Chapter 620: Reversal

This kind of meteor is truly insignificant, at least for a Fifth-Rank battlefield.

Such a meteor, like a speck of dust from Outer Void, could be blown away by General Zhou with a mere breath, making it impossible for it to interfere with the battlefield.

However, General Zhou and the Mohist Cultivator, under the threat of Karma fluctuations, were now exerting their 'full strength'.

Their true full strength meant not a single bit of reserve power, not even the strength to blow a breath, so this meteor was bound to interfere with the situation.

This made a thought flash through General Zhou's mind like lightning—

“Is the full strength I’m exerting right now… also the ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’?”

This is the most terrifying aspect of facing the Heavenly Dao’s will.

Are the actions taken at this moment truly your own, or are they orchestrated by the ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’? Can you tell the difference?

You cannot.

Unless you can discern your own Karma, achieve the ‘Knowing Heavenly Mandate’ of Human Dao Confucianism, the Daoist ‘Returning to the Root means Stillness, Stillness means Returning to Life’, or the Buddhist ‘Six Senses Fully Open, Seeing Through Three Lives’, or simply, like the Demonic Dao and Martial Dao, shatter your own Karma lines, thereby achieving immediate sainthood, unity of spirit and flesh, escaping Karma, and not submitting to the Heavenly Dao’s will.

The Dao of Reason also perceives Heavenly Principles, and those of the Demonic Dao are masters at manipulating fate.

But clearly, as Fifth-Rank Cultivators, none of them could do it; they couldn’t achieve it.

To resist the ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’ to a certain extent, one would need to be at least a Fourth-Rank.

Fear swept over General Zhou.

This would not affect his movements, nor would it affect his actions after making a decision; a Fifth-Rank Cultivator was already able to remain unaffected by emotions.

People can be unaffected by emotions, but they certainly still have emotions.

Therefore, General Zhou merely experienced pure fear.

An instinctive fear in the face of the unknown.

An unknown Third-Rank had intervened in the battlefield, and everything at this moment was under the ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’.

This fear did not shake General Zhou, but it changed the actions of the Mohist Cultivator beside him.

His heart was also covered by fear.

However, similarly, as a Fifth-Rank, he was not controlled by fear, but under fear, he made a different decision: he wanted to resist the Heavenly Dao’s will.

No sooner said than done, the combined attack of the Mohist Cultivator and General Zhou was a matter of an instant, less than one hundred-thousandth of a second, far exceeding the speed of light.

So swiftly, facing this situation, they made two different decisions.

As a result, a rift appeared in his coordination with General Zhou.

Shen Shuibi, fully focused, seized this rift.

She transformed into Yin Qi, like a swimming fish, or perhaps the smooth essence of Tai Chi, and slipped through this flaw.

This dodge was not perfect; she was still struck, causing her to be injured.

But no matter what, she had managed to escape a certain death situation at the cost of severe injuries.

Having missed this opportunity, General Zhou had already retreated, and Shen Shuibi no longer needed to contend with him; she could continue to stall.

General Zhou missed this chance to kill; next time, it would probably require several more quarters of an hour of maneuvering.

But several quarters of an hour?

In just a few dozen seconds, Cha Xike would arrive.

In several quarters of an hour, the detector would be activated, and it would be too late!

This meteor merely appeared, sweeping past for an instant, doing nothing else, but it achieved its purpose.

“We failed,” General Zhou said.

He didn’t blame anyone; in fact, he couldn’t.

This was the ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’.

The ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’ is not controlled by man.

This was the true Heavenly Dao’s will.

As long as the situation changes, it doesn’t matter how it was achieved.

Why control a meteor? Did it have to crash into something?

To a Fifth-Rank, such a collision would be like being touched by dust, perhaps not even felt.

But, it didn’t need to crash.

Just sweeping past for an instant was enough to influence the situation.

“We failed. Kill her to recover some losses. In this Shaman Dao war zone, she is the strongest. Without her, the Shaman Dao’s offensive will be much weaker,” the Mohist Cultivator said.

“Good, recover as much as possible. The Heavenly Dao’s will is not omnipotent. From the looks of it just now, it couldn’t exert too great an influence. It should be a Third-Rank from our side who made a move,” General Zhou said.

Even as they spoke, hundreds of millions of miles away, a dazzling flash erupted.

