Great Dao

Biodata

Nature

• Formless and elusive: The Great Dao cannot inherently be touched. Early people discerned its rudiments by observing mountains, rivers, plants, seas, and stars 496.
• Present throughout existence: Its principles can be sought in everything from individual leaves and grains of sand to mountains, oceans, and stars 496.
• Inexhaustible: Descriptions such as “three thousand Great Daos,” “myriad Daos returning to one,” and “the Dao follows nature” express its boundless possibilities rather than establish a single fixed enumeration 178 305.
• Capable of preserving individual paths: The world records cultivators’ Daos as enduring Dao Patterns, allowing their achievements to remain after them 177.
• Universal across civilizations: Dao patterns in an inscription from an unknown epoch convey their meaning to Jiang Zhu despite the unfamiliar script 480.
• Not presented as eternally pre-existing: Later passages describe an original state without the Great Dao, with being arising from nothing and ultimately returning to nothing 496 520.

Role in Cultivation

Comprehending and Establishing a Dao

• Cultivation involves finding a path suited to the individual, not merely accumulating power. Severing the Dao tests both cultivation and the Dao heart, requiring reflection on one’s future direction 177.
• Establishing a personal Dao brings it into confrontation with the laws of heaven and earth. Ordinary Dao severing seeks the Great Dao’s acknowledgment rather than its defeat 177.
• Reverse-Slaying the Great Dao instead challenges the Heavenly Dao’s restraints for that realm. Jiang Zhu follows this approach by repeatedly destroying the manifestations of his tribulation 178.
• Existing Dao marks can guide later cultivators. Ancient emperors’ traces on the Starry Sky Ancient Road benefit those seeking Sainthood, while Heavenly Soldier Ancient Star preserves imprints that cultivators study through tribulations 259 311.

Suppression

Heavenly Tribulations

Manifestations and Applications

Laws, Runes, and Imprints

• Living forms: The true dragon’s scales appear branded with the Great Dao, while the nine leaves of Jiang Zhu’s Sword Grass deity bear similar engravings 10 18.
• Weapons: Divine Marking weapons can, in exceptionally rare cases, develop intertwined “Traces of the Dao” and gain unfathomable power 6.
• Formation patterns: Even a fragment of a Great Emperor Killing Formation contains mysteries beyond ordinary Saint Lords’ comprehension. Red Dragon Old Daoist gains enough insight from one to manifest a golden Dao beneath the group’s feet 94.
• Imperial remains: Taihuang’s coffin preserves a Great Dao imprint distinct from Dao Dissolution. His remaining flesh and blood also retain a Dao against which Jiang Zhu tempers his own cultivation 148 320.

Combat Techniques

Resonance

• Jiang Zhu’s union with the myriad Daos causes spontaneous manifestations during his preaching: visible laws, Dao Sounds, golden lotuses, Divine Springs, and auspicious beasts. Cultivation at the site proceeds at twice the normal speed even before he speaks 395.
• An Immortal King’s escaping Dao Rhythm can transform nearby ordinary objects into rare treasures. Water from places where Immortal Kings contemplated or discussed the Dao was prized for brewing Enlightenment Tea 453.
• Different supreme Daos are not automatically compatible. On the Road to Immortality, the seven Supremes’ Daos repel one another until Immeasurable Heavenly Venerable’s formation enables them to converge for a joint attack 369.

Related Concepts

Individual Paths

• Jiang Zhu: Chooses to unite myriad Daos within his physical body. His Dao Palace scripture ultimately shatters its five deities and returns their essence to himself, pursuing one invincible body 177 283.
• Azure Emperor: Proposes that supreme strength may lie in uniting the self with the Dao until the Dao follows one’s thoughts. This is his understanding, not a universal prescription 466.
• Wang Bo: Looks toward primordial chaos as the source and destination of myriad Daos, emphasizing a return to the beginning and the capacity to evolve countless forms 466.
• Dao Ancestors generally: No single method guarantees advancement. Jiang Zhu advises developing a distinctive Dao, art, obsession, constitution, or understanding of the world until it opens or extends a path 466.

Transcending the Great Dao

Sacrificial Dao

• Sacrificial Dao burns rules, order, and even the cultivator’s supreme Great Dao to achieve further sublimation. At this level, ordinary Dao principles, laws, and the power of order no longer affect the practitioner 511.
• The Desolate Heavenly Emperor reaches this domain during battle by burning his essence and every remaining trace of his Great Dao 492.
• Jiang Zhu enters it by sacrificing his ten Dao fruits along with fate, cause and effect, time, the past, and reincarnation. The surrounding Great Dao vanishes and origins retreat as his transformation completes 520.
• Transcendence does not eliminate every constraint: even the Strange Ancestors must respect the immense causal backlash of drastically altering the River of Time 511.

Notable Quotes

“This was not defeating the Great Dao, but gaining its acknowledgment.”
— Explanation of ordinary Dao severing 177

“The Great Dao is utterly impartial, yet also utterly partial.”
— Azure Emperor 466

“Sacrificial Dao sacrifices the dao, but is it not also a release from the past...”
— Jiang Zhu 520