Before Li Ming crossed over, he had many questions about the Age of Mythology while reading Shrouding the Heavens.
Only after crossing over did he find answers to many things the original story had left unclear.
It turned out that ordinary cultivators who attained enlightenment in this era were called Supremes, while the nine who possessed the strength of a Heavenly Emperor or near-Heavenly Emperor were called the Nine Heavenly Venerables.
It was not, as some readers believed, that everyone who attained enlightenment was called a Heavenly Venerable.
The Supremes of this era were also easily confused with the Dark Supremes of later ages, who had severed their own cultivation.
That was because, after Extreme Sublimation, Dark Supremes briefly regained their former peak combat power, leading many people to misunderstand the distinction.
In short, ordinary enlightened cultivators were called Supremes in this era.
Those with the strength of a Heavenly Emperor or near-Heavenly Emperor were called Heavenly Venerables and ranked among the Nine Heavenly Venerables.
The Quasi-Emperors of later ages were called Quasi-Venerables in this era.
Those at the Saint and Saint King stages were called Ancestral Kings, though some were also called Saints.
But the title for the Great Saint stage had never changed. They were still called Great Saints.
Before the Age of Mythology, and after the Chaotic Ancient Era, there had been a long Primordial Ancient Era.
That explained why so many Dark Supremes remained in the Age of Mythology.
Before crossing over, many readers had believed there might have been no Dark Turmoil in this era.
In fact, the Primordial Ancient Era had also produced many Supremes—ordinary cultivators who had attained enlightenment.
They were all waiting for the opening of the Road to Immortality described in the original story, when Emperor Zun would attempt the Ascension of the Entire Religion during the Age of Mythology.
That was why they had sealed themselves away to wait for that time.
Dark Turmoil had inevitably occurred in the meantime.
Zhang Bairen had remained sealed from the age of the Desolate Heavenly Emperor all the way to Ye Fan's era. That alone showed that people had long known they could seal themselves with Divine Source or Immortal Source.
There were even secret arts resembling the severing of one's own cultivation. Those Dark Supremes had studied such methods before sealing themselves away.
As for the so-called Tribulation Heavenly Venerable, many cultivators had attained enlightenment before him.
After all, the Five Secret Realms Cultivation Method had not been created by the Tribulation Heavenly Venerable. The Desolate Heavenly Emperor had created it.
Before the Desolate Heavenly Emperor severed the ages with one sword stroke, he had already passed the Five Secret Realms Cultivation Method on to others, and it had long since spread far and wide.
In any case, Li Ming had found answers to many of the questions he had had before crossing over.
Starting as an ordinary Mortal Body, Li Ming had reached a point where his might shook the Nine Heavens and Ten Lands. He was over ten thousand years old now, yet he had never returned to Ziwei Star.
He had thought of going back before, but one thing after another had delayed him.
His enlightenment and cultivation in the Bronze Immortal Hall, in particular, had taken far more time than he had expected.
He had never imagined it would be so easy to lose himself in comprehending the Immortal Dao Runes.
Fortunately, Li Ming still had plenty of years left.
He had consumed many treasures that extended life or improved lifespan and constitution, though no Immortal Medicine.
Dragon Marrow, Ten-Thousand-Year Medicine Kings, Primordial Life Stones, Immortal Source from the Immortal Domain, Supremes' Origin Essence Blood—he had used a great deal of them.
Eating Ten-Thousand-Year Medicine Kings like radishes, treating Primordial Life Stones and Immortal Source from the Immortal Domain like biscuits, and swallowing all those origins like candy—perhaps only Li Ming could afford such extravagance.
It had also extended his First Lifetime far beyond that of an ordinary Supreme.
His vitality was still at its peak and was even growing slightly stronger.
By his estimate, living over twenty thousand years in his First Lifetime would be easy.
He might even challenge Ye Fan's twenty-six thousand years.
When the time came, he could either try to transform into a true Flawless Chaotic Body or simply eat those ten Flat Peaches. Living past twenty-six thousand years should not be a problem.
For Li Ming, time was abundant.
He could calmly pursue enlightenment and cultivation while studying how to live a new lifetime.
Now that most of his affairs were settled, it was time to return home in glory and take a look around.
He had taken "demon" as his title, calling himself the Demon Venerable.
That title caused an uproar among the humans of Ziwei Star.
Ziwei Star had finally produced a Human Race Supreme. Naturally, they did not want people calling him the Demon Venerable.
Even though Li Ming called himself the Demon Venerable, the people of Ziwei Star refused to accept the title.
On Ziwei Star, people called Li Ming Venerable Ming or Ziwei Venerable.
