The sky of the Infernal Sulfur Plane was forever a dark red.

The moment Jie Ming stepped out of the spatial teleportation array, the smell of sulfur rushed toward him.

He paused, took a deep breath, and his expression suddenly relaxed.

He was back.

Since all related matters had been prepared, it was time to focus on closed-door cultivation for his breakthrough.

Though he said that, over the next three days Jie Ming did not enter seclusion. Instead, he cleared the accumulated affairs from recent years one by one. Operational data from the Black Giant incubation pools, coverage blind spots in the nest information network, recent months’ training reports for the Dao Soldier legions, growth statistics for Incense Fire Divine Dao believers across various regions…

He did not return to his office. Instead, he sat on a stone beside the main altar of the Incense Fire Divine Dao, flipping through the reported documents one by one and setting them aside after processing them with his spiritual power.

A Black Giant priest serving as his assistant stood nearby for a long time, watching Jie Ming work with slight concern. Finally, he couldn’t help but speak. “My Lord, do you not intend to rest?”

“Ah, it’s fine. This is my rest.”

Hearing this, the Black Giant priest assistant offered no further persuasion.

On the evening of the third day, after approving the final document, Jie Ming set down the magic network terminal.

He sat by the stone for a long time, doing nothing, simply gazing at the six auxiliary towers gradually being completed in the distance.

These auxiliary towers had been built by the Black Giants to assist his breakthrough. Atop each tower burned flames of different colors—crimson, golden-yellow, cyan-green, icy blue, silver-white, and pitch-black. The six-colored flames flickered beneath the dark red sky, reflecting on the mirror-smooth altar stones and trembling into six slender bands of light.

Jie Ming had not lied to the Black Giant priest. These past few days, he truly had been resting.

After three days of recuperation, his essence, energy, and spirit—the Three Treasures—had stabilized, and his Dharma Form had recovered from its previous turbulence.

He was like a fierce horse that had finished a full gallop and finally come to a stop. Its mane no longer trembled, and its breathing gradually deepened.

It was time.

Jie Ming stood up and spoke to the Black Giant priest beside him. “I am going into seclusion. During this period, do not report anything to me.”

“Understood.” The Black Giant priest bowed respectfully. “Do you need us to prepare anything for you?”

“No need.”

He manifested his true body in dark golden light and walked into the newly built house within the altar.

Standing at the center of the altar, Jie Ming began his preparations.

Divine sense anchoring, soul branding, memory backups, consciousness segmentation, heart demon oaths, resonance with natal magic treasures…

He had read the Great Dao Book Pavilion’s records on Dao Integration back and forth no fewer than ten times. He examined and implemented every proven protective measure for safeguarding one’s path that had been repeatedly verified by generations of cultivators.

Each method was like a stake driven into the boundary of his consciousness to help stabilize his will.

Halfway through the arrangements, he paused and looked down at the altar beneath his feet.

The hexagonal black giant stones, the six auxiliary towers, the six kinds of flames, the energy transmission network extending from underground, and the invisible channel connecting the incense power of tens of millions of believers.

Back when Jie Ming had prepared to establish the Incense Fire Divine Dao, he had hesitated for a long time. Only after confirming that it could provide significant help on his future path did he finally make up his mind.

Now, standing here, he suddenly felt that the resources he had spent back then had been well invested.

Those dozen or so measures were indeed useful for breaking through to the Dao Integration Realm, but their actual effectiveness… could only be described as “useful.”

No one could measure in advance how profound the difficulties encountered during Dao Integration would be.

In the Dao Integration experience left by the replica, there was one sentence: “You think you are prepared, but the Dao will not proceed according to your preparations.”

Faced with the all-encompassing rules of the world, no matter how strictly one defended, there would always be gaps.

If divided by proportion, out of Jie Ming’s ninety-five percent success rate, these miscellaneous measures probably accounted for only fifteen percent, while the Dharma Form itself accounted for twenty percent.

Of the remaining sixty percent, half came from Jie Ming’s research on anomalies and the replica’s experience, and the other half came from the Incense Fire Divine Dao. Adding in the Divine Dao’s assistance in other areas, it was no exaggeration to say that this Incense Fire Divine Dao was equivalent to the third golden finger Jie Ming had created for himself!

As for the second golden finger… it was the body forging method. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Strictly speaking, during the breakthrough to Dao Integration, the Incense Fire Divine Dao was not so much a defensive line as an “anchor.”

