The enormous beam of light that suddenly appeared struck the spot where Wu Tao was suspended in mid-air, cross-legged.
At this moment, Wu Tao had already cast aside all external matters.
In fact, at the very beginning, this sudden surge of heavenly spiritual energy had caused quite a few cultivators who were diligently in seclusion to suffer greatly.
Many cultivators, caught in the most critical moment of their seclusion, were abruptly disturbed, causing them to spit out a mouthful of blood, severely injuring their vital energy, and some even went mad.
If it were any other cultivator, they would have been torn apart by these suffering cultivators.
...
However, after experiencing such troublesome matters repeatedly, they had become somewhat accustomed to it, and instantly stopped their seclusion rhythm.
Their proficiency was so practiced it was heartbreaking, their speed as swift as flowing water.
...
These dedicated cultivators in seclusion, at this very moment, besides dissatisfaction and indignation, also held a trace of envy.
"Purple Mansion stage!"
"Their leader is now attempting to break through to the Purple Mansion stage!"
"This is a goal that many cultivators spend their entire lives and all their resources pursuing."
Indeed, at first, the heavenly fluctuations caused by Wu Tao had stirred up a great commotion in Moon Glow City, making many cultivators indignant.
In the end, it was Ye Yu who stepped forward, explained everything to everyone, and distributed a large amount of benefits, only then did the matter get resolved.
...
At this time, Moon Glow City underwent another massive change.
Whether it was houses, cave dwellings, city walls, or mountains, grass, trees, rivers, and lakes, all were covered in a layer of purple!
Purple energy permeated for thousands of miles, separating the inside from the outside, like a heavenly curtain.
A colossal beam of light, entwined with the power of heaven and earth, pierced through the vast clouds, bringing with it a violent gale, connecting heaven and earth!
This suddenly appearing enormous beam of light struck the spot where Wu Tao was suspended, cross-legged, having entered the profound and mysterious Qing Xuan state of Daoism, where the self and the external merge into one.
The convergence of heavenly and earthly power here was not to aid him, but rather to harm him.
The reason for this was that in his confrontation with a portion of the will of heaven and earth, Wu Tao, relying on the World Origin Seed and his own strength, had gradually gained the upper hand.
Although the will of heaven and earth did not possess emotions, it instinctively gathered a portion of its power to suppress Wu Tao.
The massive accumulation of heavenly and earthly power in one place contained supreme might, and for Wu Tao in his current state, it was an absolute disaster.
Sensing the threat to his life, Wu Tao opened his eyes, which had been closed for a full fifty years.
Although Wu Tao was now close to success, in the face of a life-threatening danger, he could not afford to be so meticulous.
Extremely powerful spiritual energy flowed through Wu Tao's meridians, and his natal artifact, the Early Evening Sword, was surrounded by an all-encompassing sword qi!
At the most crucial moment, Wu Tao still chose to trust the natal artifact that had accompanied him to this point.
The path of a cultivator, when reaching its end, is to contend with heaven and earth; one step back leads to death.
A world-shattering sword cry reverberated throughout heaven and earth, and with a single slash, he cleaved through the firmament!
This sword could break through thousand-mile cities, sever ten-thousand-mile rivers, and cause ancient mountains and famous peaks to collapse. After this sword strike, a cold light flashed, traversing the entire Yun Continent.
"BOOM!!!"
With a sword strike that rent the sky, the heavenly and earthly power condensed by the will of heaven and earth instantly collapsed.
At this moment, the entire world changed before Wu Tao's eyes.
A feeling indescribable by words arose in Wu Tao's heart.
A long river appeared from nothingness between heaven and earth.
This long river was formless and unsubstantial, as if it did not exist, yet nothing could impede its flow.
For it was a river of time.
The constant flow of the river of time gave rise to the birth, aging, sickness, and death of living beings, their joys and sorrows, their anger and sadness; it was the origin of all things and the end of all things.
The river of time had countless branches.
These countless branches represented the different paths taken by each living being after making a choice, leading to myriad splendors, as well as mediocrity, and even tragic suffering.
"The River of Time!"
The moment this river appeared, these four words surfaced in Wu Tao's heart.
Instantly, numerous thoughts flashed through his mind.
The River of Time was both real and illusory, seemingly empty but fundamentally substantial, a river filled with taboos.
No living being or powerful entity could ever traverse this river from beginning to end.
