Chapter 387: Dao Fruit

With Yaoguang subjugating the last two Void-Refining Realm fiendish cultivators beneath the Heaven-Sealing Stele and refining another two into his grotto-heaven, the Yin Lunar Sect's attack finally came to an end.

Wu Changfeng, Qi Sha, Ling Ruogu, Chi Yu, Li Hanqiu, Wan Liugui, and the others resumed their duties, maintaining order in the Southern Capital.

Not that there was much order left to maintain.

Once word spread that Yaoguang had slain every last one of the invaders—two Void-Shattering and five Void-Refining fiendish cultivators—everyone in the Southern Capital turned meek and obedient, whether they came from other powers or enjoyed the backing of Heavenly Dao Sect experts.

Every command handed down from the domain lord's residence was carried out without reservation.

Even though the Heavenly Dragon-Slaying Array had been active for more than half a month, cutting off all contact with the outside world, no one raised so much as a complaint. Everyone quietly cooperated with the domain lord's residence and waited for the great battle to come to a close while staying in their own homes.

From time to time, people would gaze up at the sky above the domain lord's residence with awe and fervor. There, Yaoguang's grotto-heaven remained visible, refining fiendish cultivator after fiendish cultivator!

Those fiendish cultivators were so powerful that even the occasional wisps of heavenly fiend origin qi leaking out were enough to make countless cultivators' skin crawl. These were terrifying existences that could scramble the psychic minds of countless Golden Core cultivators and make their cultivation deviate with just the briefest contact.

Yet before the lord of their southern domain, the great deputy sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect, Yaoguang, even these powerful cultivators could not escape subjugation, slaughter, and refinement.

With an expert like this protecting the Southern Capital, and with the rules he had established over the past few years, he seemed intent on steering things toward order. It gave everyone living in the Southern Capital a sense of security they had never known before.

***

Above the domain lord's residence, Yaoguang was refining one Void-Shattering and two Void-Refining fiendish cultivators at the same time. Even for him, this was no easy task.

Proceeding like this took him considerably longer, and the heavenly fiend origin the fiendish cultivators detonated in their desperate resistance had also further damaged his grotto-heaven. He would need even more time afterward to restore it.

Still, he didn't hesitate. He was fully confident that he'd have enough time.

As the Dark Fiend Lord's resistance faded away, Yaoguang immediately turned his attention to his mental world, settling on the Daemon Hunter branch. Sensing the dense, almost tangible streams of light flowing along it, he let out a soft sigh. "That should be enough."

Without any hesitation, he swiftly guided the light from the Daemon Hunter branch into the Immortal Dao branch.

The next moment, the branch, which had already been at 45% progress, rapidly bloomed and bore fruit, growing to the very limit of what its current tier allowed.

Upon reaching that limit, the branch seemed to stall for quite some time. But the experience accumulated from refining and slaying one Void-Refining and two Void-Shattering cultivators was simply too vast.

As it continued pouring in, the stagnation finally gave way, and the limit was broken.

The Immortal Dao branch, which had been nothing more than an ordinary bough of the ancient tree, transformed in an instant into something like jade, suffused with a transparent, glass-like quality.

As the branch changed, the excess energy flowing into it began surging back into the ancient tree itself, as though the entire tree was about to transform, radiating glazed luster and brilliant light.

The change lasted only a moment before grinding to a halt.

The energy was not enough!

Though the whole tree now shone with a faint light, only the Immortal Dao branch had fully turned that glazed jade color, while the Refiner branch had undergone a partial transformation.

The remaining branches, Array Caster, Alchemist, Merchant, and Daemon Hunter, all stayed in their ordinary state, gaining at most a faint glow.

"Just like when advancing from the Golden Core Realm to the Void-Piercing Realm, the whole tree has to transform?" Yaoguang realized what was happening.

But compared to the leap from the Golden Core Realm to the Void-Piercing Realm, the leap from the Void-Shattering Realm to Dao integration seemed far greater.

After all, his advancement to the Void-Piercing Realm had merely required merging essence, qi, and psyche into one, fusing Martial Dao, Qi Dao, and Psyche Dao into the single Immortal Dao.

But advancing to Dao integration required raising each of his existing branches to a sufficiently high level, thereby fundamentally transforming the ancient tree itself.

In other words, it required his high-dimensional cognition to undergo a transformation.

He had a premonition that once he completed this transformation, the world his high-dimensional cognition perceived would change entirely. It would be like viewing an ant's world through human eyes.

If his current self was a child, able only to observe the limited area he lived in and touched, then after the transformation he would become an adult, free to walk every corner of the mountains and plains, seeing boundless worlds an ant could never imagine or reach in its lifetime. With the right conditions, he could even go to those places.

But the process would likely be a long one.

Not that long, actually!

Yaoguang's psychic mind quickly settled on the Daemon Hunter branch. If his judgment was right, those two Void-Shattering fiendish cultivators had contributed roughly 70% progress to his Immortal Dao branch.

