Lu Yun turned around; he could still see Qing Yu smiling at him from the other side of the ladder. Waving gently at her, he retracted the ladder with reluctance. With the Bridge of Forgetfulness next to her, he’d be able to flash back to her side in an instant if he called upon the Tome of Life and Death.
The void in front of them wasn’t a world—it was still empty space. Countless pristine currents floated and drifted through the void, coalescing into marvelous existences.
However, out of all the places they’d visited, this seemed more like a world of life than any other. Verdant plants rooted in empty space, forming a scene of lush vitality. This wasn’t where the sixth dao palace was, but an outskirt where chaos creatures gathered.
However, the pure currents here were hundreds and thousands of times more concentrated with energy than anywhere else. Both Lu Yun and the little fox felt great comfort flood their limbs.
“Little fox, would you say that I have to refine a dao fruit?” Lu Yun suddenly asked his companion.
“Eh? Have to refine a dao fruit?” The little fox blinked. “I don’t have a dao fruit either.” She paused, “I reincarnated beneath the immortal dao and rewalked the path of cultivation, but I really did skip over refining a dao fruit.”
“So why do I need one then?” Lu Yun sighed. “Perhaps my path was incorrect to begin with. Maybe someone purposefully put the six dao palaces in front of me so that I would fight for them, seize them, and refine them. Perhaps they planted the sixth one here on purpose to lure me into the chaos.”
The little fox blinked and remained quiet.
Lu Yun had thought through a lot of things after entering the chaos, including musing over the six dao palaces. He seemed to have gained five of them through arduous and hard fought difficulty, but he hadn’t actually run into that many obstacles in reality. He’d acted whenever his impulses called for it and come back fruitful.
In fact, everything had been too smooth.
The last palace had been moved into the chaos, ensuring that he’d have to venture deep into enemy territory for it. He’d then presumably obtain it without trouble, naturally refining the six greatest laws of order in the chaos as his dao fruit for his final course of action.
But this abnormal smooth sailing was now growing into his biggest mental hurdle. Inexplicable worry beset his mind and he suddenly felt like he was a pawn, taking his steps in accordance with someone else’s plan.
That sense of alarm only grew stronger after that unknown existence delivered the purple ladder.
He was also skilled in formula dao, which was why he’d picked up a hint of something out of the ordinary. His understanding of formula dao was different from Qing Yu’s.
Her usage derived the complete cause and effect of something, overseeing the situation from an omnipresent view and scanning everything in its entirety.
His grasp melded himself into what he was deriving and made its inferences from the intricacies of the situation.
There was no right or wrong about their methods, just a different emphasis. Qing Yu saw things with greater foresight, but he saw them in greater detail. However, since the matter at hand had to do with himself, he could only pick up a hint that something was wrong, but none of the precise details.
Lu Yun was no fool. He could very well benefit someone else with all of his hard work if he continued on this current track. Everything about him would become someone else’s. This was why he’d wanted Qing Yu to stay on the other side and not come with them.
“So what are your plans?” whispered the little fox.
“I don’t know.” Lu Yun fell silent. “I don’t know how much they know about me or what about my trump cards that they know. If they already know everything about me, I really won’t know what to do next.”
“I don’t think they know about your real trump cards,” mused the little fox. “Violetgrave! The only thing they know about you is human dao hell and Violetgrave! Think about it, the three-eyed man was also afraid of Violetgrave.”
Lu Yun still didn’t know what exactly the Tome of Life and Death was or what level treasure it was. But when it turned into his nascent spirit, he could bring the Bridge of Forgetfulness to heel. The bridge was an advanced life form in the fourth realm! Therefore… it seemed logical to say that the creatures of the second realm wouldn’t be able to probe its existence.
“Let’s skip the sixth dao palace for now. Let’s cultivate and you can give me pointers on how I can progress without refining a dao fruit. You should also try becoming a creator within thirty years. If you can, then it won’t matter if I break through or not,” Lu Yun proposed.
“Alright!” the little fox nodded. “When I reincarnated in the world of immortals, though I’d lost my sense of self and my memories of the great wilderness, I still knew that the Dao Tree was a massive trap. That was why I didn’t go pluck my dao fruits, but used another method… Well, I can’t say that I didn’t refine a dao fruit, just that I substituted it with something else.”
Lu Yun listened silently without interrupting her.
“With body as dao fruit!” the little fox said. “When God, Ah Zhi, Fuxi, and I were lost in the wheel of reincarnation, the subtle ties of destiny still connected us as the four celestial masters of the primordial immortal court. All of us used our own bodies as our dao fruits and refined it accordingly.
“No matter what cultivation method or great dao you train, it all stems from your own being. Your own body is the container, and you yourself is the source of everything,” the little fox said solemnly. “Us four utilized our own bodies as our dao fruits, so while I recovered my original empyrean realm under the primitive great dao when we went back to the great wilderness, I was still a being under the immortal dao. That’s how I became an anomaly, and now I’ll teach you how to do the same.”
She took human form as she spoke and tapped between Lu Yun’s brows, imparting her cultivation method to him.
His forehead relaxed and he sank into deep thought, opening his eyes after a very long time. “I’m sure the chaos creatures are aware that I’ve come though, so we need a change of plans.”
He tapped at empty air and sent thirty-six golden soybeans sparkling through space. They transformed into thirty-six youths that looked just like him.
Gritting his teeth, he used the Tome of Life and Death to sever the connection between him and the purple ladder, splitting it into thirty-six copies and sending it into his clones.
His mastery over the death arts had reached astounding heights, so he was able to bestow the Dragonquake Scripture onto each of the thirty-six golden warriors. They took shape as chaos dragons and then transformed back into humans.
Armed with the purple ladder, there was no telling who was the real copy among them. Lu Yun was betting that the chaos creatures didn’t know about the Tome of Life and Death, so that treasure was the only one he could rely on now.
