That feeling of being about to split apart came over Taiyi again.
This time, it was not because his brain could not keep up. After all the previous chaos, he had finally trained up his ability to multitask. Listening to Hongjun's sermon, suppressing the fragments so they would not act up, steadying the phantom forms of the Three Corpses so they would not collapse—he was managing all three at once, yet he could still spare the tiniest sliver of attention to secretly ponder other matters.
Such as now.
Hongjun was explaining the seventh taboo concerning the connection between the Three Corpses and the consciousness entrusted within spiritual treasures, his voice as calm as ever. Ninety-nine percent of those in the hall had their eyes closed, their brows knotted as they desperately digested every word from the Dao Ancestor's mouth. This stuff sounded profoundly mysterious; one careless thought, and they could go down the wrong path.
Taiyi had his eyes closed as well, wearing the same expression of deep contemplation as everyone else. Yet the fragment of his attention was clinging to the three shards within his sea of consciousness.
The fragments were especially "well-behaved" today.
They neither jumped nor stirred, merely hovering quietly in the depths of his sea of consciousness. Dark golden patterns slowly flowed across their surfaces. The three images outlined by those patterns—the leyline fissure of Buzhou Mountain, the karmic stain in the Blood Sea, and the karmic knot in the Netherworld—were much clearer than they had been days ago. Even the rough edges of the fissure, the dark red tint of the stain, and the dead knot twisted into the tangle were all plainly visible.
Taiyi stared at them, and the longer he looked, the more something felt wrong.
Why did these three "flaws"... not look like accidental damage?
They looked more like...
Just as he was pondering it, an exceedingly faint ripple spread across the fragments' surfaces. Immediately afterward, a stream of information—cold, chaotic, yet carrying a strange sense of "order"—poured through the point where the fragments connected to his Primordial Spirit.
It was not the system's mechanical notification tone, but a more primitive, more direct form of "understanding."
It was as though someone had slammed a book filled with forbidden knowledge directly into his mind.
[Order operates... cycles without end... yet all things have their limit... calamity resets... yin and yang invert... karma falls into disorder... Heavenly Dao surveillance... falls to its lowest...]
It came in broken, hazy fragments.
But Taiyi abruptly seized upon several key words.
The reset of the calamity... surveillance falling to its lowest...
His heart skipped a beat. He hurriedly gathered his focus, temporarily shutting out even the sound of Hongjun's sermon as he devoted himself fully to receiving the fragments' information.
The information continued to flow.
[...A calamity... when the world's baleful aura has accumulated beyond recovery... the old order collapses... the new order has yet to arise... there is a gap between them... as brief as an instant... as long as several days...]
[...When order collapses... the Primordial Spirits of the saints... serve as anchoring points... and also... points of weakness...]
[...If disturbed at this moment... the rules may be pried loose...]
Taiyi felt as if he had stopped breathing.
The information from the fragments was fragmented and blurred, as though they were forcibly interpreting something beyond their own level. Yet these scattered bits of understanding pieced together a picture that made his heart pound.
The reset of a calamity was not merely simple fighting and slaughter. It was a complete "reset" of the world's order. The old rules of operation would collapse, while the new ones had not yet been fully established. In between lay a period of... emptiness? Or rather, chaos?
During that period, the Heavenly Dao's surveillance over the Great Wilderness would fall to its lowest point.
And the saints' Primordial Spirits... because they bore the role of "anchors" stabilizing the new order, would instead be exposed, becoming a relatively vulnerable link in the entire Heavenly Dao system?
Taiyi's mind buzzed.
He suddenly recalled the scattered snippets he had read in his previous life—during a calamity, even saints might fall. He had once dismissed that as exaggeration, a necessity of storytelling. But now... perhaps there truly was a sliver of possibility?
Not by confronting them with brute force, but by finding the "node" connecting a saint's Primordial Spirit to the Heavenly Dao amid the "gap" between old and new orders, then giving it the slightest pry...
It was like trying to push open a tightly shut door. You could not force it open, but if you found the rusted point on its hinge, added a drop of oil, and gave it a light pull—
The door would open.
Taiyi felt his hands trembling faintly within his sleeves.
It was not fear, but the shudder of discovering a heaven-shaking secret and touching the edge of some forbidden boundary...
He forced himself to calm down and continued receiving the fragments' information.
The stream of information became difficult and intermittent, as though it had encountered some immense resistance.
[...Analysis obstructed... target level too high...]
[...Attempting dimensional reduction interpretation... presenting in the form of 'flaws'...]
[...Coordinates locked... opportunity... at the beginning of the calamity's reset...]
Buzz—
The fragments suddenly shook, and the patterns on their surfaces dimmed in an instant. The information stream came to an abrupt halt as well.
Taiyi felt as though someone had violently dragged him out of deep water. His mind was a little muddled, and his ears rang.
He slowly opened his eyes and quietly exhaled a breath of stale air.
