Even with Liu Dongqing's present experience and temperament, accustomed as he was to the world's towering waves and raging storms,
when he heard Ding Ruojun's account reach this point,
his eyebrows could not help shooting upward.
His face was filled with undisguised, heartfelt astonishment and admiration, as though he had beheld a celestial marvel.
"An embryonic [Heaven-Bearing Karma-Slaying] Dao Fruit?"
At his words,
Ding Ruojun nodded lightly beside him.
"That's right."
"According to the account of his inner journey that the ancestral master left in his Daoist writings and notes,"
"this was also a choice he made after careful consideration."
"In that Age of Gloom, the actual strength of an embryonic Dao Fruit was not the first priority. What mattered most was successfully mastering and refining it, accomplishing the heaven-defying feat of becoming an Ascendant Profound Realm Cave-Heaven master in a single leap!"
"So strength was immaterial. Having one at all was the crux."
"And considering the dreadful cultivation conditions of that Age of Gloom,"
"if the Dao Fruit leaned toward a tangible expression of Dao and arts, the suppression and hostility it encountered from the natural world would likely have been far stronger."
"Forming an embryonic Dao Fruit would also have been harder."
"Conversely,"
"if it leaned toward an expression of Dao and arts on the numinous void level, then even in the gloomy early days of Great Dao Strife, the world still afforded gentler, kinder latitude to formless, intangible numinous void arts."
"It was precisely on this principle"
"that the ancestral master created the Dao of the Four Graves Nether Soil, then the Twelve Yuanchen Dao."
"He first used white bone yin balefulness to explore the imagery of nether death among the myriad demons and living beings. Then, between life and death, he explored the purest spiritual essence