Not one of Ziwei Star's myriad beings dared call Li Ming the Demon Venerable.
Li Ming came from Ziwei Star and had attained enlightenment as a Supreme with a Chaotic Body.
They could not distinguish a Flawless Chaotic Body from an acquired Incomplete Chaotic Body. As far as they were concerned, Li Ming had a Chaotic Body.
No sooner had he attained enlightenment than he forcefully slew the Carefree Heavenly Venerable, one of the Eight Heavenly Venerables.
It had been a Divine War to shock the ages and shake the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Lands.
The legendary Chaotic Body had attained enlightenment as a Supreme, killed the Carefree Heavenly Venerable and numerous Dark Supremes, and declared to the world just how heaven-defying and powerful a Chaotic Body could be.
The fall of so many Dark Supremes made those who wanted to seize the Demon Venerable's Chaotic Body Origin come to their senses and lie low.
In their eyes, a Chaotic Body that had attained enlightenment as a Supreme was far too heaven-defying. His strength was almost beyond belief.
The Dark Supremes had watched Li Ming fight their kind many times.
Even when those Dark Supremes underwent Extreme Sublimation and attacked the Demon Venerable together, they could do nothing to him.
In the most recent battle, he had even smashed those Life Forbidden Zones apart.
Wang Bo, the Chaotic Body who had once appeared as briefly as a night-blooming flower, had shone with incomparable brilliance despite never attaining enlightenment as a Supreme.
At the Eighth Heaven Quasi-Emperor stage, he had dragged a Heavenly Venerable to his death. The feat had shaken everyone who heard of it.
The Demon Venerable's attainment of enlightenment as a Supreme had once again shown everyone how extraordinary the Chaotic Body was.
Li Ming's vitality was now boundless, and he stood at his peak. No one could stand against his edge.
Even when he likened the lurking Dark Supremes to insects, none dared challenge his authority.
They all knew that confronting Li Ming head-on now would be nothing but a search for death.
"The Demon Venerable is truly arrogant. He's provoked every Dark Restricted Area. Let's see whether he can withstand the staggering karmic backlash," a Dark Supreme said coldly.
"Exactly. So what if he has a Chaotic Body? Time is merciless. One day he'll grow old, his vitality will run dry, and he'll die in Dao Dissolution!"
"Heh. Then he'll either sever his own cultivation or die in Dao Dissolution. All his achievements will come to nothing..."
"Let him strut about for these two lifetimes."
"He'll pay for today's arrogance and tyranny!"
"When he reaches his twilight years, we'll settle our scores with him!"
"I truly want to devour that legendary Chaotic Body Origin."
"Kekeke. When he grows old, we'll seize his Chaos Origin together."
No one responded openly to Li Ming's words. No Dark Supreme took the initiative to provoke him.
They had decided to make trouble for him in his twilight years.
No matter how brazenly he flaunted the title of Demon Venerable, once he grew old, he would have no choice but to die in Dao Dissolution or sever his own cultivation and become a Forbidden Zone recluse.
Which of these Dark Supremes had not once attained enlightenment and ruled the world? They, too, had brimmed with confidence, swept aside every foe, and believed they would one day become immortals.
They had spent their entire lives exploring every possible method, only to discover that immortality was nothing but a fantasy.
In this environment, becoming immortal was impossible.
Nor could they break through beyond the Supreme realm.
Only when the Road to Immortality opened would they have a chance at Mortal-World Ascension.
So, to await that opening, they had used various means to sever their own cultivation and settled in for a long wait.
The Road to Immortality was not far from opening now—perhaps in tens of thousands of years, perhaps in over a hundred thousand.
They also awaited the sorry sight Li Ming would make in his twilight years.
Ever since Li Ming attained enlightenment as a Supreme, his own Dao had suppressed the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Lands. No one else could attain enlightenment as a Supreme in this era.
Even Alternative Enlightenment had become impossible.
Anyone foolish enough to try would suffer severe Dao Injuries, or even turn to ash in an instant.
The Chaotic Body, fused with the Heavenly Heart Imprint and aligned with the Myriad Dao of Heaven and Earth, was simply too terrifying.
Though his Chaotic Body was not flawless, he could still draw close to the Myriad Dao of Heaven and Earth.
After fusing with the Heavenly Heart Imprint, he could comprehend those myriad Dao even more deeply, laying a firm foundation for his transformation into a perfect Chaotic Body.
Standing atop the Bronze Immortal Hall over the Chaos Sea at the Cosmic Frontier Wasteland, Li Ming discovered that a vast amount of Faith Power had gathered from the unseen after the battle.
