It was difficult for regular cultivators, even third ranks, to reach one thousand squares. Yet for these overlords, it’d taken them only a split second.
Li Hao was fully immersed in the chessboard now, it was like he was in another realm entirely. He didn’t dawdle, nor did he seek to blast off and catch up from behind. That didn’t mean anything to people at their level.
The young man was very familiar with these daos and walked through their squares like he was taking a stroll through a park. He made quick work of them, collecting all of the dao strength and turning them into a ball of light. A thousand daos were gathered and he was through with a loud rumble of his own!
It was echoed twice in the surroundings.
......
On the ground.
Jaws dropped in the crowd. This was too fast! The five exalted emperors had taken only a heartbeat to pass one thousand squares.
“Comparison is absolutely the thief of joy!” some muttered mournfully. “I’m a third rank, but I’ve only reached 999 squares. Who knows how much longer it will take for me to pass the final one thousandth?”
But these guys had ripped straight through one thousand! That was too fast! Was the gap between them that big?
“The Human King seems to be the fastest...”
“It’s normal to start off strong. They passed at almost the same time...” The crowd watched raptly. They couldn’t actually see anything, just a few shadows walking through the chessboards in the air. The five were having no issues at all and were a completely different sight from the difficulties that regular exalted emperors normally encountered.
......
To Li Hao and the rest, the first five or six thousand squares were not a challenge at all. The young man set his own pace, ignoring the sounds coming from the two sides. He just wanted to keep to his own dao and perfect it, consolidating it.
He’d reached a lot of new reflections about the great dao lately, but hadn’t had time to digest them. There were similar daos in the dao chess that could help him round out his knowledge.
His third set of one thousand worlds was not yet fully complete. He wanted to center them around desire, so took his time when he encountered any daos related to desire or emotion. The young man made sure to carefully perceive the differences within them.
The daos within the dao chess might not be the same as the ones in Skyward. But since it was a treasure that the world master had left behind, their origin was the same.
Li Hao crafted more worlds as he walked. Worlds started revolving around him. He enjoyed one advantage compared to the others—he was inside Allheaven Hall with his primary body. He wasn’t a mental entity, a detail in which not even the Human King measured up to him.
The other guys might not be able to ensure victory over Li Hao, if the young man decided to force his way through. Their primary bodies would have to be here to do that. It was just, there wasn’t much meaning to crashing through the chessboard.
The seven emotions and six sensory pleasures are only an aspect of desire...
Li Hao thought of the dao of emotion that Gan Wuliang cultivated. There were a lot of similarities between the two as they were complementary. All desire had to do with emotion. Whether it was greed or envy, those were external displays of emotion.
Take the young man, for example. He dearly wished to revive his brother and parents. That was an eruption of emotion as well—an extreme eruption. Was this greed or something else?
He’d defeated the reincarnation of life and death with this greed!
So how could he integrate them into a cohesive whole?
Various notions rose in his mind and Li Hao waved worlds into being by his side. There were ones of anger, despair, hopelessness, greed, lust...
Everything was here.
The dao of desire imparted some spirit to the great dao...
In the young man’s eyes, emotion had much to do with a dao’s spirit. The great dao was heartless...
Comparatively speaking, a dao without emotion meant that of disorder, of chaos!
True dao of order should have emotion. It might be calm or ripple with another sentiment. These were all emotions and desire.
If one dao flowed smoothly, then all daos would flow smoothly.
Li Hao continued to contemplate the topic at hand as he walked, quickly passing through two thousand squares!
......
At the same time.
Daoist Chaos Sky continued to walk like he was passing through level terrain. He occasionally stopped for a bit of observation, but didn’t study the dao in detail. He simply looked at it quietly.
This was space!
He knew that this wasn’t a complete spatial dao as the Skyward master might not have etched a complete copy of it on the dao chess, but this was still immensely worth of analysis and self-reflection.
“What is the difference between real space and the space here?”
Was it in the rules?
The daos here were dead, created through artificial effort and not true chaos dao.
Space... chaos was one unified whole to begin with and space everywhere to be found. Anywhere was space...
Chaos Sky headed steadily forward, no longer lingering. Perhaps he would see more only after he reached the end of the chessboard.
Dao rules materialized around him—many of them. They were a dense array that melded into the surroundings. The man kept walking, his speed so fast it was startling.
......
“Three thousand!”
“Venerated Chaos Sky is a bit faster than the rest of them. He reached three thousand so quickly!”
