Rise of Humanity

Zhong Yue stood unmovingly, he said, “The oath you’ve made to Elder Shui, do you still remember it?”

Feng Xiaozhong’s eyes remained brimming with madness as he replied placidly, “Of course I do, to not harm any humans. But it remains a question if Old Man Shui is even alive. Nevertheless, alive or dead, the oath I’ve made to him is bound to the rest of my life. Rest assured, I’ve improved my skills so much that even if I dissect your Yuan Shen, it won’t harm you in the slightest.”

He scrutinized Zhong Yue from head to toe and inwardly marveled at Zhong Yue’s innate Yuan Shen. Even if it was just a cursory glance, Feng Xiaozhong’s eyes felt like scalpels already dissecting him in Zhong Yue’s mind. It felt abnormally uncomfortable.

“Innate Yuan Shen, the soul, innate, and so is the spirit. Truly amazing.” Feng Xiaozhong praised, “I’ve also dissected a few of the prenate creatures who happened to have also cultivated the innate Yuan Shen. But to my dismay, they are nothing more than fakes. Their innate Yuan Shen was formed by infusing the soul with the innate Qi to replace the true innate soul. They didn’t really achieve the innate Yuan Shen. But you, you did it. It is a must to allow me research on it. We’ll be able to discover more mysteries…”

Immediately, Zhong Yue could feel a cold chill rushing down his spine. Those who had achieved the innate Yuan Shen were all the core disciples of powerful factions. Yue Wang of the Luli Clan, Yang Changsheng of the Zhongyang Clan, the incumbent Heavenly Monarch’s son, Royal Prince Wen Dao were among this echelon.

Yet, Feng Xiaozhong said he had dissected a few of them before? One must say, Feng Xiaozhong was truly daring!

“Why waste time exploring when I can just tell you how I did it?” Zhong Yue smiled.

Feng Xiaozhong asked curiously, “You are willing to tell me? All of them weren’t so I had to dissect them and study it myself.”

“Well, we are all human here. It doesn’t matter if I were to teach you.” Zhong Yue laughed. Then, he proceeded to transfer his abstrusities, knowledge, and experience of cultivating the Innate True Soul and innate mortal body to Feng Xiaozhong.

Feng Xiaozhong remained silent for a long time as he mulled, then suddenly, he shook his head, “No, this won’t work. According to your cultivation, the soul and spirit are still two separate elements, they aren’t combined into one to achieve the real innate state. In my opinion, the only possible way to do it is to scrap the spirit down and leave only the soul. Only then can we awaken the power of the Yuan Shen.”

Zhong Yue pondered at the possibility. The Yuan Shen was also the atman, and the atman was formed by two elements, the soul and the spirit. The spirit was the spirit of nature. Qi Practitioners meditated the elements in heaven and earth and conjured their own spirit, allowing them to wield those respective elements. Then, combining the spirit with the soul to form the Yuan Shen, they could open the Yuan Shen secret realms and wield the power of Yuan Shen.

But what Feng Xiaozhong was suggesting was to undermine the spirit and let the soul become the Yuan Shen, and what the Qi Practitioners would harvest was the power of the soul.

This would make the soul both the spirit and Yuan Shen!

This was an extreme method, but the benefits were immense. As of now, there was a limit on Qi Practitioners that conjured the elements into their spirits.

The spirit would bestow them power, but at the same time, it would limit their powers as well.

For example, even if one conjured the imperial spirit of the Heavenly Monarch, his cultivation progress would be immense and his foundation far sturdier than his peers. However, at the peak of his cultivation, it would be much harder to break through the achievements of the Heavenly Monarch that he visualized.

After all, the imperial spirit resembled the Heavenly Monarch, a level that was nearly impossible to surpass!

As such, the innate spirit bodies faced the same problem. With the incredible power of the elements, their strengths were much greater than their peers, but at the same time, it posed as an obstacle at the finish line. For example, when the Innate Water Spirit Body and the likes have cultivated to a certain stage, it would turn harder for them to widen their cultivation path as they were greatly limited to the sole elements they were bound to since birth.

