Chapter 478: Cheers

The birth of a Dao Lord was cause for enormous celebration across the North Sea Star, and since this particular Dao Lord could very nearly be considered from the North Sea Star, it filled every cultivator with confidence about their own future.

It had to be understood that during every North Sea Star Dao Contest, though a full one or two hundred Dao Lords came from across the starry sky to fight over those forty-nine slots, more than half of them belonged to other factions out in the depths of the starry sky.

They knew that a Gate of the Immortal Realm existed on the North Sea Star and made the journey specifically for it. Some had taken part in more than one or two Dao Contests; others were entirely unfamiliar faces, arriving from starry skies a billion, several billion, even tens of billions of light-years away.

There was no shortage of top-tier existences among them. But the Gates of the Immortal Realm in their own regions had been monopolized by far more fearsome figures, like single sects that held dozens or even hundreds of Dao Lords, which forced them to travel far from home and look for another way to step into the Immortal Realm.

Strictly speaking, the Dao Lords who truly came from the North Sea Star numbered less than a third.

Under those circumstances, the birth of another Dao Lord on the North Sea Star naturally set every cultivator and every power there rejoicing, whether they stood at the Void-Shattering Realm, the Void-Refining Realm or the Void-Piercing Realm, or had only recently arrived. It told them that all the hardship they had endured to migrate to the North Sea Star had been a wise choice.

The news swept across the entire North Sea Star like a storm, over a single day.

***

"A Dao Lord! Sect Master Yaoguang... is a Dao Lord already?!"

Inside the Heavenly Dao Sect, Liao Chen, Chi Yun, Dong Xi, and Yuan Xing, the Void-Shattering Realm cultivators who had been held up by various matters and had not gone with Zhen Xuanyuan and Gu Li to receive the Central Heaven Dao Lord, were left thoroughly dazed.

Had he achieved Dao Integration that easily? He had left the sect, heading to the starry sky to welcome the Central Heaven Dao Lord, who had come from the Heavenly Dao Sect himself... And he had achieved Dao Integration on the way?

Every one of them found it beyond comprehension. Had the news not come down from the Central Heaven Dao Lord in person, along with an order to prepare for a Dao Lord's celebration, these supreme elders would have assumed somebody was playing a joke on them.

***

Within the Taiyi Immortal Sect, the Supreme Jade Emperor, Supreme Hong Yan, and the other Void-Shattering cultivators looked at the Taiyuan Perfected Lord in the communication array, all wide-eyed with astonishment.

"I-Is this true?" the Supreme Jade Emperor said, and then could not help pressing on quickly, "There was no sign of it beforehand! He didn't travel out to the starry sky to hide himself away somewhere deserted, and there wasn't the faintest disturbance when it happened. Even the process of Dao Integration seems to have been skipped over! No decade or more spent merging with the Dao, no dozens of Dao transformation crises... He simply reached the Dao Integration Realm like that? Since when did Dao Integration become this easy?"

"Hard as it is to believe, it's true," the Taiyuan Perfected Lord said with a wry smile. "You're not the only ones who find it unbelievable, or who feel that Sect Master Yaoguang treated this Dao Integration like a game. I watched the whole thing with my own eyes, and I still have a sense that none of it was real."

He sighed heavily. "That was Dao Integration! A moment when life and death are on the line, something not even a Dao Lord would feel confident about facing a second time! And yet, Sect Master Yaoguang broke through, and the whole process took under an hour. However you look at it, it feels unreal."

"Could it be that Sect Master Yaoguang used some secret technique and temporarily gained a sliver of Dao Integration's mysteries? That he hasn't actually reached the Dao Integration Realm at all? Wouldn't his state be better called semi-Dao-Integration?" One Void-Shattering Realm supreme elder offered a completely unsupported speculation.

The reason was simple. The whole thing was absurd. If reality was going to be this absurd, then surely a slightly absurd guess was only fitting.

"Semi-Dao-Integration?" The Taiyuan Perfected Lord shook his head. "You must all have sensed the battle between Dao Lords that broke out in the heavens just now. It didn't last long, but the outcome was brutal and grim beyond words. In addition to the Unchained Dao Lord, who moved first, three more Dao Integration cultivators were killed: the Extinction Dao Lord, the Kunpeng Demon Paragon, and the Jade Scale Demon Paragon! And of those four, the Extinction Dao Lord and the Kunpeng Demon Paragon basically died at Dao Lord Yaoguang's hands, while fighting him one-on-one."

He looked at the supreme elder who had asked. "So tell me. A man who becomes a Dao Lord and immediately turns in a record as fine as killing two Dao Integration cultivators, would you consider him a semi-Dao-Integration cultivator?"

The supreme elder opened his mouth, but couldn't get out a single word.

"Actually, I rather think there might be a little bit of truth in that," Supreme Hong Yan said, and his words at once drew the eyes of every supreme elder in the Taiyi Immortal Sect. "Yaoguang's talent is higher than any of us imagined. It has genuinely left the range of what ordinary people like us can conceive of. Even measured against the Penglai Dao Lord, his talent is more remarkable."

He weighed each word as he described it. "Nothing an existence beyond imagination does is worth being shocked by. Even his smooth breakthrough to the Dao Integration Realm is perfectly reason—"

The supreme elder, a Void-Shattering cultivator and artifact paragon both, could go no further. He had been trying to talk himself into believing what was happening in front of him, but with the facts laid out before his eyes, he could not hold it together. "Reasonable my foot!"