The Bronze Mirror within his body remained ancient and unadorned, rising and sinking in his Immortal Platform Secret Realm.
The ancient Bronze Mirror seemed to have existed since heaven and earth first opened. Its primordial aura was almost beyond belief.
It stirred an urge to kneel and worship.
Even after attaining enlightenment as a Supreme, Li Ming was still awed by the Bronze Mirror's aura.
Even now, he could not see through it. Like a mass of chaos, it defied description and understanding.
The Faith Power flowing in from the unseen, along with other mysterious forces he could neither name nor explain, was absorbed entirely by the Bronze Mirror.
"I wonder where this Bronze Mirror came from."
Li Ming sighed as he sensed its aura.
The Shrouding the Heavens World was no ordinary world.
As Li Ming's cheat, the mirror could effortlessly transcend the endless, ever-higher reaches of the three Heavenly Emperors. It was truly inconceivable.
It could break the Red-Haired Monster's closed loop. Its origins were frightening to contemplate.
He had risen from a frail Mortal Body to where he stood today as though blessed. The Bronze Mirror surely had something to do with it.
After all, the Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art was far too heaven-defying. An ordinary person would have struggled to derive it.
Yet Li Ming had derived it and mastered it.
With the Bronze Mirror concealing him, countless people had wanted to kill him but could not find a trace of him.
Only when he attained enlightenment as a Supreme did they realize that the Chaotic Body had grown this powerful.
Whether innate or acquired, a Chaotic Body was a constitution whose Chaos Origin countless Dark Supremes coveted.
In this era especially, after what had happened with Wang Bo's Chaotic Body, many had become obsessed with it.
Some even believed that Mortal-World Ascension required becoming a Chaotic Body or devouring Chaos Origin.
Many Dark Supremes had studied how to evolve into a Chaotic Body, but all had failed.
And with all those Dark Supremes eyeing him, Li Ming had attained enlightenment as a Supreme without coming to serious harm.
The moment he attained enlightenment as a Supreme, he possessed Heavenly Emperor-level combat power.
Everyone knew that "Heavenly Emperor-level" described strength, not a cultivation realm.
The gulf in strength between an ordinary Great Emperor and a Heavenly Emperor was enormous.
An ordinary Supreme lived only around ten thousand years in one lifetime, perhaps a little more.
Even living a Second Lifetime with an Immortal Medicine would increase their strength only slightly.
But if they could live a Third Lifetime through their own abilities, their strength would undergo a fundamental transformation.
They would leap beyond ordinary Supremes and become what people called Heavenly Venerables.
In the original story, the Carefree Heavenly Venerable had been killed by Ye Fan before Ye Fan attained enlightenment as a Great Emperor, somewhat tarnishing the prestige of the Nine Heavenly Venerables.
But how many people possessed the strength of Ye Fan, Heavenly Emperor Ye?
At the very least, the Undying Heavenly Emperor and Emperor Zun were widely acknowledged to possess Heavenly Emperor-level strength, even if neither was as powerful as Ye Fan.
From ancient times to the present, only a handful had possessed Heavenly Emperor-level combat power.
Those who possessed it in their First Lifetime were rarer still.
Calling them as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns would be no exaggeration.
Li Ming now possessed Heavenly Emperor-level combat power in his First Lifetime. It was indeed something to be proud of.
He was nothing worth mentioning beside the Dark Strangeness beyond this world, but at least he now had the strength to protect himself within it.
Emperor Zun was probably still transforming and might suddenly appear at any time.
That fellow Netherworld Venerable was likely transforming in the Underworld as well. In the future, he would become the first person known to attain enlightenment as a Supreme again after becoming a corpse.
As for the Undying Heavenly Emperor, Li Ming did not know whether he had been born yet. In any case, he had not accidentally fallen into this world through a crack in the Immortal Domain.
Using the original story's descriptions, Li Ming roughly worked out the current timeline.
He traced the events of the Age of Mythology in Shrouding the Heavens.
By that reckoning, he had crossed into the Shrouding the Heavens World rather early.
But he had read the original story. He knew several ways to transform and which ones could succeed, so he could study them with a clear aim.
It was like knowing the correct answer beforehand. Working out the steps became easier.
The greatest mistake many Dark Supremes of this era made was not knowing which path was right.
They had only scratched the surface of many paths to longevity. In the end, with their lifespans running out, they were forced to sever their own cultivation and become Forbidden Zone recluses.
It would still be a long time before the Solar Saint Emperor and Lunar Saint Emperor were born on Ziwei Star.
Neither had met a good end in the original story.
The Undying Heavenly Emperor had devoured the Solar Saint Emperor's origin and corpse entirely.
