bioinnovel Chapter 357 The Path of All Beings
Chapter 357 The Path of All Beings
Nezha was the first to react, and with a flick of his Fire-Tipped Spear, he tried to deflect the Pangu Axe. But Su Fan was faster; the axe blade had already slashed across his left palm.
The skin and flesh split open.
Blood gushed from the cut. It wasn't red blood, it was golden. The golden blood flowed along the lines of his palm, dripping onto the surface of the Pangu Axe. The axe surface absorbed the blood like a sponge, and a burst of white light erupted, illuminating the entire South Heavenly Gate wall with a dazzling brilliance.
"This is not the blood of Pangu." Su Fan held his bleeding left hand, his voice steady. "Pangu's blood is scattered throughout the primordial world. It is the blood of Pangu's physical body, capable of inheriting the Heavenly Dao. Standing guard before the Southern Heavenly Gate, I tried using five Daos—the power of Typhon, the power of Ra, the power of Pangu, the Dao of Protection, and the Dao of Slaughter." He raised his hand and pointed to the ten thousand soldiers on the city wall. "I also tried borrowing their Dao."
Su Fan lowered his eyes and watched the wound on his palm slowly heal in the golden light.
"But none of these are the 'blood' of the primordial world. The blood of the primordial world, the blood that lives on this land, has never been any divine position, nor any magical treasure or law—it is in every single person standing on this battlefield."
He raised his eyes, his gaze calm, "The Heavenly Dao will not recognize a master because of a drop of dead blood. What the Heavenly Dao recognizes is the will to protect the primordial world, and those who stand on the city wall without retreating even half a step."
"You fused five Daos in the chaos, and even fused their Daos?" Yuanshi Tianzun asked, his brows furrowed.
"Yes. I spent three days in the chaos, doing this all the time except for searching for fragments."
Su Fan spread his left hand out in front of everyone. The skin on his palm had healed completely, and the golden lines flowed under his skin. They were thicker and more numerous than before, spreading from his palm to his wrist, from his wrist to his forearm, and then from his arm into his collar.
"The five paths plus the path of ten thousand people are twisted into a new path. I haven't named it yet. The remnant consciousness of Pangu said it is the 'path of Heaven.' But now it is not the path of Heaven, but the path formed by the will of all living beings in the primordial world."
Peng suddenly let out a cry.
The hiss was short, so short that it stopped before it could spread. But the man in black robes stopped the warping space. He stood still, his pure black eyes fixed on Su Fan and Peng on the city wall. After a moment of silence, his voice rang out in Su Fan's mind again.
"Your number of rules has doubled."
"Do we still want to talk?" Su Fan looked up at him. "Or do we still want to fight?"
The man in black robes did not answer. The other eleven black dots in the sky began to move. The arc-shaped array was shrinking. The eleven black dots descended from the depths of the clouds at an extremely fast speed. With every zhang (approximately 3.3 meters) they fell, the sky darkened by one fen (approximately 3.3 meters).
"They heard it."
The roc spread its wings, and a second cry soared into the sky, piercing the clouds and splitting the gray mist that was about to gush down in two.
Then Peng silently told everyone, "It's not a full-scale attack, it's the law pressing down. They want to completely sever the Southern Heavenly Gate from the primordial cause and effect."
Su Fan looked up at the eleven approaching black dots on the horizon, then swung the Pangu Axe. Golden patterns spread from his palm to his entire body, and golden light enveloped him like a thin layer of armor.
He looked down at the human warrior standing at the city gate. The human warrior pushed Qingfeng aside and took a step forward. His bare legs stomped on the city bricks, causing two circles of energy to explode.
The human warrior brandished his broken sword: "Boss, what is 'Law's Encroachment'?"
"A cage of extraterritorial laws." Su Fan squatted down, picked up a loose city brick, and weighed it in his hand. The buzzing sound inside the brick was still there, and the white light had not yet dissipated.
"They wanted to use the principle of cause and effect to enclose the Southern Heavenly Gate, creating a world independent of the primordial rules. Inside this world, the primordial time, space, and laws of heaven—were all food."
Su Fan handed the city brick in his hand to the human warrior: "But once this cage is closed, the 'rule density' of the twelve of them inside will actually be locked up."
"What do you mean?" The human warrior caught the brick.
Nezha glanced at the brick joint and said, "It's because they swallowed too much, and too fast."
Yang Jian understood instantly. His third eye opened a crack, glistening with undried blood, but his expression relaxed slightly.
"The Dao of Cause and Effect was originally completely open in the chaos, and the laws flowed like air. Once they actively closed the cage, the primordial laws swallowed by the twelve extraterrestrial gods would become congested in the limited space. When the laws became congested to a certain extent, their absorption frequency would slow down."