That was—the aftershock of a Golden Core explosion.

Cha Xike, using his body as a vessel, moved the Golden Core explosion and the remnants of a Fifth-Rank’s Inner World to the center of the Human Dao army.

He merely moved them; he had no ability to refine them, much less contain them. Just by swallowing this Qi, he was already beyond saving.

The Qi from the Golden Core explosion tore apart his body and Dharma Idol, releasing itself once more.

As mentioned before, even Shen Shuibi herself would not fare well if she entered this Qi; the chaotic Dao Resonance Dao Resonance within was highly destructive, and one could only slowly wait for it to calm down.

But at this moment, it hadn't calmed down, and no one present could withstand this Qi.

Including the Human Dao army.

The remaining two Fifth-Rank Cultivators, and the surviving Human Dao army, were all engulfed. No one in the Human Dao army could react; the speed of the spread was too fast.

General Zhou watched that scene, then gripped his long halberd again and charged towards Shen Shuibi.

For Fifth-Rank battles, fighting for ten days to half a month was common.

But now it was different.

The opponent’s injuries were too severe.

If they could kill the opponent within two quarters of an hour, there might still be a turn of events.

But he also knew it was unrealistic.

When Shen Shuibi had no qualms and could escape and evade at will, even with two opponents of the same rank, they wouldn’t be able to truly make her escape.

But having missed the flaw she exposed when she actively moved to block him earlier, it would take one or two hours to kill Shen Shuibi now.

Then, one or two hours it would be, to slay her!

The battle resumed, and no one paid attention to the detector anymore.

The activation of the detector had become a foregone conclusion.

Liu Junyi sent another message, but neither General Zhou nor the Mohist Cultivator paid any attention; they could no longer afford to be distracted.

If they were distracted, Shen Shuibi might be able to drag it out even longer, leading to more variables.

The battle continued, and Shen Shuibi fell into a predicament of being completely beaten. If no one came to her rescue, as everyone expected, she would surely die here after one or two hours.

But she didn’t consider any of this.

There was no need to consider it.

Her mind was calm; she only knew what she needed to do, and then she would do it.

A clear Dao Heart is precisely this.

Knowing what you need to do, and then doing it; as for the consequences, that’s something for after it’s done, it doesn’t matter.

If one worries about consequences and changes one’s actions, that is what mortals do; they love to change their minds constantly, drifting with the current, without their own convictions.

Two quarters of an hour passed quickly.

The charging ended.

The detector lit up.

An inexplicable fluctuation swept across many world clusters, and then this fluctuation began to bounce back.

At this very moment, outside a world cluster, within a Daoist Art.

There, approximately a dozen Shaman Dao Fifth-Rank Cultivators, plus several worlds being dragged behind.

But… they were lost.

That’s right, they were lost. Although it sounds incredible, getting lost in Outer Void is actually very normal.

Outer Void is so vast, with no landmarks, completely dark, no front or back, left or right, and even less distinction between up and down. You simply cannot determine where you are going at this moment.

For many practitioners attempting flight in Outer Void for the first time, they cannot even determine if they are moving forward.

Yes, you are not even sure if you are moving, because no matter how you move, there are no reference points for you. You cannot confirm your state, and because there is no gravity, you cannot find up or down.

In Outer Void, unless there is an extraordinary sight like a ‘Great Fire’ to guide you, travelers cannot confirm if they are moving, let alone in what direction. All directions are completely uniform, and up, down, left, and right present absolute darkness and chilling cold.

Even if you fly for ten years, the surrounding scenery will not change at all, and even the slightest deviation from your course, say by a millimeter or two, will eventually lead to a deviation of thousands of miles after a long journey.

Flying in Outer Void is like being blindfolded and throwing a grain of sand, aiming to accurately throw it from the South Pole to the North Pole, precisely through the eye of a needle.

This is not an exaggeration; it even underestimates the difficulty, because given the vastness of Outer Void, a world is far, far smaller than a needle eye, and as for that grain of sand, it’s the kind that cannot be seen at all.

The slightest error in between would lead to getting lost, or even losing one's direction forever.

To solve this problem, one needs to use things like ‘star maps’, which use certain extraordinary sights in Outer Void as guides, marking the relative positions of large world clusters, and then, by calculating the relative movement between worlds with coordinate calculations precise to ten or more decimal places, one can maintain the correct course in Outer Void.

