Desolate Era (Book 41 - Book 45)

“Out with the old…” With but a thought, Ning sent his will descending deep into his sea of consciousness, where an azure flower was slowly swaying. When Ning’s will descended, the flower suddenly began to decay and break apart. A moment later, the azure flower had completely vanished within the sea of consciousness.

“…and in with the new.” Ning began to redeploy the true, complete, and perfect technique. It was now suitable for even Autarchs to use, although Ning wasn’t completely sure as to whether or not it could convert Autarch-level divine power and Immortal energy.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. The various chaos seals began to manifest within Ning’s sea of consciousness. Ten of them appeared in succession, and they began to interlay atop of each other, solidifying into an azure seed.

The azure seed popped open as a sprout emerged from it. The sprout began to grow, resulting in a series of dazzlingly beautiful leaves appearing, with a little closed bud appearing in their midst. The bud slowly grew larger and larger, and it looked as though it was opening up but not quite ready to fully bloom just yet. The beautiful azure flower emanated an aura of ineffable mystery, and it was many times more dazzling than the previous one. It gently swayed there in Ning’s mind, surrounded by countless green leaves.

This was the perfect azureflower technique which arose from the Ten Chaos Seals.

Strands of divine power, Immortal energy, and heartforce all flowed into the azure flower, which was able to easily take them in and then transform them into a new type of energy. As soon as this new type of energy was created, Ning felt extremely comfortable.

Whooosh. Under Ning’s control, this new type of energy quickly filled every inch of his body. Crack! Pop! Ning’s muscles, tendons, and blood began to change and transform.

This was a new form of energy, a perfect form of energy that vastly surpassed divine power and Immortal ki. As a result, it could be used to create a more perfect body as well! It could be used for close combat, could control magic treasures from afar, and was incredibly strong.

Ning’s physical body was quickly remade by this new form of energy. He withdrew his Immortal ki back into his Jindan chaos region, leaving only this new energy pulsing through his veins.

“This is the new type of energy which Autarch Awakener hoped for. I shall call it…” Ning paused for a moment, then smiled. “Mana.” He opened his eyes, his entire body feeling clean, refreshed, and comfortable as the mana flowed through him. This new power, mana, was a thousand times stronger than Emperor-class divine power or Immortal ki. When he used mana to execute his Eternal Omega Sword Dao, the power of his strikes would probably increase by another twenty to thirty percent.

The reason it ‘only’ increased by that amount was because at Ning’s level, the power of one’s attacks was chiefly determined by one’s insights into the Dao. Personal strength only played a fairly minor role. For ‘mana’ to improve an Autarch’s power by 30% was absolutely incredible!

“Mana… so it has finally been completed.” The white-haired elder was very excited. “Master was unable to perfect it, and so he never even came up with a real name for this new type of energy. Now, it has finally been completed.”

From this day forth, ‘mana’ was born. In the future, it would slowly be spread throughout the Chaosverse and supplant divine power and Immortal ki as the most important type of energy a cultivator could train in.

Completing the Ten Chaos Seals had been fairly easy. Now, Ning would need to go into deep meditation to work on his other Daos.

……

After 360 chaos cycles in secluded meditation, Ning fused the Dao of Light into his Sword Dao and created the Light Sword Dao.

After 430 chaos cycles in secluded meditation, Ning mastered the Dark Sword Dao.

After 3,200 chaos cycles in secluded meditation, Ning learned how to fuse his Dark Sword Dao together with his Light Sword Dao into a new technique he named the Cycle Sword Dao.

After 11,100 chaos cycles in secluded meditation, Ning fused the Dao of Formations into his Sword Dao and created the Sword Formation Dao.

Ning continued to fuse one Dao after another into his Dao of the Sword. Finally, after 3,900,000 chaos cycles, Ning successfully integrated his Dao of Karma into the Dao of the Sword and created the Karma Sword Dao. This took Ning the most time of all to complete.





Book 43, Chapter 14 - The Calm Before the Storm


Ji Ning continued to train, and nearly 6 million chaos cycles went past in the blink of an eye. Autarch Skyfeeder continuously maintained a rate of 1000x temporal acceleration for the Azureflower Estate.

One day, the gates to the estate suddenly swung open. The white-robed Ning walked out, black sheath over his back, and Autarch Skyfeeder halted the temporal acceleration process.

“You’ve finished?” Autarch Skyfeeder left her wooden cabin and walked barefoot through the air towards Ning.

“Thank you for everything, Autarch Skyfeeder,” Ning said gratefully.

“A minor matter. The stronger you become, the better off the entire cultivator civilization shall be,” Autarch Skyfeeder said with a smile. “And besides, it only took me 6,000 chaos cycles of real time. That’s nothing to me.”

“It was 6,000 for you, but to me it was 6 million,” Ning said with a sigh. It truly had been an extremely long period of time for him, and he had experienced it in its entirety. He had completely focused on cultivating, having emptied his mind of all other thoughts.

In the end, he had successfully mastered everything he wanted to master. The most time-consuming had been the Karma Sword Dao, and it had taken him nearly 3 million chaos cycles to complete it. Next was the Numerancy Sword Dao, which should’ve been just as difficult, but since he had already mastered the Karma Sword Dao he had managed to speed up the process a bit and had completed it in roughly 2 million chaos cycles.

Karma and Numerancy… both were extremely difficult to master. All the other Daos were simpler, with some taking a few dozen chaos cycles at most.

“How did your training go?” Skyfeeder asked.

“I’ve advanced as much as I can,” Ning said. “Based on my theories, I should be able to merge all the other Daos into the Autarch-level Omega Dao, but as of right now I still don’t know what that breakthrough would look like.”

“Going from Emperorhood to Autarchy has always been a difficult task,” Skyfeeder said with a smile. “Everything shall be as fate wills it. Based on what I know, the Sithe Chaosverse actually has quite a few Omega Emperors of the Sword, but all of them have remained trapped at that level.”

“Makes sense.” Ning nodded. He had reviewed the memories of many Sithe Emperors, and so he had come to learn quite a few things. All information regarding the Omega Daos themselves had been sealed, but there had been a few memories regarding the Omega Emperors. This was why he had come out of cultivation. It was probably impossible to become an Omega Autarch through secluded meditation. In fact, it was actually more likely that this breakthrough would come naturally as one lived an ordinary life! The Dao could be found in all things, after all, as all things were linked together.

It was true that putting yourself in a life-or-death situation could be even more effective, but then you ran the risk of failing and dying. The Autarch’s generally wouldn’t put themselves in such great danger without a very good reason, because their deaths could destabilize the entire cultivator civilization. In fact, it would impact the entire Chaosverse itself!

“Oh, right. I used Autarch Awakener’s original energy-cultivation technique to create an even more profound one,” Ning said. “Anyone can train in the new [Azureflower] technique and use it to convert divine power, Immortal ki, and heartforce into a new type of energy! This will greatly strengthen both body and soul. Give it a try, Skyfeeder. Let’s see if the technique is capable of transforming Autarch-class divine power and Immortal ki.”