Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Mortal World as a Prison Forging Karmic Fire [Part Two] [Please Subscribe]

What exactly is willpower? Even with Li Yang's level of cultivation, he could not fully comprehend it. He only knew that willpower was the most peculiar force in the world. Just like the sages of antiquity, they were the embodiment of powerful willpower, completely forsaking the influence of biological instincts and wholly devoting themselves to their own Dao.

Whether it was Confucius of the Spring and Autumn period or the great Neo-Confucian scholar Wang Yangming of the Ming dynasty, they all belonged to this category of figures. Yet, when speaking of the most brilliant among them, one could not ignore the God of the West.

According to the conclusions Li Yang drew from his study of the Bible, God was a master who had reached the pinnacle of the Dao of willpower.

If imagination was the foundation of human rise, then willpower was the hope of human transcendence.

In Li Yang's understanding, the world was a massive mass of collective consciousness, and all living beings between heaven and earth had been providing it with strength since the dawn of creation.

Through every reincarnation of a living being, the most primordial divine soul would return to this core entity of consciousness, leaving behind only the most primal trace of true spirit to undergo cyclical rebirth. Through this endless cycle, this consciousness would grow ever stronger, and the Heavenly Dao would become increasingly perfected.

The authority of deities was a manifestation of borrowing the power of this collective consciousness.

Regardless of whether they were Eastern or Western deities, their authorities were diverse and could even be said to encompass all the rules of time. This was the Dao, which could be called omniscience and omnipotence.

The God of the West used His own Dao to replace the Heavenly Dao. Although His consciousness was far from being comparable to the world's consciousness, He forged an unconventional path by guiding the souls of believers into a realm He created Himself, thereby swelling His own consciousness and siphoning nourishment from the world. This was the reason why He claimed to be omniscient and omnipotent. How similar this was to the Heavenly Dao; one could even say it was a miniature consciousness of the Heavenly Dao.

Although the true background of this God remained unknown, His attempt to act out the deeds of the Heavenly Dao using His own willpower revealed His immense power and terrifying nature. Furthermore, His wisdom undoubtedly stood at the forefront of all cultivators in the world. Having risen from the Divine Dao, He was able to use it as a foundation to leap beyond the barriers of the Divine Dao. From ancient times to the present, absolute few could compare with Him.

When he had first come into contact with the path of cultivation, Li Yang had also believed that the gradual thinning of the world's spiritual Qi was caused by the progressive weakening of the Heavenly Dao.

It was only now that he discovered the truth of the matter, which happened to be the exact opposite of his conjecture. With the development of the world, the Heavenly Dao would only grow stronger, as could be seen from the increasingly rigorous rules of heaven and earth.

In ancient times, as long as one attained immortality, their lifespan would surge to a Yuanhui—one hundred twenty-nine thousand and six hundred years. Yet nowadays, even upon cultivating to the level of a Heavenly Celestial, one only possessed a meager five-hundred-year lifespan. Every five years, one had to endure the trials of heaven and earth, surviving tribulations to live for another five hundred years, repeating this cycle endlessly until perishing under a great calamity of heaven and earth.

Why was this the case? It was precisely because the Heavenly Dao was growing ever stronger. All living beings between heaven and earth were crops planted by Him, harvested year after year. There were exceptionally powerful crops that refused to be harvested and grew into towering trees; His sickles of the past were not sharp enough, naturally failing to cut down such giant trees. But now things were different. He was growing stronger, transforming from a sickle into an axe. No matter how powerful one might be, as long as one failed to leap beyond this world, one was destined to be harvested by Him and become His nourishment.

The reason the world ushered in the Age of Dharma Ending was because this mass of willpower had already grown strong enough. He was harvesting all the energy within the world, and once the world was completely drained, it would undergo reincarnation, re-evolving into an even more powerful world. Just like the reincarnation of humans, this was the path of a world's growth.

As for the so-called spiritual Qi of heaven and earth, it was merely the dissipated origin of the world—a special kind of willpower, a signal, a signal that living beings could receive. Every time heaven and earth harvested all living beings, a portion would dissipate, urging the creatures within the world to grow more robustly, acting much like fertilizer.

As for why deities enjoyed a nearly infinite lifespan, it was because from beginning to end, deities were nothing more than His laborers. After accepting the divine office conferred and condensed by the Heavenly Dao, the origin of a deity gradually merged with the Heavenly Dao, growing impartial and cold, transforming into a puppet of the Heavenly Dao until they became a part of heaven and earth. This was the very reason why immortals and gods had to sever their seven emotions and six desires. To put it bluntly, the moment a deity accepted their conferral, they had already been harvested; it was merely that this method was gentler, presenting the outward appearance that they were still alive.

However, could a tool-like entity that had lost its seven emotions and six desires and existed solely to maintain the rules of heaven and earth still be considered its true self?

It was simply that this process was subtle and imperceptible, slowly stripping away the conferred individual's seven emotions and six desires. As for the duration of this process, it depended entirely on one's personal willpower. For those with firm willpower, this period would naturally be very long; for those with weak willpower, assimilation would occur rapidly.

Therefore, willpower was profoundly mysterious. It had nothing to do with a living being's soul strength or level of life, depending entirely on the creature's own innate traits. However, there was one constant: the stronger one's wisdom, the stronger one's willpower would be.

Ordinary beasts lived entirely by instinct, so their willpower naturally could not compare to that of humans. Yet what willpower truly was remained something no one could clearly articulate.

