In the sun-facing meditation room on the third floor, the Spirit Gathering Formation ran at full capacity, and the Spiritual Qi was so dense it almost condensed into mist.
Chen Fan sat cross-legged on a cushion. A translucent Dao diagram hovered before him-the Diagram of the Five Supreme Dao Evolutions he had only recently acquired.
Just two hours earlier, Jiang Qingyuan had given him a complete grounding in the Theory of the Origin Dao downstairs.
This visiting professor from Jing Prefecture Academy in the Central Continent taught just as she conducted herself: crisp, decisive, and straight to the heart of the matter.
From the essence of Spiritual Qi to the composition of Spirit Roots, from meridian circulation to the anchors of the Dao heart, she had clarified many of his previously hazy concepts in just a few words.
As Chen Fan listened, the tangled brush blocking his understanding suddenly cleared, leaving his mind lucid. So this was how the origins of the Great Dao worked? Had I just been blindly cultivating all this time, crossing the river by feeling for stones?
Brimming with confidence, he felt he had reached the threshold. Striking while the iron was hot, he rushed to the third floor, ready to tackle the second stage of the Diagram of the Five Supreme Dao Evolutions head-on.
Now, however, he stared at the writing on the diagram, utterly withdrawn.
"Supreme Change is that in which Qi has yet to appear; Supreme Beginning is the beginning of Qi; Supreme Inception is the beginning of form; Supreme Simplicity is the beginning of substance; when Qi, form, and substance are all present but have yet to separate, this is Supreme Ultimate."
He recognized every word, and they read smoothly enough together.
But the farther Chen Fan read into the annotations, the more tightly his brows knitted.
Supreme Change was formless, falling into neither existence nor nonexistence; a single thought dissolved all methods, and ten thousand tribulations could not find its trace.
Its Dao principle was to bring existence out of nothingness, dissolve concepts, and erase cause and effect, returning all existence to its unmanifested state of origin.
"...What does that mean?"
Chen Fan stared at the words "dissolve concepts and erase cause and effect," his head a muddled paste.
How did you dissolve a concept? How did you erase cause and effect?
Did it mean making an opponent's attacks vanish into thin air during a fight? Or could it simply make things that had already happened disappear?
He braced himself and read on.
The single Qi of Supreme Beginning opened the buds of myriad Daos, giving birth to chaos; it transformed Qi to evolve the Dao and nurtured the seeds of Principles.
Supreme Inception revealed images, the first emergence of myriad forms; the void traced the outlines of heaven and earth, and a single thought manifested all phenomena across the heavens.
Supreme Simplicity condensed substance, giving all things a foundation; it turned the insubstantial into the real, creating flesh, blood, and spiritual treasures.
Supreme Ultimate was an undivided whole, distinguishing yin from yang; it established order and evolved cycles, governed balance, birth, and destruction, and could split heaven from earth.
Each layer was more abstruse than the last, each more ethereal.
By the time Chen Fan finished reading, his temples were throbbing.
The clarity he had felt while listening to Jiang Qingyuan explain the fundamentals had vanished without a trace.
He was like a primary school student who had just learned addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, only to have his head forced down over a treatise on advanced mathematics. Every symbol looked familiar, but together they were a heavenly script.
"And here I thought I had what it took..."
Chen Fan covered his face.
No wonder Elder Qian said that no one could be so stupid they still did not know calculus at fourteen.
Now he understood that feeling. I understand all the reasoning, but how am I supposed to use it?!
Comprehension was like a thin sheet of paper over a window. If you could not poke through it, you simply could not, and no amount of stubborn grinding helped.
"So I'm still a Dao-comprehension noob."
Chen Fan tugged at the corner of his mouth in self-mockery. He was not discouraged; if anything, he felt like laughing.
He was about to put away the diagram and slowly work through the most basic Supreme Change section first when a faint warmth suddenly stirred deep in his Dantian.
The [Aperture of the Mysterious Female], which had remained quiet all this time, began operating without warning.
Humm-
A trace of vast, gentle Chaos Qi rose from his Dantian and surged straight up his meridians to the crown of his head.
The next second, it was as though someone had suddenly pressed "autoplay" on the previously incomprehensible Diagram of the Five Supreme Dao Evolutions.
An immense framework of information flooded into his mind through his gaze!
It was not a word-by-word explanation or a gradual, step-by-step guide. Instead, the complete logic of evolution and framework of origins were stuffed into his perception all at once.
The deathly stillness of Supreme Change, the first stirrings of Supreme Beginning, the phantoms of Supreme Inception, the solidification of Supreme Simplicity, the separation and union of Supreme Ultimate...
The complete, endlessly recurring trajectory of the five realms unfurled thunderously within his Spirit Sea like a crystal-clear painted scroll!
"Holy shit?!"
Chen Fan's mind shook violently, and he nearly lost his balance.
He still did not understand "why it was like this," and he still could not explain the underlying principles of the Dao, but someone had slapped the standard answer and its derivation framework right into his face.
The process remained obscure, but the result had been forcibly hammered out!
Boom!
Deep within his Spirit Sea, the chaotic mist that had already begun to settle suddenly churned.
Supreme Change descended first.
A white expanse of absolute purity spread silently, without light or darkness, movement or stillness, without circulation.
