It was a new day on the mountain of the Infinite Dao Sect, which seemed increasingly beautiful and prominent in the middle of the enormous desert.

For cultivators, there was not much difference between night and day. The sleeping hours normally used by mortals are merely the second part of a good day filled with meditation.

Perhaps, by not seeing time pass, the day bloom and then night fall, this is also one of the reasons why cultivators do not feel bad or bored spending years in meditation, only feeling the weight of time when one day they awaken and realize that many of their acquaintances are no longer there, and even the colors of their own hair have faded.

Aotian, with two women in his arms, indeed felt the melancholy of time. Even so, he also recognized that there was happiness in this cycle.

‘Three years have already passed…’

He sighed, hugging the two bodies of his wife more tightly, the second of which had arrived only a few hours earlier. Because of that, they celebrated so wildly until Rihai fell into a deep sleep in both bodies.

‘Although so much time has passed, and I have done so many things, it still feels far too fast.’

His eyes flickered with a complicated light.

‘Three years ago I was just another person on Earth, with an ordinary job and an ordinary life. Nowadays, my hands are stained with blood, and I have killed more people by my own hand than many wars I heard about in my past life. All of this while trying to carve a path to save a world that is about to collapse…’

The more he thought, the heavier the sigh hidden in his heart became.

Looking at his wife, in two bodies, he gently kissed both of her foreheads with love.

‘Only you can give me strength.’

The two girls moved slightly in his arms, settling more comfortably before returning to sleep in his embrace, which made him smile gently.

Aotian, on Earth, had been a great reader, and there were countless times when he envied or imagined himself in the place of some character, with a cheat in hand and a fulfilling life.

Living what he was living was basically a dream, and he was not truly regretful. Even though he felt longing and guilt for having left his family on Earth, with everyone believing he was dead—which, in fact, he was there.

Even so, the pressure he felt on his many shoulders was also not what he expected to find in a world where he possessed a golden finger.

Several times he considered abandoning everything, taking Rihai and living a common life, without a sect, without an empire, without thinking too much about helping people. Simply living for himself, together with the avatars he already had.

Looking at the gray ceiling of his cave room, he lost himself in such thoughts.

But then he closed his eyes and stopped thinking about it.

That was not something he would truly do. He had already grown attached to his many disciples and accepted his self-imposed responsibility to guide the human race, and even the sapient spiritual beasts, toward a better and more prosperous life.

Although speaking of guiding others sounded arrogant, as if he knew what was best for them, Aotian accepted a simple truth:

‘It can’t get worse than it already is.’

Yes, simple, but true. The world was in chaos, and even if he could not do anything perfect, he could still help improve things. That was already much better than standing by with folded arms, simply letting everything continue as it already was.

And he was no longer alone with his avatars. With each passing day, more and more people joined his cause, and it increasingly ceased to be a matter of him imposing his own opinion, becoming instead a collective effort in pursuit of something greater.

…

A day passed since the arrival of Rihai’s second body at the sect, and she was not the only one who returned. All of the sect’s disciples had also come back together with her.

The main peak of the sect’s mountain was filled with disciples, but in turn, the number of elders had decreased considerably to replace the positions left by the disciples and keep everything in order.

Fortunately, a single elder was enough to replace thousands of disciples, and with everything left organized before they were given permission to depart, there would not be many problems on those sides.

A week had passed since most of them left the sect, but everyone returned punctually that day, since the Dao sermon had been announced to take place exactly on that date even before they departed.

The veteran disciples would not miss this for anything, and the junior disciples certainly would not let something pass that made their senior brothers so excited.

In front of the great pulpit where the speaker, Elder Wen Tai, would discourse on the Dao, a dense human wave was already waiting, seated on meditation mats, chatting noisily and eager for what would happen next.

With more than three hundred and sixty thousand disciples present, the area they occupied, even gathered together, was not small. Not to mention that there was a large number of beasts in the sect, which had also gathered there to listen, some of them enormous.

Fortunately, the stronger ones could shrink to the size of kittens, like the Red Tiger, who at that moment was sitting on Aotian’s lap, being scratched behind the ears while staring fixedly at the pulpit in excitement.

Even so, everyone could fit there to hear the sermon that would take place. Unlike the past, with the new sect mountain, there was more than enough space for everyone to remain there comfortably.

And the atmosphere of excitement was tremendous.

Of the three hundred and sixty thousand disciples, only thirteen thousand were veterans. Even so, the legend of the great mass epiphany of the past had already spread throughout the sect, and the new disciples whispered about it excitedly, wondering if they too might experience something similar.

But it was not only them. Even Aotian wondered, anxiously, if something like that could happen, although he doubted it greatly.

As he grew stronger, especially now with his ancestors in the Tribulation Transcendence realm, his spiritual senses became sharper, and the things of the world revealed themselves more clearly to him.

And when he closed his eyes and stopped to concentrate on listening to the world, he felt a tremendous sense of oppression, despair, and sadness. It was as if the world itself lamented its helplessness and its end.

Aotian could feel the weakness of the world, and probably that wave of forced epiphanies last time had been its final breath, saved for years, and perhaps its last gamble after Rihai’s birth.

Thus, to expect a decaying world to bless nearly four hundred thousand people was, in a way, expecting too much.

Back in the crowd, among them were two people who stood out slightly among the new disciples, sitting together.

One of them was Shen He, curious about what exactly that was about. His master, Liu Taixuan also waited calmly inside the necklace, watching the outside world with a serious gaze.

