Mang Shusheng's Ink Painting Practice

Chapter 290 Thoughts on the Void

The witch tribe has found its own spiritual home, which is their 'Emerald Dream'.

A group of people started to sleep soundly whenever they had nothing to do, in order to attract more remnants of the witch clan's dreams from the dream realm.

Beneath the pile of remnants of dreams, Zhao Yifu's Dream City resembles another ancient witch clan. Within the Dream City, there are now four remnants of ancestral witch dreams, including Xuanming's.

Zhao Yifu breathed a long sigh of relief, thinking to himself that he was finally calmed down.

He managed to persuade all the witches to go back, since they could enter the Dream City no matter where they slept, so they didn't necessarily have to stay.

The only potentially bad thing is that Da Wu Jiu Feng doesn't want to leave.

Zhao Yifu earnestly advised, "Great Witch Jiufeng, I have already told you that Great Witch Xingtian is in the ninth level of Heavenly Prison. Can you leave now?"

Jiufeng shook her head and said seriously, "Jiufeng offended the Dream Ancestor before and damaged a lot of the Dream Ancestor's cave. Now I can only do what I can to atone for my sins."

As she spoke, she reached out and pulled up a large tree that she had previously knocked down, then replanted it on the ground.

Then, through some unknown magic, the tree's roots began to wriggle and re-enter the soil.

The witch clan always had many magical and secret methods.

In retrospect, if the Wu tribe had been able to manage the land peacefully back then, as a 'god race on earth,' how could they have ended up in such a state?

In any case, Zhao Yifu felt that these witches lost because they were too impulsive and lacked common sense.

Later, Zhao Yifu had no other choice but to let Jiufeng live on the mountainside to watch over the water source for him.

The nine phoenixes were not picky at all. They found a cave, crawled inside, and slept whenever they could, without making a fuss.

Zhao Yifu wondered if the Wu tribe might just turn into 'Druids' like this.
The key point is that these 'druids' are indeed carefully maintaining and weaving their dreams in Zhao Yifu's Dream City, making Zhao Yifu's Dream City better little by little.

What surprised and delighted Zhao Yifu was that this Dream City gradually began to give back to him.

As more and more fragmented dreams appeared in the City of Dreams, Zhao Yifu felt that the power of his primordial spirit that he could draw upon was also becoming stronger.

In short, he obtained an external spirit amplifier?
In any case, Zhao Yifu can finally breathe a sigh of relief now, and the troublesome matter has been settled.

But for him, things weren't over yet. What was the purpose of settling the Wu Clan? Wasn't it to help Boss Youquan realize his ambitions as soon as possible?
But the leader of Youquan himself has failed, which is quite frustrating.

To be honest, Zhao Yifu was most anxious about when Youquan would arrive; his own cultivation level was secondary.

He couldn't help but wonder, why is this secluded spring taking so long?

He simply sank his primordial spirit into his spiritual aperture, and then found the source of darkness within it...

After thinking for a moment, he still separated a wisp of his dream clone and went inside. He wanted to see what this dark spring was up to.
The dream avatar entered the dark void just like last time.

There was still nothing here, but Zhao Yifu was already very clear that a great will born from the void existed here.

For this will, perhaps space and time are meaningless; to the beings of the three realms, it is as if it were eternal.

As for why such beings must enter the Three Realms, well…
Zhao Yifu didn't understand at first.

However, he only realized this after talking with his master about the essence of cultivation.

Perhaps for this great being, He is also unchanging in this silent, unchanging dark void.

If He wants to ascend to a higher level of existence, He must step out of the void and enter this world that is essentially derived from Him.

This realization made Zhao Yifu understand that it was inevitable for Youquan to leave the dark void and enter the Three Realms, unless this big shot gave up his ambition.

Zhao Yifu waited in this void for a while but nothing happened. He thought Youquan would come looking for him as eagerly as before... Could it be that she was hiding from him?
Zhao Yifu was speechless.

But what can he do at this time?
Before Youquan came to find him, he carefully examined everything in the dark void.

Actually, when he said he was 'looking around,' he couldn't see anything at all; it was always pitch black.

In the deep darkness, it seemed as if there was nothing, yet it also seemed as if everything existed.

The only source of light was the world system representing the Three Realms behind him, which was slowly operating behind him.

He couldn't help but turn around and look at the Three Realms system.

