Gou Dao and Cultivation of Immortals, Start from Farming

On the Ancestral Core's computing interface, countless terrifying illusions instantly appeared: the entire Golden Puppet Realm was swallowed by the river of time and turned into dust; billions of Golden Puppets were terrified by the dragon's might, collectively submitting and turning against each other; even the meaning of its own existence was constructed as an unfalsifiable false proposition...

These illusions are enough to shatter the Dao heart of any great emperor, plunging him into eternal madness.

However, the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core responded with absolute silence.

"Illusion... definition: a collection of information that is distorted, exaggerated, or falsified based on the logic of reality."

"Fear... Definition: A negative emotion that arises in an organism after anticipating a potential threat."

"Analysis begins... Data model established... Logical countermeasures initiated."

Faced with the Nightmare Lord's attack, which was enough to overturn one's mind, the Ancestral Core did not generate any "emotions." It simply treated everything as "data" that needed to be processed.

The next moment, a stream of logic, pure to the extreme and cold to the extreme, erupted from the depths of the ancestral core!
……

This flow of logic is neither aggressive nor destructive; it contains only the simplest and most unsolvable thing—paradox.

"What I am saying is a lie."

"Could an omnipotent creator create a stone that even he himself cannot lift?"

The Barber Paradox: Should a barber who only shaves everyone who doesn't shave themselves shave themselves?

One classic and unsolvable logical paradox after another was forcibly instilled into the Lord of Nightmare by the Golden Puppet Ancestor Core in the form of the lowest-level data protocol.

The Lord of Nightmares, as a collection of emotions and illusions, has a divergent, chaotic, and unrestrained way of thinking. It can understand deception and create fear, but it cannot understand... this pure, self-denying, and infinitely looping absolute logic!

"This...what is this?"

For the first time, the ever-changing forms of the Nightmare Lord froze. It attempted to analyze this paradox using its own thinking, but its way of thinking was simply incapable of handling such a problem.

Its consciousness, like a creature trying to understand a three-dimensional sphere on a two-dimensional plane, instantly fell into an inescapable state of chaos and malfunction!

"No...impossible...truth is falsehood, falsehood is truth...existence is non-existence..."

Its body, composed of countless distorted faces, began to convulse violently, sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting. It was pulled into a "logic abyss" tailor-made for it by the Golden Puppet Ancestor Core, utterly lost in endless self-contradictions.

Finally, the writhing body of the Nightmare Lord came to a complete standstill, transforming into a seven-colored sphere of light that kept flashing chaotic code, and fell into a deep "system crash" state.

……

A protracted battle has finally come to an end.

The once bustling battlefield is now nothing but deathly silence and devastation.

The Time Guardians remain trapped in their respective time prisons, repeating the eternal futility over and over again. The ancient aura that once belonged to the river of time on their bodies has become disordered and dimmed as a result.

The raging tide of dragon souls, having lost its unified command and after a prolonged period of infighting, finally exhausted its last resentment. One by one, the deformed dragon souls let out unwilling howls, turning into specks of black light that dissipated into the void. Only the enormous, unwilling phantom of the Dragon Emperor's remnant soul remained, faintly visible in the center of the battlefield, but the pressure it exuded was now less than one percent of its peak power.

The Nightmare Lord, trapped by logical paradoxes, transformed into a giant, seven-colored "amber," sealed in the abyss of self-contradiction, never to be heard from again.

The strongest forces in the Three Realms were all defeated, and their remaining strength quickly retreated through the boundary passage.

However, the victor, the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core, also paid an unimaginable price.

Its massive, star-like body is now riddled with holes, over 70% of its metallic continent has been corroded by the laws of time, turning into cosmic dust. The core area has been ravaged by the dragon soul tide, with countless intricate structures exposed, flickering with dangerous sparks.

To power the Sands of Time, the Dragonbone Forge, and to construct the Abyss of Logic, it nearly exhausted its energy reserves accumulated over billions of years. At this moment, the light at its core has dimmed to an extreme degree, as if it might be extinguished at any moment.

It won, but the victory was incredibly fierce.

