Shrouding the Heavens: The Ultimate Daoist Venerable

Chapter 121 The Ascension Plan
Although Lingbao Tianzun gave an affirmative answer, his expression remained solemn. He continued, "I have a general idea for this great formation, but there are still two problems. First, we need a celestial artifact to break through the world barrier; second, we need a massive amount of energy to support this instantaneous burst."

This was largely in line with Liang Yu's expectations. After all, in later generations, when Ye Fan led his sect to ascend to immortality, he opened the entrance himself, allowing all his relatives, friends, and former members of the Heavenly Court to enter.

Although Liang Yu wanted to open a permanent passage for ascension, it was clear that even a mortal immortal might not be able to do it. A mortal immortal could only open a path to heaven, but could not make that path exist forever.

Since Liang Yu and his allies hadn't even achieved the status of a Red Dust Immortal, it was naturally even more impossible for them to do so.

Therefore, he had no choice but to settle for second best and leave a large array in the place closest to the strange world, so that future Daoists could activate the array to unleash enough power to briefly open a passage and enter it.

But this requires a powerful array that can unleash a near-Heavenly Emperor-level full-force attack in an instant, and it also needs to be reusable multiple times.

Liang Yu himself did not have a perfect solution; his designs always had various problems. Even though he had considerable knowledge of the secrets of character formation, there was still a significant gap between him and Lingbao Tianzun.

Therefore, the core of this plan is Lingbao Tianzun. Everyone else, including Liang Yu, is just a tool to contribute to Lingbao Tianzun's design and ensure its complete realization.

Currently, the array proposed by Lingbao Tianzun only has these two requirements, which is already considered very well-developed.

Although the human world and the strange world are very close here, the world barrier is still too strong. Most cultivators cannot break through it, and even if they do, they may not be able to withstand the force of the world barrier's backlash.

Integrating immortal artifacts into the grand formation is indeed a good method. The original timeline's Emperor relied on the Cauldron of the Origin of All Things to clear a path, reducing the damage he suffered and ensuring longer endurance. As a result, he did indeed use the Cauldron of Ascension to break through the barrier of the strange world with minimal consumption.

Upon hearing this, Liang Yu said, "Immortal artifacts are not a problem. Let's set aside the Desolate Tower, the Immortal Bell, and the Bronze Immortal Palace for now. My Qiankun Creation Tower has already become an immortal artifact, and your Immortal Slaughtering Sword Formation should also become an immortal artifact in this lifetime if it is further refined. In fact, when Fellow Daoist Morality is born, we can even join forces to refine an immortal artifact specifically for setting up the formation."

"As for this energy, it depends on the Origin Technique. Over the years, Fellow Daoist Mingzun and I have pushed the Origin Technique to a higher level. As long as we add the Origin Heaven Divine Runes to Fellow Daoist Lingbao's grand formation, we can draw upon the power of the Great Universe to activate the grand formation, thus providing sufficient energy to support it."

"However, Fellow Daoist Lingbao, won't our human universe become weaker and weaker as a result?"

Upon hearing this, Lingbao Tianzun frowned, but then immediately understood the reason.

Every enlightened being is formed from the very essence of heaven and earth, having absorbed countless blessings from the universe. If they were to pass away peacefully, all of this would gradually return to the universe. Even if they didn't pass away peacefully, their essence would still remain within the universe, eventually returning to the cosmos.

But now that they are ascending to a strange world, these creations will become a permanent loss. It may not be apparent in the short term, but over time it could indeed lead to the universe becoming weaker and the environment becoming harsher.

Even without the Ascension Plan, the universe will continue to decline. Although there are ups and downs in the process, from the Mythical Era to the Primordial Era and then to the Ancient Era, we can see that the recovery period during the low period is getting longer and the peak period is getting shorter.

Liang Yu had always suspected that the decline of the Great Universe was because among those who attained enlightenment, too many became supreme beings in forbidden zones or attacked the path to immortality, too few died of old age, and even fewer passed away by transforming into the Dao.

If these supreme beings, who have absorbed vast amounts of cosmic essence, die on the path to immortality, it's equivalent to being separated from the greater universe. The essence they took with them can only be retrieved when the path to immortality reopens. If these supreme beings self-destruct and seal their forbidden zones, it's as if a large amount of cosmic essence remains in the universe, but cannot be accessed.

Furthermore, many enlightened beings have immortal bodies after death, and some even possess spiritual powers, which makes it difficult for these cosmic essences to return to the world.

Even if the universe draws energy from outside the universe to replenish itself through breathing, it would still be difficult to withstand such a loss or uncontrolled loss of essence.

After all, the universe today is the result of reconstruction after being damaged, and it is no longer what it used to be. Moreover, the Immortal Realm, which could have supported the universe's depletion and replenished its essence, has long been disconnected from the human world due to damage.

Therefore, while the decline of our universe is partly due to those terrible upheavals in prehistoric times, the main reason now is that there are too many parasites that are old but not dead, and not truly dead!
What? I'm a parasite like that too? Oh well, never mind.

However, as the two "parasites" who are more concerned about the universe and are more noble, Lingbao Tianzun and Liang Yu obviously cannot just let things go, nor can they allow their original plan, which was originally intended to completely eliminate the darkness and chaos and benefit future generations, to cause the decline of the universe to be even faster.

In the original timeline, Ye Fan's method was actually the simplest and most effective in solving the fundamental problem. He directly led the most outstanding individuals still existing in the universe at that time into the Immortal Realm, and then repaired the Immortal Realm in the shortest possible time, thereby allowing the Immortal Realm to give back to the mortal world, enabling human cultivators to gradually ascend freely without needing a high cultivation level, just like in the ancient Immortal Era.

Even without ascension, the human world will gradually begin to recover to its former state, where even celestial kings could be born.

In this way, although the human world will be extremely weak for a period of time after Ye Fan leads the Heavenly Court to ascend to heaven, all problems can be solved as soon as he succeeds.

However, this method is not applicable to Liang Yuhe and Lingbao Tianzun now.

After a moment's thought, Lingbao Tianzun said, "Fellow Daoist Wuji's concerns are quite reasonable; we should indeed avoid this problem. By the way, Fellow Daoist Wuji, what is the strength of the cultivators in this realm?"

Liang Yu said, "The strongest one is only equivalent to when I first met you, fellow Daoist. In addition, there are more than twenty Supreme Beings equivalent to those who have attained the Dao."

Compared to the human realm, this performance is clearly rather mediocre. After all, there are more than twenty or thirty self-imposed restrictions in the human universe alone, and more than twenty Supreme Beings have already died at Liang Yu's hands.

Upon hearing this news, Lingbao Tianzun said, "Then we'll have no choice but to set our sights on this world. Let me carefully calculate this strange world again and redesign a grand formation."

Lingbao Tianzun's idea was to manipulate the great formation to ensure that for every Daoist who ascended, a portion of the essence of heaven and earth would be drawn from the strange world to replenish the human universe, thus maintaining a balance.

However, taking too much would make it difficult to continue cooperating with others, while taking too little would cause the Great Universe to suffer losses. Therefore, Lingbao Tianzun must calculate precisely to ensure that the Great Universe only earns a tiny bit each time.

Liang Yu couldn't help but exclaim, "Fellow Daoist Lingbao is indeed the number one expert in array patterns, unmatched by anyone. Moreover, you have already gone to great lengths for the human world as soon as you woke up, which truly impresses me."

(End of this chapter)