength first. Without power, all ambitions were just empty talk.

Meanwhile, at Shanhai Pass…

…the development of the war was just as Wu Dao had expected.

It was impossible to determine a winner in the short term.

The two sides entered a protracted war of attrition. The resources consumed and the powerful experts who died each day were more than a single All Heavens Emperor’s Lineage could bear!

Overall…

…Mountain and Sea still held a slight advantage.

Although the frontline was still far from the Seven Days Pass, it was advancing steadily, and they had conquered a great deal of territory.

However…

…after another half-month…

…no matter how fiercely Mountain and Sea attacked, it was difficult to advance any further.

The accumulated foundation of the Hongyuan Five Tribulations finally erupted.

All Heavens had been frantically conscripting soldiers and mobilizing resources. Even though their individual strength was inferior to Mountain and Sea’s, they used their vast numbers to build an iron wall, forcefully stopping Mountain and Sea outside the danger zone.

The most intense phase of the assault passed.

The ferocity of the fighting lessened, and both sides finally had a rare chance to catch their breath.

Of course…

…this so-called “respite”…

…didn’t mean a ceasefire. In fact, the major battles hadn’t stopped for a single day since the war began.

It meant…

…that there was now enough time to safely rotate in reinforcements.

It was no longer like before, where every rotation was a new army rescuing an old one, with the old army resting only to become the new army again, without a single moment’s rest.

However…

…there were exceptions to this.

For example, the Quasi-Emperor defensive lines managed by Wu Dao’s incarnations were like unkillable cockroaches, immovable pillars of the sky.

In the half-month since the war began…

…his incarnations had remained on the front lines, never once being rotated out for reinforcements. This utterly stunned the Military Lords and Domain Masters of the Seven Days Pass.

At the Quasi-Emperor and Great Emperor stages…

…although it was difficult to kill them, and they were all reputed to be Immortal and Undying, that was only relative.

When facing opponents of the same level, there was no fundamental difference in their life essence.

They could still suffer all sorts of Dao-inflicted injuries during a fight. If not treated and healed in time, minor cases would result in being ‘crippled,’ while severe ones could lead to a sudden, violent death.

But Wu Dao’s many incarnations…

…were truly baffling.

The many Military Lords and Quasi-Emperors on the battlefield had seen him nearly beaten to ashes by Mountain and Sea’s experts on more than one occasion, yet he simply wouldn’t die. An instant later, he would be full of vigor again, fighting with ever-increasing courage.

However…

…this wasn’t enough to draw too much attention.

This was because there were quite a few Hongyuan Quasi-Emperors who, like Wu Dao, possessed freakish life force recovery abilities and had never withdrawn from the battlefield.

Take, for instance, Little Martial Ancestor and the others at the top of the Emperor’s List.

They had all reached the Saint Body Great Perfection, the third step of Transverse Cultivation. Their various trump cards were the envy of others; even if besieged by ordinary Great Emperors, they couldn’t be killed in a short amount of time.

In other words…

…if Wu Dao’s batch of incarnations never died…

…it was highly likely they would dominate the Emperor’s List in the future.

Of course…

…others didn’t know that the batch of monsters who had recently emerged in the Seven Days Pass were all Wu Dao’s incarnations. They merely sighed with emotion that in this Great Era, heroes were as numerous as crucian carp crossing a river—endless and ever-emerging.

After all…

…even when all of Wu Dao’s Quasi-Emperor incarnations were sent out, they could only be scattered across a few territories.

An achievement of this scale, in such a small area…

…was utterly insignificant when compared to the vast Shanhai Pass, let alone the Seven Days Pass. At most, it would attract a few sideways glances, and nothing more.

Another month passed like this.

On this day, Wu Dao’s many incarnations unusually requested reinforcements to take their place, withdrawing from the battlefield. They were no longer stubbornly fighting and throwing themselves into the fray.

The Domain Masters of the various territories all understood.

Wu Dao had likely accumulated enough battle merits.

They figured he wanted to exchange them for Dao Source to assimilate into his own strength. Thus, they quickly arranged for replacements and told Wu Dao to recuperate well, assuring him that other Quasi-Emperors would hold the defensive line he was responsible for.

But in reality…

…Wu Dao’s “recuperation” was a pretense.

The real reason was to gather his mind and energy for a breakthrough.

His main body, after this period of high-intensity cultivation and burning a large amount of Five Tribulations Dao Source, was already approaching One Tribulation Perfection!