Within that pure white, the restless fire essence, the roaming Spiritual Qi, and even the thirty-three Spirit Veins that had only recently formed in his Spirit Sea quietly returned to extinction, like melting ice and snow.
Under the reshaping of the Five Supremes, they returned to their state of origin, before they had been born or manifested.
Chen Fan felt his Spirit Sea empty out. Even his Divine Sense sank into it like a stone into the ocean, unable to raise the slightest ripple.
The deathly stillness lasted only an instant.
Immediately afterward, Supreme Beginning descended.
An almost imperceptible speck of primordial azure Qi emerged from the depths of the pure white. Like a seed, it trembled gently, then became a spreading primordial mist of light.
The luminous mist flowed ceaselessly. Countless tiny Dao patterns arose and perished within it, gathering and dispersing. It had no fixed form, yet held the budding of myriad Daos.
From this, chaos was born.
The luminous mist continued evolving, entering the realm of Supreme Inception.
Countless phantoms began appearing within the hazy mist.
Mountains and rivers, the sun, moon, and stars, Gods and Devils and roaming beasts, towers and palaces... Myriad illusions rose and fell within it, arising and perishing, seemingly real yet illusory. A touch would scatter them like smoke and clouds, leaving only an outline of light and shadow.
This was the "beginning of form." All things had outlines, but no substance yet.
After that came Supreme Simplicity.
Plain white streams of origin light precipitated out of the phantoms, becoming countless minute particles of origin.
The particles gathered and scattered ceaselessly, sometimes condensing into metal, sometimes becoming jade, sometimes flowing into the textures of flesh and blood, sometimes dispersing into star sand and dust.
Illusory forms took root, and all things gained substance.
At the instant when Qi, form, and substance were all fully present, yet remained one undivided whole-
Supreme Ultimate took shape as an undivided whole.
A circular wheel of entwined black and white slowly rotated at the center of his Spirit Sea. Yin Qi and yang Qi lay hidden within it, while earth, water, fire, and wind brewed along its edges.
With every fraction the wheel turned, the chaotic mist trembled in turn, holding boundless possibilities for evolution.
Supreme Change → Supreme Beginning → Supreme Inception → Supreme Simplicity → Supreme Ultimate.
One complete cycle forcibly ran its full course within Chen Fan's Spirit Sea.
Chen Fan was utterly numb.
He could clearly perceive every step of the changes within his Spirit Sea, but he could not control them.
The Aperture of the Mysterious Female had directly "run through" the second stage of the Diagram of the Five Supreme Dao Evolutions for him. As its master, he was more like an impotent husband.
Before he could recover, the Supreme Ultimate wheel shuddered violently!
Thirty-six luminous, translucent white Spirit Veins rapidly extended out of the chaos along the paths of Supreme Ultimate's circulation, taking shape!
They were more than twice as powerful as the thirty-three he had condensed before!
Every one was full and rounded, flowing with spiritual light, their quality far surpassing the Spirit Veins of ordinary Qi Refinement cultivators.
"It worked?!"
Joy rose in Chen Fan's heart.
But that joy had barely surfaced when a sudden change struck.
Before the thirty-six newly formed Spirit Veins could stabilize, the surrounding chaotic mist swept over them. Like ice and snow dropped into boiling water, they actually dissolved at a speed visible to the naked eye!
One, two... ten, twenty...
In just a few breaths, all thirty-six Spirit Veins melted, returning to the most fundamental particles of chaos and scattering throughout his Spirit Sea.
At the same time, his Spirit Sea, which had still possessed boundaries, began expanding wildly.
The crimson fire essence was gone, the luminous white Spiritual Qi was gone, and the clearly defined meridian walls were gone.
His entire Spirit Sea had completely transformed into a gray, boundless Chaos Sea.
Mist churned and primordial Qi flowed, while deep within, the cycle from Supreme Change to Supreme Ultimate slowly repeated, generating endlessly.
Deep within the Chaos Sea, almost imperceptible points of light were slowly gathering and dispersing.
Between those points of light, the exceedingly faint, exceedingly fine rudiments of entirely new channels were spontaneously tracing themselves out and coalescing.
But at the same time, the risk of losing control arrived with them.
The Aperture of the Mysterious Female was exerting itself automatically, and the Diagram of the Five Supreme Dao Evolutions was evolving passively. Chen Fan's own cultivation realm simply could not support such a terrifying transformation of origins.
The Chaos Sea expanded faster and faster, causing even the meridians in his physical body to tremble and crack.
Violent Chaos Qi spilled outward along his meridians. The Spiritual Qi in the meditation room fell into complete disarray, and tables, chairs, and jade bottles were sent flying.
Chen Fan gritted his teeth and tried to circulate his cultivation method to stabilize the situation, only to discover that his Divine Sense was like a small boat facing towering waves within the Chaos Sea. He could not control it at all.
I've taken this too far...
The thought had barely flashed through his mind when his consciousness began to swim.
Downstairs, Jiang Qingyuan's fingertips abruptly paused as she leafed through research materials.
Her slender brows knitted slightly, and she looked up toward the third floor.
In just an instant, she detected that out-of-control presence of origins-violent and chaotic, carrying an endlessly generating power of creation, yet teetering on the brink.
"This brat..."
Jiang Qingyuan rose and reached the third-floor meditation room's door in just a few strides.
Her Divine Sense swept over the situation inside. Her expression darkened slightly, and she raised her hand and pushed the door straight open.