Of course, this was only the surface. In the unseen depths, beyond even Zhao Cheng's sight, there was a place that only his subtler senses could vaguely reach, where a certain power was gathering.
This power was incomparably far-reaching and incomparably profound. It could even be said that it belonged to a kind of power that was not power.
Indeed, if Zhao Cheng had not now completed some most fundamental transformation, even he would have found it difficult to perceive such a thing.
Certainly, in a handful of reincarnations, he too had reached the height of the Nine Tribulations, standing at the pinnacle beneath so-called transcendence.
But Nine Tribulations were not all alike.
Some Nine Tribulations were merely Nine Tribulations. Put into numbers, they were only 9.0. But for others, Nine Tribulations were simply the upper limit; they had surpassed 9.0. Some exceptionally powerful beings could reach 9.9, even 9.99...
Though even 9.99 could not erase 9.0, one could still easily suppress several of the other.
Indeed, 9.0 was a Heaven-ordained limit, the greatest balance, the final ultimate. Beyond 9.0, there should not have been anything more.
Yet the miracles of life in this world had never been content with so-called limits.
And Infinite World was so vast. Though reincarnation encompassed Infinite World, it encompassed only its breadth, not the full extent of its length. The phenomenon of reincarnation was merely one among countless phenomena, not the highest.
Ripples of transcendence were not scarce within that infinite length, while magnificent eras lay there in bewildering, upside-down confusion.
Within that infinite length, there had never been a lack of those who heard the Dao in the morning and could die that evening—who, for the sake of advancing, abandoned bodies that endured forever, tempered themselves amid all kinds of phenomena, encountered all