Come to think of it.
Ever since he had taken human form, Tongtian's cultivation level had barely improved.
His cultivation had continued to grow.
But his realm remained unchanged.
Even now,
he was still at Peak Da Luo.
By comparison,
Taiqing and Yuanshi had only been at mid Da Luo when they took human form, yet by the time they parted ways with Tongtian, they had already reached Late Da Luo!
Though they were still some way off from catching up with him,
Tongtian wasn't too concerned about the possibility of his two elder brothers surpassing him.
Still, he was somewhat anxious
that he had never been able to advance his realm.
In fact,
why had he followed the opportunity here and chosen to part ways with his two elder brothers? Was it not also because the opportunity seemed to offer a chance to break through?
As for why he hadn't managed to break through...
The reason was simple.
He hadn't found the path ahead!
Tongtian didn't really know how one was supposed to proceed beyond Da Luo.
Could he achieve Hunyuan in a single step?
In theory, it was possible.
But it was far too difficult.
The gap between them wasn't merely tenfold, a hundredfold, or ten thousandfold.
It was countless times greater!
With such an enormous gap, achieving Hunyuan in a single step was almost impossible.
Even if it were possible,
it would take an immensely long time.
So,
he could only seek another way.
But until just now, Tongtian hadn't had the slightest clue.
Of course,
with his comprehension and good fortune,
he would eventually figure it out.
But just like achieving Hunyuan in a single step, it would take an immensely long time.
Only somewhat less, by comparison.
But now,
the situation had changed.
"Ha ha ha!"
"My opportunity for a breakthrough lies with this Spirit Root!"
Tongtian couldn't help laughing out loud.
Hum~
He summoned the Greenping Sword once more!
This time,
he didn't intend to pick the Spirit Root. Instead, he would use it as a means to practice his swordsmanship.
He would enter the Dao through it!
And break through his current realm!
Whoosh!
Tongtian's aura surged like a rainbow, his fighting spirit deep as an abyss.
He slashed with his sword.
He was no longer holding back eight or nine tenths of his strength. He was putting in everything... no, twelve tenths!
He had truly gone beyond his normal limits.
It was also the strongest sword Tongtian had ever struck.
Without a Supreme Treasure to protect them,
even Taiqing and Yuanshi would have to pay a heavy price.
Anyone below mid Da Luo?
They'd be lucky to survive with only their skin peeled off!
This sword...
was terrifying!
Tongtian was confident in it.
Surely this sword could at least stir the Spirit Root a little, couldn't it?
But clearly,
Tongtian was expecting too much.
His sword was indeed powerful, but its location mattered.
On this Immortal Mountain,
after he swung his sword, there was no earth-shaking tremor, nor any sign of the world changing.
Everything remained as it was.
Only at the foot of the mountain, it seemed...
there was an extra wisp of breeze?
Aside from that,
nothing else happened.
As for making the Sword Grass stir, or getting it to "acknowledge him as its master" or anything of the sort, that was even less worth dreaming about.
While Tongtian stood there in a daze,
whether by mistake
or not,
a small leaf of the Sword Grass reached out and moved.
It was as though the "breeze" had blown it, and then...
a sword light of utterly terrifying power appeared.
It was powerful enough to crush Tongtian's Sword Intent completely!
That sword light
instantly swallowed Tongtian.
He was utterly powerless to fight back.
Not only that,
the sword light tore open a spatial rift leading to another part of the Primordial Wilderness and swept Tongtian into it,
carrying him far from the Immortal Mountain.
Vaguely,
Tongtian thought he heard someone say,
"Go play somewhere else!"
After escaping from the spatial rift, Tongtian's clothes were disheveled, and he looked utterly wretched.
It was hard to imagine
that he was a Peak Da Luo cultivator.
But now,
Tongtian had no time to worry about his appearance. He hurriedly calmed his Heart Spirit
and seized the chance to contemplate what had happened.
Though the sword light had been sharp, it carried no killing intent.
It had only swept him away.
It hadn't meant to kill him.
So,
though Tongtian looked wretched, he had suffered only minor injuries.
They were no cause for concern.
He could recover from them while in seclusion.
Besides,
the impression of the sword light still lingered in his mind.
Through this impression,
he might even have a chance to advance his Sword Dao Law further!
That was to say...
to shed the word "Law" and step into the realm of the "Dao"!
At the same time,
he could use this opportunity to break through his current realm.
So his opportunity had been to get slashed by a Spirit Root?
For a moment,
Tongtian didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
But before entering seclusion,
he couldn't help wondering about one other thing.
