Lei Jun Tianzun?
Wasn't he the Heavenly Dao?
Had he really mistaken him for someone else?
Fortunately, while Lei Jun was lost in thought, Ming He came to his senses.
Then—
A mournful cry rang out.
Yet it was also deeply respectful.
"May I ask the Celestial Venerable to point Ming He toward a way to survive?"
"If this continues!"
"Ming He fears he'll dissipate!"
Dissipate was an exaggeration.
But it still made clear just how wretched Ming He's situation was.
His voice sounded utterly miserable.
"I have already pointed out the way. If you can't figure it out, then your path to survival is already cut off!"
"Even if I wished to help you, the Heavenly Dao might not back down!"
"Do you understand?"
Lei Jun spoke in a detached tone.
What?
The Celestial Venerable had already shown him a way to survive?
In what he'd said earlier?
Hearing this,
Ming He hurriedly thought back.
Fortunately, cultivators didn't forget things.
He still remembered what Lei Jun had just said.
That there was a possibility the Heavenly Dao had made some kind of mistake.
And that he might have obtained some opportunity he shouldn't have.
At once,
Ming He's heart tightened as a possibility came to mind.
"Celestial Venerable, Ming He understands!"
Lei Jun raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
He waited quietly for Ming He to continue.
"Several dozen Eons ago, I extracted a strand of Profound Qi from the baleful energy in the Blood Sea!"
"There seems to be a Dharma Gate within this Profound Qi! It's quite mysterious, though I haven't comprehended it yet!"
"Could it be..."
"That there's something strange about this Profound Qi?"
"I beg the Celestial Venerable to investigate!"
As he spoke,
from the depths of the Blood Sea,
a strand of utterly mysterious energy drifted out from the place where Ming He had been born.
Lei Jun gently swept his hand out.
The Profound Qi settled into his palm.
Then,
Lei Jun poured his Divine Sense into the Profound Qi and began to examine it.
There was no denying it.
The difference in cultivation was laid bare in that moment.
Ming He had possessed this Profound Qi for dozens of Eons,
yet he had learned nothing from it.
But Lei Jun saw through it in an instant!
To Lei Jun,
the Profound Qi held no secrets.
His speed was due not only to his superior cultivation, but also to the fact that the Profound Qi was familiar to him.
He had encountered something similar before.
Lei Jun was delighted.
"Just as I thought!"
"It really is connected to Shen Ni! My guess was right!"
"But I never expected Ming He to extract Profound Qi from the baleful energy! Perhaps it has something to do with his special origins!"
"With this Profound Qi, I might be able to find a clue to the opportunity that would reveal Shen Ni's True Body hidden within the baleful energy!"
"That means there's much less need to purify the Blood Sea!"
As it happened,
the baleful energy it contained was only one reason Lei Jun wanted to purify the Blood Sea.
It wasn't even the main reason.
The real reason was that he wanted to find clues to Shen Ni's True Body within it.
Who could have guessed
that the clue would be with Ming He?
And that Ming He would even "let it slip" to him.
After putting away the Profound Qi, Lei Jun didn't immediately try to deduce the clue.
There was still something to deal with first.
"That's right!"
"It's this Profound Qi!"
Lei Jun spoke, his Dao Sound spreading throughout the Blood Sea.
"This Profound Qi has an extraordinary origin. It contains the Dharma Gate of the Beast Emperor Shen Ni!"
"The Beast Emperor has yet to be destroyed. You secretly kept the Profound Qi, which makes you an accomplice of the Beast Emperor. The Heavenly Dao hasn't brought down a tribulation on you—that's already because of your origins! Do you understand?"
"So that's how it is!"
Ming He's heart shuddered.
Though still somewhat bewildered, he could see that the Blood Sea water was no longer being purified.
That was undeniable proof.
At that moment, Lei Jun spoke again.
"Of course, if you consider the Dharma Gate within the Profound Qi an opportunity, you can keep studying it!"
"Do you still want this Profound Qi?"
Lei Jun had barely finished speaking when Ming He answered.
His tone was utterly resolute.
"Celestial Venerable, please, don't say another word!"
"I don't want this opportunity after all!"
"No! What opportunity? This is clearly a calamity!"
"Celestial Venerable, you can do whatever you want with the Profound Qi!"
Whatever he wanted?
Even without those words, Lei Jun wouldn't have returned the Profound Qi to Ming He.
He had already put it away.
"If that's settled, then the Great Oath can be fulfilled!"
"Also, the Profound Qi is of some use to me. I suppose I've gained an opportunity from you as well!"
"How about this? I'll pass on to you the Dharma Gate I found in the Profound Qi!"
"That way, it'll be returned to its rightful owner. What do you say?"
"Put your mind at ease. Without the Beast Emperor's Profound Qi, just the Dharma Gate alone won't cause the Heavenly Dao to trouble you again!"
As he spoke,
Lei Jun sent a wondrous technique into the formation around Ming He.
"Thank you, Celestial Venerable!"
Hearing his reply,
Ming He was overwhelmed with gratitude.
He nearly burst into tears.
Not only had Lei Jun pointed him toward a way to survive, but after taking the Profound Qi, he had even returned the Dharma Gate to him.
Ming He still got to keep his opportunity,
and he'd been spared many Eons of trying to comprehend it.
Not only that,
Lei Jun, who had taken the Profound Qi, would now have to bear the Heavenly Dao's "hostility" on his behalf!
What kind of person did something like that?
Ming He let out a long sigh.
His gratitude was beyond words.
"Lei Jun Tianzun, you truly are a Great Good Person of the Primordial Wilderness!"
"From now on, besides worshipping the Heavenly Dao,"
"I'll worship you as well, Celestial Venerable!"