The old man, despite appearing calm, was actually not at peace. Upon learning that one of the names for that occasion was a “Dao sermon,” his heart stirred, and a slight anxiety could not help but grow in his chest over what exactly that meant.

There was also a second person beside Shen He, an old man with white hair, a thin body, and a serious gaze.

His name was Lian Shou, the same old man who climbed the sect’s staircase, surpassed Shen He, and became the first disciple of that recruitment to join the sect.

He did not talk much, but he was not a recluse either. Everyone who knew him understood that, despite his constantly serious face, he was actually a very kind old man.

And since he joined the sect a little over a month ago, his cultivation, previously stagnant, had begun to soar at an absurd speed. At one hundred and sixty years old, always believing he would never be able to reach the Golden Core, he suddenly found himself facing not speculation, but the certainty that he would reach such a realm.

There were even rumors in the sect that an herb capable of improving spiritual roots could be bought in the sect’s exchange pavilion, although the price was somewhat steep.

An herb that upgraded a low-quality root to medium-quality cost the same as a Foundation Establishment technique from the sect.

One that upgraded medium-quality roots to high-quality carried the price of a Golden Core technique — exactly the one Lian Shou needed to improve his fire-element spiritual roots. He was desperately gathering contribution points for it.

Finally, there was the one that raised a high-quality root to perfect quality, and that was the most expensive. It required the same amount of contribution points as purchasing a Nascent Soul technique, something that, as far as he knew, no member of the sect yet had the financial capacity to acquire at the moment.

While the disciples pondered various things, the crowd of hundreds of thousands suddenly fell silent together, as if a mute button had been pressed. Not even the birds there dared to let out so much as a chirp.

This happened because, upon the pulpit, a middle-aged elder with long black hair and an academic aura had arrived with a serious expression, looking at everyone.

His eyes swept across the crowd from one side to the other before his words began to echo, reaching each person there through his spiritual energy.

“Everyone, I am Elder Wen Tai, from the Heritage Pavilion, responsible for the sect’s Dao sermons…”

As the elder introduced himself, since many of the new disciples did not know him, hidden within the void, in a way that even the old Liu Taixuan did not perceive, was the ancestor of the Heritage Pavilion, Zhao Wenming, observing everyone from above, hidden in the sky.

He had already begun operating his aura ability, Wisdom Domain, which exuded a faint and undetectable energy that cleared the minds of all allies enveloped by it.

Under the operation of this unknown force, as Wen Tai’s words flowed, the disciples’ minds, under extreme clarity and with retention far superior to normal, began to plunge into various realizations, as if they were under the effect of a mini-epiphany in terms of comprehension.

“The first cultivation realm, Qi Refinement, seeks…”

With new disciples present, the sermon began from the beginning and progressed smoothly for several minutes, dissecting the cultivation realms up to the Nascent Soul before stopping, since continuing beyond that would not be necessary, as the disciples were still very far from Soul Formation or higher realms.

Liu Taixuan, unfortunately the only one who still longed for more, found himself slightly awakening from that wonderful state, now with a far greater understanding of the cultivation realms, something he had never imagined would be possible. Although he felt a little displeased that it had stopped there, it had still been extremely beneficial for him.

Fortunately, the sermon had not yet ended, and he soon returned to that wonderful state under Wen Tai’s words, which seemed to touch the very essence of the world.

“…Cultivation is like a mighty river that branches and nourishes all things. Our body is the land, the trees, the grass, and the animals. The fauna and the flora. Our roots are the path through which the river flows, and spiritual energy is the water that brings life to all of it.”

“Just like a tree, which is born from a seed, creates branches and roots, grows tall, and bears fruits that feed the life around it, so too is the growth of a cultivator. It is not merely about gathering energy until it overflows and something stronger is forged. It is about knowing how to bloom, providing the ideal conditions, and then becoming the most beautiful and strongest tree in the forest, one that withstands the strong wind even when standing alone above the others.”

“To tread the path of immortality, it is not enough to simply sit cross-legged in a cave, drawing in energy with your roots. One must live, see things, feel the world, and understand why one grows, why one dies, and why one walks this path.”

“By understanding the world, you can understand yourself and thus forge a firm path beneath your feet, walking much farther than anyone before you.”

“Some of you may have already heard of the Dao, a force or energy necessary to reach immortality and leave mortality behind. But today I tell you: the Dao is not an energy, it is not a force. It is a state, a state where all things exist.”

“Everything has a Dao, everything has a path. The Dao does not exist in a spiritual vein, nor in an energy in the air or in someone’s spiritual roots. The Dao exists around you, in the smallest things you do, in the little rules that govern the world.”

“To reach the Dao, one must extend a hand, feel the flow of the wind that stirs your hair, the air that fills your lungs and nourishes life. Then you will walk the Dao of wind.”

“Touch the water that wets your feet, hydrates the body, and washes away dirt. Then one will walk the Dao of water.”

“Everything has a Dao. The Dao is around you, you only need to feel it.”

“The people of this world do not understand the Dao, because as they walk the path of cultivation, they try to detach themselves from everything.”

“They forget that water is what hydrates and gives life.”

“They forget that air is necessary to breathe.”

“They forget that fire has heat and burns.”

“They forget that these small things… matter.”

“If they let go of everything, how can they understand the world, themselves, and ascend to a higher state?”

As his words finished falling, the world seemed to freeze.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep