Chapter 522: Enlightenment in the Void
Chapter 522: Enlightenment in the Void
The last three experiences were but a moment's effort for Chen Mu.
The next morning, Chen Mu summoned the system panel once again.
[Primordial Dao: Void (Initial Stage)]
[Experience: 3000 points]
The required experience to advance the Void Dao from its initial stage to the Enlightenment stage was finally fulfilled.
"Finally..." Chen Mu murmured as he gazed at the system panel.
Three years had passed.
Secluding himself deep within the forbidden area, he had sat in meditation for three years without interruption. Even when his sister, Chen Yue, successfully broke through to the Marrow Washing Grandmaster level, he did not leave seclusion to meet his family. All this was for the sole purpose of cultivating the Primordial Dao to the 'Enlightenment' realm as soon as possible.
Once the Void Dao reached the Enlightenment stage, his strength would instantly soar to the Lower Divine Tier Eight. With a Void Dao Divine Armament, even if it were incomplete, he would come infinitely close to the Lower Divine Tier Nine, almost reaching the level of a true Divine Realm expert! This step was of utmost importance!
Although he could enter the Divine Realm at any time, he still wanted to strive for that portion of Divine Power from the Origin Site, ensuring that upon entering the Divine Realm, he would attain a perfect Divine Realm true body.
"Let's begin."
With a calm mindset, Chen Mu wasted no time and, with a thought, chose to advance his cultivation.
After years of arduous cultivation, he would finally achieve enlightenment in an instant!
The experience points on the system panel instantly depleted to zero, transforming into a faint golden glow. Chen Mu felt his vision darken as the scene of the cave vanished, and he found himself immersed in an endless darkness.
Amidst the vastness, all around him was nothingness, void of everything except the void itself. There were no sounds, no matter, not even the passage of time. It was as if he had entered a realm of pure nothingness.
"This is..." Chen Mu was momentarily taken aback.
Since awakening the system panel and using its power to comprehend the Martial Dao and the Primordial Dao, this was the first time he encountered such a situation. In the past, insights about the Martial Dao and Primordial Dao would be forcibly infused into his consciousness, allowing him to experience countless years of transformation in a single moment, directly imprinting the entire process onto his heart.
But this time was entirely different.
His consciousness did not fall into a daze, nor did he have any sudden realizations about the Void Dao. Instead, he found himself standing in a world of nothingness, not knowing where he was or how time passed.
In this place, the only thing he could perceive was the void—an endless, boundless void.
Chen Mu tried to sense his body, but he couldn't feel its existence. He couldn't harness any physical power or tap into his soul force; it was as if only his thoughts existed here.
Heaven and Earth, Primordial Mixture... None of these powers could be summoned.
Hum—
But soon, Chen Mu discovered a force he could wield—the only force available to him—the power of the Void, which he had grasped in the initial stage of the Void Dao. He could barely muster a meager amount of void energy, but it was incredibly challenging, far more difficult than when he was in the Great Xuan World. Moreover, the situation here was entirely different from the void outside the Great Xuan World.
In the void beyond the Great Xuan World, the energy flowed like tides, becoming more intense the further one ventured. Here, however, the nearby void was in a state of near-complete stillness! It was as if the void had 'died'.
Every strand of void energy was utterly silent and lifeless. Moving in this place wasn't like swimming in a pond but rather wading through a swamp, where even the mud was unbearably dry, requiring all his strength to barely stir it.
"What kind of place is this?" Chen Mu furrowed his brows slightly. He tentatively manipulated the void energy, propelling himself forward in one direction.
After walking for a while, he realized that the surrounding void remained unchanged, and he couldn't sense anything else—only nothingness and more nothingness. It was as if his consciousness were trapped, unable to escape.
At Chen Mu's current level, he maintained his composure and continued moving in one direction, even though time seemed to stand still here. He kept track of the time that passed and walked for about ten days straight. The void around him remained lifeless, and Chen Mu finally stopped.
