Life Accumulates Boundlessly, Calamity Descent Heavenly Punishment (67, Thanks to Wendy Paimon's Alliance Leader!)

What, exactly, are nature and life?

Some said they were the soul and the flesh.

Some said they were spiritual awareness and vital essence.

Some said they were the innate origin and the acquired form.

Some said they were the nature that came from the Dao and the constraints that came from Heaven.

An Jing's understanding of [nature] had already grown profound. Nature was not merely the soul's immortality, the soul's indestructibility—nothing so shallow... It was something deathless and imperishable, known as the "true self." Innate spiritual clarity, moral conscience, purity and freedom, the Primordial Spirit unbound by any restraint—all of them stemmed from it.

An Jing had transformed his own soul into the spirit of a Grotto-Heaven, thus transcending the taints of the acquired and attaining the "Dao of Nature." His soul naturally gained free and imperishable existence.

But what of [life]?

Simply becoming stronger?

Simply piling things up?

Simply compressing and merging without end, making steel ever more steel-like, endlessly accumulating mass until it became denser, more degenerate matter—until one delved even deeper, surpassing matter's very essence to become a certain "form," a blackness, a profound depth, an endpoint with no end.

That might indeed have been a path, one leading to the ultimate Dao of Life.

But that was not what An Jing sought.

What he pursued was not pure [power].

It was a kind of [beauty].

Perfect matter. A perfect body.

One that surpassed imperfect humanity.

And then ascended to the essence of the [Dao]—[Dao Embodied Flesh].

At that moment, An Jing withdrew his fist.

His arm shattered, melted, and was even vaporized into nothingness.

Charred black marks spread as well, reaching his shoulder, his chest, and even his entire body.

Sun Zhuzhou's power was still too overwhelming. Even a Saint Manifestation would not willingly take