Chapter 122 - Enlightenment

Half an hour passed, and finally;

[Congratulations Host! For cultivating to Low-Expert Stage of cultivation!]

[Taiyi All-Encompassing Breathing Technique]

[A profound breathing technique that allows the user to regulate their breathing and maintain a stable intake of air in almost any environment. It subtly improves the absorption of surrounding Qi, allowing the user to cultivate slightly faster and more efficiently.]

[The technique can filter impurities from inhaled air and Qi, allowing the user to maintain their breathing even in environments with thin, polluted, or unusual atmospheres. With sufficient mastery, the user can greatly extend the duration they can remain without breathing.]

Expert Stage. A realm achieved by only around five hundred cultivators across the entirety of Vaeloria. Cale had just crossed that threshold.

His senses expanded exponentially, perceiving the world in layers of complexity that had been invisible to him mere moments before. Every flow of energy, every vibration, every movement of cultivators in the distance—all of it became a bit more clear.

And with this breakthrough came enlightenment.

At the birth of the universe, twelve primordial energies had existed in balance.

Chaos was the first. The progenitor Chaos created the other eleven, and from that creative act, reality itself was born. Everything begins with chaos. Everything ends with chaos.

Nihility is nothingness. Yet it is not nothing. Nihility is the null state, the absence of definition. And now Cale understood—it was never meant to be treated as separate from chaos. It was an aspect of chaos itself. The two were inseparable.

He had always possessed control over chaos, but nihility had eluded him. Now, finally, he grasped it a bit more.

Then came the Righteous and Demonic Paths.

As long as the human heart possessed desire and greed, there would always exist multiple ways to cultivate. Two fundamental directions.

The Righteous side sought to abandon desire entirely, becoming one with the world, freeing oneself from greed and worldly attachments. But not all who walked this path succeeded. Demons existed even in righteous hearts: greed hiding beneath righteousness like serpents beneath flowers.

The Demonic Path took the opposite approach. It embraced endless desire, using it as a trial to break free from the mortal self and ultimately reach higher levels of cultivation. And yet, not all demonic cultivators were demons. Some were as kind as flowers, treating even the simplest joys of life with reverent care.

This proved the fundamental truth: the two paths were neither inherently good nor evil.

But once one stepped onto either path, desires could easily be born within the heart. Those desires became chains, shackles that controlled the cultivator from within. This was the true demon not an external force, but an internal corruption born from one’s own nature.

Only by overcoming that demon could one transcend desire itself. Only then could one think of achieving true immortality.

Thus, the Demonic Path was not about becoming a demon.

It was about passing through the Demon State in order to attain true freedom.

Those who truly succeeded on the Demonic side were not demons. They were ascended beings who had conquered their own nature.

And then there was love. Affection. Liking. Longing.

To Cale, love itself was neither good nor evil. Yet it was perhaps the most tempting desire of all—and one from which escape was nearly impossible.

It encompassed all seven sins simultaneously.

Demonic cultivators often failed to distinguish love from mere desire and lust. They became consumed by it, sinking deeper and deeper, straying farther from their own hearts, doing things they normally would never consider. Love became a weapon they wielded against themselves.

For Righteous Cultivators, the path was comparatively safer. They walked the path of abandoning worldly desires, suppressing their attachments, keeping their hearts artificially free from such temptations.

Or at least, that was what they showed to the world.

The truth was far more complex, one which you or I may never know.

The Demonic Path was filled with far greater pain and suffering than the Righteous Path. But when a Demonic Cultivator overcame those trials and broke through every desire that sought to bind them... they attained whatever they ever wished for, even True freedom.

Cale opened his eyes.

[Congratulations Host! For cultivating to Mid-Expert Stage of cultivation!]

[Reward: Earth Spiritual root, Earth Element has been Unlocked!]

His consciousness continued to expand, integrating the new earth element into his arsenal. The knowledge of earth cultivation flowed into him automatically.

[Congratulations Host! For cultivating to Peak-Expert Stage of cultivation!]

[Reward: Wind Spiritual root, Wind Element has been Unlocked!]