By now, he had concluded that no matter how far he went in this lifeless void, it would always be the same. Moreover, he couldn't perceive anything beyond the void, not even the power of time. Although he hadn't cultivated the Time Path, he had, at the very least, experienced its force. But here, there was nothing!
Not even time existed in this place—it was a realm of absolute nothingness and stillness.
"The System Panel wouldn't trap me here without reason."
"I was attempting to elevate my understanding of the Primordial Dao, but my consciousness was forcibly pulled here, and the System Panel never infused me with insights into the Primordial Dao... Could it be that this step of understanding the Void Dao requires self-enlightenment?"
A thought emerged in Chen Mu's mind.
This wasn't impossible!
He had once asked Xunmu about it, and learned that the Primordial Dao, from the very beginning, was a completely different level. It granted various incredible powers, most of which were 'gifts' of the Primordial Dao itself!
Just like how the Void Dao, upon enlightenment, would naturally possess the ability to 'merge with the Void'.
As the name suggested, once one mastered this ability, their body could merge with the void, not only harnessing and controlling the vast void energy but also forcing enemies to attack the entire void if they wished to kill a Void Dao Enlightened being.
This 'merging with the Void' allowed one to hide behind the void, using it to withstand most of the damage, making them extremely difficult to defeat, even for those with greater strength.
This 'merging with the Void' wasn't a secret technique or skill gained through understanding the void, but rather a capability granted upon reaching a certain level of comprehension of the Void Dao, with the acknowledgment of the Void Primordial Dao.
The most crucial aspect was the acknowledgment of the Primordial Dao.
The System Panel didn't forcefully infuse him with the insights of an Enlightened being, perhaps because doing so would only grant him those insights without the acknowledgment of the Primordial Dao of this universe.
"If that's the case, it does make sense, but there might be another possibility..."
Chen Mu mumbled to himself.
Although it seemed that the System Panel played the most significant role in his cultivation, it never provided him with resources out of thin air.
His physical enhancement came from the resources he gathered, which the System Panel helped him utilize to the fullest.
His martial progress was also a result of his own accumulated insights, which the System Panel maximized the efficiency of.
The System Panel only ever provided an 'assisting' effect.
The same might be true for understanding the Primordial Dao.
Since the experience of Primordial Dao enlightenment couldn't be forcefully infused, the System Panel played an 'assisting' role, pulling him into this void of stillness, allowing him to experience and comprehend the Void to the fullest.
Here, time didn't pass.
Chen Mu was almost certain that when he returned to the Great Xuan World, time there would remain unchanged, frozen at the moment he activated the System Panel.
In the past, when he gained insights into the Heaven and Earth Dao, the System Panel passively infused him with experiences, and every insight felt incredibly real, no different from his own cultivation.
This time,
There was no difference.
The System Panel simply reduced its control over him, giving him more freedom to take charge of the 'enlightenment' process.
"Since it's like this..."
Chen Mu's emotions quickly calmed.
He was no longer the person he once was. Having cultivated an immortal soul and an indestructible body, he was the unrivaled Martial Saint of the Great Xuan World, capable of entering the Divine Realm at any moment. He was no longer the lowly servant from a remote corner of the world.
The System Panel had provided him with this void, an infinite void, allowing him to experience it up close, without the constraints of time and age. A thousand years here would be but a fleeting moment in the outside world.
If he couldn't achieve this level of understanding, what right did he have to pursue immortality?
With this thought, Chen Mu immediately calmed his mind, focusing his gaze on the boundless void nearby, and began to sense the endless mysteries of the void.
In a short moment, various mysteries of the void enveloped him.
This place seemed like the deepest, most fundamental part of the void, where every mystery he perceived was exponentially more profound than what was contained within the Void Dao Divine Armament.
In a 1619 book, there is no mistake!
Indeed, the difficulty of progressing from the embryonic stage to the Enlightenment stage of the Void Dao was far greater than Chen Mu had anticipated.
He sat in the void, quietly contemplating, unaware of the passing time and the flow of years, capturing one mystery after another and carefully unraveling their essence.