From this perspective, the Three Realms seem as small as an exquisite toy, slowly operating according to its own laws, making one want to touch it...

It was amazing; he had never imagined that the Three Realms would seem so small in front of him.

Curious, he reached out, wanting to touch the outside of these three realms...

As a result, a strange ripple appeared around the Three Realms, preventing him from touching it.

But... Zhao Yifu was very curious about what this force that was blocking him was.
The way of heaven?
He had no good feelings towards the Heavenly Dao now, so he poked it again with his finger...

The next moment, a bolt of purple lightning shot out from above, jolting Zhao Yifu awake.

Then he woke up from his dream.

He stood up abruptly, the pain from the electric shock in his dream still fresh in his memory.

The pain in that instant was excruciating... Of course, it hurt a lot in the dream, but now it doesn't seem to hurt as much...

He was quite curious, wondering what this thing was that was hurting him so much.
Since the loss of his attention in the dream was almost negligible for him, he just went for it... well, mainly because he had nothing better to do anyway.

So he returned to that point in the void where the Three Realms were located. This time, he examined the outside more carefully, making sure there was nothing behind it. Then, out of curiosity, he touched it with his finger again...

Another ripple spread.

However, this time the purple lightning struck even faster than before, jolting him back to consciousness in agony.

After regaining his senses, Zhao Yifu went again, completely determined to succeed.

He was very curious about where the power in the Three Realms was attacking him.
This time, however, he didn't act rashly but instead pondered the matter carefully.

To be fair, he can indeed observe the workings of the three realms, but this is a very macroscopic view. He cannot see things at the microscopic level at all, just like how a normal person cannot see bacteria and viruses without the help of a microscope.
The Three Realms now appear like exquisite toys to Zhao Yifu, but how vast are the Three Realms in reality?
He couldn't see clearly.

So at this point, his thought was whether there were any tools that could help him observe at a more microscopic level.
His dream avatar remained in the dark void, pondering its meaning.

I wondered where Boss Youquan had gone.
Youquan is definitely more familiar with this dark void. If Boss Youquan is here, it would be much better than him trying to figure it out by himself.

So the dream clone was thinking, and his original self was thinking along with it.

In the dark void, there was neither Yin and Yang nor the Five Elements, nor even chaos. All his abilities were useless; the only useful thing was the thought ability that this clone inherently possessed…

Oh, no, he can also sense the dark source power more directly.

There is endless dark energy in this void, and it is unknown what changes will occur when it is gathered together.
He tried to gather some...

Well, nothing has changed except that the concentration of dark energy around his dream clone has increased slightly.

Zhao Yifu felt he could perhaps do more, but this dream clone could only do so much. Only then did Zhao Yifu realize that he needed to deepen his understanding of the dark source power.

So the original body began to seriously comprehend this power.

This power undergoes a significant change upon encountering real matter, much like Zhao Yifu's transformation into the Founding Titan, which was achieved by unlocking and infinitely expanding the original code of his body under the support of dark source power.

So how does this change occur at a more microscopic level?
Zhao Yifu thought of the way he observed things in his previous life and wondered if he should get a microscope.

No, not at all.

He has a primordial spirit and divine sense. As long as he adjusts his divine sense to a state of 'subtle insight', he can then observe all things around him.

At this point, he can see the microscopic level of all things in the world, and the amount of information greatly increases.

Generally speaking, he would not use his divine sense at the microscopic level, since the amount of information in that instant is too great and his primordial spirit would have a great difficulty in processing it.

However, doing research now is a different story.

He first looked at his own hands.

With his profound divine sense, his hand was actually a ball of spiritual particles.

It looks as if he has been completely energized, but in reality he has never abandoned his physical essence. This is because as he cultivates, his body is filled with countless spiritual particles between cells, and even between molecules and atoms.

This is actually a celestial body.

Zhao Yifu was very curious about how the dark source power would affect his body.
Then the dark energy climbed up his palm, and he felt a black mist quickly turn his entire hand black.

He couldn't fully observe how this process was going on, but he already had a very surprising guess in his mind... that the dark source force affected a microscopic region even smaller than spiritual particles!

Spiritual particles filled his body, and this dark source energy could fill the gaps within the spiritual particles!
At the same time, the dark source energy can assimilate itself into the entity it attaches to, which means that any matter that is attached to by the dark source energy will be strengthened many times over...

