"Huh?! Why?!" Lunzhuan blanched in shock.
"All you ever think about is chasing beautiful women. You amount to nothing. And I find it a little hard to bring myself to push you. I've been far too gentle with an Immortal King's descendant, and that's done you harm rather than good," the Reincarnation Disk said bluntly.
"Besides, I now have important matters to attend to. I can't keep indulging your nonsense. The Immortal Phoenix King was one of the ancient Ten Fiends, another who successfully rose to kingship besides the True Dragon and Sword Grass. The king's understanding of the fire Dao is exceptionally profound and will benefit you. Be good, and stop being so willful. I can't protect you forever."
Lunzhuan fell silent. He looked at the Immortal Phoenix King's egg, then at the circle of mighty figures around him, and finally at Chen Yao, who had lured away his disk. His gaze brimmed with resentment.
If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have come! The disk wouldn't have said anything more, either.
"You... aren't leaving right away, are you? You'll stay a while longer, won't you?" Lunzhuan asked hopefully.
"I'll stay here, but I'll leave your training to my fellow Daoist, the Immortal Phoenix King. I won't interfere anymore." The Reincarnation Disk was resolute. "My memories were too hazy before, so I spoiled you excessively. Now that I've recovered much of them, I won't shelter you anymore."
"All... all right." With a mournful face, Lunzhuan turned and bowed solemnly to the Immortal Phoenix King's egg.
What... what does this make me? I just reeled in the Reincarnation Disk like that? Chen Yao watched the Reincarnation Disk float toward him and hide within his Immortal Qi. It all felt unreal.
Could my origins have something to do with the Reincarnation Immortal King?
Sure enough, Sky Desolation spoke up. "Old Disk, this brat wouldn't happen to be Reincarnation's reincarnation, or... his illegitimate son, would he?"
Shit! Someone actually asked!
"No. He has neither that bloodline's aura nor that Dao fruit's," the Reincarnation Disk denied.
"So watching this little fellow grow might help us discover Reincarnation's contingency? Perhaps Reincarnation really does have a chance to return to life? He began his preparations far earlier than we did. Even if he's already reincarnated, more than a million years have passed since Immortal Ancient. Cultivating anew with a view from such lofty heights, he would have had more than enough time to return to the Immortal King realm," the Immortal Phoenix King said.
"Indeed. The Reincarnation Disk made the right decision. Just follow him. With karma entangling him, he'll likely encounter many difficult matters in the future and need a Dao protector. Sky Desolation must protect our fellow Daoist Kun Peng, I can't readily leave, and our fellow Daoist Immortal Phoenix has only just reincarnated. The Reincarnation Disk is the best Dao protector for him," the Willow Deity said.
"Uh... then thank you for your kindness, Senior Reincarnation Disk. I look forward to your guidance!" Chen Yao said solemnly, without any false modesty.
Even a damaged Immortal King artifact possessed immense power. With only one-sixth remaining, it was still equivalent to an immortal artifact. This differed from the little pagoda, whose loss affected its fundamental Dao fruit, much as the Heavenly Immortal Tree had become Heavenly God Trees after its essence was cut into four parts. Since the Reincarnation Disk's damage did not involve its fundamental Dao fruit, its fall in rank was actually not severe.
With an immortal artifact protecting my Dao, as long as no Remnant Immortal takes action, I can swagger unchallenged through the Upper Realm!
After this little interlude, the Reincarnation Disk became Chen Yao's Dao protector and began personally guiding his cultivation of the Six Paths of Reincarnation Heavenly Art, pointing out his mistakes and shortcomings.
It also learned that Chen Yao wanted to use the transcendence of the Spirit Transformation Realm to master Grand Luo Insight.
"Hmm, that's interesting. A Yang God method-a path that unites the primordial spirit and flesh to achieve a fundamental sublimation. With this innate art, you can indeed become a Yang God to a certain extent, but it has many flaws. The essence of this art isn't sufficient to truly accomplish that. Its strength lies merely in its ingenuity, with many clever shortcuts." The Reincarnation Disk studied Grand Luo Insight, pondering silently.
"Once your cultivation reaches a certain realm, every obsession you hold and every drop of your blood will be able to bear your true spirit. There are also some methods in this world that can accomplish such things at lower realms. Essentially, they adapt powers naturally mastered at higher realms into cultivation arts that lower-realm cultivators can use. This innate art called Grand Luo Insight is something similar."
