What did a Third-Rank hot war look like?
Actually, it was quite straightforward.
For existences that were "metaphysical," even "history" itself did not seem weighty enough before a Third Rank. Reality itself would change because of their appearance.
Ideas and reality inherently influenced one another. This was also one manifestation of the Daoist yin-yang taiji.
Opposites united as one. Speaking of life and death, existence and extinction, success and failure, gain and loss, benefit and harm, calamity and blessing, right and wrong, crooked and straight—one must raise both opposing ends and unite them. On a grander scale, heaven and earth, motion and stillness, yin and yang, ending and beginning were all the same.
Though it was said, "What is above form is called the Dao; what is below form is called the vessel," in truth, Dao and vessel were spoken of together and belonged to one whole. Above form and below form were truly two ends, while form stood at their center. Thus, grasping both ends, one must speak of things when speaking of objects, speak of Dao when speaking of vessels—just as speaking of heaven required speaking of earth, and speaking of virtue required speaking of deeds.
Thus, what lay above and below form had to be spoken of as interconnected, to reveal their unity. Heaven, earth, and all things changed without end, and within those endless transformations, one could see the true meaning of the "Dao."
In other words, the battle of the Third Ranks' "Dao" would manifest directly in the material world.
That was only natural. When the Dao changed, the universe naturally changed with it.
Yet in an abstract sense, this battle had no "battlefield," because both sides were affecting subtle adjustments to all of reality.
For lifeforms like Third Ranks, whose reach encompassed every possibility,