Chapter 1096 - 496: Ancient (Part 2)

And at the center of the vortex, Dao Sheng had already abandoned all thought, all resistance.

His Divine Soul was like a lone skiff cast into a furious ocean woven from the birth and death of billions of worlds.

In one instant he endured the extreme sharpness of the Gold Law, and in the very next, that sharpness was dissolved by the endless embrace of the Water Law, turning into a neither-this-nor-that "corrosion" Power that etched mottled marks upon his Dao bones.

In one instant he tasted the exuberant vitality of the Wood Law, and in the very next, that vitality was strangled by the ultimate Nirvana of the Law of Death, evolving into a "decay" state poised between life and death, draping his Divine Soul in a layer of ashen bleakness.

Light and dark chased one another within him, no longer clearly divided, but gnawing at each other, turning into a grey "Chaos" that devoured all concepts.

Time here lost all meaning. In the span of one breath he was still the eight-thousand-year-old child of the Dao Origin, overlooking the rise and fall of epochs; in the next breath he seemed to have returned to the point of origin, when he first emerged from the strange stone, ignorant yet pure. Immediately after, he was hurled into a future billions of years hence, witnessing this world reduced to dust, its remnants drifting through a cold Cosmos.

Past, present, future—three timelines were forcibly twisted together by the Power left behind by the Throat of Chaos, smelted into a merciless file that madly polished away his mark of existence.

This was a torment more terrifying than death.

Death still has the concept of "death" to define it. What he was enduring at this moment was the collapse of "meaning" itself.

Everything he had built in eight thousand years, everything he had known, everything he had held to—all of it was being dismantled one piece at a time in this chaotic furnace, melted down into the most primitive, most chaotic, most attribute-less "raw material."

That "Dao Sheng" was being erased from the root!

"Hahahahaha... Die! In this paradox of self-negation, utterly vanish into nothingness!"

The will of the Throat of Chaos echoed through the void outside the Dao Origin Realm, suffused with glee and cruelty. It savored its masterpiece, savored how this once flawless child of perfect order, who had left it helpless, was now walking step by step into self-destruction within the trap it had so carefully laid.

Yet it did not notice that in the deepest part of that chaotic Energy vortex, within the core of Dao Sheng’s Divine Soul that had been completely laid bare to ravage, a strand of grey airflow so faint as to be almost undetectable was quietly condensing.

That was neither order nor Chaos.

That was...the breath of "Fire."

It was the Dao resonance born from the phrase: "Only when you no longer strive to ’become’ everything can you truly...’embrace’ everything."

This breath was like a calm needle anchoring the furious sea. It did not join the struggle, nor did it try to quell the storm; it simply existed there, quietly, providing Dao Sheng’s soon-to-be-completely-dissolved "self-awareness" with a final "anchor point."

With this anchor, Dao Sheng’s consciousness did not become utterly lost in the endless Chaos.

He was no longer "Dao Sheng"; he was merely an "observer."

He observed the clash of gold and water, and etched into memory the true meaning of "corrosion."

He observed the intertwining of life and death, and grasped the essence of "decay."

He observed the mutual gnawing of light and dark, and saw through the shape of "Chaos."

He was like the most devout, most focused of students, studying the most forbidden, most frenzied knowledge under heaven. The "order" he had built over eight thousand years had endowed him with peerless "comprehension" and "powers of inference." At this moment he was using those powers to comprehend and infer this boundless "Chaos."

He did not attempt to define them; he only came to know them, to acknowledge their existence.

Gradually, the torrents of the Law of Chaos surging into his body seemed to sense this change.

They were no longer frenzied invaders that sought to destroy everything, but rather as though they had found a stage upon which they could "display" themselves. Within Dao Sheng’s body they freely played out their myriad "possibilities," while his Divine Soul quietly classified and recorded it all.

His body became a library of "Chaos."

His Divine Soul became the "librarian" of that library.

Time passed, none knew how long.

Perhaps but an instant, perhaps hundreds or thousands of years.

When the final ray of warped Law-light also merged into Dao Sheng’s body, that Energy vortCx that had swept across heaven and earth finally began to slowly subside.

In the depths of the pit, Dao Sheng’s body was still shattered, covered in web-like cracks. But from those cracks no golden divine radiance spilled forth anymore; instead there seeped out a kind of profound gloom, as though it held the birth and death of ten thousand stars.

His aura had utterly vanished.

Not the Nirvana of death, but another kind of...return to the original simplicity. He seemed to have completely fused with this broken heaven and earth—you in me, I in you—such that no Divine Thought could ever again detect him as a separate presence.

"Is it over?"

In the void, the will of the Throat of Chaos carried a trace of doubt. It could no longer sense Dao Sheng’s existence, nor could it sense the chaotic Source it had left behind. Everything seemed to be completely veiled beneath an unimaginably vast curtain.

And those several ancient onlookers fell into an even deeper silence.

"He...succeeded?" In the intent of the Void Touch there was a hint of incredulity.

"No...you cannot call it success." The voice of the Source of All Things was more grave than ever before. "He did not ’defeat’ Chaos, nor did he ’repair’ order. He has merely...become a new ’vessel.’ A...monster capable of simultaneously bearing ’order’ and ’Chaos,’ yet not leaning toward either side himself."

In the Eye of Silence, that eternal indifference turned at this moment into a streak of deep, shadowy light.

"Has Fire’s gamble...been won?" For the first time its intent carried the color of a question. "It seeks to create an ultimate existence that transcends ’being’ and ’non-being,’ to face the coming of that ’Great Nirvana.’ But this before us...is it Fire’s Dao Fruit, or Chaos’s ’new king’?"

Just then, within the pit, change surged forth once more!

The little "Primordial Spirit" deer that had always stood as Guardian at his side let out a soft cry of joy. It could feel that familiar and intimate aura returning!

It stepped forward, carefully approaching Dao Sheng, lowered its head, and once more gently touched his body with its antlers.

This time, it was no longer the deer sending Life Force into Dao Sheng.

Instead, Dao Sheng’s body actively drew from it a thread of the purest, most primordial "life" Source, untouched by any definition!

Hum—!

That single point of "life" Source was like a stone cast into the surface of a tranquil lake; in Dao Sheng’s Deathly Silence-ridden body, it instantly stirred waves ten thousand fathoms high!

Taking that point of "life" as the origin, the billions of Laws of Chaos within him that had been recorded, classified, and "understood" seemed to have found a "fulcrum," and began, in an unfathomably mysterious fashion, a new arrangement and recombination!

No longer mutually clashing and annihilating.

But, under a higher-level "rule," achieving a strange "symbiosis!"

Ka-cha, ka-cha...

Dao Sheng’s shattered Daoist Body began to crackle like roasting beans. Those terrifying fissures did not mend; instead they split open even wider!

Pieces of Dao bones that bore the old "order," fragments of flesh inscribed with brilliant divine radiance, peeled away from his body, falling into the dust, turning into motes of golden light, and utterly dispersing!