Hong Yan's face twisted with bitterness. "At the very least, give us a little time to prepare ourselves. Cultivate quietly for another few hundred years, even just one or two hundred, then go hide out in the starry sky and integrate with the Dao in secret, spend three to five years on it, and reach the Dao Integration Realm after a great battle between your protectors and the ones who come to attack you. We could accept that. But this? He went out like a man on a grocery run, and came home as a Dao Integration cultivator! Is that really reasonable?"

The other Void-Shattering cultivators nodded in agreement. Yaoguang had merely gone out to receive the Central Heaven Dao Lord! How was that any different from stepping out to buy groceries?

And it seemed like he had succeeded before he even reached the Central Heaven Dao Lord, which made the whole thing even more absurd. He gave them no time at all to prepare.

"Perhaps we truly can't see this world clearly anymore," the Taiyuan Perfected Lord said with a wry smile. "In any case, all of you make your preparations and attend Dao Lord Yaoguang's Dao Integration ceremony. After today, Dao Lord Yaoguang will be one of the Dao Integration overlords within the radius of several billion light-years from the North Sea Star."

An overlord! That was the other name every cultivator used for a Dao Lord. Any Dao Lord who wished to could easily rule over a hundred million, even several hundred million light-years of the starry sky, and hold sway over untold living beings and civilizations.

***

Within the Penglai Immortal Sect, a single order from the Penglai Dao Lord set everything moving at once.

Shi Lin, the acting sect master, immediately sent word to all halls and departments and set them to gathering the most distinctive natural treasures from across the Deep-Blue Sea.

The Penglai Dao Lord had described it as no more than attending a Dao Integration ceremony when the time came, but as sect master of the Penglai Immortal Sect, Shi Lin had to uphold the sect's face. Anything less would let people see her own master outdone.

With the order given, countless people across the whole Penglai Immortal Sect went into motion. Even the Void-Refining palace masters came out of seclusion, interrupting their cultivation to search for rare natural treasures, all so they could show up, however briefly, at Yaoguang's Dao Integration ceremony.

As for Zhan Xiao, Leng Qingqiu, and Shui Yunhan, the news struck them like a thunderbolt. Leng Qingqiu, in particular, was left dumbfounded, and a long while passed before she came to herself.

After the shock came disbelief. But the information they quickly gathered from every direction left them no choice but to accept the reality in front of them.

It was true! Yaoguang had truly reached Dao Integration. And immediately after that, he had cut down Extinction and Kunpeng, two Dao Integration cultivators, and used their blood to establish a fearsome reputation as a top-tier Dao Lord right away. It had also lifted his name straight to the summit of the North Sea.

Once she understood it all, Leng Qingqiu grew completely docile, and out of unease, she reduced her presence to the barest minimum.

She had realized that with Yaoguang's standing as a Dao Integration cultivator, if he truly wanted to deal with her, not even her own master would say a single word about it.

No Dao Lord would offend another Dao Lord over one insignificant Void-Refining cultivator. Not even one who happened to be her disciple.

***

While the other powers made their own preparations, the Nine Cauldrons Sect in the southern domain had sunk into an ocean of joy.

"Dao Integration!" Wan Liugui howled at the sky, his expression close to deranged. "My heavens!"

Compared to Su Yaoxue or Li Qingshan, he understood better what a single Dao Integration cultivator meant, and he understood it better than even Li Hanqiu.

Back when their Cangwu lineage first arrived on the North Sea Star, their situation had been extremely dangerous. Had the Taiyi Immortal Sect not taken them in, they would not even have had a patch of ground to stand on and find a way to survive.

That was why, even knowing that the Taiyi Immortal Sect treated the battle immortals of the Cangwu lineage as consumable stock, the people of the Cangwu lineage had not complained.

At the time, the Taiyi Immortal Sect was the only top-tier faction willing to accept them and give them a standing. Without it, the Cangwu lineage would have had to fend for themselves and would've likely been exploited by every top-tier faction.

And what was the standard for a top-tier faction?! A Dao Lord.

He thought back to when the Cangwu lineage's greatest ambition was to raise a single Void-Piercing cultivator of its own, and compared it to now... In the Nine Cauldrons Sect, the Void-Piercing cultivators were too many to count on one hand.

They even had Void-Refining cultivators, powerful figures that could have started a lineage of their own inside the Taiyi Immortal Sect. And now Yaoguang, the greatest backer behind the Nine Cauldrons Sect, the one giving them confidence, had achieved Dao Integration and become a Dao Lord!

"Hahaha!" Wan Liugui laughed heartily, delight and wild joy spilling out of him without restraint. "Good! Good! Good! Wonderful! Wonderful!"

Li Hanqiu was not quite as close to madness with delight as Wan Liugui, but his face was full of a man's contentment at having nothing left to regret in death. "I never dreamed that one day I'd see the Nine Cauldrons Sect give birth to a Dao Lord. This is truly... truly..."

He got out several more "truly"s and still had no idea what words could describe the joy of the moment.

In the end, he could only sweep a hand through the air. "Pass down the order. We will hold a grand celebration for the whole sect, a grand celebration for the whole southern domain! We're going to celebrate this historic moment together with all the countless people of the southern domain. Let everyone cheer for the birth of Dao Lord Yaoguang!"