He glanced at the Refiner and Array Caster branches. Judging from the changes in their glazed texture, they would need to reach level 16 before possessing the foundation for complete transformation.

And not just those two; the other branches all seemed to be the same. Fortunately, the other branches required far less to grow than the Immortal Dao branch. Yaoguang quickly calculated what it would take to nurture every branch to level 16...

Between fifteen and twenty Void-Shattering cultivators hunted and slain, or between one hundred fifty and two hundred Dao Artifacts forged.

With high-grade or top-grade Dao Artifacts, the required count would drop further. At his current refining speed, refining one Dao Artifact per decade was a safe estimate. If things went smoothly, one hundred and fifty artifacts would take less than a thousand years; if not, two thousand.

For a Void-Piercing Realm cultivator with boundless lifespan, spending two thousand years in exchange for a chance at becoming a Dao Lord was hardly too long to wait.

"An added complication," Yaoguang remarked. "And here I thought I'd reach the Dao Lord Realm with ease."

He carefully sensed the volume of information within the ancient tree, and soon understood the reason. His high-dimensional cognition had indiscriminately absorbed all knowledge, yet much of it was of no practical use.

The nature of high-dimensional cognition simply forced him to learn everything. It was like exam-oriented education: some material never needed to be studied at all, but the insistence on being comprehensive and flawless in every respect massively inflated the workload and wasted time and energy for no reason.

Then again, becoming a Dao Lord is the greatest transformation on the path of cultivation. Once someone becomes a Dao Lord, understanding one thing lets them grasp a hundred others. My comprehension of the Heavenly Dragon-Slaying Array is the perfect example. Yaoguang thought.

Yaoguang raised his head and gazed at the curtain of light shrouding the Southern Capital. The Heavenly Dragon-Slaying Array's construction was nothing sophisticated; it relied on the fact that enough raw power could create miracles, and nothing more.

A top architect could design a thousand-meters-tall tower, drawing on untold reserves of professional knowledge, so that once built, anyone would have to call it an architectural wonder.

But for a cultivator, someone who possessed mountain-toppling, sea-overturning divine abilities, wouldn't it be far easier to carry over a ten-thousand-meter mountain, refine it into a pillar, and plant it in the earth? Who would dare say that was not a wonder? Who would dare say that was not a miracle of architecture?

That was exactly what the Heavenly Dragon-Slaying Array was.

For Dao Lords, these brute-force miracles let them easily lay down level 13 arrays. With a little study of array art materials, they can set up level 14 grand arrays. With serious research, level 15. And some exceptionally gifted array art Dao Lords can even lay down level 16 arrays...

It was all clear to Yaoguang now. Artifact refinement is the same. Dao Artifacts are things they can forge offhandedly. They could even carry an ordinary object on them, letting it steep in their Dao resonance day after day until it transformed into a Dao Artifact. Above that, high-grade Dao Artifacts demand real refining attainments, and top-tier Dao Artifacts can only be forged by Dao Lords who have devoted themselves to the craft. As for immortal artifacts at an even higher level...

Not even one in a hundred Dao Lords possessed the means to forge an immortal artifact.

But even if they could not forge immortal artifacts or lay immortal arrays, which are equivalent to level 16, the wondrous powers a Dao Lord commanded still let mastery of one thing unlock a hundred others.

In other words, every Dao Lord was a level 13 array caster, refiner, alchemist, and more, and a little study of the relevant knowledge would push those levels to level 14.

That was presumably why the ancient tree demanded a complete transformation into an entirely new form before it could evolve toward Dao Integration.

The gap between Dao Lords and everything below them was simply too vast. Professional skills that beings below the Dao Lord Realm could only master by exhausting every method and resource were, to a Dao Lord, instincts that required no study or research at all.

It's a pity I haven't reached the Dao Lord Realm and can't dominate the Void-Shattering Realm with Dao Lord-level insight. Still, the Dao Fruit formed at 100% Void-Shattering progress will boost my strength considerably...

Yaoguang focused his attention on the Dao Fruit. Its name was simple and direct: "Dao Seed."

He quietly perceived the fruit's wondrous ability. It could plant a second Dao Seed in a cultivator's grotto-heaven, deriving a second life-bound Dao Technique.

A life-bound Dao Technique stood apart from all other Dao Techniques.

Yaoguang's was Void Flicker, a movement art. Once planted, it had given him, while just at the Void-Refining Realm, the confidence to escape unscathed from a Void-Shattering opponent.

Qi Sha's was the Great Annihilation Sword Qi, an offensive Dao Technique that had granted him peak Void-Refining combat strength the moment he reached the realm. Paired with the Annihilation Sword, his Great Annihilation Sword Qi could even threaten the lives of Void-Shattering cultivators.

Such was the power of a life-bound Dao Technique. It effectively raised the base Dao Technique by one stage. At the proficient stage, its power rivaled the mastery stage; at mastery, it rivaled perfection; and at the perfection stage, it was forcibly elevated to the grand perfection stage.

Most importantly, with this Dao Seed, he would have one more option in the Dao contest.