"Slowing down means we have time to fight back." Su Fan slung the Pangu Axe over his shoulder, turned to face the gradually darkening daylight on the city wall, and spoke calmly.
"Listen up, brothers. The first wave, let them devour you. They're not devouring your strength, they're devouring the primordial rules—the heavens, the earth, the spirits of the soldiers, and the Daoist arts in this space are all part of the primordial rules."
Qingfeng raised his broken sword, the shards humming low. Almost simultaneously, ten thousand soldiers on and around the city walls roared, "Use the entire South Heavenly Gate as bait!"
"Yes." Su Fan's voice wasn't loud, but it clearly suppressed the entire buzzing. "Use the entire South Heavenly Gate as bait. When they're full and start blocking the laws—that's when we counterattack."
Sun Wukong lowered his golden cudgel from his shoulder, its tip pointing towards the gray mist outside the city wall's crenellations. The gray mist was rapidly pressing towards the South Heavenly Gate, and the eleven black dots were becoming clearer, their outlines becoming discernible—each shape and form distinct, some resembling human figures, others curled up like swarms of insects.
The one at the very front was also dressed in a black robe, but instead of hands, three iron chains emerged from its sleeves, each ending in a black hook. The hooks spun in the mist, and with each rotation, a circle of gray mist around them disappeared.
"They've started devouring the outer rules." Yang Jian, with his eyes closed, relied on his Heavenly Calculation to sense the rate at which the laws were being lost. "Eighty percent of the Heavenly Light rules outside the South Heavenly Gate have been consumed. The sky now—is transparent to them."
"Then make it transparent."
Su Fan descended the crenellations of the city wall, passed through layers of soldiers, and stood on the steps closest to the city gate. His footsteps were heavy and steady, each step landing on the bricks and stones still bathed in the white light.
After he stopped, he turned to face Nezha, Yang Jian, and Sun Wukong, and said, "From now on, follow my orders."
The three of them looked up at the same time.
"Nezha. The temperature at the outermost edge of the Wind and Fire Wheels is a manifestation of the Law of Separation of Fire. When they absorb the cause and effect of the Separation of Fire, a magical explosion will occur at the focal point of the collapsing flames. The point of the magical explosion is where your spear tip pierced."
Nezha grinned and brandished his Fire-Tipped Spear in front of him.
"Yang Jian, your Heavenly Eye can see through the causal gaps. When they devour the rules, there is a half-breath digestion gap after each type of rule is consumed. During this digestion gap—you command the archer battalion to shoot their hooks."
"clear."
"Great Sage." Su Fan looked at Sun Wukong one last time.
Sun Wukong remained silent, his monkey eyes reflecting the golden light emanating from Su Fan.
"The Seventy-Two Transformations don't change the physical form, but rather the causal threads of fate within the primordial world. Each time you transform within the cage, their causal paths become entangled in an even more inescapable knot."
Sun Wukong strapped the golden cudgel to his neck, his arms draped over the ends: "The more you transform, the more blocked they become?"
"The more blocked they are," Su Fan nodded. "They want to swallow the heretics, and your transformation technique is like stuffing a wire into a chicken rib for them. They can't swallow it, and they can't spit it out."
Sun Wukong grinned.
The laugh was soft, but genuine.
Yuanshi Tianzun walked up from behind, his whisk draped over his arm. He looked into Su Fan's eyes and said:
"This method is risky. Once the laws within the cage reach a critical point, they might detonate half of the primordial laws they've swallowed to break through the blockage. The South Heavenly Gate will withstand the impact of the collision. This collision will tear apart the soldiers on the city wall whose cultivation level is insufficient."
Su Fan turned around, looking at the ten thousand soldiers on and below the city wall. His gaze passed over the severed limbs and the illusory bodies glowing with light, and he suddenly said in a loud voice:
"Those whose cultivation level is insufficient should all retreat to the inner court of the South Heavenly Gate, where Laozi will use the Heavenly Dao Repair Technique to rebuild the outer layer of the defense line."
"No retreat." Qingfeng was the first to speak, his voice not loud.
"We will not retreat," the human warrior replied.
"I won't retreat." The wolf demon growled softly from its throat.
Su Fan shook his head: "I'm not letting you fight, not to make you afraid, but to ensure your survival. When you can't withstand the impact of the laws, the laws themselves will force your souls out of your bodies, and even the Heavenly Dao Repair Technique won't be able to save you then. Survive until the counter-offensive—that's when you really need to live."