The incense power of tens of millions of believers flowed into his Fate Subsystem through the altar. That golden light core would continue shining during the most fragile moments of his consciousness. Even if he forgot who he was or how to return, the faith of those believers would pull him back.

While reflecting on this, Jie Ming continued implementing the remaining measures one by one.

Once everything was arranged, he sat cross-legged at the center of the altar and closed his eyes.

Then, he released all suppression on himself.

He knew the Great Dao Book Pavilion’s records on Dao Integration by heart.

Dao Integration was not strictly a breakthrough or advancement, but an irreversible transformation of one’s life essence.

Therefore, the process of breaking through to the Dao Integration Realm would not produce overly dramatic phenomena.

After Jie Ming closed his eyes, his body did not emit light. The sulfur rivers outside the altar remained calm as ever, and the flames on the six auxiliary towers did not even change their flickering frequency.

It was as if nothing had happened.

But from Jie Ming’s perspective, everything had changed.

His consciousness detached from the individual known as “Jie Ming.”

More precisely, his consciousness had originally been contained within a vessel called “self.” Now, that vessel suddenly disappeared. Thus, the “water” inside the vessel immediately merged into the surrounding environment.

He saw the “Dao.”

Those principle lines that appeared as energy ripples in the All-Purpose Eye, the fate threads that manifested as causal networks in the Fate Subsystem, the underlying world logic that surfaced between the opening and closing of the vertical pupil… all underwent an essential change at this moment.

Everything unfolded simultaneously, spreading toward endless distances.

No boundaries, no structure, no reference points.

It was simply an infinite space woven purely from laws, and he was a part of this space.

He had always been here; he simply hadn’t known it before.

Like a paralyzed patient who had lived his entire life in a pitch-black room, never knowing there were walls, a ceiling, or a floor.

Now, the lights suddenly turned on, and he discovered he was not a guest in the house, but the house itself.

The walls were skin, the ceiling was bone, the floor was muscle…

After accepting this form of himself, Jie Ming couldn’t help but immerse himself in everything revealed after merging with the world.

It was the simplest, most ordinary everything, yet he felt inexplicably fascinated by it.

During this process, Jie Ming began to forget things that belonged to him.

The first to disappear was purpose.

He forgot his goals and ideas, forgot his pursuits, and forgot what he had originally been thinking…

Then came relationships.

He knew he had had certain people, certain events, and something called “life.”

But the connections between those things and himself broke one by one.

Finally, it was “I” itself.

Jie Ming.

Two characters.

He knew these two characters had once represented a specific existence, but now they had become detached from any meaning.

Like a word repeated too many times until it turned into a syllable without content.

During this process, Jie Ming also sensed many “noises,” as if trying to drive him out of this state.

“Ah… those should be the secret techniques I prepared…”

Jie Ming thought this way.

He knew what those things were, what their purpose was, and what his current state was.

But none of it held meaning, because these cognitions, like his name, were losing their specific “syllables” through repeated chanting. He drifted in the ocean of the Dao, becoming lighter, thinner, and less and less like a person.

The ocean named “Dao” swallowed him in a very gentle way.

Like the rhythm of a mother gently patting a child’s back to lull them to sleep.

There was no pain or struggle, not even any discomfort.

He was simply becoming “fainter.”

The individual existence representing Jie Ming was merging bit by bit, imperceptibly, into the boundless “nothingness.”

He no longer remembered that he was human.

He no longer remembered “himself.”

Finally, when his forgetting reached a certain limit, the Incense Fire Divine Dao triggered.

In every corner of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, within the tribes covered by the Incense Fire Divine Dao, hundreds of millions of believers simultaneously sensed something.

No command was issued, yet they set down what they were doing, stopped in their tracks, turned around to face the direction of the altar, clasped their hands together, and closed their eyes.

The Black Giants instinctively began to pray. Their voices were not loud, but when tens of millions of voices echoed together, they formed a resonance like the pulse of the earth.

That power transformed into a rope, shooting forth simultaneously from tens of millions of directions. In the infinite void, it found the remnants of that consciousness. Then, like providing a cushion of wind for a falling leaf, it held it steady.

The wind was not strong.

But it was enough.

“I… am…”

A voice came from the void, as faint as a moth struggling in a storm.

Yet supported by the continuously surging power, the voice continued:

“…Jie Ming.”

This was existence itself confirming itself once more.

Consciousness was returning.

And the continuously incoming incense power from tens of millions of directions kept feeding it new fuel.

Finally, Jie Ming slowly opened his eyes.