Chapter 303: Six Paths of Samsara
Chapter 303: Six Paths of Samsara
Tianyi’s current conduit, his body, only had around fifty percent of the former body’s strength. He would regain his full strength with time, but for now, it was sufficient as long as he did not face off against an immortal emperor or their equivalents.
He waved his hands, and the ground around him shattered and disintegrated into dust. “My Law of Destruction has improved.”
He lost and had to cultivate another body, but he mastered the Law of Destruction. It was hard to say if it was a gain or loss for Tianyi. With enough time, he could master the Law of Destruction but not this fast.
Since Tianyi mastered the Law of Destruction, Xi Longyi’s soul orb no longer had any use, but he didn’t want to destroy it. It was like a collector’s mindset. Even if the object lost its use, he didn’t want to throw it away.
He sighed and willed it. The orb containing Xi Longyi’s soul shattered in Donghai Longzi’s hand; he didn’t have a chance to beg or scream. The soul fragments transformed into soul essence and were absorbed by Tianyi’s true dragon clone.
Tianyi didn’t immediately move and sat down instead.
When his eyes closed, the scene of heavenly punishment appeared in his mind. Compared to heavenly tribulation, heavenly punishment had far more power. Heavenly tribulation tested a cultivator to judge whether they were worthy, while heavenly punishment aimed to destroy its target. As such, it contained the law of destruction.
Unlike tribulation lightning, he couldn’t absorb punishment lightning because whatever it touched would disintegrate and become ruined, even qi and essence.
Furthermore, he had already tried to absorb the heavenly punishment but discovered that he couldn’t absorb anything from it. If anything, the more heavenly punishment he devoured into the Nine Heavens Universe, the less energy his inner universe had. The difference was extremely minute, but after years of withstanding the heavenly punishment, he discovered it.
The heavenly punishment definitely didn’t only contain the Law of Destruction. Even if it was at the divine level, the Law of Destruction should not be able to steal his universe’s energy. The heavenly punishment contained a more powerful law that he couldn’t sense.
After a while, Tianyi made a wry smile. Previously, it was him stealing energy from the Three Thousand Immortal Realms System, but now it was his turn to taste his own medicine.
He opened his eyes and stood up. It was no use, he couldn’t sense the mystery behind the heavenly punishment. At his current level, there was no law he couldn’t sense, at least normal laws. He couldn’t sense the law at the divine level.
Tianyi only knew of one law at the divine level, the Law of Creation. Once he mastered it, he was sure that he would achieve divinity level in power, but before then, he had to master as many laws as powerful and merge them.
According to his estimate, he needed to at least master three hundred laws. Tianyi made a wry smile, he hadn’t even achieved ten percent of that, but he was less than two hundred years old. He had time.
‘If only I had a method,‘ Tianyi thought. ‘Should I have more people in my inner universe like Daoyi? Whatever she comprehends will be fed back to me, but I still have to conceal my inner universe. At least until the Numinous Realm is defeated.’
No longer thinking about it anymore, Tianyi stood up and flew into the distance. He paused for a moment and observed his surrounding. ‘Strange, I feel like someone is staring at me. Was it my imagination?’
After seeing no response, he folded space and traveled within the layers of space. Although his strength decreased, it only meant base stats and not his skills, so even immortal emperors would be hard-pressed to discover him within the layers of space.
While flying towards the Six Paths of Samsara, Tianyi noticed more and more wandering souls. He sighed. When he had taken away Youdu and severed the connection between the ten Yama Palaces and it, the Nether Realm had further distorted, and the efficiency had long plummeted.
“I shortened the destruction of the Silent Lightning Timeline again,” Tianyi softly muttered in a complicated mood.
Although he didn’t personally do it, he had implicated all the living beings in it for his own selfish reasons. Sure, they were doomed to die anyway, but that didn’t make his actions any better. If the powerhouses of the Silent Lightning Timeline knew of his actions, they’d likely band together and torment him for all eternity.
Tianyi stopped. He could save some, couldn’t he?
If possible, he wanted to save the people of the Huang Realm more since he had grown up there, but that was no longer possible. Why not save these souls? He even had the perfect place to keep them until he could create the Six Paths of Samsara.
So along the way, whenever Tianyi saw the lost souls, he would collect them and place them in Fourth Heaven. He didn’t need to worry about overcrowding at all. Compared to the Nether Realm, Fourth Heaven was only larger, not smaller.
Of course, Tianyi didn’t choose any soldiers willy-nilly. He opened his Truth-Seeking Eye and chose to remove the souls with too much karmic sin. He thought about choosing only souls with karmic merit but decided against it.
What, he already doomed their timeline faster, and he was going to be picky?
Tianyi didn’t choose the souls that had already embarked on the path of cultivation like the ghost soldiers of the ghost rulers. They had already become ghost cultivators and understood some matters, and he didn’t want to risk anything. Better to choose ignorant souls.
His act was self-serving and could even be called hypocritical. No, Tianyi acknowledged his action as hypocritical. He was doing this to smooth his conscience and lessen his guilt, but so what? As long as he felt satisfied, that was what mattered.
If given the same choice, Tianyi would still choose the same course of action.