Even the so-called strongest innate spirit bodies like the Five Elemental Spirit Boody, the Sun and Moon Twin Spirit, the Innate Galaxy Spirit Body, none of them were exempt from this rule.

Thus, the innate spirits were the ones that brought them to their current powers, but also the exact ones that stopped them from going further.

However, Feng Xiaozhong’s idea was simple yet radical—scrap away the total existence of a spirit and hence, save the cultivators from the future inevitability. This was far more absurd and extreme than Zhong Yue cultivating the Innate True Soul!

However…

“It’s possible!” Zhong Yue thought, “Although the spirit brings great benefits, it’s nothing really important and only acts as an assistant to my soul. It is not impossible to scrape out my spirit. But that being said, the spirit has many benefits too, most of the cultivation stage’s extreme states are based on the spirit. If I scrap away my spirit now, my foundation will crumble and I will lose control over my arcane energy, causing it to shatter my soul and mortal body. Furthermore, I need to reopen the six Yuan Shen secret realms, recultivate the inner core, the Avatar…”

Feng Xiaozhong’s eyes brightened up. He sat on the innate god’s hand and invited Zhong Yue to sit by his side. He said excitedly, “If the soul’s power is to be fully unleashed and its energy repletes through the Yuan Shen, the soul’s destruction would no longer be a concern. What do you think, junior martial brother?”

Zhong Yue pondered and shook, “But the biggest problem awakening the power of the Yuan Shen. According to your way, the soul is the Yuan Shen, and in order to fuse it with the mortal body, only innate gods are capable of doing that. It is virtually impossible to awaken the soul’s power, let alone fuse it with the mortal body.”

Feng Xiaozhong grabbed Xing Tian over and slid his finger over the young boy’s body, revealing Xing Tian’s inner body structures. The young boy laid flat and let Feng Xiaozhong do whatever he wanted. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time Feng Xiaozhong had done this to him.

After all, Xing Tan was a living creature formed from Bo Xun’s head and thus, a part of him still remained the same as the innate gods.

Feng Xiaozhong opened up the wound and looked at Xing Tian’s body structures with eyes filled with inquisitive madness. He said calmly, “Come and look. Xing Tian’s mortal body and soul are both tightly connected, it is truly amazing. I’ve researched him more than a thousand times and every time, I manage to find something new. The Martial Divine Masters are the masters of the mortal body. They trained themselves to the point that their souls are locked in their body. However, it is only locked, not fused. I hypothesize that only by cultivating both the innate mortal body and innate soul can one perfectly fuse the two together. Do you still remember the Bloodline Wheel? It bridged the mortal body and Yuan Shen, allowing the blood essences of the two to flow freely.”

Although shocked by Feng Xiaozhong’s sudden actions, Zhong Yue’s focus soon became fixated on those words. He looked down at Xing Tian’s body and mulled, “I’ve never thought of this before. That said, there is a possibility the mortal body and soul can be fused together. So that leaves only one last problem left—how to awaken the power of the soul?”

Feng Xiaozhong said happily, “That’s what I’ve been studying lately!”

The mad man stood up in excitement and visualized scissors, using them to cut open the innate god’s body. He then shrunk himself and entered the innate god’s mortal body.

Just as Zhong Yue was going to follow, he suddenly stopped and flicked his finger, shooting out a ray of innate Qi that surged into Xing Tian’s body and helped the latter in healing the long wound.

Xing Tian’s body was recovered in no time and he quickly got up, a babyish smile climbed onto his face as he thanked, “Thank you Junior Martial Brother Zhong. Master will occasionally cut me open from time to time. I’m already used it.”

“Junior martial brother, quick!” Feng Xiaozhog’s voice hurried from within the innate god’s body.

