Heavenly Dao Loophole

Chapter 45: Heavenly Dao Loophole

Taiyi felt that familiar sensation, the one that made him feel like he was about to split apart, surge up again.

This time, it wasn't due to a lack of mental capacity. After his previous ordeal, he had actually managed to hone his "triple-tasking" skill. Listening to Hongjun's sermon, suppressing the fragments from causing trouble, and stabilizing the phantom images of his Three Corpses – he was managing all three simultaneously, even managing to spare a sliver of his consciousness to ponder other matters.

Such as, right now.

Hongjun was expounding on "The Seventh Taboo: The Connection Between the Three Corpses and Spiritual Treasures," his voice as calm as ever. Ninety-nine percent of the people in the hall had their eyes closed, brows furrowed into knots, desperately trying to digest every word that dropped from the Dao Ancestor's lips. This stuff sounded arcane, and a single slip-up in thought could lead them astray.

Taiyi also had his eyes closed, presenting a facade of deep contemplation just like everyone else. But in his mind, that sliver of wandering consciousness was clinging to the three fragments in his sea of consciousness.

The fragments were being unusually "well-behaved" today.

They weren't jumping or causing trouble, just quietly suspended in the depths of his sea of consciousness. The dark golden patterns on their surfaces flowed slowly. The three patterns formed by those patterns—the fissure in Buzhou Mountain's leylines, the stain of karma in the Sea of Blood, and the knot of karma in the Underworld—were significantly clearer than they had been a few days ago. He could even see the rough edges of the fissure, the dark red of the karmic stain, and the tight knots of the tangled karma with perfect clarity.

Taiyi stared, and the more he looked, the more something felt off.

These three "loopholes," how did they look... not like accidental damage?

They looked more like...

As he was pondering, a faint ripple suddenly spread across the surface of the fragments. Immediately after, a cold, chaotic, yet strangely "ordered" stream of information surged in through the connection between the fragments and his Primordial Spirit.

It wasn't the System's mechanical prompt. It was a more primitive, more direct form of "cognition."

It was as if someone had directly shoved a book full of forbidden knowledge into his brain.

[Order operates... cycles ceaselessly... yet all things have an end... Calamity restarts... Yin and Yang invert... Karma becomes chaotic... Heavenly Dao's surveillance... reduced to a minimum...]

Fragmented and hazy.

But Taiyi suddenly grasped a few keywords.

Calamity restarts... Surveillance reduced to a minimum...

His heart skipped a beat. He quickly gathered his focus, temporarily blocking out Hongjun's sermon, and poured all his attention into receiving the information from the fragments.

The information continued to flow.

[...The Calamity beings... Heaven and Earth's malevolent energy accumulates beyond recovery... the old order collapses... the new order is not yet established... there exists a gap within... brief as a finger snap... long as several days...]

[...When the order collapses... the Primordial Spirits of all Saints... serve as anchors... and also as... weak points...]

[...If disturbed at this moment... rules can be leveraged...]

Taiyi felt like he had stopped breathing.

The information from the fragments was broken and blurry, like an attempt to interpret something far beyond its own level. Yet, these fragmented cognitions pieced together a picture that made his heart pound with fear.

The restart of a Calamity wasn't just a simple matter of fighting and killing. It was a complete "reset" of the order of Heaven and Earth. The old set of operating rules had broken down, and the new ones hadn't fully solidified yet, leaving a period... of emptiness? Or perhaps, chaos?

The Heavenly Dao's surveillance power over the Great Wilderness would be at its lowest during that time.

And the Saints' Primordial Spirits... because they bore the role of "anchors" stabilizing the new order, they would instead be exposed, becoming the relatively fragile link in the entire Heavenly Dao system?

Taiyi's mind buzzed.

He suddenly remembered snippets he had read in his past life—during a Calamity, even Saints could fall. He had always dismissed it as exaggeration, as a narrative necessity. But now... perhaps there was a sliver of possibility?

Not by brute force, but by finding the "node" connecting a Saint's Primordial Spirit to the Heavenly Dao within the "gap" between the old and new orders, and giving it a gentle nudge...

It was like trying to push a locked door. You couldn't force it open, but if you found the rusty hinge and applied a drop of oil, a gentle push...

The door would open.

Taiyi felt his hands tremble slightly within his sleeves.

It wasn't fear, but the tremor that came from discovering an earth-shattering secret, from touching the edge of some taboo.

He forced himself to calm down and continued to receive the fragments' information.

The information flow began to become difficult, intermittent, as if encountering some powerful resistance.

[...Analysis blocked... Target level too high...]

[...Attempting dimensional reduction for interpretation... Presented as 'loopholes'...]

[...Coordinates locked... Timing... The beginning of the Calamity restart...]

Hum--

The fragments vibrated sharply, their surface patterns instantly dimming, and the stream of information abruptly ceased.

Taiyi felt like he had been violently pulled out of deep water, his mind a bit dazed, his ears ringing.