Wind joined his collection. The speed, the freedom, the transcendence of physical limitation that wind embodied became part of his understanding.

’Hmm, seems like I’ve got all the primary five elements now,’ Cale thought with mild irritation. ’From the looks of it, the system wants me to keep flames as my main while also using all other techniques as secondary. Sigh, what a troublesome partner I have. I hope you give me a good cultivation technique for all these elements. My original one is solely based on chaos qi and chaos flames.’

Meanwhile, at the array’s outer perimeter, Leonard and his two Sage-stage ancestors were attempting to forcefully breach the protective barriers.

WHOOSH!

A combined assault of divine consciousness and power crashed against the barrier. It was an overwhelming force that should have obliterated any normal obstruction.

Instead, they were pushed back violently, their bodies skidding backward across the ground.

"Ugh!" Leonard gasped, his eyes widening in shock.

One of the ancestors snarled, "S-such a strong presence! Looks like the one whose soul owns this place has left some incredibly strong techniques!"

Leonard’s eyes suddenly narrowed as he caught sight of something in the corner of his vision.

Emma!

She was sitting peacefully with her eyes closed, cultivating. Her aura was rising steadily, advancing through realms in real-time as power flowed into her from the array’s center.

One of the ancestors suddenly pulled out a treasure from his spatial ring. The artifact began to glow with divine resonance, and Leonard immediately shivered.

"Y-you! Although you’re the ancestor and higher than me in cultivation, how dare you take that item!" Leonard roared, his voice carrying the authority of the Sect Leader. "I am the goddamn sect leader!"

Tens of eyes turned toward them, watching the internal conflict unfold.

The other ancestor laughed a cruel, hungry sound.

"Child, oh child," he said mockingly. "Why do you think we both came here despite struggling to suppress our cultivation? Both of us are stagnant in our advancement. We will try any straw to climb up! And look such a wonderful item has shown up. Let’s go take it."

Both ancestors channeled their entire divine consciousness into the artifact simultaneously.

A puppet materialized; a being of divine construction standing approximately one hundred meters in height. It possessed four massive arms, each one capable of crushing mountains. Its face was completely featureless, blank as void, but its chest was covered in strange circles and patterns that pulsed with power.

It was a semi-divine tier weapon.

A puppet that became as strong as the consciousness of the cultivator channeling power into it. And since both ancestors—despite being relatively low in soul cultivation possessed the core realm of Sages, the puppet reached the realm of Peak Sage in an instant.

Leonard’s face went pale.

This was one of the Raging Seas Sect’s treasures: a generational artifact passed down through centuries. To see it revealed here, used so recklessly, filled him with dread and fury.

If something went wrong. If the puppet was destroyed or stolen. The sect would lose its primary defense against all rival factions. It was a gamble Leonard had never been willing to take.

But his ancestors, desperate and hungry for advancement, had made the decision for him.

Emma’s eyes snapped open, terror evident in every aspect of her expression.

"The hell?? I-I was just... what happened, what even is that?!"

Cultivators throughout the array screamed and ran in panic. A Peak Sage-level entity had just materialized in their midst,

At the array’s center, Cale sensed it immediately.

A huge divine consciousness was rushing toward him, carried by the puppet’s immense body. The ancestors were attempting to destroy the array’s core directly, believing that would save them.

They had no idea what they were about to face.

Cale closed his eyes.

He gathered every ounce of his recently acquired power, concentrating it into a single point.

He used Soul Shattering Strike.

BOOM!!!

The explosion was silent.

The puppet’s head simply... ceased to exist. One moment it was there, the next, it was obliterated utterly disintegrated. The massive hundred-meter body swayed, then collapsed like a felled tree.

It hit the ground with force sufficient to create an earthquake that rippled across the entire array.

Everyone stared at the corpse of the semi-divine puppet, their minds unable to process what had just happened.

Then Leonard’s voice trembled out, barely above a whisper.

"W-we have no way of getting out! If even that was destroyed in one shot..."

He turned around to run, not even looking at the two dead ancestors.

"It was a trap to begin with!" another cultivator screamed.

"If even that was destroyed in one shot..." someone else whispered, horror replacing any hope they’d harbored.