As for Earth Celestials, they were able to remain immune to the harassment of heavenly tribulations precisely because of the isolation provided by grotto-heavens and blessed lands. Strictly speaking, a grotto-heaven and blessed land was a miniature world; although it could not detach itself from the main world, it existed in a subordinate relationship, and the tentacles of the Heavenly Dao naturally could not extend into the grotto-heavens.

However, grotto-heavens and blessed lands would also perish. Once the spiritual Qi of heaven and earth was exhausted, the grotto-heavens could no longer be sustained, and they still failed to escape the harvesting of the world.

Yet there was one point: the world itself possessed no wisdom. What it possessed was merely the pure instinct of self-aggrandizement, much like a piece of computer program—yet an advanced program capable of self-improvement and self-patching of vulnerabilities, as if pre-programmed by someone in advance.

Li Yang's current state was extremely peculiar, caught in the midst of a nirvanic transformation. His soul was like a newborn infant, unstained by a speck of dust, brimming with pure truth. Only at such a time could he pierce through to the true nature of the world.

"Catherine?"

Upon seeing the source of that pure spiritual brilliance, Li Yang was suddenly enlightened.

Catherine truly differed significantly from ordinary vampires. Through their period of interaction, Li Yang had also discovered that she differed greatly from his preconceived notions, proving that cinematic portrayals were indeed far too one-sided.

Ordinary vampires, after being turned, retained their human nature, but as time passed, their personalities were gradually eroded by the desire for blood, becoming somewhat twisted or even deformed. The radiance of their human nature was progressively replaced by intense desires.

Indolence, aversion to labor, promiscuity, indulgence, and luxury formed their core themes. Beneath their glamorous daily exteriors lay the ugliest facets of human desire.

Yet Catherine was different. She seemed entirely untouched by this, feeling more human than actual humans, and even purer. She repaid kindness and sought revenge for wrongs with a swift clarity, and the radiance of her human nature had not been distorted by the accumulation of time, but instead grew ever more robust.

......

"Hahaha... Since you keep shoving this thing back and forth, we'll take it!"

At that very moment, a pitch-black fissure tore open across the void. Accompanied by a burst of loud laughter, a burly man over two meters tall, with a bare upper body and flushed red skin, entered in free fall from the high altitude, slamming heavily onto the altar.

"Rumble..."

The instant the giant landed, accompanied by a deafening roar, he smashed a half-man-deep, cracked crater right in the center of the altar.

"Awooh... Stop!"

Seeing that the giant was about to wrench the thunder-chisel from the ground, Lucian reacted with lightning speed. His form instantly expanded, transforming into a towering, robust silver-furred werewolf as he lunged forward.

"Sizzle..."

"Get lost! Bang, bang..."

The moment they collided, Lucian's gleaming wolf claws raked across the man's body, kicking up a cascade of sparks. The muscular giant flew into an instant rage, lifting his massive fists high and slamming them mercilessly into Lucian's jaw, before delivering a vicious kick that sent him flying backward.

This entire sequence of movements occurred in the blink of an eye.

Just then, another figure leaped down from the air: an Asian woman clad in tight leather with a head of purple hair and purple face paint, accompanied by a white woman holding a leather whip.

"Who are you people?"

The moment these figures appeared, Amelia also cast Rics away, turned, and ran over, taking her stand with a wary expression beside Lucian, who was just picking himself up from the ground.

"Big lug, make it quick! We'll hold them off for now!"

The purple-haired woman turned her head and shouted at the red-skinned giant, while ripples immediately began to shimmer across the space before her.

"Click-clack... OK, hehe... Watch me!"

The red-skinned giant twisted his neck, grinning broadly as he spoke, before turning and striding toward the thunder-chisel.

"Awooh... Awooh... Stop!"

Amidst a chorus of overlapping wolf howls, a swarm of lycans charged forward instantly, attempting to thwart the red-skinned giant's actions.

"A pack of beasts..."

A cold smirk hung on the lips of the white woman holding the whip. As the leather whip unfurled, white arcs of energy instantly flared along its length.

"Snap... Sizzle... Swish..."

A streak of white energy whip lashed across the void. An oncoming werewolf was sliced through as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter; before it could even utter a scream, it was instantly cleaved in half, spilling its entrails across the ground.

"Fall back, all of you!"

Seeing several of his subordinates perish under the whip-wielding woman's hands in the blink of an eye, Lucian's eyes widened as he barked an order to his kind. He then rapidly accelerated himself, his silver fur rippling in the air as he executed a series of agile leaps, dodging the aerial energy whip and rapidly closing the distance on the woman.

"Ha..."

"Clang, clang..."

On the other side, Amelia did not hold back in the slightest. Pale gold runes flickered across her forehead, and a golden toxic mist spewed from her mouth. Drawing the twin blades from her back, her entire body transformed into a streak of black light as she charged toward the purple-haired woman.

"Sizzle, sizzle..."

Gazing at the oncoming toxic mist, a cold smile played on the purple-haired woman's lips. A large rift instantly tore open in the space before her, swallowing the poison entirely. On the other side, high in the sky along the perimeter of the altar, a spatial wormhole silently ripped open, and a plume of golden toxic mist emerged from it.

In an instant, a large swath of the crowd still lingering outside the altar was cleared out. Crying and wailing, they fled in panic toward the direction of London.