Chapter 751 - 471: The Path to Ascension (Part 2)

Chapter 751: Chapter 471: The Path to Ascension (Part 2)

Having discussed so much about the Heavenly Dao, what exactly is it? According to modern understanding of traditional culture, it’s speculated that the Heavenly Dao might be a kind of universal rule, such as stones falling when thrown, creatures aging and dying, plants withering, and tools corroding—these are all universal rules, collectively referred to by ancient people as the Heavenly Dao.

But this understanding is too superficial. Wang Ye’s comprehension of the Heavenly Dao is more akin to something in the microscopic world, intangible yet controlling everything in the macroscopic world.

But everything in the world has its counterpart,

Black and white, heaven and earth.

The counterpart of the Heavenly Dao is the Human Path—the operational law of human society.

The Human Path is opposite to the Heavenly Dao; it symbolizes acquisition, competition, aggregation, taking from the less to serve the more.

Acts aligned with the Heavenly Dao, like helping the weak and following universal rules, can increase merit. Acts aligned with the Human Path, like seizing resources and self-enhancement, can decrease merit.

In terms of results, both can make oneself stronger—except the former borrows the protection of the Heavenly Dao, while the latter seizes nourishment from all things.

Humanity seizes the resources of all things, presses other species, enhances itself, and nurtures its own Primordial Spirit, which brought about today’s advanced intelligent life.

And simultaneously within humanity, this seizing from others to strengthen oneself is ongoing.

The stronger one’s Primordial Spirit, the more intelligent they become, and their fortune also enhances, increasing their influence on others.

But some people, such as those in Buddhism and Daoism, have created a method to borrow resources from the Heavenly Dao—that is accumulating merit and blessings.

And the virtual existence Wang Ye perceived after his breakthrough is exactly merit. In simple terms, it’s a "chip" for acquiring things from the Heavenly Dao.

According to traditional culture, merit is the only chip ordinary people have to exchange things with the Heavenly Dao. Accumulate enough merit, and one may obtain things originally not belonging to them from the Heavenly Dao, such as luck, blessings, or transcendence from reincarnation. However, these expressions are artistically refined. Essentially, the only thing humans gain is the Divine.

Just like his existence after Primordial Spirit Emergence, able to penetrate all matter but still influence reality. When the Divine is strong enough, it can influence reality, summon desired things and friendly people or animals, and when strong enough, move objects with thought, known as telekinesis.

According to ancient summaries, there are two paths to strengthen the Divine. The first is to cultivate the heart, do good deeds, accumulate merit, and achieve spiritual perfection naturally. The second is to cultivate fate, make oneself robust, drive spiritual uplift, and thus influence the world. Overall, the second path is certainly more arduous than the first, because the physical limits of ordinary people determine that strengthening the body is necessarily tough and slow.

Wang Ye is clearly on the second path. Because from the beginning, he relied on evolution to obtain telekinesis, and during evolution, he devoured a massive amount of food, which is also a form of resource plundering. While he was filling his stomach, countless lives starved to death due to resource shortage, and these starved lives became a part of him. The Creation Skill he practiced before is the same; the Breathing Technique of absorbing Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi is to transform things from nature for personal use.

By reasoning, he should be a typical example of strengthening through cultivating fate.

But he doesn’t understand why his merit is overwhelmingly abundant. The collective merit of an entire city is still less than his own.

If we say that the merit of those on the ground is like stars in the sky, then the current Wang Ye is a blazing sun hanging in the firmament.

Countless merits continuously absorb more energy into his body, and this energy doesn’t originate from the real world but from the microscopic world’s Heavenly Dao.

This is why the Samadhi True Fire he releases doesn’t deplete his energy and seems to defy energy conservation. In reality, the energy of the Samadhi True Fire also comes from the so-called Heavenly Dao.

"I don’t think I’ve done any good deeds?" Wang Ye couldn’t help but scratch his head, feeling bewildered.

According to ancient scriptures, merit is gained by doing good deeds. Moreover, when doing good deeds, one must have no utilitarian mindset, or else merit cannot be obtained. Therefore, only monks who selflessly do good for decades might have a chance to strengthen their spirit and become high monks.

From Wang Ye’s reasoning just now, the fundamental principle of obtaining merit is actually conforming to the Heavenly Dao.

The Heavenly Dao represents universal rules, essentially maintaining balance, robbing the rich to give to the poor.

But even Wang Ye didn’t realize,

that his usual actions are actually highly aligned with the Heavenly Dao.

Everyone must know that humanity has seized all world resources over the past million years to become global overlords, hindering the proliferation of countless other beings. And the Heavenly Dao symbolizes compensating the deficient. So, to some extent, killing is actually a way to align with the Heavenly Dao.

The key lies in whether the act of killing is selfish or altruistic.

If selfish, it leans toward the Human Path.

If altruistic, it leans toward the Heavenly Dao.

For instance, like Thanos snapping his fingers to adhere to the balance rules of the Heavenly Dao, thereby gaining endless merit.

The world is idealistic; a moment’s thought can influence many things.

Killing for personal gain only leads to a decrease in merit, so those who have killed hundreds or thousands cannot accumulate merit.

After evolution, Wang Ye also lost the so-called utilitarian mindset; hormones can no longer affect his emotions,

making his thinking align perfectly with the style of the Heavenly Dao.

He acts without a strong desire for personal gain.

Over time, Wang Ye’s merit became so complete. However, he didn’t initially train skills to realize merit, so it had little effect on him, at most improving his luck slightly. Now, after mastering Samadhi True Fire, he can truly use this cosmic energy called merit for energy release.

Even though the energy his merit can mobilize now still can’t compare with his own energy release, as he grows stronger, his improvement will surely reach a bottleneck. By then, merit can play the dominant role, becoming his main method to mobilize energy. After all, merit doesn’t need to consume personal energy and can directly mobilize cosmic energy, inherently having a certain advantage and not falling into the predicament of energy shortage.

Moreover, after sensing merit and the Heavenly Dao, Wang Ye also comprehended the real method of becoming an immortal.

The concept of "immortal" is created by ancient people, with the radical for "people" and the character "mountain," symbolizing that the existence of an immortal is higher than mountains, which were already the highest existence ancient people could imagine under the sky. "Immortal" was therefore a beautiful fantasy of humanity, imagining higher existences, higher-dimensional creators. It served as a spiritual pillar for impoverished and suffering people, imagining that higher-dimensional "immortals" could help them.

But Wang Ye, through skills gained from system upgrades, glimpsed a real path to immortality.

That is, through enhancing merit, making the cosmic energy he can mobilize more and more.

Until he can mobilize the energy of the entire universe, controlling nearly all of the Heavenly Dao, he becomes a Saint.

Afterward, he would replace the Heavenly Dao, becoming the Heavenly Dao.

In other words, he would become the entire cosmos.

But this path of ascension is too long, too long. Wang Ye, who has not even left Earth, starts imagining controlling the entire universe, which seems too much like a fool’s talk.

But there’s one undeniable point: this ascension path is indeed reasonable and existing.

Clearing up the future direction of evolution, Wang Ye suddenly felt clear and enlightened. Mastering the means of mobilizing cosmic energy means that in the future, he doesn’t have to painstakingly seek harder materials in the cosmos to replace muscle and bone and other body tissues. He only needs to find enough Extraterrestrial Crystal Clusters for Refining the Spirit. As long as the Divine is strong enough, he can mobilize enough cosmic energy to protect himself, preventing external harm. This is far more convenient than seeking hard materials everywhere, and with the system’s daily automatic evolution, becoming an immortal is just around the corner.

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