Huh?
The Dao of Destruction?
Lei Jun was genuinely surprised this time.
Shen Ni spoke again.
"And this Dao's insights are also connected to you!"
"Connected to me?"
Lei Jun fell silent for a moment, and a guess formed in his mind.
"After the Godslaying Spear failed to be forged, I realized that my chances of defeating the Heavenly Dao would be less than two in ten!"
"And if you interfered as well, those odds would drop by another one in ten!"
"So I changed my approach."
He paused briefly.
Shen Ni's consciousness was still faint, but he seemed to be experiencing a last burst of vitality.
He was extremely excited.
"I'm very curious. If your cultivation improves further, what would your chances be in a battle against the Heavenly Dao?"
"My goal is to destroy the Primordial Wilderness, that's true!"
"But why must I be the one to do it? Why can't someone else?"
"That's what I've been plotting all these years!"
"Otherwise, do you think this is the full extent of my power?"
Lei Jun furrowed his brows, understanding what Shen Ni meant.
At the same time, Lei Jun couldn't help remembering something.
Earlier, when the Chaos Demon God Shell appeared, the Heavenly Dao Will hadn't manifested!
Why hadn't it?
It clearly wasn't because the Chaos Demon God Shell had no impact on the Primordial Wilderness.
It had been held back!
"Do you know that when I fought you, the Spiritual Light here was less than one-tenth of its full strength?"
"If not, did you really think the Nine-Nine Lightning Tribulation could have beaten me into this state?"
"Dream on!"
"And the reason I did all this was to sacrifice most of the Spiritual Light!"
"So I could merge the Dao of Destruction into the Heavenly Dao!"
At that moment,
Lei Jun understood.
He completely understood what Shen Ni meant.
Then he picked up the thread of the conversation, his expression cold.
"So, to maintain the stability of the Primordial Wilderness, the Heavenly Dao might resort to more extreme measures in the future? Even..."
"Destruction?"
"And if I become a source of instability, the Heavenly Dao might take action against me?"
"Hahaha!"
Shen Ni laughed, his tone approving.
"Your comprehension really is astonishing!"
"You understand at the slightest hint!"
"It seems I chose well!"
"So I've decided to give you another great gift!"
"This gift is called..."
"Destruction!"
As he spoke,
that tiny Spiritual Light of Shen Ni's suddenly burst into an immeasurable black radiance!
In an instant,
the sun, moon, stars, and all of heaven and earth dimmed!
The same was true of Ziwei Star.
Fortunately, the black radiance came and went just as quickly.
In less than an instant,
it vanished.
It was as if someone had switched off a lamp, then immediately turned it back on.
But that wasn't the point.
The point was the Dao of Destruction within the black radiance!
Shen Ni had actually sacrificed himself to the Dao!
He had destroyed himself!
He had shown Lei Jun the True Essence of Destruction!
At that moment,
Lei Jun couldn't help but be moved.
In a sense, Shen Ni was also a seeker of the Dao.
And an exceptionally devoted one!
To seek Destruction, he was willing to destroy even himself!
If Lei Jun wanted,
he could even gain quite a bit of insight from this.
It wasn't impossible for him to comprehend the Dao of Destruction.
No wonder Shen Ni had called it a "great gift."
At that moment,
Shen Ni had completely perished.
Not a trace of him remained in heaven and earth.
There was no longer even a possibility of his resurrection.
The Beast Emperor of an era, Shen Ni,
had fallen just like that!
But Lei Jun knew that Shen Ni's influence on the Primordial Wilderness wouldn't fade.
If anything, it would run deep.
Including Lei Jun himself.
He was one of the people affected!
Lei Jun hadn't quite recovered from the shock. He felt a little wistful.
There were many reasons for that feeling.
But the main one was what Shen Ni had said.
That final black radiance.
Besides being a "great gift," wasn't it also proof that Shen Ni's words were true?
Shen Ni really had comprehended the Dao of Destruction!
And now,
he had not only merged it into the Heavenly Dao, but had also shown it to Lei Jun.
The sight was unforgettable.
It had left an impression on Lei Jun's heart.
"Truly, the Dao..."
"It isn't just about destruction in an instant. It's also about the long-term effects!"
"Whether or not I have doubts, and whether or not the Heavenly Dao takes action against me, once this seed is planted and trouble begins, it's only a matter of time."
"If the Heavenly Dao had contained the Dao of Destruction when I was at the Blood Sea, perhaps it wouldn't have been caught between advancing and retreating."
"In a sense, Shen Ni's actions have also completed the Heavenly Dao!"
For a moment,
Lei Jun was filled with emotion.
As for why Shen Ni had told him all this
instead of keeping it hidden,
the reason was simple.
What Shen Ni truly wanted to destroy was the Primordial Wilderness. The Heavenly Dao and Lei Jun were both secondary concerns!
So,
if he had kept silent and Lei Jun hadn't sensed what was going on, Lei Jun could easily have ended up at a disadvantage.
And then his goal wouldn't have been achieved, would it?
Shen Ni wanted to use Lei Jun
to fight against the Heavenly Dao,
and then destroy the Primordial Wilderness!
That was why
Shen Ni had told him outright.
Not only that,
he had deliberately gathered his True Body here, along with the Demon God Remnant, and had practically handed them over to Lei Jun, letting himself be defeated by him.