However, never doubt the wisdom of civilization; countless civilizations have solved the problem of getting lost in Void Realm navigation in their own ways.

For Shaman Dao, they had ten thousand ways to confirm their relative position in Outer Void and precisely locate their targets, even allowing their flying boats to navigate automatically without getting lost.

But… what if a cultivator with great Divine Ability used their power to disrupt gravity, seal the celestial timing, tear apart the relative positions of all routes, and speed up the movement of world clusters by a tiny fraction…

Then, Outer Void itself would become the most terrifying prison.

Here, you are free; you can go anywhere.

However, no matter how you walk, it’s equivalent to treading water, impossible to find matter, no worlds, no light, only the eternal solitude, darkness, and bone-chilling cold of Outer Void.

This is why the Shaman Dao reinforcements haven't arrived; even with a dozen legitimate Shaman Dao Fifth-Rank Cultivators, they couldn't quickly figure out their relative position.

And they couldn't just randomly crash around like headless flies, because who knows where they would end up.

So, they could only wait.

Wait for the moment of breakthrough.

For example—

A strong fluctuation swept through.

The detector swept across many world clusters, and at the same time, it allowed many world clusters to observe the detector itself.

Observation through a medium is inherently reciprocal; you see light because light travels into your eyes.

When you see light, light has already touched you.

When the detector's fluctuations swept across these world clusters, these world clusters in turn saw the detector.

This detector became a new ‘extraordinary sight in Outer Void’.

Inside the Shaman Dao reinforcement flying boat in Outer Void, the operator shouted loudly: “We found the place! I don’t know if it’s the war zone, but there are clear observation signs. Going there will at least allow us to confirm our relative position.”

“We’re very lucky, the distance is very short. If we travel at full speed, directly sacrificing the flying boat, we can arrive in at most an hour.”

Arriving in an hour, of course, isn't considered close.

Because the Shaman Dao flying boats are very, very fast; these are special flying boats used within the Shaman Dao during wartime.

Such a flying boat, by forcibly flying at the cost of being directly scrapped, can increase the Heavenly Dao’s speed limit to tens of millions of times, and an hour is enough to cross a world cluster.

But… they were indeed very lucky.

After all, they could still fly there.

Many times, even at tens of millions of times the speed, you still can’t fly there.

“This speed also puts a lot of pressure on us. Everyone, prepare to abandon the flying boat,” a leading Shaman said, appearing to be a Invoker.

As for the others, they were Shamanes from outside the three lineages of Zhu Bu Sect, such as Xing Ren, Wu Yu, and so on.

Since Invoker gave the order, everyone immediately obeyed and abandoned the flying boat.

This flying boat was a Fifth-Rank Spiritual Artifact, and one of a very high grade, capable of overloading to the point of being scrapped, which testifies to its tremendous power.

In the Void Realm, the speed of light was distorted, its upper limit increased, and then, the flying boat sped through Outer Void at a terrifying speed that threatened to melt itself!

At the same time…

In the rear base camp of the Shaman Dao war zone, Li Qi also propped himself up, spitting blood.

He couldn't collapse now.

Although he had won, Shen Shuibi was still in danger.

Even though his brain felt like it was burning and his Spirit Soul was cracked and damaged, Li Qi got up the moment he awoke from his coma.

He swallowed a Medicinal Pill, took a deep breath, and absorbed the power of the blood sacrifice.

Then—

He infused True Knowledge Dao Resonance into it.

This was the answer to ‘I am I’; this was the influence of the Dao Path on Divine Ability.

Li Qi’s understanding of ‘I am I’ was that the unique intersection point on the Karma line was ‘I’, the unique entity within Karma, unchangeable by memories, Physical Body, or anything else.

Through this answer, one could extend to the network of Karma formed between people and between people and objects.

The connections between things, once moved, pull at each other. Planting a tree today, enjoying its shade tomorrow—such entanglements are Karma. There is cause, there is effect, and the effect becomes a new cause. Karma flows, endlessly, and everything is inevitably linked to other things on this great Karma network.

Thus, to become the Heavenly Dao’s will, one could start from this aspect, tracing the network of Karma.

Li Qi once again relied on his powerful computing ability to delve into it.

He wanted to use the ‘Heavenly Dao’s will’ to save Shen Shuibi!

Even though he himself felt that he couldn’t go on.