Chapter 677: The Great Dao Resonates! (1/2)
Chapter 677: The Great Dao Resonates!
The first blade of Spirit Severing!
The first Dao of Spirit Severing!
Meng Hao sat cross-legged at the bottom of the Milky Way Sea. Around him stretched skeletal remains that formed the outline of a flower. Amongst the swaying seaweed, the skeleton pulsed with a faint light, which gradually turned into a ghastly white color, like that of bones.
It weighed down on the five-colored Resurrection Lily, suppressing it so that its struggling turned into a frenzy.
Meng Hao’s body withered, continuing to look weaker and weaker, until he looked like a bag of bones. However, his eyes shined with an unprecedented life force.
It was as if he was embodying the Dao; all of his mind and heart and will were focused in his eyes, which rested on the multicolored blade in front of him.
He completely ignored everything in the outside world. His entire focus was that blade!
The blade moved!
It slowly raised up! As it did, the blade in the Heavens above, which contained innumerable constellations, also rose high, casting its light down onto the lands of South Heaven as it did.
Immediately, gigantic waves swelled up across the entirety of the Milky Way Sea, crashing and thundering far and wide. The movement of the blade even caused the Violet Sea in the Western Desert to begin to roil violently.
All of the Cultivators, and in fact, all living things, in the Outer Sea, the Fourth Ring, and the Third Ring, were all flabbergasted.
The 10th Wang Clan Patriarch’s face was unsightly to the extreme as he stared up into the sky. Although his face flickered with various emotions, he didn’t dare to take even a step forward toward the area where Meng Hao was performing his Spirit Severing.
He well knew that a great Dao was nearing. Were he to step foot into that area, that great Dao would exterminate him in body and spirit. The reason was that this Dao… was not his Dao.
“Dammit!” he cursed, killing intent growing with intensity in his eyes. “Well, eventually your Spirit Severing will come to an end. You absolutely must not kill yourself in the process, child, otherwise I’ll never acquire your Dao foundation!
“However… I still want to know, just what Dao did you come to understand?”
Within the Third Ring, the Three Saints’ faces also flickered. In contrast to Saint Flying Immortal and Saint Sea Divinity, Saint Sun Soul’s eyes glowed with a strange light. He was instantly able to determine that the Spirit Severing was being performed… by Meng Hao!
“So, it turns out you were actually only a half a step into Spirit Severing!” he thought, taking a deep breath.
Meanwhile, as the astral blade slowly rose up, the struggling, illusory image of the Resurrection Lily had reached the point of insanity. It quivered in terror because of the unprecedented feeling of deadly crisis; this was the first time it had ever truly experienced dread.
It could clearly sense that the blade in front of Meng Hao had the power to sever it away. That blade was backed by the power of a great Dao, something it was powerless to resist.
A faint voice could suddenly be heard coming from the skeleton in the seaweed, and the eyes of the long dead Reverend Silverlamp suddenly glowed with lucidity. “The Dao of freedom, of independence….”
He looked at Meng Hao sitting in front of him, and murmured, “Were it not for the fact that he was steeled by the Resurrection Lily, this kid would never have been able to comprehend such a great Dao of Heaven and Earth….
“Sever the fetters, and achieve true independence…. The interesting thing is that it’s impossible to tell whether he was tempered by the Resurrection Lily, or whether the Resurrection Lily was tempered by him.
“I can just barely sense that both he and the Resurrection Lily each have someone watching over them…. One is the Dawn Immortal of the Second Ring, mother of the Resurrection Lily who exists in the lands of South Heaven. The other… is in the Eastern Lands.”
Even as Reverend Silverlamp was looking at Meng Hao, a sinister gaze shot out from the black depths of the sea in the Second Ring, bearing a boundless evil. Despite the evil, it still exhibited a trace of Immortal Will as it peered towards Meng Hao.
“I bloomed at dawn,” thought the owner of the voice, “and my consciousness emerged…. On the day of vicissitudes, I achieved Immortal Ascension, and met someone I should not have met.
“Shui Mo stole away my heart, a heart… that contained all of the longing from my previous life…. It sank down into the Milky Way Sea and was sealed in a formation of stone, locked away in a copper coffin… restrained by countless chains.
“What was locked away was my goodness. Eventually, it transformed into a roc, which now weeps in the Rebirth Cave.
“The League of Demon Sealers. The Ninth is the pinnacle. Is he your hope…? I knew long ago that if I could not find you, then I would destroy the hope of the League of Demon Sealers.”
The gaze coming from the Second Ring looked at Meng Hao with complex emotions. There was coldness, confusion, hatred, and viciousness.
Meanwhile, in the Great Tang of the Eastern Lands, a woman was looking in the direction of the Milky Way Sea. Her gaze penetrated through the air, through the Milky Way Sea, all the way to Meng Hao.
It was a gaze filled with concern, worry, nervousness, and anxiety. All of that transformed into an endless love that wrapped up her heart.
She stood atop a lofty Tower of Tang, gazing far off into the distance. Next to her stood a man who silently clasped her hand. He could feel her trembling, and could feel the dampness of sweat in her palm. [1. A Tower of Tang was first mentioned in chapter 1. Meng Hao eventually visited it in chapter 59, which culminated in his vision of Choumen Tai, and then Choumen Tai’s corpse falling into the Southern Domain. Later, in chapter 138, when he went to the Black Sieve Sect for the first time, he found out that such towers exist in other places. He also saw a Tower of Tang in the illusory life he lived in the trial by fire to become a Violet Furnace Lord in chapter 289.]
“This is Hao’er’s tribulation,” he said softly. “I just wanted him to be able to live a normal, mortal life. And yet, he ended up choosing the path of cultivation…. Now there’s no looking back.
“If he fails,” he murmured, “then the both of us can go receive him when he is reincarnated. We can spend a whole life with him, walk a whole sixty-year cycle of springs and autumns….” He seemed to be speaking both to the woman, and himself.
“You know, you’re very cold-hearted,” said the woman. Tears flowed down her cheeks.
A tremor ran through the man, and he closed his eyes. Deep in his heart existed bitter pain, which spread out to fill his entire being. He seemed to be recalling the fragile child running through the fog that year, weeping as he cried out to his father and mother. He remembered how the boy limped about trying to find him. When the boy caught sight of him, he could see the tears in the boy’s eyes, and he realized how much the boy relied on him.
“Li, you don’t understand….” The man did not speak these words, but rather, whispered them in his heart. [2. The “Li” character here is 丽, the same character as in Meng Li’s name 孟丽.]