"The primordial spirit merges with the flesh, the undying true spirit governs the Yang God, and from beyond Grand Luo Heaven, one surveys heaven and earth. I think the key to this art lies in ascending to Grand Luo Heaven. Becoming a Yang God is merely the means." As Chen Yao pondered and looked at the Reincarnation Disk, inspiration suddenly flashed through his mind.
"Senior, do you have a way to invoke reincarnation? I could try reincarnating through past lives, using Grand Luo Insight's power to experience different threads of fate. From there, I could find where those fates become misaligned and take a shortcut into Grand Luo Heaven," Chen Yao asked.
"Hmm? That could work!" The Reincarnation Disk approved of the idea as well.
"But you must think this through. I can initiate reincarnation experiences without a Yellow Springs Fruit, but it's very easy to lose yourself. Those reincarnations are equivalent to real lifetimes, and they'll place quite a burden on you."
Chen Yao nodded. "Don't worry. I'm mentally prepared. I won't be satisfied unless I give it a try."
"Good. Let's begin, then." The Reincarnation Disk did not hesitate either. Light flowed, and the River of Time flickered in and out of sight. Chen Yao's vision went black, and his primordial spirit immediately sank into slumber.
A storyteller narrated his tale beneath a tree, then snapped his fan shut at the end, drawing a chorus of cheers from his audience.
"Bravo! Bravo!" The listeners applauded, dropped some scraps of silver into the storyteller's bowl, and dispersed one after another.
The white-haired storyteller leaned against the great tree, his eyes weathered by life. He had lived in this place for more than eighty years.
"So this is the so-called reincarnation dream." The old man looked at his hands.
This was naturally Chen Yao. Within the reincarnation dream, he sometimes sealed his memories and sometimes released them. Throughout the process, either instinctively or deliberately, he used Grand Luo Insight to observe his own "fate."
This allowed him to see something different. When his memories were sealed, his fate was swept along completely. Everything he had originally possessed receded into the distance as he followed the course of the reincarnation dream. But when his memories returned, his fate developed an error, gaining an overlapping shadow. It recovered shortly afterward, yet became vastly different from its original course.
"This feeling... it has a hint of being able to take over someone else's fate," Chen Yao mused.
"I'm still a little short. I need more reincarnations to find that crucial point."
Reincarnation dream after reincarnation dream, Chen Yao became a merchant, a soldier, an emperor, or a wandering martial hero. By alternately sealing and releasing his memories, he lived through these dreams, observing the misalignment of fate and sensing the strangeness as he entered each new reincarnation dream-the feeling of his own fate changing little by little.
Several times, after sealing his memories, he nearly lost himself completely, his awareness of his own identity on the verge of extinction.
Outside, the Reincarnation Disk watched Chen Yao continue through the reincarnation dreams and saw Reincarnation Seals begin to appear on his hand.
It seemed that not every reincarnation dream could succeed. The Reincarnation Disk did not know the criteria either, but several times, only half a Reincarnation Seal appeared before a new one overwrote it. In the end, after more than a dozen reincarnations, Chen Yao had only three Reincarnation Seals on his hand.
Just then, Chen Yao voluntarily broke free from the cycle of reincarnation dreams. His aura changed, and he actually turned insubstantial, vanishing from perception.
"Hmm?!" Shocked, the Reincarnation Disk carefully examined the spot, but no one was there.
Looking back through time, Chen Yao's figure was still present, only to vanish abruptly at a certain instant.
A breeze passed, and Chen Yao reappeared where he had been. In the spacetime of the past, his figure also reappeared at every moment from which he had vanished.
His body suddenly transformed into Qi. His blood essence and bones all became pure Qi, merging with the primordial spirit in his primordial spirit Cave Heaven to form a Yang God in which spirit and flesh were one. The primordial spirit, which had been shaped into a half-spirit body through spirit nurturing within the Cave Heaven, shed its original form and became closer to a body of flesh and blood.
Then the pure Qi throughout him changed little by little. Every trace of his aura shifted, and he became a stranger.
It was one of the identities he had possessed during reincarnation.
At that moment, Chen Yao vanished completely. An entirely new person stood there, without a past, his heavenly secrets shrouded in obscurity.
After a while, his form changed again, restoring his original identity.
He extended his fingers and touched a nearby spirit medicine. The parts of his hand that made contact actually disappeared little by little, as though the spirit medicine were erasing them. When he withdrew his hand, the spirit medicine suddenly trembled, inexplicably bearing several finger marks.
The finger marks carried a resonance of spacetime. Upon examination, they seemed to have been pressed into it several seconds earlier.
Grand Luo Insight! It had successfully become a divine ability.
Before you continue