Chapter 588 Dao Realm, Part 2

‘Does this mean we’ve found a way to High Heaven?’

With this thought, Jiang Qiu remained silent. The Exiled Great Demon kneeling on the ground, however, was so overjoyed by the few words from One-tailed that he kowtowed repeatedly. “This is wonderful! One can truly achieve Enlightenment in the First Celestial Realm! May I ask for your divine title, O Divine One?”

The Exiled Great Demon, an old man with stark white hair, knelt before them with an expression of utmost reverence. He had waited for this day for longer than he could remember; in truth, he had never imagined such a day would actually come.

But today, he had. Here, in the depths of the Beimu Mountain Range, he had met a legendary deity who had achieved Enlightenment in the First Celestial Realm.

He was so certain because he had encountered a similar aura before. What he had experienced then was the remnant of a divine being, a mere relic. Now, he was sensing that same divine aura from a living person. How could he not be stunned, shaken to his very core!

‘I have to follow in the footsteps of this Divine One and go to High Heaven,’ he thought. ‘Even if I’m not worthy, I at least have to leave the Beimu Mountain Range.’

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to leave; he had been exiled here, watched, and bound by all kinds of restrictions. He wasn’t in control of his own fate, and the suffering was immense. For more than a hundred thousand years, he had amused himself by creating cities on a whim, but the boredom was crushing.

His Realm was in constant decline, which was agonizing. Now, he just hoped this Divine One could lead him out. He would pay any price!

In truth, escaping was both difficult and not. The main problem was finding a foothold after he got out. He was, after all, a Great Demon exiled from the Chaos Main City. If he couldn’t go back, where else was there to go?

The world’s most precious resources were almost entirely controlled by places like the Chaos Main City. On his own, he could never find the resources needed to recover to his Peak. And heading north to Tai Lake was also incredibly risky and difficult.

Thinking this, the Exiled Great Demon resolved to follow the Divine One’s footsteps and leave the Beimu Mountain Range. In response, One-tailed calmly revealed the name of the Nine-tailed Fox God. As she did, she felt a peculiar aura emerge from the Exiled Great Demon, creating a faint resonance with her own ethereal Nine-tailed Fox God True Form.

It was like a deity sensing the devout faith of a reasonably powerful being. And so, a deal was struck: Jiang Qiu and his companions would follow the Exiled Great Demon out of the Beimu Mountain Range. As long as the Great Demon could guide them to Tai Lake in the north, he would be permitted to remain by their side.

The Exiled Great Demon was not surprised to hear they were heading to Tai Lake. For a deity, going anywhere was normal. To super-powerful beings like them—beings who were practically from another plane of existence—the First Celestial Realm was nothing more than flat ground beneath their feet, to be trod upon as they wished.

Only those who had truly sensed a deity’s aura or encountered their relics could possibly understand the overwhelming might of a Celestial Spirit. Alternatively, perhaps only the most supreme beings—like the Chaos City Lord, the Demon Emperor, or the Taihu Python—had ever been fortunate enough to witness even a specter of a deity.

As for the Exiled Great Demon, he was simply grateful that he actually knew the way out of the Beimu Mountain Range and toward Tai Lake in the north.

The reason he knew the route was simple. The Exiled Great Demon had been stuck here for at least a hundred thousand years. All alone, with nothing else to do, he had spent his time exploring the routes of the Beimu Mountain Range when he wasn’t creating cities for amusement.

He knew the path north to Tai Lake and the path south back to the Primitive Ancient Forest. Unfortunately, he could never use them. The moment he stepped out, he would be detected. He had once nearly been crushed by the sheer might of the Taihu Python, and returning to the Primitive Ancient Forest would mean certain suppression by a powerful expert with a Chaos Bloodline.

Exiled Great Demons like him were always at the mercy of others. They no longer possessed their original strength, and they were bound by restrictions that made it impossible to oppose the Chaos Main City. Because of this, even if he went to a Demon City, he would never be entrusted with any real power, making it difficult to find a place to belong.