BUZZ—

In the Primordial Battlefield…

…deep within the Bottomless Miasma Abyss…

…the black and white magnetic field, gravity, and miasma twisted together. The all-encompassing pressure could instantly crush a cultivator at the third-step Saint Body Great Perfection, forming a unique, silent sea that resembled a sediment of dichromatic mercury.

Deep within the black and white sea…

…Wu Dao sat quietly cross-legged within a bizarre and colorful field. The minds of his many incarnations returned to him. Ignoring the terrifying pressure of the magnetic field, he opened his attribute panel—

[Physique: Primordial Magnetism Path]

[Extraordinary: Essence Devouring: All Things, One Tribulation (259200/259200) +]

[Transverse Cultivation: Infinite Primordial Scripture – Holy Body Perfection Second Step +]

[Divine Cultivation: Juntian Creation Scripture·Great Venerable Thirty-Two Layers +]

[Soul Cultivation: All Phenomena Divine Luo Scripture·Thirty-Two Layers of Great Venerable +]

[Divine Origin: Upper-Rank Great Venerable]

[Celestial Treasure: Bitter Dust Robe (Emperor’s Artifact 100%)]

…

[Teleportation Points: …]

The Origin of Primordial Magnetic Dao.

He was just two steps away from entering the Second Tribulation!

His three fundamental Extraordinary Powers were also just two final steps from reaching the essence of a Quasi-Emperor.

At this moment, looking within himself through Introspection…

…he could see that within the Origin of Primordial Magnetic Dao at the top of the tree diagram, the One Tribulation civilization of the Primordial Magnetism Path was approaching flawless perfection!

Below it…

…within the Dao Source of Essence Transverse Cultivation…

…Chaos Qi was faintly beginning to form, a sign that he was about to enter the sequence of the Chaos Body.

The Dao Source of Qi Divine Cultivation.

The Dao Source of Shen Soul Cultivation.

Within these two Dao Sources, representing energy and the Divine Soul, a profound and mysterious charm belonging to the infinite, the endless, and the immeasurable began to emerge.

At the very bottom, the Primordial Magnetic Crystal Particles…

…each one was a Primordial Magnetic Cosmic Seed, or a primordial magnetic singularity, about to break out of its cocoon and become a Proto-Cosmos.

The efficiency of their numerical growth became inconceivable, charging toward ∞-1 through a computational method that mortals could not comprehend.

Once fully perfected…

…he would enter the ∞-1 domain.

Once he broke through to the qualitative change of the Second Tribulation…

…the number of Wu Dao’s Primordial Magnetic Crystal Particles, and the rotational Magnetic Field Power they could generate, would enter the smallest domain of infinite power in the Hongyuan system.

In other words, the battle power of a Great Emperor!

‘If I use the mathematics of my previous life, does breaking through to Great Emperor battle power mean that the set of my Primordial Magnetic Crystal Particles corresponds to the set of natural numbers, N?’

A strange thought occurred to Wu Dao.

His Primordial Magnetic Crystal Particles could also be labeled from zero to infinity to form an infinite set, with each element corresponding one-to-one with the set of natural numbers.

This would form a state of equipotence.

In other words, they would be the ‘same size’.

This was somewhat different from the Hongyuan System.

This was because in the future, he intended to step into the infinite sequence with the essence of the Quasi-Emperor sequence.

For the Extraordinary life forms of Hongyuan…

…the process of a Quasi-Emperor becoming a Great Emperor involved integrating layer upon layer of Proto-Cosmos Dragon Veins, breaking through their limits to sublimate, and transforming into a complete Grand Cosmos Ancestral Dragon Vein that would give birth to an infinite collection of spacetime.

Therefore…

…every Great Emperor could unleash endless power. However, because the structure of Hongyuan is that of a larger infinite set containing smaller infinite sets…

…as a result, even though a Great Emperor possesses infinite power…

…it would be divided by the even larger, endless collection of spacetime. To shatter Hongyuan was something not even a Daoist of the fifth tier of infinity could accomplish.

For example, when the Seven Days Pass and Mountain and Sea went to war…

…both sides deployed their All Heavens Emperor’s Soldiers. Logically, the infinite might of the second tier should have had no problem sinking the entire battlefield in an instant.

But in reality…

…if the surface spacetime of Hongyuan could not withstand the force…

…it would shatter the spacetime crystal walls, and they would fall into a deeper, vaster, endless spacetime.

During Wu Dao’s recent battles…

…he had experienced this situation. Both sides used Emperor’s Weapons, frequently shattering layers of spacetime crystal walls and falling into the silent void deeper within.

‘Probably… this is a protection program of the Primordial Path.’

