Studying Destruction

Yaan sat atop Rainbow Mountain with his eyes shut, just as he had been doing for the past ten years now. In the end, it took him seven years to reach the centre of the Divine Beast Sector, where he dropped Rainbow Mountain at the foot of the Heavenly Statue.

Pushing the two Primordial Treasures so close together was in itself a challenge, but Yaan managed to work his way around the turbulent storms that arose as he forced the mountain to land at the statue's feet.

Compared to the Heavenly Statue, Rainbow Mountain was but a spec of dust. The size wasn't important though, Yaan still valued Rainbow Mountain above everything else.

What he had discovered was that in placing the mountain at the feet of the statue - which to Yaan, looked awfully similar to the humanoid form of the Heavenly Dao - the mountain was enriched by the dao of heaven, bringing every dao enhancement and suppression in each of the nine layers to a new extreme.

Yaan had developed a deeper understanding of Rainbow Mountain over the past ten years, and he felt that he was close to becoming the mountain's true 'owner'. Typically, Primordial Treasures couldn't be bound and owned like other treasures, but this sort of connection could partially manifest if it was comprehended to a certain extent. If he one day refined Rainbow Mountain into a Primordial Divine Treasure, at that point, he would be the one and only absolute owner of this mountain.

However, recently, Yaan had been more focussed on Shi's dead body than the mountain.

Indeed…her dead body.

He killed her.

Actually, he had killed her several hundred times now, but she refused to stay dead. Even when he incinerated her body, mind and soul, whilst she was in a completely vulnerable state and couldn't protect herself at all, she somehow kept returning to life!

At first, he had just thought of her as tenacious, but at this point, Yaan honestly wasn't sure if he even had the ability to put her down for good! He could keep her suppressed and unmoving, he could keep her body, mind and soul in a state of death, but as soon as he went all-out and tried to finish the job, she would reverse her own destruction, returning to life yet again.

After studying her some more, Yaan no longer saw Shi as a cultivator, but a walking natural disaster. This was because he eventually determined that if he prepared for an extended period of time, he could definitely end her life permanently…

But if Shi was truly destroyed, the eruption of destruction that would result from her demise would be of cataclysmic proportions, and would most definitely kill him.

In fact, he was pretty sure that if Shi was truly destroyed right here and now, the destructive wave would sweep through the world, and tear open the golden spatial tear, finalising the last sign of the Era's end and making way for the invaders from the Chaos Era.

And so, Yaan felt a bit lost. Previously, he had planned to kill her, extract her Dao Soul, and hand that over to Defiance, should Defiance ask for her back, but now…

How could he do that, knowing that Defiance would then go on to destroy her Dao Soul and rip open the golden spatial crack? 

It was a bit of a dilemma, but fortunately, Defiance hadn't yet made an appearance. This was actually not what Yaan had expected…

By now, Defiance must have determined that Shi was most likely being concealed within either the Divine Court or the Paradise Sect. The fact that he hadn't arrived to find her, meant one of two things - either he wouldn't act until he was absolutely sure which power held her, or, he already knew that she was in Yaan's possession, but for some reason, he had decided to leave her be for now.

Another ten years flew by.

Yaan rubbed his chin and pondered as he casually traced his finger into a profound symbol across Shi's body.

This was a Divine Rune, one that he had been developing in a very controlled manner for ten years now. It simply meant - Destruction.

Shi's lifeless body was destroyed, her dead mind collapsed and was annihilated, her soul was wiped out into nothingness, leaving only her Dao Soul in one piece. The Dao Soul was neither alive nor dead, but it could certainly be 'destroyed' just like the mind, body and soul. However, he refrained from doing this, feeling a terrifying premonition of danger as the Destruction Divine Rune approached her Dao Soul.

Cracks spread across her Dao Soul, but Yaan quickly retracted the symbol before it could complete the destruction. He watched carefully as he traced another rune that he had been comprehending, which meant 'Creation'. With this rune, her Dao Soul was prevented from collapsing, and the abyssal cracks across its surface were gradually healed.

Yaan's ability to create the Divine Runes and control them like this was developed by cultivating on Rainbow Mountain and continually digesting his gains from the Boundless Dao Library. He had devoured so many Dao Runes in the library, and somewhere deep within him, the potential to recreate those Runes was slowly being drawn out.

