After teleporting a thousand miles, Li Mu appeared in a secluded valley, surrounded by towering ancient trees and mist-shrouded Spiritual Qi. The moment he stood still, he immediately sensed the terrifying aura, like a shadow, rapidly approaching from behind him.
Li Mu’s expression hardened. He reached out, summoning a Movement Talisman from his storage ring. He quickly formed hand seals and chanted incantations.
“Hmph, if you want to catch me, it depends on your skill!” Li Mu scoffed.
Just as the Undying Demon Lord from the Demon Abyss and the Great Ascension Immortal Lord from the Immortal Spirit Realm revealed their figures, Li Mu forcefully injected his spiritual power into the Movement Talisman. The Talisman instantly burst forth with dazzling light, followed by a spatial-temporal glow that enveloped him.
With a whoosh, Li Mu’s figure instantly vanished from his original spot, and the spatial rift rapidly healed, as if it had never existed.
“He ran again! Let’s see how many Movement Talismans you have!” The Undying Demon Lord from the Demon Abyss roared, his Devilish Qi surging as he transformed into a black streak, pursuing relentlessly.
The Great Ascension Immortal Lord from the Immortal Spirit Realm followed closely, his sword like a startled swan, hot on his heels.
Hundreds of miles away, Li Mu reappeared in a valley filled with towering ancient trees. The residual warmth of the Movement Talisman had not yet dissipated, but he unhesitatingly crushed a second Qiankun Movement Talisman. The moment the Talisman paper activated, his figure instantly disappeared with the spatial-temporal light.
“Boom!”
The Demon Abyss Cultivator’s Blood Escape Demonic Light crashed into Li Mu’s afterimage, pulverizing the entire valley. The Immortal Spirit Realm Immortal Lord formed a sword-finger incantation, and the 'Soul Chasing Plate' in his sleeve locked onto the northwest direction: “Chase!”
A black and a green light, two Great Ascension extreme shadows, tore through the air.
On the vast, sandy Gobi Desert, Li Mu stumbled out of the teleportation. He backhanded three ‘Illusion Body Talismans,’ and the Clones formed by the Talismans sped off in different directions, while his true body crushed an Earth Escape Talisman, activating it instantly.
“Petty tricks!”
Nine ‘Illusion Breaking Golden Needles’ flew out of the Immortal Lord’s sleeve, causing the Clones to explode one after another. The demonic Cultivator summoned a Ground-Devouring Demonic Leech, and a hundred zhang of sandy ground was instantly swallowed by the surging tide of insects, but Li Mu had already used the Earth Escape Talisman to move to a volcano a few miles away.
In the scorching heart of the volcano, Li Mu decisively crushed the fourth Movement Talisman. The Talisman light, carrying the aura of hot magma, shot into the sky, and his figure instantly vanished.
This time, Li Mu appeared deep within a dark forest, surrounded by dense trees that blocked almost all light.
Li Mu knelt on the forest floor, covered in decaying leaves. The continuous use of Movement Talismans for teleportation had caused his body to suffer damage from the powerful backlash.
However, Li Mu ignored the pain and activated another Movement Talisman, using the gray mist as cover to escape.
“Plop!”
Li Mu plunged into an icy cold pond, his spiritual power nearly exhausted. He pulled out his last three Movement Talismans, sticking one to a large rock at the bottom of the pond. He crushed another, activating it while enveloped in the pond’s Yin Qi. The moment the Talisman light shot into the sky, he used Water Escape Art to dive against the current.
“He ran again! How many Movement Talismans does this guy have?!” The Undying Demon Lord from the Demon Abyss roared, his Devilish Qi overflowing, almost destroying the surrounding trees. He transformed into a blood-red rainbow, chasing the Talisman light directly.
The Great Ascension Immortal Lord, however, stared at the lingering Chaos fluctuations at the bottom of the pond, forming a sword-finger incantation: “Part Water!”
The pond water split, revealing the empty bottom. The Great Ascension Immortal Lord’s figure flickered, and he pursued Li Mu in the direction he had fled, riding his sword.
The Great Ascension Demon Lord immediately changed course, following closely behind the Great Ascension Immortal Lord.
At this moment, a thousand miles away in the Northern Region, amidst a blizzard, a spatial-temporal light dissipated, and Li Mu’s figure stumbled out. The continuous use of two Movement Talismans had caused his body to be on the verge of collapse from the backlash.
Just then, two powerful auras rapidly approached from afar. The figures of the Undying Demon Lord from the Demon Abyss and the Great Ascension Immortal Lord from the Immortal Spirit Realm appeared faintly in the blizzard.
