Chapter 837: Dimensional maze

the Purification Method unfolds!

After he saved Sariputra, Sariputra taught him this move; these were all things Sariputra had taught him before! (See Chapter 756 for details)

Li Qi chanted in his mind: “The body refers to the five pure sense organs, such as the eye, as detailed in the previous form aggregate. These five pure sense organs are collectively called the root-body. The Alaya-consciousness holds this root-body as its own essence and also takes the root-body as its object of perception. Therefore, Yogacara states that the root-body is the Alaya-consciousness’s manifest portion. This is also called the Adana-consciousness, because it holds the body.”

As he spoke, one could see the twelve sense bases: the eye base, the form base, the ear base, the sound base, the nose base, the scent base, the tongue base, the taste base, the body base, the touch base, the mind base, and the dharma base.

The twelve sense bases refer to the arising of the aggregates in sentient beings of various kinds, which is called birth.

The light of Mahavairocana illuminates all things, pervades all places, shines upon all dharmas, radiant and majestic, this is — Great Radiance!

Nature refers to the essence of all phenomena, which are subject to birth and cessation. These all share the characteristics of arising and ceasing with the world, hence it is said that nature falls into the manifestation of arising and ceasing, and is called the conventional. The essence and characteristics refer to the essence of all phenomena. Although the phenomena of the world are impermanent in their arising and ceasing and inherently unreal, they still appear distinctly and clearly, with manifest essences and characteristics, such as the so-called Myriad Phenomena of the Universe.

From this, it can be seen that the five aggregates give rise to form, and form refers to the Four Greats.

Thus, when form is empty, the aggregates are empty.

The final summary is just four words —

The Four Greats are all empty.

Thus, from each of the five aggregates arise four views, four times five is twenty, and twenty for each of the three temporal periods, totaling sixty. The two views of permanence and impermanence are fundamental, resulting in sixty-two views in total. Furthermore, within the form aggregate, form is the self, apart from form there is no self, within the self there is form, and within form there is the self. The conventional is the ultimate truth, and thus the phenomena within the conventional are reality.

Then, Li Qi softly said, “The five aggregates transform and cease, and the Four Greats are all empty.”

The four Demonic Kings were all incredibly shocked!

Buddha-Dharma!

And it was very profound Buddha-Dharma, specifically designed to counter demonic power! This level of skill would be considered a Buddha’s disciple outside. Why would it appear on a Shaman?

Are you kidding me?!

But Li Qi paid no attention, continuing to operate his spell.

What is meant by the completion of the five aggregates is the Form Realm, and the world is the conventional, hence called conventional truth. Truth refers to reality. In terms of conventional truth, what truly exists, such as a bottle, clothing, or even the sun, stars, and earth, all truly exist according to conventional truth. What truly does not exist, such as the self conceived based on the five aggregates—the five aggregates truly exist, but this concept of self truly does not exist. Other things can be considered; existence and non-existence are not false, hence called truth.

What about the Formless Realm?

If there are those with thought, this refers to the devas in the Heaven of Thought. These devas only have thoughts, hence from this point upwards, all are called the Formless Realm, as they no longer possess a physical body, hence the name Formless.

Buddhism uses the Purification Method to suppress the Demonic Lord in the Heavens of the Formless Realm, and Li Qi, with his Inner World, emulates the Heavens of the Formless Realm to unleash the Purification Method!

It must be known that he had a ‘Fourth-Rank Demonic Lord of the Demonic Lord Lineage’ within him.

Li Qi’s Inner World transformed, using the Purification Method taught to him by Sariputra, to suppress the Heavenly Demon Lord within him!

The moment of transformation, the Demonic Lord of the Demonic Lord Lineage within him, whom others found most difficult to deal with, was completely Sealed, losing all ability to resist.

For the Heavenly Demon Lord, who had already transformed into ‘thought,’ the Heavens of the Formless Realm possesses the Sphere of Neither Perception Nor Non-Perception. Focusing the mind on the boundless emptiness allows the mind to correspond with the boundless emptiness, which is the so-called Sphere of Infinite Space.

If it is inherently empty, from where would thought arise?

The complete ‘emptiness’ of the Formless Realm, utterly devoid of the five aggregates and thought, is precisely what can suppress entities like the Heavenly Demon Lord who have transformed themselves into thought.

No sooner said than done, all of this, including the verbal exchange, happened in but a flash.

The next moment, the unique ‘mark’ of the Patrolling Envoys appeared in the sky.

In just a flash, the other Demonic Lords had already reacted, and the three of them struck simultaneously.

However, this time their attack was not to fight here, but to tacitly arrive at Boundless Outer Domain.

