You've only been cultivating for a few years, and you're already talking about cultivating

Chapter 146 My Path Can Be Achieved

Every battle, every opponent, is an opportunity for observation in the eyes of the Insect Daoist. From the moment he stepped into the South China Sea, he had already been noticed by the Insect Daoist.

Only this observant Taoist could keenly sense that something unusual was hidden beneath this vast sea.

This thing is hidden very well and very cleverly; no one has ever seen its true form.

In order to find and observe this thing, the Insect Daoist stayed in the South China Sea for decades.

In the ocean, who has the greatest impact on the entire ocean?

It is the Dragon King of the South China Sea.

Every move of the Dragon King of the South China Sea has a profound impact on the South China Sea.

Therefore, that thing must have some connection with the Dragon King of the South China Sea.

Over the decades, he traveled to most parts of this sea area, observing the major events that occurred there, and deducing whether there was something behind these events.

In particular, observe the Dragon King of the South China Sea. What is the Dragon King doing? What is the Dragon King thinking? Why is the Dragon King acting this way?

He was observing insects, but who says he can only observe one person at a time?

Decades later, although he had never seen that thing, he had figured out some of its details and habits.

Now, it's simply a matter of verifying them one by one face-to-face.

So what if we're both from the Three Pure Realms?

The Insect Daoist could still easily subdue the mirage.

It wasn't because he was much stronger than the mirage, but because he had been preparing for it for many years.

The mirage sensed that it was falling into a giant net.

This feeling is like when he was young, he was playing around and secretly ran to the beach, and suddenly a huge net fell from the sky and covered his head.

He struggled and bit desperately—

Now, that distant and hazy memory is strangely intertwined with the current predicament.

Shen felt as if he was no longer a great demon of the Three Pure Realms who had cultivated for hundreds of years, but a cub caught in a net, facing a familiar yet unfamiliar net.

When he was young, he tore the net with all his might and escaped back to the sea.

But now?

He couldn't break free! No matter how much he struggled, no matter how much he screamed, the net woven from white light remained unmoved, instead tightening even more.

The Insect Daoist's methods were very peculiar. What surged from his hands was not sword energy, not lightning magic, not any spells that Shen had ever seen, but streaks of white light.

White light is formless and intangible, neither bright nor dazzling; it appears thin, yet it is quite peculiar.

Wherever the white light touched, his magical power involuntarily contracted, stagnated, and dissipated, as if it had been gripped by an invisible hand, rendering him unable to move.

The mirage felt a sense of despair.

"What is this—" Shen's voice trembled slightly.

He didn't understand why there was such a big difference between them, even though they were all cultivators at the Three Pure Realms.

He had cultivated for hundreds of years, breathing in mirages and weaving illusions, and believed that he had reached the pinnacle of this realm. But why was he like a butterfly nailed to a specimen box in front of the Insect Daoist, with wings but unable to fly?

The Insect Daoist looked at the mirage, his gaze calm and his tone indifferent: "This is your—flaw."

"My weakness?" The mirage's vertical pupils widened in disbelief. "How come I didn't know?"

He really didn't know.

He has cultivated for hundreds of years and knows every inch of his scales and every strand of his magic power like the back of his hand. If there is any flaw, how could he not know it?

He felt that the Insect Daoist seemed to understand him better than he understood himself.

"Have you ever thought about it?" the Insect Daoist asked, "why is the world the way it is? Why do different beings have different appearances?"

The mirage did not answer. He didn't know what use these questions were, nor what their connection was to his own weaknesses.

"Where did they come from?" the Insect Daoist seemed to be talking to himself.

"Your illusions are indeed very sophisticated, but they originate from your own instincts, and are actually no different from an insect transforming into a butterfly."

"You know what to do but not why, and that's why you failed."

Enraged and desperate, the mirage roared, "You know all this?"

"Of course I know." The Insect Daoist nodded, then said, "I not only know your instincts, but also the instincts of insects and birds, and even my own instincts."

"This proves that my path is correct."

The white light condensed by the Insect Daoist's magic power increased and became denser, like weaving a net or forming a cocoon, wrapping around the mirage layer by layer and firmly enveloping it.

The mirage felt itself being compressed, constricted, and solidified. Its enormous body involuntarily shrank, from hundreds of feet to tens of feet, from tens of feet to a few feet, from a few feet to an inch—

In the end, it transformed into an amber-colored pearl, lying quietly in the palm of the Insect Taoist.

Within the pearl, the clam's body is lifelike, every scale is clearly visible, and every hair is distinct, as if it is still alive, still breathing, and still looking at the world with doubt.

The Insect Daoist looked down at the amber pearl in his palm, his gaze neither joyful nor sorrowful, his face devoid of any superfluous expression.

He simply stood there quietly, like a statue frozen in time in the boundless darkness of the deep sea.

After a long silence, he said softly, "My path can be completed."

Having said that, he sat cross-legged in the deep sea.

The thick fog around him had dissipated, and the darkness of the deep sea closed in again, engulfing him.

He closed his eyes, but his consciousness exploded in an instant, turning into countless streams of light that shot off in all directions.

He felt that he had become one "I", then split into three "I"s, and then transformed into countless "I"s.

Each "I" observes different things in different places, at different times, and in different bodies.

That was the culmination of his century of cultivation.

All the insects he had seen, all the roads he had traveled, all the data he had recorded, and all the patterns he had verified all rushed back at this moment, merging into countless "me"s.

Countless "selves" began to merge and become noisy, because the object of observation for these countless "selves" was not those insects, but "me".

Each "I" has a different perspective on "me," but slowly, countless "I"s use different methods to observe, verify, and prove.

Although I don't know if the results of the argument are correct, I at least know that the path of observation, verification, and argumentation is correct.

Thus, countless "I"s gradually converge into three "I"s, and the three "I"s ultimately unite into one "I".

o

This is the real "me".

At this moment, the Insect Daoist broke through.

"I take a detached view of the mortal and immortal realms as mere illusions, and laugh as the sun and moon come and go as they please. This body is not bound by the chains of fame and fortune, and I gather up the myriad miles of mist and clouds in a single sleeve."

The shackles of the Three Pure Realms shattered like thin paper, and his cultivation level soared, crossing the threshold that countless cultivators could not overcome in their entire lives, and entering a completely new and higher realm.

He became a Golden Core cultivator.

>