Thus, after languishing in the Beimu Mountain Range for so long, he had finally found a new hope of escape. He promptly began leading Jiang Qiu and the others north.

He brought nothing with him aside from some essential food. Along the way, he readily answered every question One-tailed and Jiang Qiu asked. However, he himself had no real understanding of what a deity was; his impression of them came entirely from one place: High Heaven!

Celestial Spirits were deities. The reason was simple: they were powerful. So powerful, in fact, that the moment he met Jiang Qiu and One-tailed and sensed the faintest trace of the Nine-tailed Fox God’s aura, he had fallen to his knees to worship them.

One must remember that he was once a being who had surpassed the True Body Realm, a member of the top tier of experts just below the absolute pinnacle. Who could possibly exist that would require him to bow in reverence?

He wouldn’t have abased himself so completely even before those pinnacle beings. And in reality, opportunities to meet them were so rare that he had been, for all intents and purposes, one of the most powerful experts in the open.

And yet, a being of such immense power was now desperate to travel with Jiang Qiu and the others. This was all because he feared deities—he feared the Celestial Spirits.

Only those who knew enough could understand just how powerful the Celestial Spirits truly were. That was why he held them in such awe.

As for his talk of achieving “Enlightenment in the First Celestial Realm,” he was referring to Cultivators from the First Celestial Realm who had successfully ascended to become Celestial Spirits.

This was because a divine aura could only be emitted by a Celestial Spirit, and not all Celestial Spirits originated from High Heaven. Some ascended from the First Celestial Realm—from the worlds below.

He suspected One-tailed was one such being who had ascended from the First Celestial Realm, only to return for some special reason. Admittedly, he had no memory of a deity called the Nine-tailed Fox God, but he chalked that up to his own limited knowledge. He only knew of a few deities by name.

The deities the Exiled Great Demon knew of had mostly achieved Enlightenment in the First Celestial Realm. They included a few Ancestors from the Chaos Main City and the Emperors of the Demon Race. These beings had the potential to ascend and become Celestial Spirits, but very few succeeded.

Clearly, One-tailed possessed neither a Chaos Bloodline nor a Demon Bloodline, which made her highly unusual. But he didn’t dare inquire further, terrified of offending a deity.

Hearing all this, Jiang Qiu began to realize just how difficult it was to become a Celestial Spirit. Ascending through the Thirty-Six Celestial Realms was an incredibly arduous climb.

Only a handful of people had ever managed to ascend from the First to the Second Celestial Realm, and all of them were beings at the absolute pinnacle of power. The sheer difficulty was staggering.

Jiang Qiu considered that he hadn’t even met a single expert from the top tier below the pinnacle. Even if the Exiled Great Demon counted, he was a top-tier expert from over a hundred thousand years ago and was no longer at his prime.

‘Under these circumstances,’ he thought, ‘I still have a very long way to go.’

However, the Exiled Great Demon also explained the Realm system of the First Celestial Realm. The path began with Spiritual Awakening, followed by Opening Spirit Veins to embark on the true path of Cultivation. From there, one reached the Spirit Control Realm and could become a local Dominator. After establishing oneself as a king, one became a Great Dominator, a stage above the Spirit Control Realm. Those who went on to pioneer their own cultivation methods became the Ancestors of a generation, known as True Dominators at the Transformation Realm. Beyond the Transformation Realm were the Super True Dominators, powerful enough to establish cities in the middle section of the Primitive Ancient Forest and forge a path for countless Ancestors.

The stage after Super True Dominator was the True Body Realm, which was the minimum requirement to earn a place in the Chaos Main City. After that, only two High Realms remained.

They were the realm beyond the True Body Realm, and the Dao Realm!

The Dao Realm was the absolute pinnacle, with so few members you could count them on one hand. A hundred thousand years ago, there were only three or five such beings. He didn’t know the current number, but the Taihu Python was definitely at the Dao Realm.

As for the realm beyond the True Body Realm—that was the Realm the Exiled Great Demon himself had once reached.