From the unparalleled, eternally glorious, peerless emperors of the world to fleeting beings who lived less than a day, all were equal and insignificant within this river.
For no matter how powerful or weak you were, you were merely an inconspicuous tiny tributary within this long river.
Maintaining the very foundation of all heaven and earth, how could he, Wu Tao, extract a wisp of the law of time from this river of time?
Wu Tao gazed at the suddenly appearing River of Time, falling into silence, his mind racing at full speed.
But before he could devise a plan, the River of Time had already bifurcated into countless tributaries.
These tributaries had no distinction of high or low, nor of width, but their flow rates differed, some fast, some slow...
No one in this world knew where they would eventually lead...
What awaited ahead, happiness, suffering, or something else...
It was precisely this uncertainty that gave life its unique splendor.
Crossroads, blocked paths, no paths, good paths, smooth paths, and so on; the countless choices made by individuals in a single thought would determine countless unknown roads!
What a person would become in the future could only be witnessed by time and destiny.
Finally, the countless tributaries converged into one, and then abruptly disappeared, as if they had never existed in this world.
...
At the same moment, countless living beings, within the River of Time, were enacting different lives.
Regardless of what kind of life it was, it belonged exclusively to that living being, and no one could take it away.
After a long while, Wu Tao finally came back to his senses.
For the first time in hundreds of years, an unspeakable fear appeared in Wu Tao's eyes.
This feeling was not particularly pleasant, especially for someone like Wu Tao.
Not everyone wished to know what their future held, nor did everyone desire to grasp the pulse of time and the rhythm of destiny.
The reason for Wu Tao's state was that he discovered himself standing at a massive fork in the river, with different tributaries stretching in all directions.
He saw his own future, filled with beauty, sadness, despair, success, failure, and countless other possibilities.
For ordinary people, faced with such a situation, most would feel delighted, but Wu Tao was different.
At this moment, Wu Tao felt only fear.
For people like Wu Tao, their lives could only be controlled by themselves; they did not believe in so-called futures!
Even if this future were to truly come to pass, Wu Tao would exert every effort to change it.
...
But no matter what, in the vastness of heaven and earth, even a fleeting being or an ant had its own choices to make.
Every choice it made, its glory, its failures, all of it would be buried and submerged with the passage of time, leaving no trace behind.
...
Breaking free from the River of Time, Wu Tao's fighting spirit had not diminished in the slightest; instead, it had grown even stronger.
As the saying goes, "one will not give up until they hit the south wall," but even if one were to die hitting the south wall, what then?
In the Kyushu cultivation world, there was a country called the Shang Kingdom.
The last emperor of the Shang Kingdom was incompetent and inept. A minister, for the sake of the nation's survival, resolutely chose to offer his life as a warning, and threw himself to his death against a wooden pillar in the main hall.
Yet, in the end, the country still perished under the rule of that monarch.
Many people mocked this minister, and some even wrote a book about it, which was passed down to later generations.
But for that minister, the moment he chose to make that earth-shattering leap and angrily crash against the wooden pillar, his life had, in his own eyes, already ended.
This was the path he had chosen; perhaps it was not as beautiful as he had hoped, but for him, it was the best outcome he had chosen for himself.
...
Wu Tao's situation was extremely dire.
With external pressure from the power of heaven and earth and internal spiritual energy in disarray, caught between internal and external threats, his life hung by a thread.
Between life and death lies great terror, but if asked whether Wu Tao regretted it, the answer was undoubtedly no.
From Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, to the current Purple Mansion, through hundreds of years of storms, when had Wu Tao not faced adversity head-on and triumphed over the strong with the weak?
Facing the crisis, Wu Tao's fighting spirit burned madly, and his aura reached a new peak.
Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all things as straw dogs.
Thus, there are those who defy heaven and act against the trend, conquering the heavens.
The River of Time lay before him, seemingly within reach, but how could the will of heaven and earth allow Wu Tao to succeed so easily?
A power that grew infinitely and frantically suppressed his physical body, threatening to erase Wu Tao from this real world at any moment.
Even a mortal standing nearby could tell that the situation was dire.
Although the will of heaven and earth was merely an emotionless, AI-like existence, and its actions were solely directed at Wu Tao,
how could such a large-scale mobilization of heavenly and earthly power by the will of heaven and earth only affect Wu Tao?