In later ages, a Supreme from the Underworld had slaughtered many of the Solar Saint Emperor's talented descendants to forge a Chaotic Body. The sorry few who remained were nearly wiped out by the Golden Crow Tribe.
The Lunar Saint Emperor's descendants fared even worse. The Duanmu Family wiped them out in one stroke, then seized their home and took over the Lunar Divine Sect.
The fates of the Solar Saint Emperor and Lunar Saint Emperor truly were tragic.
They had never failed the Human Race. Yet when their descendants faced hardship, scarcely anyone was willing to step forward and help.
People had even acted as though terrified of inviting trouble upon themselves.
The Solar Saint Emperor and Lunar Saint Emperor had not yet been born. Perhaps Li Ming could establish rules on Ziwei Star and leave some chance to set things right in the future.
At the very least, he felt their descendants should not suffer persecution at the hands of the Undying Heavenly Emperor, the Underworld, or other powers.
For their lineages and bloodlines to be extinguished in the end was simply too tragic.
Elsewhere, people called Li Ming the Demon Venerable. But on Ziwei Star, they were unquestionably proud that he had been born among them.
His words still carried weight.
An endless tide of Faith Power surged in. Li Ming sensed it briefly and immediately felt it resonate with several paths of the Myriad Dao of Heaven and Earth.
"I never imagined Faith Power could be so profoundly mysterious."
"No wonder Amitabha Buddha the Great proved his Dao and became an emperor in later ages. His study of Faith Power reached the very pinnacle."
Even the Bronze Mirror was deeply interested in this Faith Power.
Faith Power could also be called the beliefs of all living beings.
It was an extraordinarily mysterious, extraordinarily unusual power.
Li Ming remembered that the trilogy had described a mysterious method of cultivation when the Desolate Heavenly Emperor was still a child.
It was the Sacrificial Spirit Method.
It clearly used Faith Power to cultivate, and could carry its practitioners to astonishing heights.
Even the Immortal Monk King seemed to have used Faith Power to cultivate all the way to the Immortal King realm.
Liu Shen had gone even further. Through the Ancestral Sacrificial Spirit Method, she had undergone Nirvana and been reborn, then cultivated all the way to the realms of Quasi-Immortal Emperor and Immortal Emperor.
Of course, she had not relied solely on the Sacrificial Spirit Method. She had also used the Liu Shen Method.
The wondrous uses of Faith Power were truly beyond belief.
By the era of Shrouding the Heavens, the Undying Heavenly Emperor had used Faith Power to create a mighty Supreme: the Undying Daoist.
He had even severed their connection and granted the Undying Daoist an independent mind and life.
Later, Amitabha Buddha the Great had used Faith Power to prove his Dao and become an emperor.
Though it came with all manner of restrictions and would bind one to the living beings of the world through unseen ties of cause and effect, the mysterious power of Faith Power was undeniably fascinating.
Li Ming could merge with the Myriad Dao of Heaven and Earth, and his study of Faith Power was remarkably deep.
At least before the Undying Heavenly Emperor and Amitabha Buddha the Great appeared, no one in this world understood Faith Power more thoroughly than he did.
But the more he learned, the warier of Faith Power he became.
So he gathered part of that Faith Power into the Bronze Mirror and channeled the rest into the Heavenly Demonic Saber.
After gaining a little insight into it, he never used Faith Power again.
Li Ming had forged his Heavenly Demonic Saber with so many rare materials—twenty or thirty times as much as other Dark Supremes used. Though it was called a saber, it was unquestionably a formidable weapon.
Having incorporated eight kinds of Immortal Gold, along with the bones and Origin Essence Blood of numerous Heavenly Venerables, it had long since evolved to an inconceivable degree.
It had become even more mysterious and powerful after many Immortal Dao Runes from the Bronze Immortal Hall were inscribed upon it.
Thanks to the Bronze Mirror, Li Ming had dug up many tombs early on and obtained countless treasures.
He had even acquired Immortal Gold materials very early and forged a Dao-Proving Weapon that was his alone.
Li Ming devoured origins; the Heavenly Demonic Saber devoured bones.
Li Ming was not the only one evolving Chaos. The Heavenly Demonic Saber was doing the same.
Thus, the Heavenly Demonic Saber had long been able to radiate an aura of chaos and refine chaotic energy.
It was called the Heavenly Demonic Saber, but it might just as well have been called the Chaos Saber.
Only this chaos was not that Chaos.
After refining so much Immortal Gold, as well as the bones and Origin Essence Blood of Heavenly Venerables, the Heavenly Demonic Saber had grown ever more mysterious and powerful.
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