In that instant, fragrance spread for ten thousand miles, and blazing light surged into the sky.
All the Incense Essence power Li Ling had gathered became a force that broke through the foul air of the Impure Land, revealing an unprecedented dawn over this land long ruled by the Demonic Path.
Mystic Heaven's avatar, the Emperor Venerable, manifested once again, a trace of surprise on his face.
He could feel Li Ling summoning him, drawing him together once more in the mortal world.
"This Deity-Invocation Art can actually summon forth my power!"
The perennial difficulty facing those who attained Dao Integration and True Refinement was that, after becoming one with the Heavenly Dao, they had to embrace supreme forgetfulness and sever their past attachments. Only then could they adapt to the boundless grandeur of the Heavenly Dao and avoid being devoured by it.
From that point onward, their original will was compressed into something like a single Dao Seed and fell utterly dormant.
Only when they manifested before others through an avatar or some other means could it emerge again.
Even then, the greatest power they could wield reached only the peak of the deathless realm, a level just slightly beyond Spirit Transformation, but not too far beyond it.
Once they exceeded that limit, they would provoke a violent reaction from the Great Dao of the entire world and be expelled.
Without a conscious will, achieving even this was extremely difficult. It could only be accomplished through the contingencies they had left before Dao Integration, together with the devoted cooperation of their disciples and descendants.
This was the fundamental reason certain great predecessors left behind their traditions and legacies.
Both bloodlines and incense offerings could serve as anchors, helping them locate their own era, origins, and history within the infinite