Chapter 118: Integrating the Three Realms, the Spiritual Brain

Cough, cough, cough.

Following a fit of violent coughing, Luo Zu’s immortal body—which should have been immaculate and free of ailment—revealed a trace of sickly, pallid redness.

However, after a few breaths, he drew in the essence of the sun and moon that he had been gathering for half a day, and channeled the spiritual energy of heaven and earth from ten thousand miles away, refining it into immortal essence to repair his internal injuries. Only then did he recover.

The injury came quickly and departed just as fast; after all, he was the first immortal of the human race.

On the contrary, Luo Zu used this opportunity to record the methods employed by those great figures.

It was just that his external incarnation had been reduced to ash, leaving him with nothing but the painful memory of the strike and the lingering shockwaves that had trailed his divine sense.

Fortunately, it had not been a direct hit; otherwise, his injuries would surely have been far more severe. As for total annihilation of body and soul, that was not yet the case.

"Solar Divine Fire, Hou Yi’s Divine Arrow..." Luo Zu chewed over these two terms repeatedly.

These were the most valuable things he had distilled from that painful memory. However, the figures who unleashed this Solar Divine Fire and Hou Yi’s Divine Arrow were not necessarily the master of the Solar Star or the Great Shaman Hou Yi themselves.

"Patriarch? Are you alright?" Inside the cave, everyone was staring intently at Luo Zu.

"I’m fine. Let us continue," Luo Zu waved his hand. "Where were we?"

"Uh..."

"Wait, Xi and the Fire Child have arrived," Luo Zu interrupted the second child before he could speak.

Xi and the Fire Child were nearby, which was why they arrived so quickly. Even so, only a quarter of an hour had passed; they had truly hurried. A dozen people rushed into the cave in a flurry, hurrying before Luo Zu to catch their breath and recover their stamina.

"Patriarch, we are here," the Fire Child shouted.

Luo Zu swept a calm glance over him, frightening the boy into lowering his head, not daring to speak further.

"Everyone will receive the teachings; none of you will be left out. And there will be no lack of reports regarding the tribe’s affairs," Luo Zu stated.

The necessary reports would naturally not be neglected; Luo Zu was now intent on cultivating a successor. After all, having attained immortality, it was time to let others ascend while he stepped into the background.

Otherwise, given his lifespan, sitting in this position day after day would never end, which would be unfavorable—a detriment to the development of the tribe. Of course, such a detriment would only occur in the distant future, not in the present.

Yet, Luo Zu also desired to distance himself from the power of the mundane world. As the tribe grew larger, the matters he would have to consider and the effort he would have to expend would only increase, ultimately hindering his cultivation. Luo Zu understood his own needs well: he did not wish to be a King of Men, but a free and unfettered immortal.

However, he would not abandon the necessary tasks or shirk the responsibilities he bore. After all, before his status as an immortal, he was of the human race.

"Yes, yes," the Fire Child nodded obediently.

Luo Zu then resumed his discourse on the methods of attaining immortality. He was essentially梳理 (combing through/organizing) the path of cultivation for everyone, though much of it contained new insights he had gained at his current level.

The four stages of cultivation—Refining Essence into Qi, Refining Qi into Spirit, Refining Spirit into Emptiness, and Refining Emptiness to join the Dao—all had new developments. The methods for the three souls and seven spirits, the Yin Spirit, the Yang Spirit, and the Primordial Spirit had all undergone changes.

These were positive advancements, highly beneficial to everyone’s future cultivation. Furthermore, his teachings were not obscure or mystical; he used simple, straightforward language to explain direct methods of practice.

The contents of the Daoist scriptures from his past life were often convoluted, requiring every word to be broken down and kneaded apart to interpret their true meaning. Luo Zu would not do this. After all, the reason those scriptures were written that way was partly due to the underdeveloped papermaking industry of antiquity, necessitating brevity, and perhaps also as a form of encryption to keep outsiders at bay.

There was no need for such redundant actions now. He would speak openly and clearly, hiding nothing.

While Luo Zu was teaching, his consciousness remained within the World in the Pot. He divided his divine sense, enveloping the Human Realm, the Immortal Realm, and the Nine Netherworlds, and in an instant, he possessed all three realms.

This was exactly what Luo Zu had intended to do earlier. Before, he had been slow and hesitant, taking a year to possess even a fragment; now, he had achieved it with ease.

With all three realms now possessed—which he considered his "Merging with the Dao"—nothing within them could escape his grasp. He could see everything with a single glance, without the slightest omission.

However, after merging the three realms, the number of manifestations his consciousness could divide into was reduced by half. This was because half of his consciousness had to remain anchored in the three realms to maintain this "Merging with the Dao."

"It is quite exhausting," Luo Zu remarked.

The burden was greater, but for him, it was still manageable. After all, the divine sense and cognitive capacity of a True Immortal were no longer comparable to what they once were. Moreover, reaching this stage was not the end; he would not stop here. His cultivation, his divine sense, and his wisdom would all slowly increase. Since he had just broken through, this growth rate would be significantly faster than it would be later on.

Luo Zu estimated that this period of rapid growth would last about three months. After three months, his strength might be triple what it was now, if not more.

After three months, it would be a matter of steady, incremental progress until he reached perfection, at which point he could move toward the next stage. Therefore, the burden brought by this "Merging with the Dao" of the three realms was truly nothing.

Instead, Luo Zu could use this to comprehend the nature of order itself. All things in existence followed rules; these rules, when summarized, formed the Great Dao. But what of the Great Dao itself?

This was a sudden whim of Luo Zu’s: the Primordial World contained various Great Daos, but did the Great Dao have a Great Dao of its own? And beyond the Great Dao of the Great Dao? And beyond that...

As he spiraled into this infinite nesting doll of concepts, Luo Zu felt his head spinning.

After "Merging with the Dao" of the three realms, Luo Zu forged thirty-six more Dharma bodies within the chaotic, nameless space beneath the earth of the Human Realm. Added to his previous thirty-six, he now possessed seventy-two Dharma bodies.

Thus, he had seventy-two Dharma-image brains.

The reason he only added thirty-six Dharma bodies during this breakthrough was primarily because the version of these Dharma-image brains had undergone another iteration. They had evolved from simulating the biological brains of the past into the current "Spiritual Energy Storm" brains.

This inspiration came from the various spiritual energy storms in the "Immortal Realm." Their computational power would be 1.5 times that of the original...

It was not much, truly, but this was merely the result of a preliminary design; it would continue to be iterated and updated in the future. Furthermore, to match the new version of the Spiritual Energy Storm brains, Luo Zu would improve his Dharma bodies; the new ones would be composed of three hundred and sixty strands of immortal essence, rather than just one.

Thus, his workload would continue to increase.

Luo Zu’s current immortal body could hold thirty-six thousand five hundred strands of immortal essence.

It was a precise number.

Beyond these hardware upgrades, Luo Zu’s software was also upgraded accordingly.

For instance, the Four-Nine Mysterious Art.