In the end, Chen Mu didn't know how much he had comprehended about the mysteries of the Void Dao. All he knew was that in his consciousness, he could no longer remember the passage of time. He didn't know if three thousand years or four thousand years had passed.
Finally, at one moment, Chen Mu's body trembled slightly.
The endless Void, which was deathly still and seemed to have 'died' long ago, suddenly stirred around him.
This Void, which had been so lifeless, now seemed to be brimming with new life. There was even a hint of 'joy' in the air, as if it were celebrating and congratulating Chen Mu.
In that instant, Chen Mu's eyes suddenly snapped open.
As he opened his eyes, the boundless Void before him, that dead and silent world, gradually faded and disappeared. In a daze, everything in his sight reverted to the scene within the forbidden valley cave.
The cave remained unchanged, and even when Chen Mu slightly expanded his mental awareness, he could sense that the entire Seven Profound Sect and the Seven Mysteries Mountains were exactly as they had been before he immersed himself in the Void.
"Indeed, in that Void Realm, there is no passage of time."
In Chen Mu's eyes, there was a sense of vicissitude. Despite his youthful appearance, he exuded an air as if he had lived through countless years.
If Qin Mengjun, Xu Hongyu, and others who knew Chen Mu well were here, they would immediately notice the change in him. Although his aura hadn't altered, his entire being seemed to have aged by thousands of years.
Indeed, this enlightenment was different from the past.
Previously, he had relied on the system panel to improve, infusing his mind with the insights of others, as if experiencing years or even decades in an instant. Each insight was incredibly real, but it was still a one-time infusion.
But this time, Chen Mu genuinely experienced it all. Every mystery of the Void he comprehended was solely through his own understanding, truly embodying the enlightenment of thousands of years of Void cultivation.
Ordinary mortals, faced with such a lifeless and endless Void, would likely go mad after just a year.
Even Heaven-Human experts might struggle to endure for many years.
Only Chen Mu could do it.
His soul had attained immortality, and his mental state had reached the level of a calm and clear mirror. Even after a thousand years, no dust could settle in his heart. However, as his previous life had only spanned a few decades, this experience of thousands of years made his past seem insignificant, leading to a temporary inability to suppress the feeling of vicissitude.
"Hoo..."
After a long while, Chen Mu opened his eyes again.
The sense of vicissitude on him gradually faded, and his overall demeanor returned to its usual state.
Chen Mu summoned the system panel.
[Primordial Dao: Void (Enlightenment)]
[Experience: 0 points]
The system panel quietly updated, indicating that his Void Dao cultivation had reached the 'Enlightenment' realm.
"So, this is Enlightenment."
Chen Mu closed his eyes slightly.
In his heart, the various insights of the Void Dao intertwined, and intuitively, he seemed to connect with the endless Void, transcending the limitless expanse, and touching upon a supreme power that existed within it, seemingly a fundamental aspect of the universe.
The Primal Path of the Void!
Buzz.
Chen Mu felt as if that supreme Primal Path had cast its gaze upon him, and he sensed that the Void's restraint over him was silently diminishing.
He felt the Void around his body to be incredibly familiar, as if it were an extension of his own limbs.
With a slight movement of his thoughts, Chen Mu's entire body slowly faded and disappeared.
This was distinct from the Heaven-Human Unity realm. Although Heaven-Human experts could also merge with the Heaven and Earth, they still existed within it. But now, Chen Mu's perception had completely detached from this Heaven and Earth!
This was the hallmark ability of the Enlightenment level of the Void Dao—merging with the Void!
"A wonderful feeling," Chen Mu thought.
In that moment, he felt his vision become incredibly profound, as if he could see through everything. His entire being seemed to transform into a perspective from beyond the Heaven and Earth, observing the world within.
This world appeared like a sandbox in his eyes.
He merged with the Void, becoming one with it. He was the Void, and the Void was him. The power of the Void he commanded was at least several times stronger than when he had only cultivated the initial form of the Void Dao!
(End of Chapter)
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