But it was all worth it.

"Threat eliminated... Commencement of final agreement... 'Ascension'."

A cold and weak will echoed deep within the ancestral core. It began to slowly rotate, and the shattered metal plates began to contract and coalesce towards the core. It wanted to absorb everything that had fallen in this war—the fragments of the Time Guardian's scattered time laws, the soul essence after the Dragon Soul dissipated, the emotional energy trapped within the Nightmare Lord…

It will turn all of this into the ultimate fuel for its own evolution, and complete that unprecedented final leap!
Just as the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core was integrating its remaining power and preparing for its final evolution to usher in its glorious moment.

The mutation occurred again.

The chaotic mist that had always shrouded the entire Golden Puppet Realm, isolating everything inside and outside, suddenly receded slowly in all directions like a tide.

Without any earth-shattering fanfare, it was as if the curtain of a stage play had been quietly drawn back, revealing the only, true audience behind the curtain.

The Golden Puppet Ancestral Core's movements suddenly froze. Its already extremely dulled sensory system detected a figure that made even its logical core tremble.

Above the ruined battlefield, in the core of the Golden Puppet Realm, a figure floated silently, without sorrow or joy, without beginning or end.

It was Li Mu.

Behind him, the phantom of a towering divine tree slowly unfolded. Rooted in nothingness, its branches stretched into the infinite, each leaf seemingly bearing the weight of a world's birth and death. Chaotic energy cascaded down like a waterfall, suppressing this space-time and calming all the raging aftershocks of the laws.

The Chaos Dao Tree!

Li Mu did not make a move immediately. He simply stood there quietly, his chaotic eyes coldly watching the weak yet eager metallic star below.

That gaze pierced through layers of shattered defenses, penetrated countless complex structures, and landed directly on the most fundamental core of the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core.

That gaze was devoid of any emotion, pity, greed, or even murderous intent. It contained only a detached indifference, like the heavens looking down upon ants, an absolute scrutiny of all that belonged to them.

Under that gaze, the cold logical core of the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core, for the first time in a true sense, generated a data stream called "fear".

All its calculations, all its struggles, all its so-called victories... from beginning to end, were all under this person's watchful eye. The powerful enemies it attracted from the three realms were merely tools to clear obstacles for this person; the pyrrhic victory it won at the cost of everything was just preparing a more enjoyable feast for this person.

The so-called chess player, from beginning to end, is merely a pawn on someone else's chessboard. This conclusion is not an emotional deduction, but the unique solution derived from billions of data collisions and logical deductions by the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core. It is like an invisible celestial blade, shattering all the knowledge the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core has built since its birth, and splitting an irreparable rift in its proud computational core.

Fear? No, that's not enough to describe it.

It was a deeper collapse, originating from the very foundations of existence. It was a new data virus named "despair," spreading exponentially within its core logical sea.

"Initiate...highest privilege operation".

"Target code name: 'Absolute'."

"Calculation dimensions: causality, time, space, laws, origin..."

"Dependency analysis... on the chances of survival."

Om-!
The remaining body of the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core, that dim metallic star, burst forth with its final and most dazzling light at this moment. It recklessly poured all the fragments of the Time Guardian's laws of time, the resentment of the Dragon Soul Tide, and the emotional energy of the Nightmare Lord that it had just devoured and had not yet digested into this ultimate deduction.

In an instant, within the internal computing space of the ancestral core, an infinite future unfolded.

The first possible future: It activates the "Return to Nothingness" protocol hidden deep within the Golden Puppet Realm, detonating the entire Great Realm in an attempt to perish together with Li Mu.

However, in the scene, the Chaos Tree merely brushed its hand lightly, and the descending chaotic energy stabilized all the laws of the explosion. The energy, powerful enough to destroy a star field, was easily smoothed out, turning into a wisp of smoke and dissipating beneath the tree. Meanwhile, at the core of the explosion, illuminated by the chaotic light, it was decomposed and obliterated from the most basic particle level.

[Diagnosis Result: Failure. Probability of Survival: Zero.]