He slowly opened his eyes and exhaled a breath of turbid air without making a sound.

In the hall, Hongjun's sermon continued, having reached "The Method of Maintaining the Connection Between the Three Corpses and Spiritual Treasures." The Dao Ancestor's voice remained calm, but to Taiyi, it felt like there were more things hidden within that voice that he couldn't yet understand.

Order... collapse... reset... anchor... fragile...

These words swirled in his mind.

He raised his head and looked at Hongjun on the high platform.

The Dao Ancestor sat cross-legged, his grey robes serene, his aura seamlessly integrated with the entire Zixiao Palace and the distant Heavenly Dao, utterly flawless.

But Taiyi now knew, or rather, the System (or the fragments) had allowed him to "see"—even such a perfect, seemingly eternal embodiment of order, had moments of "fragility."

The moment the Calamity restarted.

In the gap between the old and the new.

Saints acted as anchors, stabilizing the new order, but in doing so, they exposed themselves.

What was this? The Heavenly Dao limiting itself? Or was this the true meaning of "The Great Dao is fifty, Heaven's permutations are forty-nine, leaving one to escape"?

That escaping "one" wasn't the hope for the myriad beings, but rather... a rift that even the order itself couldn't fully mend?

The more Taiyi thought about it, the colder his back felt.

It wasn't fear, but a sense of insignificance that naturally arose after facing an existence so unimaginably vast and so precisely despairing.

Yet, at the same time, a near-mad excitement surged from the depths of his bones.

There were rifts.

That meant there was opportunity.

He, Eastern Emperor Taiyi, a transmigrator bound to a forbidden system, destined to clash head-on with the Heavenly Dao's script, was in desperate need of opportunity.

Proving Dao with Strength, in the end, was about using absolute power to smash open a gap in the Heavenly Dao's order and squeeze through. The path sounded domineering, but the probability of success was abysmally low—Pangu was strong, wasn't he? He opened the heavens, but he also perished in the process.

But what if... he didn't have to smash through?

What if, when the Heavenly Dao's order itself "loosened," at the moment of transition between old and new when it revealed its flaws, he made his move?

Like in a battle between two armies, not charging when the enemy's formation is tightest, but waiting for their shift change, their handover, the instant they expose an opening, and then striking like lightning?

Taiyi felt his heartbeat quicken.

He knew how insane this idea was. The restart of a Calamity was a time of world-ending upheaval and suffering for all beings. Others were trying to hide, and he wanted to rush in? He wanted to pry at the Saints' "anchor points"?

But... this seemed to be the only path he could see that might allow him to "Prove Dao with Strength" without it being a complete suicide mission.

Of course, the prerequisite was that he had to survive until the next Calamity and possess enough strength to seize that fleeting "rift."

He closed his eyes again, outwardly continuing to comprehend Hongjun's teachings, but inwardly, his consciousness sank into his sea of consciousness, beginning to sort through the information he had just received.

The chaotic period of the Calamity's restart, its duration uncertain, ranging from an instant to several days.

When the order loosened, the Heavenly Dao's surveillance greatly diminished.

The Saints' Primordial Spirits, serving as anchor points, were relatively fragile.

This could be used as a fulcrum to leverage the rules...

Taiyi silently took note.

At the same time, he realized that the "path" given by the System (fragment) was still fraught with extreme danger. Calamities themselves were places of great malevolence, and the chaotic period was even more perilous. Outer realm demons, chaotic energies, collapsing fragments of laws... any one of them would be enough to give him a hard time.

Not to mention, he would have to tamper with the Saints' "anchor points."

That was akin to plucking teeth from a tiger's mouth.

But... having a path was better than having no path.

Taiyi took a deep breath, suppressing the杂念 in his heart.

The urgent matter wasn't to aim too high. It was to use this Zixiao Palace sermon to solidify his foundation and advance his cultivation. Peak Grand Unity was not enough; he had to at least touch the threshold of Quasi-Saint to have a chance to survive the Calamity.

As for those three "rift coordinates"... Buzhou Mountain, the Sea of Blood, and Youming. Thinking back now, they were likely not just spatial "rifts," but also corresponded to certain key "variable nodes" within the Calamity?

He noted this speculation, to be verified later.

Hongjun's voice preaching rose slightly at this moment, entering a small conclusion: "...Maintaining the mind and spirit hinges on constancy. A moment of slackness leads to the abandonment of all previous efforts. What is taught today ends here."

The spiritual mist in the hall slowly subsided, the lingering resonance of Dao lingering.

The sermon paused once more.

Taiyi rose with the others and walked out with Di Jun. He lowered his head, seemingly savoring the insights from the sermon, but in his mind, the patterns of the three rifts, along with the information about the "Calamity restart," "order fissures," and "Saint anchor points," were slowly intertwining, sketching out a vague yet thrilling blueprint.

The road ahead was long and perilous.

But at least, he saw the direction.