Star Gate-Chapter 1739: Desire (I)

If Void didn’t return Skyward’s energy and claimed the portion of the world’s strength that the little flower had collected, would that be sufficient to propel him into seventh rank?

I’ll be an exalted emperor with six extreme daos and set foot into seventh rank. That will make me a peak existence among seventh ranks. While I won’t measure up to eighth ranks, I won’t be that far off.

Perhaps... I might even be the next Human King.

The little flower grew bit by bit. Darkness began to creep in. The land was dark, the skies were dark, and the entire world became part of the chaos.

......

The north.

A minor world materialized and burrowed deep into the ground, much as Void was doing with his energy. The surroundings fell silent as the world turned. However, what Void’s world of emptiness saw was the birth of a small flower. Li Hao’s was just a tiny blade of grass not yet fully grown.

It also represented their different understanding of dao. A blade of grass possessed stubborn vitality as it sank its roots downward to struggle for survival. Flowers imposed a relatively high standard for dao and were more difficult to keep alive.

Emptiness and revitalization were Void’s main daos, after all. Li Hao only cultivated them on the side. His blade of grass began to grow, extending further from the ground. The power of emptiness emanated in all directions.

All living beings and matter fell silent in Li Hao’s senses. They were in a state of absolute quiet. Mountains, bodies of water, rocks, earth, and even the wind were being stilled.

All things were silenced!

Such was the dao of emptiness. It was a strong dao, despite there being no talk of stronger or weaker daos among the myriad of daos. And though there was no such thing as major or minor daos, some daos were indeed more suited for combat and killing. In the eyes of cultivators, those daos were the ones of powerhouses!

The dao of emptiness was clearly one such dao.

The two domains of emptiness began expanding in two different directions. They were so much smaller compared to Skyward; it was like two unsightly scabs had appeared on the world.

The four seventh ranks looked down from their positions in the sky. They, too, saw two ugly looking dots. The dots were very conspicuous and left utter silence in their wake.

In the air.

Birds abruptly froze in the void, as if time had frozen. Li Hao had been watching them as he hadn’t had the clearest perception the last couple of times he utilized the power of stillness. This time, he sank into deep thought.

This was similar to when the star of time appeared—all things froze then as well. The world of emptiness was creating the same effect, with a difference in that the world of emptiness absorbed energy. The energy of all things sank into silence and was extracted.

Did this mean that the world of emptiness had a greater capacity to freeze the scene than the power of time? Then apart from tracing the past, it would seem that time didn’t have that many advantages over emptiness?

“That’s not right...” Li Hao contemplated as he continued to silence all things. Both time and emptiness possess the ability to freeze all things. What was the difference between them? Where was the advantage of time?

“Time continues to flow when emptiness is deployed!” It occurred to Li Hao. Time was not silenced in a world of emptiness and neither was space. Space and time could exist!

In other words, the birds were still alive in a world of emptiness, they’d just been frozen in place. But as time progressed, they would die of old age. But when time itself froze, they would not!

The river of time would grind to a halt when time froze, leaving everything the same one hundred thousand or even one million years later. If the chaos was silenced for one million years, all cultivators would be dead by the end of it!

But if time was frozen, then all would return to normal after the power dissipated a million years later. Perhaps cultivators wouldn’t even notice that they’d been frozen for a long time.

“Is this the difference? Time is not impacted! No... neither is life or death affected!”

Since time could pass by, that meant deaths would appear in a world of emptiness. And since death was possible, that indicated the dao of life and death was not affected by emptiness.

“Emptiness simply silences the form and cannot silence the spirit! Time, on the other hand, can freeze even the spirit.” Li Hao perceived the changes in the land as he walked through it. He wasn’t simply comprehending emptiness. All things fell silent during this process; rivers and mountains were frozen into place. Vitality was stripped away from them as they sank into oblivion...

These changes brought a great deal of new reflections to Li Hao.

Space and time, however, did not change. It was the same space as before and time continued to flow...

“Time doesn’t necessarily need to flow backward, be traced, or accelerated. It can be frozen into place as well!”

All things had been frozen when he first encountered the star of time. Time had frozen too. In the past, Li Hao had employed time mostly in the capacity of acceleration and tracing time. Borrowing strength was a kind of tracing. He’d rarely simply frozen time.

One of the reasons for that was personal strength. If his opponent was too strong, he was unable to freeze them. He could only temporarily halt them for a very short period of time. Hence, Li Hao had always thought this ability was impractical and never used it much.

But now, he had new thoughts in mind.

“To silence a world is also to freeze it! Not freezing time... makes it easier. Then can I split out part of time and lower the degree of abilities that I utilize from it? Can I refrain from freezing the area affected? Will that make it easier to use?