The wolf demon glared at him, its single eye reflecting a white light. After a moment, it lowered its head, turned, and was the first to run towards the inner courtyard. After taking three steps, it turned back and bared its teeth at Su Fan:
"You'd better be alive and shout the order to get me back!"
Su Fan did not answer.
The man in black robes stopped three hundred feet outside the South Heavenly Gate in the gray mist, neither advancing nor retreating. A black iron hook hung silently in the mist, confronting him.
Su Fan leaped onto the rampart, Pangu Axe slung over his shoulder, his gaze sweeping over the eleven extraterrestrial beings gradually coalescing in the gray mist. He suddenly raised his voice, crashing into the edge of chaos with the sound of the wind:
"Open the steamer. The food—is ready for you."
The gray mist churned violently, and the first causal chain shot out from the black-robed man's sleeve.
The iron hook pierced the sky above the South Heavenly Gate, and with a sudden pull, the sky split open.
The second hook followed closely, then the third, and the fourth. The twelve extraterrestrial gods acted simultaneously, each nailing down their own causal singularity.
The hooked blade pierced through the primordial space, tearing twelve rifts in the sky. Each rift neither bled nor flowed mist, but only carried away—the very essence of the rules themselves.
Su Fan could clearly feel the wind beneath his feet had lessened; the temperature he felt on his skin had become blurred; the colors before his eyes had lost their saturation; even the thunderous shouts of the army had slowly faded into distant echoes.
They are devouring the laws of war.
One after another, extraterrestrial gods stepped into the cage, no longer maintaining their human form, revealing their most primitive forms amidst the storm of laws.
Some were humanoid silhouettes formed by countless rotating runes, some were just a dark palm print that stretched across the sky, its five fingers slowly closing, and others were just a giant eyeball hanging in front of the city gate, the hoarse incantation of skulls rubbing together that could be heard by everyone in the city when it blinked.
But no matter what shape they were, the one at the very front never changed—it remained the same human silhouette with its iron-black robes and abyss-like black eyes.
"I've given you a chance." The man in black robes no longer used telepathy, speaking for the first time in the universal language of the primordial world. His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't uttered a word in millennia:
"In the primordial chaos, all living beings are but ants. The rules are the only valuable sustenance, and you—are not worth killing."
He raised his hand, and behind him, eleven bizarre, extraterrestrial companions simultaneously emitted resonant chants. The entire locked cage began to contract.
The suspended iron hooks outside the city wall spun faster, and the volume of the laws of cause and effect rapidly accumulated above the South Heavenly Gate, while a dark storm of laws crashed against the cage wall.
Yang Jian kept his eyes closed, his voice as steady as a weight: "He swallowed thirty percent. Nearly half of the outer laws are now empty."
Su Fan held the Pangu Axe without moving.
"Fifty percent. They have already devoured the entire outer laws of the Southern Heavenly Gate. The light, temperature, and part of the soldier's soul energy have all been transformed into their rule chain."
Su Fan still didn't move.
Sun Wukong lightly kicked his golden cudgel and muttered a count: "If we keep waiting, they'll swallow up all the rust on my golden cudgel."
Nezha's spear tip pressed against the city brick in front of him, the flames having subsided to a single wisp. He suppressed his anger, his voice sharp and steady: "What are you waiting for?"
"Wait until they swallow—" Before Su Fan could finish speaking, the countless iron hooks spinning high in the sky suddenly stopped for a moment.
The buzzing stopped abruptly for a moment. Even the huge single eye behind the black-robed man stopped its twitching blinking.
"Eighty percent." Yang Jian suddenly opened his eyes, and a ray of golden light shot out from his Heavenly Eye. "The density of the laws within the cage is approaching the critical point. Their absorption cycle has lengthened three times."
Su Fan's lips curled up.
Immediately, the Pangu Axe shone brightly with white light. He shattered the outermost bricks and stones of the crenellation with one foot, and his whole body transformed into a golden rainbow that shot straight out of the city wall, facing the dark sky above the black-robed man's head, where the laws were condensed to the point of almost solidification, and cleaved down with his axe!
"Three times the clearance—that's enough! Old Yang, click the hook!"
Yang Jian's Heavenly Eye swept over the twelve causal hooks, and as they were being swallowed and blocked, the twelve nodes appeared in perfect detail before his eyes. The Heavenly Eye activated its Divine Calculation, simultaneously transmitting its message to the archer battalions waiting in various locations along the city wall.
All eight hundred Heavenly Dao Repairing Bows were drawn to their full strength, the arrowheads coated with a layer of white light, and the bowstrings were released at the same instant.
Where the arrows pointed, twelve hooks exploded in mid-air, creating pale sparks of law.
