Cooked.
This has been the verdict ringing inside my mind.
…
I shook my head as I opened the hotel room. There, Kiana is ditating. For ten days, she focused on raising her realm. Her realm rose visibly with the spiritual milk and my Gift of Tao.
As expected, the upgraded Gift of Tao cut off half of her needed ti. The progress of my breakthrough is included on that. It went from two months to less than one month. That computation includes the spiritual milk.
We had to book an entire month to the AirBnB equivalent of this Earth. Kiana does not co out except for eating. She chose to stay in Shenzhou City for a month. She even postponed her search for Siegfried.
Kiana made another surprising argunt at that ti.
Once she’s stronger, it will be easier to find her old man… or so she says.
I complied. In the anti, I spent ti cultivating and learning about forbidden techniques.
That’s right.
They are the techniques that, at the cost of overdrawing yourself, grants you unprecedented power. I chose not the strongest, but the one with the best cost-effect ratio.
[Nine Lives Burning Samsara Art] is a forbidden technique that burns lifespan in exchange of power. The more lifespan consud, the greater the power gained. It essentially uses lifespan as a fuel to bring one's "potential self". It is the highest level lifespan burning technique involving ti.
A Foundation Establishnt might have the power of a Golden Core; a more talented Foundation Establishnt might reach the Nascent Soul Realm.
Its final level talks about burning nine lives' worth of lifespan, wiping out one's existence from the past, present, and future.
My fight with Parvati spawned that need. Well, not that final level. Just the first level will do.
Everything’s fine up to the templars. They mostly do physical attacks. Their variants can spew out elental attacks.
They don’t have Dao Rhys.
That’s the crucial point. As long as they do not have Dao Rhys, I can fight dozens of them. Everything changes with emperor-classes. Parvati possessed one.
Thankfully, they have a flaw.
A standard Dao Rhy cannot be affected by Foundation Establishnt attacks… Yet I did. It showed that they are not sitting at the Purple Mansion Realm, which I feared.
If I can describe them…
They are fake cultivators.
The ones with unstable foundation, hastily done cultivation, usage of forbidden techniques...
Parvati is a fake Purple Mansion Realm.
I struck Parvati with a physical attack first. That’s with the help of twenty minutes’ worth of montum from [Cloud Seeking Steps]. That physical blow should be at the Late Stage of Foundation Establishnt.
Unfortunately, Parvati can turn into an elental state. It avoided death by changing from its physical form. Ultimately, the [Daluo Sword Art] that temporarily pushed my sword cultivation to the third realm dealt with it.
Parvati's vulnerability showed its weakness.
It has a physical body belonging to a Foundation Establishnt Realm.
Its authority (qi) belongs to the Purple Mansion Realm.
Its mind belongs to Foundation Establishnt Realm.
The biggest caveat is its authority. It is a Purple Mansion Realm authority that can be broken by spiritual qi and ntal attacks.
If this is how the honkai does things…
Honkai is a minmaxxer. It pushes its points to one attribute while leaving the rest out.
Immortal cultivation is the opposite. It advocates all-around improvent. aning, a cultivator reaching 100 INT has every other stat at 100 too.
They will crush the one who focused on minmaxing. Moreover, the minmaxxer's skills will have flaws that can be beaten by people with lower levels than them.
Honkai is a minmaxer; Immortal cultivation is an all-arounder.
Honkai's title as a fake cultivator won't fade away.
I reached my limits on Parvati. The [Daluo Sword Art] consud eighty percent of my spiritual qi to bring it down in one strike. Undoubtedly, there are better ways to deal with them that consus less. It's just that it would be a death battle when it cos against Herrschers. They outclass emperor-classes to a huge degree.
Fortunately, Herrschers’ bodies are not as tough as I thought. Welt Yang confird it.
They can live in vacuums like Golden Core Realm cultivators, but their physical strength is absurdly lower than that. They rely more on their Herrscher Authorities to bring devastating destruction.
As for their limits, I don’t know.
Their ability to exert influence in higher dinsions already belongs to the Golden Core Realm… but that would be too absurd. I am more inclined to think that their authorities have drawbacks.
They can exert authorities of Purple Mansion to the Golden Core. This weird scaling exists since their true power belongs to the Cocoon of Finality; it is bestowed, not truly their own.
aning, they can be faced by cultivators with lower realm than them due to their minmaxxing weaknesses.
Their bodies is weaker than a Foundation Establishnt Realm. Only their authorities are important.
My biggest worry did not lie on them, however.
I took out a folded paper inside my storage ring. These are the test results of the samples I sent over to Anti-Entropy. My eyes fell to a line of text regarding my honkai adaptability.
