Mu Chunqiu's struggle only aroused a slight, insignificant interest in Lu Yan.
After his submission, Lu Yan shifted his gaze, carefully comprehending the changes brought by substituting man for heaven.
Lu Yan's current state was a brief transformation, integrating his will into the heavens when establishing the Supreme Dao Foundation, thereby replacing the Spiritual Qi Celestial Dao with his own being.
This replacement was only temporary; the positional gap between Lu Yan and the Celestial Dao was too great to control the momentum of the Celestial Dao.
If he forcibly maintained this state, he would be completely assimilated by the Spiritual Qi Celestial Dao and become a part of it.
For the vast majority of cultivators, this is the legendary assimilation with the Dao, an essence that even immortals may not pursue.
But it was clear that this was not Lu Yan's path.
Abandoning the essence of the Unchanging to be assimilated by a local Celestial Dao was undoubtedly putting the cart before the horse.
So Lu Yan regarded this brief substitution of man for heaven as a rare opportunity for enlightenment.
Strictly speaking, at this moment, Lu Yan was not the conventional Celestial Dao, but rather a living manifestation of the Celestial Dao. Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝙣𝙚𝙩
The two seemed similar but were vastly different.
The conventional Celestial Dao was like the Urban Celestial Dao, the Apocalypse Celestial Dao, which operated according to predetermined rules.
As long as Lu Yan did not actively defy the momentum of heaven and earth to alter the version of the Celestial Dao, the Celestial Dao would not interfere with Lu Yan; they were merely manifestations of this world's order, lacking strict self-awareness and preferences.
For example, the Urban Celestial Dao, even if it had the means to alter the cognitive perceptions of all humanity, could not directly act against Lu Yan because of the constraints of its rules.
The Apocalypse Celestial Dao was likewise; Lu Yan's stripping away of the Zombie Wandering Soul was regarded as a salvation process, earning him the merit bestowed by the Celestial Dao, and even if Lu Yan later offered the wandering souls as a sacrifice, it would have no impact as long as it complied with the order's rules.
And the living manifestations of the Celestial Dao were this moment's Lu Yan, and the Intelligent God Lu Yan speculated about, after completing a soul ascension.
They possessed a certain degree of self-awareness, no longer completely restricted by the order's rules, and were able to manifest their extraordinary power to a certain extent.
Perhaps the Xianxia Celestial Dao could also be considered a celestial life, as when Lu Yan took out that photo of Xingyao in the Xianxia version, he received a warning from the Celestial Dao.
It's just that the position of the Xianxia Celestial Dao was too high, far beyond what the Urban, Apocalypse, or Cyber Celestial Dao could compare to, so Lu Yan naturally found it difficult to ascertain.
Of course, all this was too distant from Lu Yan, not within the scope of what Lu Yan needed to consider at the moment. What he should truly focus on was the enlightenment brought by the current Celestial Dao.
Although he replaced the two Celestial Daos through the alternation of great momentum, it was only after his own body replaced the Celestial Dao that Lu Yan realized how lofty the position of the Celestial Dao truly was.
All types of Dao Rules between heaven and earth were fully displayed before Lu Yan's eyes, requiring no level of contemplation, as he could comprehend all methods at a glance.
Above the sky, the Emperor's shadow slightly raised its eyes; the nuclear light that had not been completely extinguished was silently erased, along with the concept of annihilating Extraordinary Power.
A light breath from his mouth and sweet rain descended within a radius of a hundred miles. Those whose pupils had been scorched blind by the radiance only felt the heat dissipate, and their eyes actually regained their sight.
With the slightest of thoughts, the bright daylight turned into the night sky filled with stars, and the light of the myriad stars at this moment shone to the extreme.
Furthermore, Lu Yan could sense that if this world's Spiritual Energy Revival had not just begun and many extraordinary laws had not truly manifested, the vast Dao Rules he glimpsed would far surpass this.
Finally, Lu Yan's will began to feel a trace of fatigue; substituting man for heaven proved too arduous for his mere mortal will, something the ritual of ascending to the Supreme Dao Foundation could not exempt him from.
However, the benefits of substituting man for heaven were already enormous, so Lu Yan need not continue to desire anything more.
Now what he needed to do was only one thing.
He raised his right hand, and with his forefinger, traced a line through the void. The spatial tear began to silently spread.
Behind the spatial rift lay the vast and boundless Soul Continent within the Soul Banner.
This land was so vast, it covered the sky and stretched over eight hundred miles, so immense that even a whole province could not encompass it.
On the Federation Land, all creatures who looked up at the heavens saw the Soul Continent, but amidst the swirling black mist, they could not discern the full view of the Soul Continent at all.
An incomparable sense of oppression enveloped everyone, as if a grand world was descending towards the present reality.
The next moment, the ground above Beimang Mountain trembled, and the Emperor's shadow extended its hand into the mountain, forcefully severing the white mist-covered forbidden land from the present world in front of everyone's shocked gazes.
Subsequently, the Beimang Forbidden Land ascended into the sky, returning to that vast Soul Continent, accompanied by the quiet dispersal of the unparalleled pressure as the spatial rift healed.
After completing all this, the Emperor's shadow closed its eyes, and the night sky altered above the canopy returned to the clear daytime sky, myriad Dao Principles resumed to the ten directions of heaven and earth, and the Emperor's shadow quietly dissipated.
All of this seemed slow but actually occurred within just a few breaths.
The crowd gazed blankly at the sky, trying to capture traces of the Emperor's shadow, yet everything was like an illusion, vanishing without a trace.
Only those whose eyes had regained their sight could be truly aware that what they had just experienced was not illusory.
Outside Beimang Mountain, representatives from various factions worked hard to calm the excitement in their hearts.
If the battle of ghosts and gods altered their original perception of the world, then the appearance of the Emperor's shadow utterly reshaped their worldviews.
The final action of taking away the Beimang Forbidden Land by that majestic Emperor's shadow was undoubtedly related to the Underworld.
Piecing together the available information, everyone quickly arrived at the truth as they saw it.
The so-called reclamation of the Beimang Forbidden Land was nothing but an opportunity given by the Lord of the Underworld to redeem the Blood God's sins. The Blood God used the various factions to force the gods and ghosts of Beimang Mountain to end their revival and engaged in a battle without a decisive victory.
Up to this point, everything was still quite normal, but then the United States, influenced by an extraordinary force hostile to the Underworld, launched a nuclear missile intending to destroy Beimang Mountain.
The nuclear missile was destroyed, but such actions eventually provoked the Lord of the Underworld, who was that mysterious Emperor's shadow.
He erased the subsequent threats and took the Beimang Forbidden Land back to the Underworld.
Understanding the cause and effect, various factions began to report to their headquarters.
And outside Beimang Mountain, Mu Chunqiu, supported by He Dongsheng, slowly stood up, looking somewhat dazed.
He vaguely felt that the abnormal thoughts that occasionally flashed in his body seemed to have dissipated in that fleeting moment.
And he began to sense that some special things in the air continuously flowed into his body, causing Mu Chunqiu to feel an indescribable irritation.
Almost instinctively, he circulated the Chang Chun Skill he found in a mural.
In the next second, all the shackles of his physical body were broken.
Qi Cultivation Stage One!