No, not all substances are.

According to Zhao Yifu's observations, these dark source forces are less dependent on matter and more dependent on the matter in which spiritual particles exist.

The state it converges on is the state of the surrounding spiritual particles, not the state of matter itself.

Zhao Yifu was surprised by the discovery, but quickly came to understand it.

Because if the dark source is the origin of all things, then it is clearly a more fundamental force than spiritual particles.

After learning all this, Zhao Yifu began to have doubts again.

If everything originated from the dark source of power, then how did the original dark source of power transform into the vast Three Realms we see today?

Zhao Yifu remembered what his master Xuandu had said: cultivators seek the source in order to develop better. Therefore, he felt that if he could understand the key to the changes in power, it would definitely be of great help to his cultivation.

He began to think blankly, while his dream clone seemed to be thinking in the dark void.

The dream clone observes the dark void, while the main body, under observation, constantly contemplates and deduces the causes of chaos.

To be honest, it would be great if he could have a wisp of chaotic spiritual energy to study right now.

The main body kept conceiving ideas, which were then transmitted to the dream avatar, only to be quickly abandoned.

The dark void remained empty, and this emptiness clearly told him that all the evolutions he had envisioned were invalid.

Zhao Yifu continued to ponder, unaware of the passage of time.

Grandmaster Xuandu rarely bothered him, and it was unclear what he meant by that.

About ten years passed in this way...

This was perhaps the longest period of seclusion Zhao Yifu had ever experienced since he began his spiritual practice.

His thinking seemed to have been in vain.

He still hasn't found enlightenment in the darkness.

But it seems that this thinking was not in vain, because when he came to his senses and finally chose to leave the seclusion, he found that his cultivation level had reached the peak of the Celestial Immortal realm.

Well, there's no need to worry about 'Celestial Immortal Perfection' or 'Half-Step Golden Immortal'; the Golden Immortal realm is already within reach.

A 'Flower of Essence' representing the essence of his physical body quietly bloomed on the top of his head, along with a 'Flower of Qi' representing the accumulation of Qi cultivation. Only the final 'Flower of Divine Spirit' was yet to bloom.

Once the three flowers atop the crown of the head fully bloom, a bridge is formed between one's inner and outer worlds, and the Golden Immortal realm is achieved. At that time, the convergence of inner and outer power can naturally generate boundless magical power. Upon reaching the Golden Immortal realm, there is no longer a need to foolishly cultivate magical power as before; everything depends on how much one's inner world can bear.

Zhao Yifu ended his seclusion and went outside.

Yiyi quietly lay by the door, and as soon as she saw him come out of seclusion, she immediately clung to him.

Zhao Yifu quickly hugged it and comforted it.

Ah Chou, on the other hand, seemed rather indifferent to this... after all, it was used to being independent.

Then Xuandu arrived as well.

He glanced at Zhao Yifu quickly and said with some surprise, "You've made rapid progress, you already have two of the three flowers, but why don't you go all out and complete the three flowers in one go?"

Zhao Yifu frowned and shook his head, saying, "There's always a sense of something missing."

Indeed, he had been pondering the principles of the dark void, feeling that without a clear understanding, his thoughts could not be clear. And how could he condense the Flower of God if his thoughts were not clear?

In short, he's basically fighting against himself.

Master Xuandu agreed, saying, "It is truly gratifying that you have made such progress. In that case, I must return to the Tushita Palace to help my teacher with some matters."

Upon hearing this, Zhao Yifu immediately felt uneasy. He said, "If my master is not here, I will have no one to discuss things with."

Xuan Du said with difficulty, "Yes, I'm also troubled by this... but my teacher has encountered a big problem, and I have to go over and see if there's anything I can help with."

Zhao Yifu asked in surprise, "What problem is there that even sages and patriarchs cannot solve?"

Xuandu said, "During the time you were in seclusion, there were faint signs that the chaotic space where our Three Realms are located was being spied on and attempted to be invaded."

“This is dangerous. As a disciple of the sage, I must go and check the situation.”

"It's one thing if the dark spring is invaded, but if it's invaded by something dangerous, that would be troublesome."

Zhao Yifu thought this made a lot of sense, and could only say with a wronged expression, "Then Master, please go. I will be careful."

Hey~
He sighed inwardly.

With my master gone, I feel a little less secure, but I also feel much freer.

(End of this chapter)