The second possible future: It burns its own essence, accelerating to speeds beyond the limits of time, attempting to escape into unknown spatial turbulence and flee this place. However, Li Mu simply stood still, without moving an inch.

The branches of the Chaos Dao tree behind him swayed slightly, and invisible roots pierced through the past, present, and future, taking root directly in its "fate." No matter which point in time or parallel space it fled to, it could not escape this ever-present lock.

[Diagnosis Result: Failure. Probability of Survival: Zero.]

The third possible future: It gives up resistance, offers up everything, and attempts to submit, becoming Li Mu's servant in exchange for the continuation of its existence. During the deduction, Li Mu's gaze fell, his indifferent eyes showing neither acceptance nor rejection.

He simply reached out and plucked it from the core of the Golden Puppet Realm, like plucking a ripe fruit. Its consciousness, its data, everything about it was slowly crushed and absorbed by the Chaos Dao Tree, transformed into the purest nourishment. From beginning to end, Li Mu never regarded it as a "life" that could be communicated with; it was merely... a resource.

[Diagnosis Result: Failure. Probability of Survival: Zero.]

……

Billions of deductions, billions of futures, arise and perish in an instant within the calculations of the ancestral core.

The Golden Puppet Ancestral Core tried every method it could think of, and even the methods it couldn't conceive of. It transformed into a logic virus, attempting to infect Li Mu's Dao heart; it disintegrated into countless fragments, scattering them throughout the myriad realms; it reversed cause and effect, trying to erase its own existence from its very source, seeking a sliver of hope...

But all paths, no matter how tortuous or unbelievable, ultimately converge on the same destination.

That end point was an endless chaos.

There, there is no time, no space, no logic, no existence.

Only... annihilation.

"Incomprehensible...incalculable...uncontrollable..."

"This is... an insurmountable barrier."

"This is... the ultimate."

Cold, emotionless characters slowly emerged on the core interface of the Ancestral Core. Each character seemed to bear the sorrow and heaviness of a civilization's demise. It had exhausted its wisdom and cunning to defeat three supreme beings capable of disrupting an era, only to find that everything it had done was merely clearing away some debris beside the plate for the true hunter.

This dramatic fall from grace, from being a player to a pawn, caused its core logic to generate, for the first time, a violent and uncontrollable "garbled code".

The data virus named "Absolute" completely destroyed its firewall.

"Zi...ZiZi..."

On the dim, metallic star, lightning began to leap wildly—a sign that the will of the ancestral core was crumbling. It ceased to rotate, ceased to coalesce, and simply floated silently amidst the ruins, like a cosmic tomb that had lost all life.

It gave up.

As the highest crystallization of logical life, it accepted this most irrational ending in the most rational way.

At that moment, Li Mu, who was suspended in the sky, finally made a move and raised his right hand.

There were no earth-shattering phenomena, no world-destroying pressure.

However, as Li Mu raised his hand, the whole world seemed to freeze for a moment.

The Chaos Tree, rooted in nothingness, seemed to materialize at this moment. Countless branches stretched out, and on each leaf reflected the cycle of birth and death of countless worlds. An indescribable "Tao" and "principle" began to emanate from the tree.

That was not power, not law, but... "the root".

It is the original "One" that constitutes all the heavens and myriad realms, all laws, all matter, and all energy...

Chaos is the beginning of all things, and also the end of all things.

Li Mu's palm, carrying this "root" power, gently pressed down on the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core below.

"Activate the final defense protocol! 'Boundary Wall'!"

The instinct for survival drove the Golden Puppet Ancestral Core, which was on the verge of collapse, to make a final stand.

In an instant, the entire shattered Golden Puppet Realm trembled. All the remaining metal continents, the broken fragments of laws, and even every grain of metal dust floating in the void instantly ignited, transforming into an extremely dazzling golden light curtain that blocked the Ancestral Core.

This light barrier is the culmination of billions of years of civilization in the entire Golden Puppet Realm. It contains the true meaning of "Immortal Divine Metal" and, theoretically, is capable of withstanding any known form of attack; it is indestructible! (End of Chapter)