Chapter 23:Dao Realm

The awards for the tournament were issued by the Five, now Four, Major Sects. As the first place in the tournament, Jadhiel was awarded an Orange Dao Fruit, a fruit from a tree directly grown and taken care of by the Ancestor of the Immortal Damu Fores; a thousand Yin Jades(solidified pure yin), given by the Yin Palace; the scales of a Stage 8 dragon; a Comets Dao Metal spear, given by the Heavenly Gates, and finally a dimensional room given by the Eternity Sect, it was a space artifact made by both ancestors of the sect, that could guard the massive amount of treasures, and keep herbs from rooting.

Seeing Jadhiel's incredible strength, three of the great sects were interested in recruiting him. The Yin Palace was a female-only sect so they made no offer, but they were interested in strengthening the alliance with the Liushangong sect and him. Jadhiel politely said that he would carefully consider all the sect proposals.

With this award, he was confident, that he could pass the last tribulation. To make himself safer, he decided he would break through the ninth realm of body cultivation first, and so he did and now he was at the Ninth Realm Stage 0. There was a last step to reach Stage I. Different from normal cultivation where one had to gradually become one with the Dao, in body cultivation one had to bear the Daos pressure. In Stage I, one had to bear stage one pressure from the Dao, while in Stage II, a Stage II Dao pressure, and so on.

Jadhiel quickly ate the Orange Dao Fruit and prepared to feel the weight of the Daos. His body started to feel heavy, but it quickly subsided, and he was at Stage I. Before the effect of the fruit wore off, he quickly reached Stage II, then Stage III, and Stage IV, after which the fruit effect wore off. Jadhiel decided to break through on his own. He reached stage V, but all his bones got broken, they regenerated at a speed visible to the naked eye, however.

Normally yang treasures were the only ones that were useful to increase male cultivation, especially ones with a yang body, with yin ones working like a weak poison to them. Only yin vitality was useful to a male cultivator, not pure yin treasures, because different from pure yin, yin vitality could more easily be converted into yang.

Jahdiel had such a pure yang in his body that converting pure ying into yang was very easy for him. He absorbed all Yin Jades at once and converted them into yang vitality for his own use, with his body nearly exploding from excess vitality, he broke through stage VI, and his bones and cartilage started to heal while they were being broken. Then he broke to stage VII, and his bones, cartilage, and muscles were been broke and regenerating at the same time.

When he broke through to stage VIII, his bones, cartilage, muscles, and internal organs, were breaking and regenerating at the same time. In the last stage, Jadhiel clicked on the revenge button. His system filled him with energy divine qi, and so he break through, in the last stage his whole body was being broken to powder and regenerating, including his nerves, which he continued unconsciously cultivating as he passed out. When he woke up, he was already at Stage IX.

Jadhiel had chosen to progress with his body cultivation, because of how much it emphasized the danger of the last heavenly cultivation, but he did not know that the ninth stage of the body cultivation was even more dangerous, as he normalized a Dao pressure, after feeling it from the Dao experts of Space and Time. The thing was that what one feels during body cultivation at stage nine was not exactly a Dao pressure...

Before breaking through the Dao realm, Jadhiel decided to use the Dao enlightenment fragment he obtained from that Dao alchemist, as he wanted to give reason to his strange feeling of familiarity with that place...

He received a notification from the system saying:

[System completely recovered. Recovering lost memories.]

Now Jahdiel understood everything, and he knew what he had to do.

He returned to reality. He made armor to protect himself with the Stage 8 dragon scales, which he was now wearing. He absorbed divine qi and quickly broke through the peak of the Ninth Stage, and so his heavenly tribulation began. First, an lightning like a formation fell onto him, then a death lighting, then a soul-devouring lightning, which he broke with the Comets Dao Metal spear, then three shield-like lightning that defended the heavens, then plain-like lightning, volcano-like lightning, and so on...

All bolts of lightning countered one of his laws. Then, the heavens calmed down a bit, until a Dao-like lightning fell, in the direction of his dantian. It caused little effect on him. This was the crippling tribulation, where the heavens would partially cripple the cultivation of the practitioner by destroying their dantian and starting the tribulation from the beginning.