Upon seeing Li Mu, both of them were stunned, their eyes filled with confusion and shock!
In the blizzard, “Li Mu” stumbled and sat down, his body covered in spiderweb-like cracks. The Great Ascension Demon Lord, filled with rage and hatred, brought his Blood Fiend Demonic Claw down, but the moment it touched “his” shoulder— “Crack!”
Li Mu’s head snapped off, revealing the dense array of Puppet parts inside.
“Damn it!” The Great Ascension Demon Lord stomped on the ice, causing the snowfield within a ten-mile radius to collapse. He roared, “To be toyed with by a mere inanimate object!”
The Great Ascension Immortal Lord stood silently in the wind and snow. His destined Flying Sword, “Qingxiao,” let out an unwilling clang, and his eyes revealed an undisguised killing intent. He laughed in exasperation: “Good! What a Li Jianxian!”
Soon, the two figures transformed into streaks of light, tearing through the sky and rapidly disappearing. On the snowfield, only the ashes of the Puppet remained, scattered by the wind.
And the true Li Mu, at this moment, was inside the Painting World Treasure Mansion, cultivating in seclusion. The Painting World Treasure Mansion was hidden within the belly of a third-tier Spirit Rock Rat, rapidly fleeing towards the most remote wilderness of the Northern Region.
It turned out that as early as when he activated the teleportation Formation Plate to escape, Li Mu had used a substitute Puppet to take his place, while his true body released his beast and hid inside the Painting World Treasure Mansion.
Inside the Painting World Treasure Mansion, Li Mu sat cross-legged, his face slightly pale, but his eyes gleamed with wisdom and excitement. Helping the Seven Absolutes Dao Pill undergo Tribulation this time had severely depleted his Origin Qi.
Fortunately, he had now turned the corner and was out of danger. However, Li Mu still did not dare to relax his guard.
At this time, the Spirit Rock Rat outside the Painting World Treasure Mansion was enjoying its prey in a cave, while Li Mu, inside the Painting World Treasure Mansion, clearly perceived all movements outside through a small amount of Divine Sense, showing no signs of relaxation.
Indeed, just as Li Mu felt a slight relaxation, an unprecedented pressure suddenly descended from the sky, as if the entire world trembled. This pressure contained the ancient and powerful will of a Demon God, as well as the extraordinary Divine Thought of an Immortal Emperor. The two intertwined, sweeping across the entire wilderness.
The two Divine Thoughts scanned back and forth several times, then collided fiercely, causing the extinction of a vast number of Yao Beasts, before fading away without result, frustrated.
Hidden within the Painting World Treasure Mansion, Li Mu felt the pressure dissipate without result. While secretly Rejoice , he also understood that he must quickly increase his strength. He took a deep breath, a look of determination flashing in his eyes, and then took out the pill bottle containing the Seven Absolutes Dao Pill from his tianxuan ring.
Li Mu’s Divine Thought stirred. The pill bottle gently twisted open its lid, and a rich medicinal fragrance instantly filled the entire Painting World Treasure Mansion. The Seven Absolutes Dao Pill slowly floated up, its surface adorned with seven mysterious patterns that flickered on and off. The ethereal figure of a pill spirit infant curled within, a faint Chaos imprint on its brow trembling slightly, as if startled, showing extreme sentience.
Li Mu took a deep breath, lightly tapping the pill body with his fingertip. Chaos True Essence, like fine threads, seeped into the Dao Pill’s core, drawing it towards him.
“Today, with you as my guide, I shall break through my Bottleneck!”
Before his words faded, the Seven Absolutes Dao Pill suddenly erupted in blinding iridescent light. The pill spirit infant abruptly opened its eyes, letting out a clear, prolonged cry. The Spiritual Qi within the Treasure Mansion surged wildly into the pill body, actually condensing into seven layers of Dao Domain projections in the Void Realm—Limitless, Yin and Yang, Five Elements, Reincarnation, Space-Time, Life and Death, and Chaos. The seven domains intertwined like a wheel, enveloping Li Mu.
“Suppress!”
Li Mu formed hand seals. On the four walls of the cultivation chamber, three hundred and sixty ‘Heavenly Star Nails’ suddenly lit up. These supreme treasures, refined from meteorite cores, had been hidden in the Painting World Void Realm three days prior. At this moment, they transformed into star-chain shackles, firmly suppressing the rampaging pill spirit.