“The dao of time can freeze a myriad of daos... Does that mean that time is truly the combination of a myriad daos?” Li Hao turned over various possibilities in his mind.

Previously, he’d approached the issue from the angle of a myriad daos forming time. But today, he was awoken to the possibility of the possibilities in reverse. He could utilize time to dismantle a myriad daos!

If my opponent is of the fire attribute, can my dao of time just target the element of fire and freeze that dao? Can I refrain from freezing all daos and just focus on the one of fire?

Will that work?

“Time is a composite that can also be split apart!” Li Hao was regretful that he’d never thought of dismantling time, despite knowing to dismantle the dao net, a world, and a dao universe.

Can time be broken apart?

That was a very difficult prospect at present.

Can I use the dao of time to trace back to when it was formed? This might be a paradox, but how else can I manifest the construction of time if I don’t trace it? How can I successfully synthesize it?

This is such a headache!

“The star of time...” Li Hao suddenly recalled that the star seemed to possess a consciousness the first time he encountered it. He hadn’t paid attention to it after that, apart from calling and dismissing it often.

Can I directly study the star of time and find some ways to lock onto single daos from it? Will that make it easier to freeze on powerhouse and their strongest dao?

Surely the dao of time can’t be this useless. Whether it’s tracing time or going with the flow, any of those abilities consumes my lifespan.

What is time, then? Are true cultivators of time limited by lifespan?

Perhaps it’s my method of use that’s wrong. There might be more to this dao. Tracing it and going with the flow are all special use case scenarios. Otherwise, what kind of time cultivator is too scared to use it normally?

What kind of ultimate dao would it be?

“So tracing time or going with the flow elicits thunder tribulations. Those are just simple collections of a tribulation. Will freezing time also result in a tribulation?”

As Void bent his back to silencing the world, Li Hao’s thoughts were miles away. He didn’t care about the strength of one dao—the core of his essence was still time. Therefore, he preferred to derive time through his comprehension of other dao.

He seemed to have understood a lot more with these musings. What Li Hao wanted to do more now was to reverse deduce time.

A dao star began to spin and took shape in front of the young man. The four observing seventh ranks frowned. If the duo was silencing the world, that was what they should be focused on. What was the purpose of coalescing the star of time now?

While Li Hao was still silencing the world, his thoughts and attention were elsewhere. The star in front of him shimmered. It was just the star for now; nothing else took place. Thus, it didn’t raise attention from the chaos tribulation.

He just needed to be more careful. With his presence concealed, the chaos tribulation wouldn’t come for him so long as he didn’t go too overboard.

Li Hao suddenly collected the star within his hand and froze the world with a point. It starkly contrasted the world of emptiness next to it.

All was dark and gloomy within the world of emptiness. Meanwhile, the area frozen by time was as if before. Apart from all life being petrified, everything else remained alive. There weren’t any major changes.

“Does emptiness exist in time?” Li Hao sank his consciousness into the star. He’d tried this once before and refrained from trying again afterward, because that try nearly froze him into the star of time.

The young man’s eyes flared with golden sparks. He could see a dense dao net!

There are so many daos! Li Hao realized with a start. As he thought, time was not a singular dao. While he’d surmised thus before, it was another thing to see his speculations confirmed. However, the daos that formed this dao net seemed to be very weak.

An embryo...

Li Hao’s new theory was that the star of time was just an embryo—a very young star.

Someone had created it, and so it appeared in Silver Moon.

The War Sovereign!

That must have been the one!

Li Hao’s hunch crystallized into certainty; he was shaken. So the War Sovereign had once crafted a star of time, woven a myriad of daos, and truly collected them all to himself! It was just... the daos that he wove were very weak.

There hadn’t been enough energy!

But to comprehend a myriad of daos and weave them together meant that his comprehension and cultivation level were far beyond Li Hao’s imagination. Perhaps he’d been... a ninth rank?

It was simply that New Martial’s energy was insufficient for him to construct a truly strong set of a myriad daos, so this was what he created.

“How terrifying!” murmured Li Hao. It was indeed terrifying. The strongest person he knew was the Skyward master. That personage had crafted 9,999 great daos to form the dao of space. Meanwhile, the War Sovereign had gone beyond that to create time!

So what was the missing dao that the Skyward master lacked?

Or was it that there were more than a myriad of daos in the chaos, just that they were crafted in different ways which ultimately formed a different core of dao?

Can I... dismantle this star?

Li Hao stared at the dao of time, suddenly gripped by an impulsive fit. If I break apart this star and use my way to forge a new one, will I succeed?