Following a Hundred Years of Cultivation, I’m dying Before I Got Cheats - Chapter 1048

Chapter 1048: A Millennium in Time, A Step Towards Mahayana
Editor: Henyee Translations

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After a century of intense cultivation, Jiang Chengxuan had mastered more than just one divine power.

The numerous perils he faced in the Immortal cave abode had sparked profound insights, especially the Seven Kills Array, which contained seven types of killing techniques modified by Eastern River.

Each technique, upon reflection, deepened Jiang Chengxuan’s understanding of divine powers.

With a sparkle in his eyes, Jiang Chengxuan, in a single breath, retracted the Void Wheel of Rule into his body, a terrifying power he now commanded with ease.

Next, he immediately manifested another Dao rule and began to practice a newly comprehended divine power.

From within him burst forth a five-colored divine light, creating five extremely bright singularities in the void. Each point was saturated with pure elemental power, causing the surrounding void to twist.

In the next moment, as the five colors whirled in Jiang Chengxuan’s eyes, the five extreme stars rapidly evolved. Strands of pure Five Elements energy rooted themselves in the cracks of the void. In the blink of an eye, they grew into five lotus flowers of glassy appearance, each opening and closing, moving and still, in virtual and real interplay, emanating a profound sense of annihilation.

This technique, named the Five-Color Annihilation Lotus, was derived by blending the Blood Lotus from the Seven Kills Array. Each of the five lotus flowers represented the pure power of one of the Five Elements. Linked together, rooted in the void, they rendered their target immobile.

When the five lotuses converged, they triggered a chaotic inversion of the Five Elements, generating terrifying destructive power. This was not merely a sum of five powers but a mutually triggering, endless chain reaction.

Previously, Jiang Chengxuan’s manipulation of the Five Elements was always in accordance with their natural cycle, endlessly generating life. However, this technique reversed the Five Elements, taking their conflict and annihilation to the extreme. It proved his complete mastery over the Five Elements and served as a means to deepen his understanding of these forces.

His task was to repeatedly practice these divine powers, pushing his understanding of the Dao rules to the pinnacle.

With each inhalation and exhalation, the divine lotuses were absorbed back into him. The force of the Five Elements gradually dissipated, revealing the black and white hues of the life-death rule that followed.

This rule, which Jiang Chengxuan had acquired most recently, was no less comprehended by him than any other. It was one of the strongest Dao rules mastered by Eastern River, the Immortal. Therefore, in the archives left by Eastern River, the analysis and enlightenment of the life-death rule were the most detailed and profound.

With such a legacy to guide him, Jiang Chengxuan could master this rule with less effort. As he breathed, invisible ripples spread from him, dissolving any residual Dao force in the void and any impurities produced during cultivation into nothingness.

This technique, named Shedding Life, restored everything it touched to its original, nascent state. In the Seven Kills Array, it was this technique that had purified the power of absolute defense talismans, plunging him into a state between life and death.

This technique, meticulously recorded by Eastern River in one of the jade scrolls, was discovered by Jiang Chengxuan who then learned it in its entirety. It employed the power of the life-death rule to reverse life and death, restoring all changes to their origin.

To fully master this technique required a tremendous power of deduction involving complex cycles of Karma. Yet, Jiang Chengxuan met all these conditions perfectly. In fact, this technique seemed tailor-made for him.

As he continually evolved these three divine powers, his understanding of the three major Dao rules also climbed towards their pinnacle.

This was an extremely lengthy process, akin to water carving through stone or sand accumulating into a tower. To achieve Mahayana, one must push all Dao rules to their limits without neglecting any. Otherwise, one must abandon them; for if not, upon achieving the Dao, flaws would remain, causing leaks that could make further progress as challenging as ascending to the heavens.

Therefore, in the realm where one controlled the Dao, few cultivators managed multiple Dao rules. Even though mastering an additional rule could enhance one’s combat abilities, few chose this path. This was not only because of the conflicting nature of the rules, which made them difficult to integrate, but also because each additional rule significantly increased the difficulty of breaking through to Mahayana later on.

Thus, typically, cultivators would streamline their rules before attempting Mahayana, discarding any superfluous understandings of the Dao to focus solely on a singular, ultimate path. This process was known as “Dao Stripping.”

However, Jiang Chengxuan had no intentions of doing so. For him, his ambitions extended far beyond merely achieving Mahayana; becoming an Immortal was not enough to satisfy him. His gaze was always set on the most distant horizons.

Even the stage of True Immortal was not sufficient to halt his progress. Not even the goal of avenging the Crimson Fire Immortal could make him compromise his potential for the sake of caution.

Jiang Chengxuan believed in his own intuitive understanding. In his past cultivation journey, he had leveraged opportunities to shorten countless years, surpassing everyone else. Now, he was ready to invest whatever time necessary to refine his foundation above that of an Immortal, striving to make it the strongest and best rather than the most stable.

This path, balancing the strongest against the safest, meant that choosing the most secure path would equate to mediocrity, while the strongest path would entail great risks and challenges.

Yet, Jiang Chengxuan was never one to fear challenges. What he feared more was becoming mediocre, a state he had experienced too often in the past.

Thus, Jiang Chengxuan decided not to discard any of the Dao rules he mastered, whether it was the Five Elements, the Cycle of Samsara, or the Life-Death rule. Instead, he continuously refined them, sitting like a stone Buddha, letting time flow by meaninglessly.

Decades turned into centuries as Jiang Chengxuan discarded all else, letting the endless passage of time become insignificant. One hundred years, five hundred years, eight hundred years, a thousand years…

In the blink of an eye, a millennium passed within this endless cultivation, an exceedingly long period even for cultivators. At the end of this thousand-year ordeal, Jiang Chengxuan’s realm finally reached the brink of Mahayana, with all his Dao rules perfected and nearing the threshold of the next great stage.

With a few relaxed breaths, Jiang Chengxuan unhesitatingly took the final step.

In that moment, various phenomena manifested, and even the entire Cloud Mist Peak felt the impact, becoming incredibly ethereal.

Sometimes the Five-Colored Divine Lotus appeared, and at other times, a river of nothingness flowed, with the cosmos and stars being born and fading away.