“That’s right!”
Those outside couldn’t see anything and only had the rumbles of each one thousandth square to go off of. Chaos Sky’s board had already rang three times.
The Human King was close behind him, then Spring Autumn.
And finally, Long Zhan.
Li Hao seemed to be slower this time, taking a while longer to reach three thousand.
“Dao Master Hao Moon... seems to have slowed down.”
“That’s to be expected, he’s a bit weaker after all. The rest are veteran exalted emperors, except for the Human King...”
The Human King was also very young, but he was older than Li Hao in this group. Therefore, he counted as part of the veterans too.
“Then it looks like the dao master is going to lose.”
“Let’s keep watching!”
“......” Despite not being able to see what was going on, the crowd remained highly excited.
......
“Dao... spirit...” Li Hao sunk into deep contemplation after stopping at a particular square.
The dao contained a spirit
The daos within the dao chess did not contain a spirit. Hence, they were just models. The Skyward master had not infused a key component into the treasure.
The spirit!
Without spirit, any work to assemble the great dao would end up with nothing, to say nothing of whether success was actually possible. A cultivator wouldn’t actually assemble spatial dao.
At ninth rank, while one wouldn’t go so far as to say that all daos possessed spirit, core daos certainly would.
Li Hao had reached the dao of joy, this was one of the daos of ten thousand. He’d also coalesced a world of this dao and after a moment of thought, incorporated his own joy into it.
But it wasn’t concentrated or strong enough.
Nurturing the spirit... I’m still lacking in this regard. Teacher said a long time ago that nurturing dao meridians and dao spirits are similar to raising a child...
Li Hao’s mind wandered to the aura again. There was spirit in aura!
He’d practiced the Five Styles for a very long time and once coalesced auras for each of the five elements. At least one of them bore a very strong spirit—the ferocious tiger of the heart!
That was a spirit formed from the aura, but also the fires of fury from Li Hao’s own emotions.
Aura... spirit... dao spirit... great dao!
Li Hao raised an eyebrow. He’d almost forgotten about this.
The world of fire!
He quickly summoned his world of fire. There was a supernatural character inside that’d transformed into the great dao. There seemed to be a tiger crouched within. It breathed on its own and operated the art of fire!
Li Hao had previously only thought that it was relatively easier to utilize the projection of fire. But today, he suddenly wondered if the tiger of fire counted as a spirit?
And it was a spirit that he’d raised himself, one of emotion!
This was a spirit of fury. When the young man observed the tiger trapped in the cage, the flames of his heart had ignited. This was how the ferocious tiger exiting the cage had come to be.
“Fury! Fire!”
Emotions also mapped to the five elements!
New enlightenment dawned on Li Hao as the idea rose in his mind. Silver Moon’s aura was a very unique concept and Silver Moon was born of the star of time. The star itself possessed a certain degree of spirit.
In that case, if the aura could become part of great dao, then wasn’t nurturing the aura a way of nurturing dao and giving birth to spirit?
“If that’s the case...”
Then that meant there was the method to nurture dao spirits within the star of time. He’d overlooked it once again and had even thought of incorporating people into dao!
He was wrong!
He should be incorporating the aura!
“This was a misstep! I see! So the birth of martial masters is meant to coordinate the nurturing of dao spirits!” Li Hao laughed with understanding. When his teacher spoke of nurturing the aura being the same as nurturing the spirit...
The young man had listened only halfheartedly.
Perhaps his teacher hadn’t been able to fully express his real thoughts. But now, his teacher might want to say that if dao meridians were under one’s firm control, then they would be stronger. Nurturing the dao meridians well meant nurturing the great dao well, which meant that the great dao possessed spirit!
And he’d never thought of this!
“Supernatural characters... Auras... The person from the future had countless supernatural characters, all with some spirit in them. I finally get it this time!”
Only now did Li Hao clear the last cobwebs in his mind. The art of nurturing spirit!
That was what was intended by the way of cultivating the aura.
With that in mind, Li Hao suddenly crooked his finger at the tiger within the world of fire.
“Aren’t you mad?” he grinned. “I locked you up again, poor thing...”
The tiger seemed to be sentient! It was an aura formed from Li Hao’s cultivation, but it threw its head back to the sky with a furious roar.
The fire tiger of the heart bounded out of the cage!
It was an existence that was supposed to roam freely, but was once again trapped. It was very irritated that it was sitting in residence at the world of fire.
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