The man in black robes abruptly retracted his left arm, breaking two of the three iron chains. He stared at the axe blade that Su Fan was slashing at him, his eyes condensing into a solid black light, forming a layer of laws in front of him.
"Your axe cannot sever cause and effect," the man in black robes rasped.
If you can't split it, smash it open.
Su Fan's axe blade did not strike directly; instead, he chopped at the edge of the cage.
The white light of Pangu's axe collided violently with the dark causal realm, and the resulting ripples swept across the city wall, causing the legs of ten thousand soldiers to sink an inch into the paving stones.
After the surging impact, the entire cage was forcibly opened by three-tenths of its length by the force of the axe.
Wukong laughed loudly, and his golden cudgel transformed into a hundred shadows.
"It's my turn, Old Sun!"
His form suddenly changed—not into something else, but simultaneously into a series of incompatible cycles of reincarnation.
A phantom image of an ancient demonic ape, a broken pillar that disrupts the secrets of heaven, and a thundercloud that should have disappeared tens of thousands of years ago in the primordial world.
The chains of cause and effect trembled violently. With each transformation of Sun Wukong, dozens of chains of cause and effect that were about to close automatically twisted into a knot.
Yang Jian calmly reported the numbers: "The congestion rate according to regulations is 92%."
All the extraterrestrial gods inside the cage paused for a moment simultaneously.
Nezha drew his spear.
The Wind and Fire Wheels exploded with two streams of lava-like flames, instantly piercing through the giant single eye on the side.
When the spear tip pierced the barrier of laws, it emitted a crisp sound like metal striking stone. The surface of the single eye's pupil cracked with deep, spiderweb-like marks, sending out a large number of fragments of laws flying backward.
Before Nezha's spear thrust was over, he twisted his wrist, and the spear shaft swept across the rune aggregate beside him, slamming the humanoid into the crenellations of the city wall. Qingfeng followed up with a sword strike, the broken blade cleaving through the gaps in the runes, producing a muffled thud.
"95% -"
The man in black robes retreated for the first time. After the layer of laws in front of him shattered, he immediately moved five hundred feet toward the edge of chaos, and thick, grayish-black causal liquid seeped from the broken iron chain.
He used droplets to redraw an archway in front of him and shouted sternly, "Close the door, explode the cage!"
The eleven extraterrestrial gods simultaneously withdrew their offensive and rapidly retreated towards the edge of the cage.
"Laojun," Su Fan called out.
The Primordial Celestial Venerable sat cross-legged on the ridge of the South Heavenly Gate, with 108 runes floating and swirling around him.
He didn't stand up, but instead pressed his whisk heavily to the ground: "Soldier Soul Formation, Lock Cage."
Ten thousand soldiers retreating into the inner courtyard simultaneously plunged their weapons into the ground. White light, like a torrent, converged along the cracks in the bricks, transforming into one hundred and eight chains that swept upwards, binding the law-based forms of the departing extraterrestrial gods one by one.
The archway, painted with causal fluid, was held firmly to its edge by three chains of light, unable to move an inch.
The man in black robes turned around, his pure black eyes meeting the Primordial Celestial Venerable on the ridge of the city wall for the first time. A ring of extremely fine causal runes flashed around the edge of his dark eye sockets.
He stared at it for a long time and finally remembered the old man's law of destiny.
Su Fan held his axe between him and Yuanshi Tianzun.
"Didn't you want to devour the rules?" Su Fan, carrying the Pangu Axe, his body shimmering with golden patterns, said, "Now the cage is stuffed full of rules. You can't swallow it all, and you can't spit it out either."
The man in black remained silent for a long time.
Just as the cage law reached its limit of congestion, Peng let out a third cry.
The roc circled atop the cage, its gray feathers all gone, revealing a pure white divine silhouette beneath, its voice booming like a bell:
"The first primordial rule—'Force'—has been completely devoured. From this moment on, the physical structure within the primordial realm will suffer irreversible damage. This is the price."
Su Fan clearly heard Peng add in his mind, "It's time to name the new path you created."
Su Fan took a step forward, and the Pangu Axe slammed heavily into the void: "The rules of the primordial world can be reduced by one, but the price for invasions from beyond the realm is that the entire Dao of Cause and Effect is blocked in a cage."
He sheathed his axe, his voice echoing over the city gates that trembled at Peng's announcement.
"This path is called the 'Path of All Beings'. In the primordial world, everyone is a rule, and everyone can act on behalf of the Heavenly Way."
The black-robed man's pure black eye sockets suddenly contracted.
Outside the cage, three even larger black stars were slowly rising from the deepest part of the chaos.