Unsuccessful in crippling Jahdiel, the heavens tried more than ten thousand times and finally gave up. So the tribulation law lighting happened again. Finally, lightning from each law Jadhiel mastered stopped in the heaven above and formed a lighting ghost, each with the appearance of Jahdiel. Cultivators believe that the ghost he was able to defeat would determine the Dao, he would have an entrance to, but Jadhiel knew that was not accurate.

With his enormous strength, Jahdiel defeated some of the ghosts of weaker laws like water, fire, earth(soil), fire, heat, light, lava, plains, and so on. In the end, the remaining ghosts joined forces against him. The spacetime ghost and heaven-earth ghost stopped him in place while the comet, volcanoes, mountains, sun, moon, and star ghosts attacked him, with long-range attacks. The yin-and-yang ghosts strengthened the attacks from the sun, moon, and mountains.

"These ghosts are a sorry imitation of myself" Jahdiel said. He used the law of plains to make all ghosts in his range of vision the law of sea, rivers, water, and Earth combined destroyed the sun ghost. While the laws of lava, heat, volcanoes, and heaven burned the moon ghost. The law of yin and yang destroyed the star ghost. The law of space and time destroyed the comet. With this, he only had to fight three more ghosts. As he combined all his laws he created a pseudo-universe, where he made the three ghosts dissipate. The universe, which was incomplete soon dissipated.

Everything changed soon, he was back in the village, in which he was born.

"Wake up my son." His mother said.

"I am happy to see you again even if it is a dream, but I have to go."Jadhiel said.

"This Dao illusion is not enough to deceive me, whatever the so-called heart demon, that would try to make me fall, it is beneath me." Jadhiel said as he applied all his cultivation pressure, and the illusion quickly dissipated.

Jadhiel was now at the Dao Realm Stage 0. He entered a state of enlightenment soon after. He could now see everything clearly. The mysterious place was now clear to him, now much clearer than to maybe all other cultivators.

That place that was sort of metaphysical could only be called the Dao dimension. Different from the common belief there were only seven Daos. The Daos were the pillars of existence that give meaning to the whole of heaven and earth and the realms below. Each Dao was like a pillar. They were the Daos of Yin, Yang, Earth, Heaven, Space-Time, Nature, and Matter. The Dao of yin and yang were interconnected like in eternal copulation, forming a Higher Dao of Yin-and-Yang. The Dao of Earth and Heaven were interconnected heavily in a warm embrace forming a greater Dao of Heaven and Earth. The Daos of Space-Time and Matter were glued like a Greater Dao of reality. The Dao Nature lived in eternal solitude.

He found out that body cultivators to progress in the ninth Realm, bore in, fact with different levels of pressure from this dimension. From the Daos was born the Divine qi, which gradually dispersed in the immensity of reality as qi.

From them the laws were constantly born, each coming from a part of the pillars, and forming the base of the higher realm and dispersing, in the corpse of experts forming the lower level words connected to heaven, that were born as earth and that have the Earth from the higher realm as heaven. The concept of three dimensions doesn't help to explain this place, as all Daos have 'bridges between themselves.' Several laws were born out of 'collaboration', between Daos.

The law of fire for example came from the Dao of Matter and Yang. The law of Formation came from the law of Space-Time and Nature, as formations were plainly the intent of a soul expressed into the space-time fabric of reality. The law of plains came from the Dao of Yin and the Dao of Earth, and so on...

There were supreme laws that could reach farther into the Dao realm. They were space-time, nature, heaven, earth, matter, yin and yang. Each of these laws came from the base of the seven Dao pillars.

The law of space and the law of time alone were semi-supreme laws, as they came very close to the base pillars, but they could be better understood as a whole, which was the space-time laws. There were also over-supreme laws that could connect to greater Daos, which were the laws of reality, yin-yang, and heaven and earth. The law of reality would be something similar to the theory of all, that physics looks up to on earth.