Within the hall, Hongjun's sermon continued. He had already moved on to the method of maintaining the connection between the Three Corpses and the consciousness of spiritual treasures. The Dao Ancestor's voice remained calm, yet as Taiyi listened, he felt that more things he could not yet understand were hidden within it.
Order... collapse... reset... anchor... vulnerability...
The words spun through his mind.
He raised his head and looked toward Hongjun on the high platform.
The Dao Ancestor sat upright, his gray robes plain and tranquil. His aura was utterly fused with Zixiao Palace and the unseen Heavenly Dao, seamless and without flaw.
Yet Taiyi now knew—or rather, the system, or the fragments, had allowed him to "see"—that even such a flawless embodiment of order, one that seemed eternal, had moments of "vulnerability."
The instant a calamity reset.
Within the gap where old and new intersected.
The saints served as anchors, stabilizing the new order, yet exposing themselves in the process.
What was that? A limitation imposed by the Heavenly Dao itself? Or was this the true meaning of "The Great Dao is fifty; Heaven unfolds forty-nine, and one escapes"?
That one which escaped was not a chance at life left to countless living beings, but... a crack that even order itself could not completely mend?
The more Taiyi thought about it, the colder his back became.
It was not fear, but the natural sense of insignificance born from facing something unimaginably vast and so precise it inspired despair.
Yet at the same time, an almost crazed excitement rose from the depths of his bones.
There was a crack.
That meant there was an opportunity.
He, Eastern Emperor Taiyi—a transmigrator bound to a forbidden system and destined to fight the Heavenly Dao's script to the bitter end—lacked nothing more desperately than opportunity.
To Prove Dao with Strength was, in the end, about using absolute power to smash open a gap in the Heavenly Dao's order and force one's way inside. It sounded domineering, but the odds of success were absurdly low. Pangu had been strong enough, had he not? He opened the heavens, yet he himself was dragged down with them.
But what if... he did not have to smash through it?
What if he acted when the Heavenly Dao's order itself had loosened, at the instant old and new replaced each other and a flaw was exposed?
Like two armies at war: rather than charging when the enemy formation was at its tightest, one waited until they changed shifts, handed over positions, and revealed an opening—then struck like thunder?
Taiyi felt his heartbeat quicken.
He knew how insane this idea was. A calamity reset was a time when heaven and earth overturned and all living beings suffered disaster. Others would flee from it if they could, yet he wanted to rush toward it? He wanted to pry at a saint's "anchor point"?
That was like pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth.
But... this seemed to be the only path he could see, one that might allow him to Prove Dao with Strength without being nothing more than a suicidal gamble.
Of course, the prerequisite was that he had to survive until the next calamity, and possess enough strength to seize that fleeting "gap."
He closed his eyes again. Outwardly, he appeared to continue comprehending Hongjun's teachings, but in truth, his consciousness sank into his sea of consciousness as he began sorting through the information he had just received.
The chaotic period during a calamity reset could vary in length, lasting as briefly as an instant or as long as several days.
When order loosened, the Heavenly Dao's surveillance greatly weakened.
The saints' Primordial Spirits served as anchoring points and were relatively vulnerable.
Using this as a fulcrum, one could pry at the rules...
Taiyi silently committed it all to memory.
At the same time, he realized that the path offered by the system—or the fragments—remained incomparably dangerous. A calamity itself was a land of great peril, and the chaotic period was even more fraught with danger. Extraterritorial heavenly demons, chaotic energy, shattered fragments of laws... any one of them would be enough to give him a hard time.
Not to mention that he would have to touch a saint's "anchor point."
That was simply pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth.
But... having a path was still better than having none.
Taiyi took a deep breath and suppressed the distracting thoughts in his heart.
His immediate priority was not to aim too high. It was to use this sermon at Zixiao Palace to solidify his foundation and raise his cultivation. The peak of the Great Luo realm was not enough. At the very least, he had to touch the threshold of the Quasi-Saint realm before he would be qualified to seek a sliver of survival during a calamity.
As for those three "flaw coordinates"... Buzhou Mountain, the Blood Sea, and the Netherworld. Thinking about it now, they were likely not merely spatial "flaws," but key nodes of uncertainty corresponding to certain crucial events during a calamity?
He noted down this speculation, leaving it to be verified in the future.
At that moment, Hongjun's voice rose slightly as he reached a brief conclusion. "...The maintenance of consciousness relies upon constancy. A moment's negligence will render all previous efforts futile. That concludes today's lecture."
The spiritual mist in the hall gradually settled, while lingering echoes of the Dao continued to drift through the air.
Another sermon had come to a pause.
Taiyi rose with the others and followed Di Jun outside. He kept his head lowered, seemingly savoring the gains from the sermon, while in his mind, the images of the three flaws intertwined with the information of "calamity reset," "gap in order," and "saintly anchor points," slowly sketching a vague yet thrilling blueprint.
The road ahead was still long, and dangerous.
But at least he had seen the direction.
Before you continue