Lord Wanshouyuan drew a deep breath of Innate Spiritual Qi, heavy as a mountain. Each breath felt like swallowing metal, but it filled him with immense energy.
Azure light blazed in his eyes like two divine lamps piercing Chaos. He drove the power of his mid-stage Da Luo Golden Immortal body to its absolute limit.
His blood and vital energy surged through his veins and meridians like countless ancient Azure Dragons awakening and roaring.
A deep, vast rumble rose from within him, as though from the depths of the Primordial Wilderness. He held fast against the terrifying pressure that threatened to freeze space and bring time to a halt.
His Ultimate Taiyi magic power also began circulating with unprecedented efficiency. Though it could not yet match the sheer force of his Da Luo-level body,
it flowed on like an underground spring, protecting his relatively fragile meridians and organs while sustaining his strength and the use of his divine abilities.
His gaze pierced the thin Chaos mist and fixed on the summit above. It seemed close enough to touch, bathed in the boundless light of the sky,
yet separated from him by Endless Space-Time and barriers of law. He steadied body and mind for one final struggle, the hardest of all.
He gathered all his Essence, Qi, and Spirit. His will focused into an invisible blade, ready to pierce the last obstacle.
Each step felt as though he carried the weight of the entire Primordial Land. The rock beneath his feet groaned, deep and muffled, as if even this ancient divine mountain acknowledged the weight of his tread.
The pressure on this final stretch surpassed anything below. Visible ripples of space undulated and twisted like waves, warping the light into bizarre shapes.
The once-formless Chaos Energy Stream grew so dense that it became a mass of gray-black lashes,
thrashing like countless frenzied tentacles against his Crystal Body with a force that threatened to annihilate all it touched.
A dense patter rang out, sharp as metal grinding against metal. Dazzling sparks and shattered motes of law scattered with every strike.
Lord Wanshouyuan gritted his teeth. His face was as unyielding as carved stone, his will firmer than the divine mountain beneath him. Only one thought remained: Reach the summit!
He cast aside every distraction, even deliberately dulling his awareness of danger. He brought every thought, every shred of will, and every ounce of strength into perfect alignment
to resist the relentless pressure. Upward. Still upward! Each step was like opening a world, slow but utterly resolute.
At last, he reached an unprecedented peak of readiness and gathered every bit of bodily strength and Taiyi magic power he could command.
With a low roar like a dragon's cry, he lunged forward, crossing an unseen, intangible boundary that nonetheless divided heaven and earth—
Hum...
A strange, faint note rang deep within his soul, as though someone had plucked the Great Dao Strings.
It felt as if he had broken through an invisible membrane of impossible thickness, or suddenly thrown off heavy shackles that had bound him for countless ages.
The ultimate pressure he expected—enough to crush an ordinary Da Luo Golden Immortal's body and erase his Primordial Spirit—never came. Instead... the weight on him abruptly lifted!
The Pangu Pressure had accompanied nearly his entire climb, as vast as a sea of stars and as heavy as ten thousand worlds.
Yet the moment he entered this mysterious region, it receded like an ebbing tide, diminishing so sharply that he could scarcely believe it.
It had not vanished. It was still hundreds, even thousands of times heavier than the pressure in an ordinary Immortal Mountain blessed land.
But compared with the suffocating force below, which had threatened to grind everything to dust, this place could almost be called peaceful.
It even held a strange sense of stillness.
Lord Wanshouyuan stumbled. Still braced against the tremendous force he had expected, he nearly pitched forward from his own momentum.
He hurriedly steadied himself, his face filled with bewilderment and disbelief.
Wary to the utmost, he looked around. His divine sense swept over every inch of space like spilled mercury, probing more closely than ever for traps or anything amiss.
He had reached the very top of Buzhou Mountain.
The ground was relatively flat and open, like an immense platform painstakingly leveled by supreme power, vast and desolate.
The stone was a deeper, purer blue-black, as though every color of Chaos had settled within it.
Profound natural Dao patterns covered its surface, beyond the power of human hands to carve. They faintly resonated with the most fundamental Great Dao Laws of heaven and earth, and staring at them for too long left him dizzy and entranced.
The sky truly seemed within reach. He could feel the breath of the Primordial Wilderness's heavens with perfect clarity: close, vast, ancient, and supreme, yet possessed of an indescribable embrace.
But what shook him most was not the pressure's strange retreat. It was another presence permeating this space, deeper and closer to the source.
It was no longer merely a brutal, hostile force bearing down on him. It was a will—immense, boundless, and irresistible!
A supreme will that refused to yield, that had opened heaven and earth and brought all things into being, that lived on even after death!
Great God Pangu had opened heaven and earth amid Chaos, then perished when his strength ran out.
Buzhou Mountain, formed from his unbending spine, bore the final imprint of his spirit: his deepest, most selfless wish to protect the world he had created.
And woven through that vast ocean of will, which nourished the mind and spirit, were countless broken yet profoundly mysterious traces.
They were neither complete inheritances nor cultivation methods. They were more like Great Dao Brushstrokes left by a supreme artisan in the midst of a masterpiece, ripples of law and the first hints of Dao resonance.
Scattered fragments concerning The Pinnacle of Strength; hazy insights into the Separation of Clarity and Turbidity and Xuanhuang Settling the Cauldron; early traces of Yin-Yang Evolution and Five Elements Generation and Overcoming; primordial marks left by Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water as they established the Primordial Wilderness... Their scope was endless, their depths unfathomable.
They were only the earliest, most rudimentary Great Dao Fragments, somewhat disordered, like sketches and notes an artisan had jotted down while shaping an idea.
Yet their source was so exalted, their vision so far-reaching, and their connection to the Great Dao Origin so pure that they lay beyond the comprehension or imagination of almost every Innate Being on the Primordial Continent.
To Pangu, who had joined with the Great Dao, opened the world, and become all things, these first traces of insight might have been no more than a starting point—sparks of thought he could discard without a second glance.
But to any being on the Primordial Continent, from a newly awakened Xiantian God-Demon to the mighty figures destined to rise in ages to come, these earliest, purest traces of the Creator God's thinking were priceless treasures!
They were beacons and wellsprings that could light the road ahead, show the way, and lay a supreme Dao Foundation!
Lord Wanshouyuan's wariness and confusion gave way in an instant to boundless awe and indescribable joy.
He understood now. The greatest treasure at the Summit of Buzhou was not some tangible Innate Spiritual Root or spiritual artifact, but Pangu's Immortal Will, vast and everywhere present, and those precious traces of his earliest Great Dao insights!
He stopped fighting the pressure with all his might. Slowly, he relaxed his taut stance and let the surging blood, vital energy, and magic power around him subside, allowing body and mind to open to what surrounded him.
He found a relatively smooth stone where the Dao patterns faintly formed a natural spirit-gathering array. Sitting cross-legged, he closed his eyes and lowered every barrier around his mind and spirit.
He offered no resistance, no rejection. Like a wanderer returning home, he let Pangu's vast, gentle, unyielding will embrace him, soak into him, and wash over him.
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