Fighting in the world, a preemptive strike is enough; before causing massive destruction, they must rush to Boundless Outer Domain to deal with it.

Five Fourth-Rank entities appeared in Boundless Outer Domain.

The first to attack was that Martial Artist.

Her Martial Dao Divine Intent unfolded—like the brightest star exploding, jets of matter surging out, wrapping the magnetic fields of surrounding matter into a narrow cone.

Her Martial Dao Divine Intent was like a colossal accelerator, launching enormous beams of matter that cut through the medium around galaxies, forming plumes tens of thousands of light-years long.

This is almost unimaginable, a tiny point carving out a cosmic void tens of thousands of light-years long within a galaxy.

This was many times brighter than an entire world cluster, and for many worlds, before observing such a phenomenon, they would have believed such violent phenomena impossible.

But Martial Artists are precisely that violent.

Generally speaking, when matter falls into a black hole or the Observable Universe’s event horizon, no trace can be observed from the outside, because light or anything else cannot cross the event horizon, and the inside and outside of the event horizon cannot interfere with each other.

There are many ways to Breakthrough, but all are abilities of Fourth-Rank and above.

For example, now, the method used by the Martial Artist is to use ‘brute force,’ forcefully propelling matter jets at a terrifying speed, forcibly penetrating the ‘event horizon.’

That's right, not relying on Li Qi's clever method, but directly blasting the event horizon! Accelerating matter to superluminal speeds!

And when you have a lot of superluminal matter, you will see an extremely magnificent scene.

The torrent of matter spirals rapidly towards the event horizon, forming a disk.

Collisions and friction between particles heated them to the Planck temperature, which is the ultimate temperature, at least on the order of ‘quintillions of quintillions.’

In a small, human-sized space, the opponent’s Martial Dao Divine Intent could release many times more energy than a hundred billion stars combined.

This is the Sword Qi of a super-quasar!

The light of the cosmic flare consumed countless amounts of energy, then erupted with even more!

Every picosecond, it would directly consume one to one hundred solar masses of matter, and the interstellar medium would be heavily depleted, causing space to become even sparser, ultimately emitting astonishing light and radiation, which would form a tidal disruption flare phenomenon observable from tens of billions of light-years away.

The charged particle wind carried the destructive power of Martial Dao Divine Intent, strong enough to overcome the gravity of a black hole, at which point it would obliterate all existence!

The Demonic Overlords did not hesitate; they had already realized that the demonic thoughts was suppressed, but they thought this was a good thing.

The demonic thoughts being suppressed meant that the Shaman would also be restricted. Maintaining the Purification Method was very difficult, and that Shaman could not participate in a Fourth-Rank melee while maintaining the Purification Method.

So, they could fight three against one, and against a Martial Artist at that.

That was too simple.

A clumsy Martial Artist like him was naturally countered by the Demonic Dao.

The three Demonic Lords’ bodies became illusory; the magnificent particle stream that had previously streaked across the cosmic curtain caused not the slightest impact.

It was roughly like, when you attacked, a message would pop up saying “Gwen is unaffected.”

The three Demonic Lords, by their very nature, could easily ignore ordinary attacks. While the Martial Artist’s attack had immense killing power among Fourth-Rankers, it was honestly just a basic attack.

It hadn't reached the point of unleashing ultimate moves to decide life or death.

After dodging this move, a vast black mist began to appear in cosmic space.

The black mist obscured the star dome, and the microscopic world began to be magnified.

Calabi-Yau space appeared in the macroscopic world. This is a higher-dimensional space curled up in an extremely small region. This six-dimensional space doesn't even have a fixed model that can be displayed, nor can any shape be described.

Its radius is less than one hundred-quintillionth of a meter, only one hundred-millionth of the radius of a proton and neutron. Describing Calabi-Yau space is almost impossible because it has six dimensions, plus it is curled up in an unimaginably twisted way, winding and distorted, and cannot be described using Euclidean geometry. They only follow a more abstract geometry.

Under this geometry, higher-dimensional topology is the only tool; you must possess a super-abstract dimensional way of thinking.

For example, a circle drawn on paper is actually a one-dimensional sphere, because to draw a circle, only a moderately curved line is needed.

There is only one direction, one dimension, so it is a one-dimensional sphere.

And the sphere we are familiar with in three-dimensional space is actually a two-dimensional sphere, because to obtain a sphere, only a two-dimensional plane, which is a curved surface, is needed.

By analogy, a three-dimensional sphere is a four-dimensional space, and they are all the same, essentially a ‘set of points equidistant from a point.’

There is basically no difference between a one-dimensional sphere and a two-dimensional sphere, even when extended to n dimensions. You can have as many dimensions of spheres as you want, whether you can imagine them or not, mathematics can describe them anyway.