The question
had to do with the voice he'd vaguely heard as the sword light swept him away.
Did that Spirit Root...
have a mind of its own?
Tongtian wasn't sure, but one thing was certain.
That was...
he really couldn't beat a blade of grass!
And not just that...
he hadn't been able to fight back at all!
"Just as I thought!"
"The Primordial Wilderness is vast, and all kinds of strange things can be found in it."
"Even with my extraordinary origins, I mustn't become complacent. I have to keep cultivating!"
"It's settled, then. I'll go into seclusion first, and once I break through, I'll pay it a visit!"
"If Da Luo Jinxian isn't enough, Hunyuan Jinxian should be, right?"
With his fighting spirit burning bright,
Tongtian entered seclusion.
Meanwhile,
on the Immortal Mountain, a voice of complaint rang out.
But strangely enough,
it wasn't the Sword Grass.
It was the Immortal Mountain itself.
"Fellow Daoist, why did you chase him away?"
"Why shouldn't I? He's so weak he doesn't even have one ten-thousandth of Yang Mei's strength. He's obviously not someone the Celestial Venerable wants to test! I couldn't even be bothered to move, let alone show my true form!"
The Sword Grass said as if it were only natural.
The Immortal Mountain
didn't argue.
It only sighed,
its tone melancholy.
"Alas..."
"Fellow Daoist, you don't understand."
"I've stood here for countless years without moving. Now he's poking the sole of my foot with a tiny toothpick, and it actually feels pretty good..."
At once,
the Sword Grass fell silent.
It was speechless.
So the sword he'd swung with all his might because it felt good?
That worked, too?
He'd just been scratching an itch...
And that was meant literally. There was no exaggeration whatsoever.
If that cultivator found out,
who knew how shocked he would be?
Still,
for Immortal Mountain and Sword Grass, this was merely an insignificant little incident in their long history of guarding the gate.
Although...
Tongtian was the first cultivator to appear here,
his cultivation
was simply too low!
He was no match for them even before they had fallen.
He had not even reached the Hunyuan Golden Immortal realm.
Could such a being
be the one the Celestial Venerable was waiting for?
Obviously not!
So,
there should be no problem with driving him away.
That was what Sword Grass thought.
Before long,
the two of them once again entered a state of half-seclusion, just as before.
But they clearly hadn't expected
that their actions
would catch Lei Jun's attention.
At that moment,
in the Small Courtyard,
Lei Jun was pondering something.
"It wasn't only Tongtian who sensed the opportunity."
"There are other cultivators, too."
"Tongtian was simply the first to arrive. Other cultivators will come here before long. If things stay as they are, they may not gain any opportunities..."
"After all, there aren't many cultivators in the Primordial Wilderness who primarily cultivate the Sword Dao Law."
"So I'll have to use a different method to test the others!"
Before long,
Lei Jun came up with an idea.
Then,
with a thought,
the entire mountain, Small Courtyard and all, suddenly changed.
One flight of steps after another
stretched down from above,
from the Small Courtyard at the summit all the way to the foot of the mountain.
"This is..."
"The Seeking Dao Stone Steps, imbued with pressure and trials!"
"Anyone who wishes to come here and obtain an opportunity must first pass these Stone Steps!"
As it happened,
Lei Jun had not bestowed opportunities upon certain cultivators on a whim.
He had a specific purpose.
During the previous Tribulation Period,
he had once fought the Heavenly Dao in a battle of magic, and in the end, they had reached an "agreement."
The agreement stipulated that
during the Dragon-Han Calamity, he could no longer interfere with the Primordial Wilderness.
But the Heavenly Dao could no longer target Lei Jun, either.
Unexpectedly,
the Heavenly Dao had erased most traces of Lei Jun from the Primordial Wilderness.
At least, on the surface,
it was as if Lei Jun had never existed in the Primordial Wilderness.
Unless one's cultivation reached a certain level,
one couldn't detect him at all.
This was the result of the Heavenly Dao acting on instinct to maintain the stability of the Primordial Wilderness.
In other words, it was dragging the Primordial Wilderness back onto its original path of Fate.
So,
after the second batch of Innate Gods took form, almost none of them had any impression of Lei Jun.
There was no helping it.
The Heavenly Dao was simply too powerful.
With supreme might, it had corrected the path of Fate,
erasing traces of Lei Jun's presence from many places.
As a result, cultivators had no impression of Lei Jun.
After all,
the Heavenly Dao had intervened.
It was as if Lei Jun had never existed.
Naturally, they couldn't remember him. This was a far more sophisticated method than directly erasing certain memories from a cultivator's Spiritual Light.