And then there was the black radiance of Destruction...
It could entirely be said that he was helping Lei Jun "level up"!
In any case, even if Lei Jun failed,
Shen Ni wouldn't lose anything.
After all, he'd had little chance of winning his battle against the Heavenly Dao to begin with. Even with the Godslaying Spear, his odds had only risen from one or two in ten to around three in ten.
It wouldn't make any decisive difference.
This was a scheme.
But even after it was exposed, it was still hard to resist.
If Lei Jun were given another chance to choose, he might well make the same choice.
After all,
even if he hadn't taken the opportunity from the Chaos Demon God Shell, would Shen Ni have refrained from merging the Dao of Destruction into the Primordial Wilderness?
Obviously not!
At that moment, Lei Jun understood many things.
Shen Ni's choice
was moving.
For a time,
Lei Jun's thoughts weren't the only things that had become clearer.
His feelings were complicated, too.
To be precise,
Shen Ni hadn't even died at Lei Jun's hands.
He had killed himself!
He had divided his Origin Spiritual Light into two parts.
One large, one small.
The part Lei Jun had dealt with was only a small portion.
And "dealt with" wasn't quite the right way to describe it.
Because...
Shen Ni had clearly come to "give him experience"!
The Chaos Demon God Shell.
The True Body Seed.
And the Dao of Destruction.
All of them had been just that.
He had even told Lei Jun all of his plans.
Or perhaps
that was another part of the scheme.
In Shen Ni's calculations, there had been more than just Lei Jun and the Heavenly Dao.
There had even been himself!
So
his own death had been part of the plan, too!
Even that last faint glimmer of Spiritual Light.
They spared none of them!
It had served its purpose.
Hadn't it left an impression on Lei Jun?
It was a seed of Destruction, too!
At the thought,
Lei Jun couldn't help but marvel.
Shen Ni was too ruthless!
He was ruthless to others, and even more ruthless to himself!
To achieve his goal,
he had begun planning his own martyrdom hundreds, even thousands, of Eons ago!
And he hadn't hesitated for a moment!
"Putting everything else aside!"
"I, Lei Jun, am willing to call you the Number One Ruthless Person of Primordial Wilderness!"
"No! You should be the Wolf Destroyer!"
"Even more ruthless than the Ruthless Person!"
All one could say was,
none of the great powers in the Primordial Wilderness were fools.
As the saying went, things reversed when they reached their extremes.
The only Fierce Beast with intelligence to emerge from among countless Fierce Beasts—
there was no way he could be stupid.
After being outsmarted by Lei Jun twice,
he would have learned his lesson.
Would he really have so abruptly revealed the Chaos Demon God Shell?
Obviously not.
"He must have used his Dao of Destruction to restrain the Heavenly Dao, leaving it unable to break away for the time being. That's why it happened so suddenly!"
"I never expected it!"
"I actually became the 'bait' and got played!"
He really had been played.
The Dao of Destruction—
it had left a deep impression on Lei Jun, even now.
"So this is the 'Dao'?"
"Its power really is far beyond that of 'techniques'!"
"Could this be related to why the next few Tribulation Periods after the Primordial Wilderness were so destructive?"
"So the Heavenly Dao never had a scheme—or rather, it never had one at all!"
"Everything it does is for the stability of the Primordial Wilderness."
It was just that its methods might be...
a little extreme?
The Innate Three Clans fought over fortune,
clashing across the Primordial Wilderness.
What was to be done?
Destroy them!
The same went for the conflict between the Wu and Yao Clans, and even the strife between the Chan and Jie Sects.
It was always the same.
But the problem was that, in the process,
the world itself was harmed, too!
Mount Buzhou collapsed, and heaven and earth crumbled.
It even split apart!
Perhaps,
in the Heavenly Dao's view, this was necessary to maintain the stability of the Primordial Wilderness.
But...
was that really so?
"Clear Cache" did need to happen.
Lei Jun didn't object.
But going so far as to damage the "system" itself just to clear the cache was taking things too far.
In a sense,
the Heavenly Dao, fused with the Dao of Destruction, was a bit like an out-of-control "artificial intelligence"?
That was what Lei Jun thought.
"Though it's not entirely that, there really is a flaw!"
And
that flaw might target him!
Even if it was only a possibility,
Lei Jun still had to be on guard.
"Even after falling, he's still exerting influence."
"In the end, whether I die or the Heavenly Dao dies, Shen Ni's plan will have been at least half-completed!
"What a clever scheme!"
The most pressing matter
was to keep improving his cultivation.
He needed to reach the peak of Qi Refining as soon as possible.
Only when an ancestor was born and no longer constrained by material energy
could he truly transcend the Primordial Wilderness!
By then,
even if the Heavenly Dao entered the fray in person, it wouldn't be able to do anything to Lei Jun.
That way,
he could attain true freedom in the Primordial Wilderness!
With a thought of his Divine Sense,
the gains from this trip to the South Sea became clear.
A ruined Demon God Shell.
An inscrutable Dao of Destruction.
And several True Body Seeds he had been searching for!
At once,
Lei Jun felt the urge to go into seclusion again.
Then, with a thought,
he returned to Ziwei Star.
After a brief calculation,
"During this seclusion, the first batch of Innate Gods and Innate Lifeforms should be taking form, right?"
Before you continue