Tianyi continued to fly, saving all the souls he saw along the way until he finally reached the core of the Nether Realm. Youdu was the capital but not the actual center where the Six Paths of Samsara resided.
From the sky, it appeared as a giant abyss, not much different than the Paradise Agony Abyss. In fact, the Paradise Agony Abyss was modeled after the entrance to the Six Paths of Samsara.
The entrance had no name, but each soul was required to go through it to reincarnate. The deeper they went, the more illusions they would experience until all their emotions and memories were purified. Only then would they enter the Six Paths of Samsara. Granny Meng’s Soup of Forgetfulness only streamlined the process.
Once there, Tianyi descended onto the ground and waited in line. Whether by luck or chance, numerous souls had stumbled upon the entrance to reincarnation. A formation connecting the entrance prevented Tianyi from taking or damaging any of the souls, so he waited in line.
Halfway through, he blinked and turned around. High above the sky was the Begonia Boddhisattva staring at him. ‘So my senses weren’t lying to me.’
Tianyi ignored him. This was the most dangerous and the safest place in the entire Nether Realm. Not even divinities could attack here, much less a bodhisattva or an immortal. The Begonia Boddhisattva could stare all he wanted, but that meant nothing to Tianyi.
For the Begonia Boddhisattva, he stared at Tianyi in confusion. As he suspected, Tianyi didn’t die when he self-detonated and had a method of resurrection. He wanted to secretly follow Tianyi and strike to capture him to interrogate where he had taken Youdu.
In his eyes, another powerful force was behind Tianyi. Perhaps the Numinous Sword Sect, just like the Buddhist Pure Lands standing behind him.
Tianyi should have reached a location near the edge of the Nether Realm and waited for reinforcements to open the entrance to the Nether Realm, not travel deeper into it. And certainly not go to the Six Paths of Samsara. Even divinities could not withstand the process of reincarnation without harm.
Just why was Tianyi here? He didn’t believe Tianyi really was going to reincarnate himself. Everything taken into the Six Paths of Samsara would be lost. There’s no way he would give up Youdu after obtaining it, yet to his surprise, Tianyi started descending down the entrance.
At the first step, Tianyi frowned. He saw a barren land without end. Only after walking for an unknown amount of years was he able to walk out of it and step onto the second step down.
He had thought that the illusions would no longer work on him, but he had been wrong. The power acting on him must be at the divine level.
For a brief moment, he considered letting Daoyi come out and temper her willpower but thought better of it. What if something happened, it would be too inconvenient to rescue her here.
He continued his way down. The second step, the third step, the fourth step, the fifth step, the sixth step, the eighth step, the eleventh step, and so on.
On the fifty-sixth step, Tianyi saw himself sitting on a throne of bones. All around him were corpses: most from unrelated people, some from his enemies, and even a few close friends. He looked down and saw three heads. The one farthest to him was of his mom from Earth, the second was Daoyi’s, and the first was his mother, Mengfei’s.
He instinctually wanted to kick them away, but his body refused to follow his words. He could feel a perverse smile blooming on his lips as he collected the three heads and walked towards an altar. He placed all three heads on the altar and said, “Now, in the whole universe, only I exist. Only I am supreme, I and the beginning and the end. Pangu, Nuwa, Heavenly Lord of Primordial Beginning, Heavenly Lord of Numinous Treasures, Heavenly Lord of Dao and Virtue? All are beneath me.”
Tianyi didn’t know how long he had lived in that world. If anything life came into existence, he would slaughter them and then drain them of everything they had. His strength kept increasing, and he broke the limit of the Divinity Realm, but he was alone.
He broke out in cold sweat as he broke out of that illusion. Compared to the Inner Devil Tribulation, it was only a few points weaker, and he could feel his emotions manipulated by it. Worse still was the fact that Tianyi didn’t know how much longer it would be until he reached the bottom.
No wonder Immortal Court Spirit said he would be the only one able to do it. If he hadn’t had his Nine Heavens Universe as his true body, the illusion would have erased his will and memories. Even then, he had to constantly restore anything lost with a backup he made on Ninth Heaven and his Past Incarnation.
Tianyi didn’t know how long he had experienced the illusions, but after the one hundred and eight steps, he finally reached the Six Paths of Samsara. He felt nonexistent sweat coating his back.
The illusion of the one hundred and eighth step had almost done him in. In that illusion, he successfully passed and returned to his own timeline. From there, he helped the Buzhou Immortal Sect defeat the Tripartite Alliance and Anti-Heaven Alliance.
From there, he waged war against the Numinous Sword Sect, eventually reaching the immortal sovereign level in strength. After that, he collected all Four Immoral Extermination Swords and formed the Immortal Extermination Formation, and defeated the Numinous Sword Sect, achieving supremacy.
After the war, he mastered the Law of Creation and reached the divine level. He re-established the Immortal Court and became the new Jade Emperor. Daoyi became the Jade Empress, and he rescued his mom’s soul.
Everything was perfect, and he became a winner in life.
Tianyi observed the Six Paths of Samsara. The Six Paths of Samsara resembled a giant silver river with numerous branches splitting off. He didn’t have long to observe or to catch his breath as an invisible force pushed him into the Six Paths of Samsara.