Nor would it affect the Innate Demon Gods.
In a way,
it was the same as when Shen Ni erased the concept of the Heavenly Dao's incarnation near Kunlun.
But no matter how much was erased, Lei Jun's "Dao" could not be wiped away.
That was why everyone wanted to "Prove the Dao," wasn't it? Because everything else was illusory, while the Dao alone was eternal.
The present was the best proof.
Even though the Heavenly Dao had erased every proof of Lei Jun's existence, he could still remain in the Primordial Wilderness,
completely unaffected.
He could even turn around and influence the cultivators of the Primordial Wilderness!
Therefore,
from this perspective, Lei Jun had reason to spread the Dao.
"The Heavens and Myriad Worlds, the Universe of Great Thousand Worlds."
"How many worlds they contain!"
"And surely, countless powerful beings!"
"I've only just laid the foundation of my Dao. Not to mention a true Dao Fruit, I haven't even condensed a Dao Seed. I've only just passed the initial stage of cultivation."
Lei Jun's strength was already formidable.
His divine abilities were also profound and mysterious.
But he wasn't the least bit arrogant. He even felt that his cultivation realm was nothing special.
Before beings on a higher level,
he couldn't even fight back.
He couldn't even sense them.
So,
there was nothing wrong with being cautious.
It was also essential to keep a few more ways to save his life.
Spreading the Dao was one of them.
Previously,
Lei Jun had thought that spreading the Dao would benefit his cultivation. Now, he hadn't found that benefit; instead, he had found a way to save his life.
Besides,
he could also use this to gradually take control of the Primordial Wilderness!
If he was going to lead the Primordial Wilderness to "upgrade,"
how could it have two people in charge?
One was enough. No more.
To avoid repeating his battle of magic with the Heavenly Dao and worsening the internal strife in the Primordial Wilderness, Lei Jun generally avoided intervening personally.
He would have his subordinates act instead.
Ideally,
they would be cultivators from this Tribulation Period.
He had fished up the Spiritual Lights of cultivators from the previous Tribulation Period
mainly to store the strength of the Primordial Wilderness and prepare for the possible wars across the Heavens to come.
Finally,
there was another reason that gave Lei Jun the motivation to interfere with the growth of the Innate Gods.
That was...
he had discovered the System Space in Chaos!
A slight sense of it was all he needed to know.
It wouldn't be long before that space discovered the Primordial Wilderness.
Probably around the time of the First Sermon.
Before then,
finishing his preparations would also help him deal with the system!
Obviously,
if there were other Transmigrators, they would surely know the Primordial Wilderness's original path of Fate—in other words...
the plot!
And they would act accordingly.
But if those Transmigrators discovered that the Primordial Wilderness they had transmigrated into was a "Modified Devil" version, completely unlike the one they remembered,
they would probably...
be utterly dumbfounded, wouldn't they?
Thinking of this,
Lei Jun almost wanted to laugh.
He wasn't nervous about the approaching System Space. Instead, he felt a strange sense of anticipation.
Of course,
it would be best to wait until he had everything ready.
In other words...
keep "modifying" the world!
That was also one of the reasons Lei Jun had bestowed opportunities and interfered with the cultivators' growth.
For this purpose,
Lei Jun sent the pebble and Sword Grass outside the courtyard to guard the Courtyard Gate.
But the two of them had taken their understanding too far.
They even looked down on Tongtian!
Or perhaps Yang Mei had set the bar so high that they looked down on anyone whose cultivation was far below his.
But that wouldn't do.
It could easily ruin Lei Jun's plans.
Thus,
the Seeking Dao Stone Steps—
or rather, the Path of Seeking Dao—
came into being.
At a single thought from Lei Jun,
the Immortal Mountain that had evolved from the little pebble sprouted 129,600 Stone Steps.
The pressure of the Stone Steps and the mountain complemented each other.
With every step upward,
one had to expend considerable effort.
For every 10,800 Stone Steps, the difficulty rose by one level.
There were twelve levels in total.
You had to complete all of them to reach the summit.
Only then could you enter the courtyard.
It had to be said:
Though the Stone Steps had multiple levels of difficulty, that didn't mean everyone faced the same trials or the same degree of difficulty.
It varied from person to person.
As long as one had sufficient talent and insight,
one could reach the summit.
Even if one's talent was lacking or one's insight fell short, that was all right.
As long as one had a good disposition
and a steadfast heart for Seeking Dao,
one might still reach the summit!
Of all these things, cultivation was actually the least important.
Before you continue