Breaking through stages in the Dao realm was actually connecting to more regions of the pillar of one of the Daos. It appeared that there were several Daos because the different regions gave different powers, and the powers of Dao cultivators would be influenced by the node of the pillar to which they first established a connection. The idea great sects have of compatible Daos, that could be enlightened by gaining wisdom from each other actually was because several Daos were actually the same, but seen from different points.

Jadhiel now knew why he transmigrated. When Li De exploded himself, he created a one-at-a-time effect even that gave him enlightenment and turn his destruction even more damaging, as he used his dao as an ingredient to make mass destruction. This event has got as far as damaging the Daos of Matter, Yang, and Ying (from Li De's cheating wife) permanently, but the damage was much more severe to the Dao of Yang as both Li De and his wife were connected to a branch of their Daos, while his 'best friend' was connected to the base of the Yang pillar.

That was the reason the Yang Dao instincts led it to trigger a Dao enlightenment in Jahdiel to tempt it into reaching its Dao and help itself to fix up the gaps with his connection to it.

The damage was so severe that a soul from Earth's dimension ended up being pulled naturally to this dimension Dao dimension. It was the first time a soul actually entered the Dao dimension, no Dao cultivator actually entered it, they only had a vague and illusory connection with it. The thing was the soul was not even under the control of any of the Daos, as it was it was outside this world's 'rules'.

With the pressure of the Daos and divine qi, the soul should have simply ceased to exist, but the unconscious soul from Earth entered a state of enlightenment, maybe by a stroke of luck. The soul not only did not disperse, but it started to strengthen by the divine qi, this soul's little amount of knowledge of programming expanded to form a new Dao, the Dao of System and Jadhiel was the Dao, or at least it was a part of his soul and mind.

The Dao was damaged by a tribulation awakened by the Dao dimension space, and the Daos felt the strong presence of this 'parasite' in the dimension, and their unconscious instinct of survival triggered an attack on the new Dao. Jadhiel's soul got damaged and he reincarnated into a lower realm, where the presence of the Daos was only indirect.

His Dao slowly started to recover on his own and offered the Instantaneous Revenge System, a weaker version of the Dao power, that has the power of reality warping but could only be triggered when revenge conditions were attended. A limiting condition allowed the Dao of the System to express a larger power to help Jadhiel while recovering and also to speed up recovery by collecting data.

The discovery that he was the system was very surprising to Jahdiel.

Jadhiel felt like paths opened to him, one that led to inside himself; others that led to the base of the Dao of Yin, Dao of Yang, Dao of Heaven, Dao of Earth, and Dao of Space-Time. There were two diagonal paths, one was between the Dao of Yin ad Dao of Yang paths and led to the base of Yin-Yang Higher Dao; the other was between the path of the Dao of Heaven and Dao of Earth and lead to the higher Dao of Heaven-and-Earth. There were the worst parts that lead to the middle of the Dao of Nature and the Dao of Matter.

"I choose none of them." Jadhiel said, and so he entered enlightenment.

He reached every present Dao and sort of also created it, as he was present although he actually did not exist directly, this Dao was the Dao Dimension, the Dao of Daos. With this, a core was formed inside the dimension giving birth to the greatest Dao, the Dao of Daos, a Dao capable of giving birth to other Daos.

The Daos rebelled against their new sovereign, and a tribulation approached the Dao of Daos, which was started by the Dao dimension itself. With his authority over the Daos, Jadhiel used their attack to defend the Dao from the tribulation, which annulled it. With this, the place of the ruler of his Dao over all Daos was solidified. He then used his power to fix the Yang Dao.

'That may have been an impossible battle to win if the Daos were truly conscious and not driven by instincts. It was very good, that when he disappeared in the lower realm the Daos simply forgot about me. 'Jadhiel thought.

This world filled with young masters was terrible in his eyes, and as the world believes in survival of the fittest, as the strongest I shall do things to my liking. Jadhiel copied his moral code and with it, he created the Dao of Karma, which would bring fortune to the ones that do good and misfortune to the ones that do bad. He spread Karma law through the whole of the higher realm and lower realms.

So Jadhiel exited the Dao Dimension, and now he was at the peak of cultivation. He did not know if he should consider himself a Satge IX Dao cultivator, or a realm beyond that.