That said, Yaan's understanding of the Dao Soul had nothing to do with the Divine Runes. Empyreans would comprehend the Dao Soul to an extent, it was only at this level that one could truly 'see' the Dao Soul. Yaan though, possessed a much deeper understanding of the Dao Soul's ability to sustain and recover from wounds, simply because his own Dao Soul had existed in a state of constant injury for so many years.

Thanks to his flawed early life, he was able to play around with Shi's Dao Soul without worrying about accidentally destroying it.

Once her Dao Soul had fully recovered, Yaan simply let go and stared.

With a flash of nauseating black lightning, Shi returned to her peak state. Of course, under Yaan's suppression, she remained comatosed - he wouldn't allow her to wake up.

"Bizarre." Yaan slowly shook his head. "Her Dao Soul is able to sense the complete destruction of her Life Essence, something that occurs whenever she is reduced to a Dao Soul and nothing else. As soon as I stop suppressing it, her dao erupts and flows in reverse, undoing the destruction as if it simply never happened. This power to survive without Life Essence…I thought it was unique to me, but it seems that others can achieve this. At least, Shi can."

Yaan didn't immediately conduct another experiment, but spent a while comprehending creation and destruction, as well as life and death, perfecting his ability to create and control these daos in the form of Divine Runes.

He realised a few years ago that each time he destroyed Shi and she was saved by her strange dao yet again, the time taken for her Dao Soul to recover to full strength decreased. It was already rapid to begin with, but the fact that she was improving made Yaan feel like he was helping her cultivate, rather than trying to kill her…

"As expected of the only cultivator to reach the Divine Step faster than me." Yaan muttered. "Her cultivation speed is monstrous in all regards. If I keep this up, I wonder if I will end up refining her dao to the point of her Origin Ascension? No, that should be impossible…hopefully…"

At this point, nothing about Shi would surprise him. She was a maniac that had transformed into destruction itself, she was an even bigger liability to this world than Yaan, the World Demon.

For the time being, Yaan gave up on his experimenting on Shi. He really didn't want to help her grow any stronger, especially not if she might end up slipping out of his control. Given his current abilities, the best choice was to keep her suppressed as he cultivated himself.

As for what he would do, if and when Defiance arrived…he would deal with that when the time came.

For the first time in 20 years, Yaan stood up, and casually stretched. He spent a few moments examining his body, once again confirming that he had achieved the perfect fusion of his dao body and cultivation base body. He could still split his bodies apart, and when he fused them back together again, he would be able to achieve this perfect fusion right away. Of course, if the separated bodies improved on their own, he would need to reattain a new perfectly fused state.

"20 years…nobody even came to find me during the last 10 years. Were it not for my communications with the Sage and a few Transcendents from the Divine Clans, I would wonder if the Paradise Sect members had all fled."

Yaan chuckled and shook his head, the passage of time was very different for divinities than for lower cultivators. A single session of seclusion would often take hundreds if not thousands of years - 20 years wasn't that long in the scheme of things.

20 years wasn't nearly long enough to process his gains from the Boundless Dao Library, but Yaan was realising that the dao waves he had absorbed wouldn't necessarily manifest as real comprehension and power just by entering secluded cultivation. For example, experimenting on Shi had massively expanded his understanding of life, death, creation, destruction, their corresponding Divine Runes that he could create with a single finger, Divine Runes and their creation in general, and of course, the Dao Soul.

"It would be nice to spend a thousand years secluded on this little mountain, but it's impossible, the outside world won't remain stable for that long. After 20 years, the Paradise Sect has just about cemented itself in place as the absolute ruler of the Four Divine Star System, everything is running smoothly now. Our members from the Blood Plane have also been implementing our rule across the continent and moon. Is it time take the Neutral Star System? Hmm…I might not even need to act personally for that expansion, since those four from the World Merchant Alliance have been managing their former group during these years. If I just send over a bit of support, it should be a simple conquest."

Yaan didn't want to waste any time that he could better spend on something else. If doing a task wouldn't benefit him, he would just delegate it to others.

'This feeling of controlling the world without really doing anything…I wonder, is this how the Heavenly Dao feels?' He couldn't help but think. 

After some thought, Yaan decided to call for the second official sect meeting.