The moment the Seven Absolutes Dao Pill entered his throat, Li Mu’s Sea of Consciousness exploded with countless Chaos Divine Lights. The ethereal figure of the pill spirit infant shrieked and struggled in his Dantian, as seven profound patterns transformed into chains binding his Divine Soul. Each chain corresponded to an unbroken Bottleneck in a layer of the Chaos Dao Scripture—Limitless obscurity, Yin and Yang imbalance, Five Elements disorder, Reincarnation stagnation, Space-Time Chaos, Life and Death irreversibility, and the difficulty of Dao Fusion.
“Today, I shall use you as fuel to burn away these shackles!” Li Mu pointed his fingers like a sword and stabbed into his heart, forcing out nine drops of Chaos Essence Blood. The blood beads hovered in the air, forming a formation, precisely the ‘Chaos Blood Refinement Formation’ recorded in the seventh volume of the Chaos Dao Scripture.
Under the shroud of the Chaos formation light, the pill spirit infant suddenly stiffened. The Chaos imprint on its brow rotated inversely like a vortex, actually sucking all seven profound pattern chains into its body.
First turn, the Limitless Dao pattern disintegrated.
Li Mu’s Physical Body shattered like glazed glass, his bones transforming into Chaos Qi flow, yet they reformed amidst the pill spirit infant’s shriek—each newborn bone was branded with ‘Heaven-Opening’ Dao marks, inhaling and exhaling in harmony with the rhythm of Grandmist’s initial creation.
Second turn, the Yin and Yang Dao Domain became imbalanced.
The left half of his body ignited with sky-burning golden flames, while the right half froze with Mystic Nether True Water. Where ice and fire intertwined, a Yin and Yang fish eye condensed in his Dantian, from which point water and fire would balance, and clear and turbid would separate.
Third turn, the Five Elements wheel dislocated.
His internal organs suddenly left his body, transforming into five-colored light clusters suspended above his head. His liver, belonging to wood, burned with green flames; his heart, belonging to fire, condensed into red crystals; his spleen, belonging to earth, gathered into mountains; his lungs, belonging to metal, transformed into sword glints; and his kidneys, belonging to water, surged with Mystic waves—when the Five Qi converged, a Minor Thousand Worlds formed within his body!
Fourth turn, Li Mu’s Divine Sense suddenly plunged into the long river of time.
He saw himself abandoned in the snowfield as an infant, fighting for survival in Secret Realms as a youth, his Dao foundation collapsing during the Golden Core Stage… Each time a Reincarnation illusion shattered, his Divine Soul solidified by three parts. By the time he broke through the ninth layer of illusion, a ‘Time Dao Seal’ had already appeared on his brow.
Fifth turn, spatial fragments burst from the pores all over his body.
Each fragment reflected a different self from a different space-time—there was a charred corpse struck by Heavenly Lightning, withered bones from a Heart Demon devouring his soul, and a body whose cultivation had dispersed due to a failed Breakthrough. When myriad fragments converged into one, a ‘Great Void Blade’ capable of cutting through the Void Realm appeared on Li Mu’s right palm.
Sixth turn, Li Mu’s heart stopped abruptly.
A sea of Other Shore Flowers appeared in his Sea of Consciousness, their blooming and wilting depicting three thousand ways to die. When he reached out to pluck a withered flower representing ‘death by natural lifespan,’ the stem suddenly transformed into the ethereal image of the ‘Book of Life and Death’—from then on, his fate leaped out of Reincarnation, and life and death were at his will!
Seventh turn, the Chaos Dao Embryo appeared.
The first six Dao Domains collapsed with a roar, condensing into a chicken-egg-sized Chaos light cluster in Li Mu’s Dantian. Each time the light cluster pulsed, it devoured thirty percent of the Painting World Treasure Mansion’s Spiritual Qi. After nine pulses, the Spiritual Veins accumulated over a thousand years within the Treasure Mansion were actually sucked dry, turning into a barren wasteland!
“Boom—!”
The instant the Chaos Dao Embryo exploded, Chaos Dao Rhyme gushed from every pore on Li Mu’s body. His hair transformed into a galaxy of flowing starlight, golden lotuses emerged from the ground with each breath, and thunder erupted in the Void Realm with each step. The Chaos Movement, which previously required hand seals to cast, now only needed a slight thought, and a thousand miles of rivers and mountains would shrink beneath his feet like a painting scroll.
Eighth Turn: Chaos Unification
The Chaos Dao Embryo pulsed like thunder, and the seven layers of Dao Domain projections suddenly collapsed into seven ancient Dao pattern characters. The characters ‘Limitless,’ ‘Yin and Yang,’ ‘Five Elements,’ ‘Reincarnation,’ ‘Space-Time,’ ‘Life and Death,’ and ‘Chaos’ linked end to end, forming a ring-shaped Dao Wheel in Li Mu’s Sea of Consciousness. The moment the Dao Wheel rotated, the Painting World Treasure Mansion exploded with a roar—
“Crack!”