Then, Zhong Yue also shrunk his body and entered the innate god’s mortal body. As soon as he walked into it, he was dazed with a world of lights that momentarily left him at a loss.

What was inside the innate god’s body was no mere blood and flesh, but worlds that were surrounded by lights.

The composition of the innate god’s body was tiny atoms formed by the innate totem patterns, containing the abstrusities of the innate Dao. It was these tiny atoms that formed the many worlds inside the innate god’s body.

And now, he was with Feng Xiaozhong traveling in these worlds, experiencing the uniqueness of the worlds and the marvelous sceneries in them.

“Can you feel it? The abstrusities that lingers in the worlds. It is indeed different from those belonging to Xing Tian!” Feng Xiaozhong looked over and asked excitedly.

Zhong Yue nodded, “The powers in his body are exploited, each world represents a secret realm.”

Feng Xiaozhong was shuttling in the worlds, he quickly said, “The worlds are the Yuan Shen secret realms! Some were the Yin Yang, some were the Wan Xiang, Wu Xing, Shen Cai, and Bloodline! Whereas the Dao Yi Secret Realm was in the center of his head!”

They soon arrived at the innate god’s head and felt the power that coalesced all the powers surging in the surrounding. The innate god’s head only had one secret realm, that was the Dao Yi Secret Realm. All of the other secret realms’ powers were united into a single power that brimmed with the innate aura and immeasurable strength!

“Did you notice it? The secret realms in this innate god number over a trillion, but not all of them are the conventional six Yuan Shen secret realms we know!”

Zhong Yue nodded, he too, noticed it. Although the six Yuan Shen secret realms were the main secret realms, there were some other types of secret realms as well.

Even though he had cultivated the Six Paths Reincarnations and opened the six Yuan Shen secret realms, it was still the first time he knew there were more than six secret realms in the Yuan Shen, and that most of them were just undiscovered.

What Feng Xiaozhong was showing him was a new type of cultivation, a wholly new path!

“Opening the six Yuan Shen secret realms unite the heterogeneous powers in the body, extracting and transforming them into six types of power that are easy to wield. But other than the Six Paths Reincarnations, there are more powers to be discovered!”

Zhong Yue mulled and said, “But this innate god didn’t open the six Yuan Shen secret realms, the powers of his secret realms are chaotic and hard to control. Thus, opening the six Yuan Shen secret realms isn’t a bad thing either. However, after opening the six Yuan Shen secret realms, that would leave the rest of the secret realms’ powers unusable. Unless, there is a technique, an art, or some way we can exploit the rest of the secret realms’ powers.”

“Which is exactly what we need to figure out!” Feng Xiaozhong laughed like a madman, “Only by doing so can one call himself a Qi Practitioner, a Dao Seeker! Only those that have done it can truly stand above the others, otherwise, they are all just common riffraff!”

Zhong Yue was dumbfounded, riffraff?

This statement alone would include all of the Qi Practitioners, gods, and every other living creature, even the Heavenly Monarchs, as mediocrity!

After all, even the innate gods couldn’t do what Feng Xiaozhong said!

And if one really did it, he would probably be a Dao God already!

“Junior martial brother, stay, stay with me and find this path that leads us to the Dao!” Feng Xiaozhong looked at Zhong Yue with a pair of eyes that burned with an unrivaled fire. He laughed, “It will be extremely difficult for me to do it alone. But with you, with you, we can find the tiniest clues and solve this obstacle. We will be able to open all of the secret realms in our body, and stand as high and as long as the heaven and the earth!”

Zhong Yue hesitated, truth be told, he was as eager as Feng Xiaozhong to discover the fundamentals of Dao, to study it without being disrupted by the worldly affairs.

But…

“Senior martial brother, there is more in life than this.” Zhong Yue said with a calm face, “There are things more important than just the Dao.”

Feng Xiaozhong was puzzled, he asked curiously, “Really?”

“Yes! There is!” Zhong Yue nodded heavily.