At this very moment, such a six-dimensional macroscopic Calabi-Yau space enveloped the surroundings.

This was a dimensional maze.

Moving in any direction might lead you to completely unknown locations. The common three-dimensional space, plus the Calabi-Yau space, makes a total of nine dimensions, mutually twisted, mutually enveloped, and mutually entangled.

This was more complex than any ‘ball of yarn.’ Nine dimensions are not nine strands of yarn; the overlapping parts and the computational power required to untangle them are simply uncountable.

It was a fool’s dream for the Martial Artist to try and unravel this maze; if she had that kind of brain, she wouldn’t have chosen the Martial Dao in the first place.

And that Shaman had to fully maintain the Purification Method, so he couldn't calculate a way to break the dimensional maze.

So, at least temporarily, by means of such a dimensional maze, the Three Demon Lords completely imprisoned Li Qi and the female Martial Artist within it.

Once imprisoned, they could slowly figure out how to deal with the two of them.

At the same time, Li Qi was also communicating with the female Martial Artist.

“You’re very impulsive. We didn’t have to be trapped in here,” Li Qi said, looking at the nine-dimensional maze, feeling a headache.

One more dimension means an infinite number of possibilities, though it’s only an Aleph-null level of infinity, not truly uncountable infinity.

This level of infinity can be handled by a Fourth-Rank. The set of natural numbers is a countable set, which can be simply understood as being traversable by counting. For example, natural numbers can be counted as 0, 1, 2, 3… and so on. There’s no need to consider whether they can be counted completely; being countable and being countable completely are two different concepts.

Nine more dimensions means having to count nine different types of Aleph-null.

Although any number of Aleph-nulls stacked together cannot produce a qualitative change—an infinite number of infinities stacked together is still infinite, without a change in nature—the impact on computational power is real.

“Is it my fault?” The female Martial Artist rolled her eyes at Li Qi, her longsword swinging again.

Such immense energy, yet it was like a clay ox entering the sea, swallowed by the ‘dimensional maze.’

“It’s not that I’m blaming you. By the way, may I ask your esteemed name, otherwise, calling you ‘young lady’ all the time feels a bit strange,” Li Qi said.

The female Martial Artist scoffed, “Hmph, hearing that, I can tell you’ll be afraid of your wife after marriage. My name is Jing Wuzhen, and you?”

“Li Qi. Also, I’m already married, and being afraid of my wife is nonsense,” Li Qi said, throwing out many fine, thread-like strands of power.

This was to explore the changes in the dimensional maze.

“Miss Jing…” Li Qi began to say something.

“Call me by my full name, you’re being creepy,” Jing Wuzhen frowned slightly.

“Alright… Jing Wuzhen, it’s impossible to unravel this maze. My inner body spirits are damaged, and my computational power cannot be fully released, so it’s a bit difficult to break through with brute force. However, I do have a method, but it requires your cooperation, Miss… Jing Wuzhen,” Li Qi said.

“Okay, what do you want to do?” Jing Wuzhen nodded. As a Martial Artist, though she wasn’t afraid of this maze, she didn’t want to get lost in it.

Getting lost in it would truly take a long time.

However, her Qi and blood were abundant, and her Divine Intent surged like wolf smoke, keeping demonic Qi and demonic thoughts from approaching her body. She wasn't afraid of the opponent, only that she was stuck in place.

“I want to perform a ritual, using external demonic thoughts as a guide, like pulling a thread inside and outside the maze. Then, if I pull the thread straight, the path will naturally become clear,” Li Qi said.

Jing Wuzhen, however, asked doubtfully, “Aren’t you afraid this maze has no exit?”

Li Qi replied, “If a maze has no exit, what kind of maze would it be? Why not just make a complete Seal and protective barrier? Even a Bagua maze has a life gate; there’s always a sliver of flaw in the heavenly mechanism. Only then can such a hard-to-penetrate maze be constructed. If it were truly a completely locked Seal… its strength would decrease. Never mind, I can’t explain these things clearly to you Martial Artists. Protect me; they will definitely try to interfere with me.”

A vein popped on Jing Wuzhen’s forehead, but she was indeed only good at fighting and knew very little about calculations and spells.

After all, for Martial Artists, these things were meaningless. Martial Dao Inner Qi could penetrate all spells; any spell or Divine Ability was the same in their eyes.

What Martial Artists are best at is dragging their opponents to their own level, then killing them, including this maze in front of them.

It was just that forcing a Breakthrough would be too much effort; it was better to let Li Qi solve it.

“Okay, I’ll protect you. Hurry up,” Jing Wuzhen said, her heavy sword shifting from offense to defense. (End of Chapter)