A speck of Chaos light leaped out from the Painting World Treasure Mansion within the Spirit Rock Rat’s belly. The speck of light grew into a ten-thousand-zhang Dao Embryo as it met the wind. Above the Northern Region wilderness, the raging blizzard suddenly halted, and every snowflake reflected scenes of Li Mu’s cultivation over the years: planting spirit fields in the Qingxuan Sect, Undergoing Nascent Soul Tribulation, refining Soul Transformation Clones, fiercely battling the Undying Demon Lord…
“All that has passed is my Dao foundation!” Li Mu’s long cry shattered the myriad snow curtains. Three hundred and sixty acupoints appeared on the surface of the Chaos Dao Embryo. Each acupoint formed its own universe, devouring and drawing the entire wilderness’s Spiritual Qi into the Painting World Treasure Mansion like a whale!
Ninth Turn: Dao Resonance
As the last wisp of Spiritual Qi entered the Dao Embryo, Li Mu’s Divine Soul suddenly left his body, seeing his Chaos Dao Embryo floating in the nine heavens. Below it was the Central Continent, curled up like an infant, and above it was the Chaos long river, spanning across all heavens—
“So that’s how it is!”
Li Mu’s Divine Soul rushed out of the Painting World Treasure Mansion, transforming into a streak of light that merged into the Dao Embryo. The Chaos long river suddenly reversed, and each time the river water washed over the Dao Embryo, it stripped away a layer of illusory Dao Rhyme. After nine washes, the Dao Embryo actually shrunk to the size of a thumb, yet it was as solid as ancient Mystic iron.
“Rumble—!”
The entire Central Continent Spirit Realm’s sky suddenly unleashed a Chaos Lightning Tribulation. This lightning was neither black nor white, but a constantly collapsing and reforming Chaos vortex. Li Mu, controlling the Chaos Dao Embryo, did not dodge or evade, allowing the lightning to strike—
The first bolt of lightning burned away the Impurities in his Physical Body, and ‘Chaos Lightning Marks’ appeared on his skin;
The second bolt of lightning tempered the Origin of his Divine Soul, and ‘Dao Thought Crystals’ condensed in his Sea of Consciousness;
The third bolt of lightning broke open the shackles of his spiritual apertures. All three hundred and sixty acupoints resonated, each seeming to transform into a bridge connecting heaven and earth, breathing in Chaos Qi;
The fourth bolt of lightning forged Chaos Dao Bones. Li Mu’s Chaos Dao Body reshaped its bones in the lightning, becoming indestructible, as if it could bear the weight of heaven and earth;
The fifth bolt of lightning purified his Dantian and Qi Sea. The Chaos Dao Embryo rotated within, transforming the power of the Lightning Tribulation into endless cultivation, making Li Mu’s spiritual power even more profound;
The sixth bolt of lightning awakened the potential of his Spiritual Veins. The Spiritual Veins of the Central Continent seemed to resonate with Li Mu, and a continuous stream of Spiritual Qi poured into his body, providing him with endless power;
The seventh bolt of lightning condensed his Dao Spells and Divine Abilities. The various Spells Li Mu Cultivated merged in the lightning, transforming into even more powerful Divine Abilities, their might shaking heaven and earth;
The eighth bolt of lightning opened up a Grotto-Heaven Blessed Land. A chaotic Grotto-Heaven suddenly emerged in Li Mu’s Sea of Consciousness, complete with mountains, rivers, sun, moon, and stars. This was his future cultivation ground and the Origin of his Dao;
When the ninth bolt of lightning struck, the Chaos Dao Embryo and his Divine Soul completely merged. The moment Li Mu opened his eyes, billions of living beings across the entire Central Continent bowed before him. Golden lotuses emerged from the ground, and auspicious omens descended from the sky like sweet dew—this was the Heavenly Dao’s congratulatory Dao Completion phenomenon for the birth of a Mahayana.
The moment the heavenly phenomenon descended, two ten-thousand-zhang cracks suddenly appeared in the sky. From the left crack, a giant claw entwined with Nine Nether Demonic Flame emerged—the Undying Demon God’s true body had arrived! From the right crack, a Phoenix burning with seven-colored divine flames flew out. The Celestial Phoenix Immortal Emperor’s World-Burning Feather Robe illuminated half of the Central Continent! (End of Chapter)