‘Without this protection program, after five Great Dao Tribulations since the Heaven Opening, who knows what kind of mess Hongyuan would be in.’

‘Besides that… Celestial Punishment is also a self-protection mechanism.’

‘The growth of a Great Dao is meant to promote the prosperity of civilization, not to allow its destruction. This is what a mature and normal Great Dao should be.’

‘If individuals could just restart Chaos whenever they pleased… or slaughter the Great Dao… how pathetic would the Great Dao have to be?’

‘The All Tribulations Provers are unimaginably powerful.’

‘But once they transcend, the Great Dao forbids them from remaining or re-entering it.’

‘This is also a form of protection for civilization.’

‘After the Great Emperor realm, the gap for each layer of battle power will reach an infinite level. Without the aid of high-grade Emperor’s Weapons, fighting across ranks is absolutely impossible…’

Wu Dao’s thoughts drifted.

He began to ponder the path ahead.

Great Emperors were divided into three grades based on their potential:

Nine Heavens, Twenty-four Heavens, and Thirty-Three Heavens.

Using the highest, the Thirty-Three Heavens, as a measure…

…the gap between each layer was an infinite multiple.

The same logic applied to the gap between Quasi-Emperor and Great Emperor.

Therefore, the so-called tales of Quasi-Emperors slaying Great Emperors were really just exaggerated hype.

Even for the current Wu Dao…

…with his 250,000 Dao Veins on the verge of complete perfection, able to slaughter Peak Quasi-Emperors like dogs, he still didn’t have the slightest confidence in being able to slay a Great Emperor without relying on external forces.

It was said that…

…the one at the top of the Emperor’s List, Little Martial Ancestor…

…had relied on external forces to slay a Mountain Sea Ancestor King. The same was true for all those Quasi-Emperors in historical legends who had killed Emperors.

‘An infinite gap…’

‘If you’re not in the same sequence, it doesn’t matter how heaven-defying you are; it’s fucking useless.’

‘Then there’s the Great Emperor Realm.’

‘The gap between a newly-ascended Great Emperor and a Peak Great Emperor will also reach infinity to the power of thirty-two!’

‘As for the gap between a Great Emperor and an All Heavens Emperor… an All Heavens Emperor wields the second tier of infinite power.’

‘The gap is even more despairing.’

‘It’s the difference between the 32nd power and an infinite power.’

‘And further up… based on what can be inferred from the origin of the Extreme Dao Bell, the gap between each layer of the Mixed Yuan Tao Emperor realm isn’t an infinite multiple, but an infinite power. The level of operational growth jumps a whole tier!’

‘Any further… is just getting ahead of myself!’

Wu Dao stopped his wandering thoughts. What he needed to think about was the issue of his own battle power amplification after breaking through to the Great Emperor realm.

Undoubtedly…

…the Divine No Evil Lotus Dao Veins, which were currently at several thousand grades, would definitely evolve again along with the Origin of Primordial Magnetic Dao.

But reaching several thousand or tens of thousands of grades would be impossible.

This was because the Great Emperor Sequence involved infinite gaps. No matter how high the growth level of a finite amplification calculation, it wouldn’t bring about any substantial change.

Wu Dao estimated…

…that by then, Gods and Ghosts and the Divine No Evil Lotus would probably return to their essence, becoming the Ultimate Ten Grades. This was because the root technique of the Divine No Evil Lotus was the Strongest Divine Technique, Mixed Lotus Extreme Path.

The upper limit of this Divine Technique’s enhancement, below the level of Dao Attainment, could be described as truly incredible.

Existences at the level of Primordial Chaos…

…could also use the Mixed Lotus Extreme Path to bridge the battle power gaps within their own sequence.

In other words…

…in the future, Wu Dao would start over from the first grade.

At the first grade…

…the additional amplification effect of Gods and Ghosts and Godlessness could reach the third grade at most.

However, as for what the specific foundation would be…

…he would only have an answer after officially entering the Great Emperor Domain and experimenting to find his own limits of endurance.

“Whew, time to begin.”

His thoughts settled.

Wu Dao gathered his mind and sank deeper into the Black and White Miasma Abyss Sea. The breakthrough to the Second Tribulation was no small matter; he had to focus completely. The war in the outside world was temporarily irrelevant to him.

Given Hongyuan’s profound foundation…

…it seemed his presence or absence made little difference. In the end, his strength was too low to affect the overall situation.

However…

…before entering seclusion…

…Wu Dao still checked on the cultivation progress of the Seventy-Three Primordial Demons above him.