The word worship was the same,
but there was a great deal of difference between the two.
The former was forced upon him.
The latter came from the bottom of his heart...
However, Lei Jun didn't respond to Ming He's words.
At that moment,
Lei Jun hadn't left,
but now that the matter here was settled, he had important business to attend to.
He had no time to pay Ming He any mind.
Lei Jun intended to use the Profound Qi to deduce the opportunity that would let him find Shen Ni's True Body!
He focused intently on the task.
In a flash,
several hundred thousand years passed.
At last, Lei Jun found that opportunity!
"As expected of the Beast Emperor!"
"He must have obtained quite a few Dharma Gates from Chaos Demon Gods!"
"Otherwise, even if he wanted to hide the baleful energy, it wouldn't have been so easy!"
At the same time, Lei Jun finally understood why he had been unable to make any headway before.
Previously,
Lei Jun had thought,
since Shen Ni's True Body was within the baleful energy, and could gather itself at any time,
then surely
the part where he hid his True Body would differ somewhat from ordinary baleful energy.
No matter how deeply it was hidden, there would always be subtle differences.
By following those differences,
he could find the True Body.
With this in mind, Lei Jun had tried again and again.
But every attempt had ended in failure.
Now that he thought about it,
the problem had been that his approach was wrong.
When the direction was wrong, the more one calculated, the further off course one went.
"Shen Ni's True Body Seed isn't in the baleful energy at all. It's in the world between Heaven and Earth."
"It's the baleful energy that's in the world!"
"That's why the True Body Seed seemed to be hidden in the baleful energy!"
"But that wasn't the truth!"
The two explanations might seem nearly identical, but in reality, they were worlds apart.
At that moment,
Lei Jun was filled with emotion.
"Shen Ni actually knew how to throw up a smokescreen! He'd even deceived me, nearly leading me farther and farther down the wrong path!"
"What 'as long as baleful energy doesn't vanish, he won't vanish'?"
"That's simply impossible!"
"When has the baleful energy in the Primordial Wilderness ever truly disappeared?"
"Even right after a Tribulation Period ended, when a new era had just begun, it only became much thinner. No matter how imperceptible it was, it still existed!"
"What's more, when another Tribulation Period began, the baleful energy would grow dense again!"
"If Shen Ni were right, he simply couldn't die! Even if he died, he'd come back to life!"
"And yet..."
After the Fierce Beast Tribulation, where was Shen Ni to be found?
He hadn't even left behind many legends!
So "as long as the baleful energy doesn't vanish, Shen Ni won't vanish" was just a smokescreen!
Shen Ni had done it deliberately.
At that thought,
Lei Jun gradually understood.
"So each True Body Seed is actually an incomplete Dao!"
"At the same time, each is also a method that cultivators in later generations can practice!"
"The Fierce Beast Tribulation wasn't just about exterminating the Fierce Beasts!"
"It was also meant to complete the Three Thousand Laws of the Primordial Wilderness!"
"The case is solved!"
"The True Body Seeds are the Three Thousand Laws!"
Of course, three thousand was just a figure of speech.
There weren't really only three thousand.
In fact, there were many more.
Besides,
Lei Jun had previously thought that he couldn't directly comprehend the Laws from the Primordial Wilderness because the Heavenly Dao hadn't emerged.
Only after finding the Demon God Remnant could he extract a little from it.
Now that he thought about it,
it was because the Chaos Demon God's power had yet to be fully integrated into the Primordial Wilderness!
However, Lei Jun didn't need the Laws now.
After he had turned the Law Furnace into a "Dao,"
the Laws became much less useful.
But in that case,
if Lei Jun used Shen Ni's True Body as an ingredient to refine the Small Return Pill,
it might cause the Three Thousand Laws of the Primordial Wilderness...
"To be incomplete?"
Lei Jun thought.
If that was really the case, he would have to consider things carefully.
He had to decide whether to go through with it.
After all, this would be no different from sacrificing the Primordial Wilderness to strengthen himself.
That would incur Great Karma!
With Karma weighing on him,
true freedom would be hard to attain.
Lei Jun had to be cautious.
So he began calculating once more.
Before long,
Lei Jun got his answer.
He let out a long breath of relief.
"Thank goodness!"
"Though I'd incur some Karma, I can repay it!"
"And the Primordial Wilderness wouldn't become incomplete!"
"After all, I'm still within the Primordial Wilderness, and I'm part of it! I just have to restore these Laws before I transcend the Primordial Wilderness!"
"The one that would truly suffer a loss wouldn't be the Primordial Wilderness!"
"It would be the Heavenly Dao!"
The calculations showed
that if Lei Jun continued refining Shen Ni's True Body,
a cultivator might eventually find that they couldn't comprehend a certain Law through the Heavenly Dao.
Because it hadn't been recorded!
They would have to comprehend it through Lei Jun!
Otherwise,
they would have to give up on comprehending that Law.
In the end, because Lei Jun was vastly weaker than the Heavenly Dao, the Heavenly Dao would probably destroy most of the True Bodies.
Only a small number of Laws would end up in this situation.
But even that was outrageous.
It was astounding.
After reaching this conclusion,
Lei Jun felt a little torn between laughter and tears.
"Well, look at that!"
"I really am going to become a 'Little Heavenly Dao'!"
"But fortunately, there are benefits as well as duties!"
Before he restored the Laws of the Primordial Wilderness,
Lei Jun would not only provide cultivators with a way to comprehend the Laws, becoming that "unseen" presence,
but would also gain greater Permission Rights!
That meant
he would be one step closer to becoming the "Little Heavenly Dao"!
Before you continue