They conducted two types of tests on my samples: with and without spiritual qi.
In the tests without spiritual qi, one thing stood out from the rest.
My honkai adaptability is insanely high.
The live experint we did earlier is related to it. Honkai energy is inserted into my body. I… no, we wanted to see how my body would react.
Surprisingly, the two energies did not conflict. The honkai energy simply flowed in my body, remaining dormant in the molecular levels.
It changed when the concentration reached one thousand honkai welt. The dormant honkai energy began to react. It beca active.
At the cost of destroying my bodily functions, it tried to raise my physical limits higher. My body began to cascade.
That was when spiritual qi began to act. It did not clash directly with honkai energy. It chose to repair the damages caused. My spiritual qi worked to repair its damages. That ford a tempering effect.
With one destroying and one repairing, my physical cultivation skyrocketed. The concentration my body holds is stronger than before.
Although, it left weak. I have to rest for a day to restore my peak state.
Honkai turned out to be another cheat to immortal cultivation. Using two different power systems gave this result. The destruction caused by honkai can be healed with spiritual qi, in turn making stronger. The recovery effect brought by a high-end technique like [Ten Directions Body Art] is insane.
Still…
My nightmares from before.
Every effect has a cause. My previous nightmares and inexplicable tiredness have a cause.
With my high compatibility with honkai, it spells out one thing.
The Will of Honkai…
It might be interested on . My biggest confusion lies in the absence of weak ntality. I did not experience shitty things like Sirin and i.
This missing point is the one making uneasy. It also happened whenever I enter the [Eminence] state of [Blade Mantra]. I can feel sothing is about to go wrong... that my days of peace are numbered.
For the first ti, my ntal state got shaken to this extent. My [Sword Nurturing Pagoda] could not grow under a weak ntal state. It might even regress in realm.
The special nature of this uneasy feeling no longer exists within internal doubts. Sothingis affecting my mind to this great extent.
The other things, I am unsure. Only, this will involve my death.
If left unattended, I will die!
…
Courting death.
I am bound to do this at so point.
Why am I backing out now?
Everything I did since the beginning is not useless.
I won’t back down.
That uneasy feeling... I will deal with it once it cos.
No matter how it turns up.
Cling-!
A bell’s chi responded to my thoughts.
My sight shifted to endless darkness. The transcendental, rational, and emotionless ntal state of Taixuan/Eminence (Grand Void). I am brought inside my ntal landscape. It happened without reciting the Blade Mantra.
The sense of unease appeared for the nth ti. My instincts are afraid of entering this space... but I don't know why.
Nevertheless, it did not impede from using [Blade Mantra]. I didn't face any drawbacks too.
My worries started to turn into nothingness. I can feel nothing. I am an unfeeling god of this world.
This feeling worsened. I am starting to go beyond the limits of what human cognition can achieve.
I looked down. It is an endless chasm of darkness.
Emptiness…
How can it be borne by one person?
A strange thought appeared inside my mind.
Fu Hua’s words inside the ga rang.
“I do not regret the shattering of my Eminence.”
The breakage of her [Eminence] liberated her from the subconscious need to show no rcy to honkai. To that, she is grateful.
Taixuan (Eminence) is the sa. I received it without any drawbacks. Except for that uneasy feeling, of course.
However…
Is Eminence truly right?
Can you only gain power when your mind is as still as water?
Immortal Cultivation answers that.
No.
Immortal cultivators are not unfeeling gods. Their will equates to their agenda. They have their needs and wants. Mimicking the objectivity and equalness of Dao (nature) erases one's free will..!
Crack-!
At this mont, I felt liberated. The uneasy feeling it brings started to dissipate to the sidelines.
A line of white crack appeared in the darkness beneath .
Crack-!
Crack-!
…
The cracks completely shattered the darkness. It revealed the sa white light I saw the mont I acquired Blade Mantra.
Taixuan is the emptiness of oneself. It is cutting off one’s emotions, tuning the mind to an extre ntal state.
Immortal Cultivators are not like that. Their will takes priority over the Dao. It is their will that is eternal. One becos akin to heaven, yet they do not treat everyone like straw dogs.
Taixuan is not the end. The [Eminence] ntal state is flawed. Every fiber of my being is sure of it.
The fifth and new realm represents the purity of thoughts. The unchanging will to go against all enemies.
The first excerpt of Heart Sutra popped up in my head.
In emptiness, there is form.
The level beyond [Taixuan]...
[True Form].
That’s what it will be called.
*****
A/N: An upcoming tiskip next. The scaling between honkai and immortal cultivation is sothing we'll need later...
User Comments
0 comments from readers