Volume 3 - Chapter 397: Sixth Layer of Form Dao, Realm and Domain
Li Hao's thoughts turned, and the power of his primordial spirit merged with the laws of his physical body. In an instant, this law surged to life like an awakened dragon-serpent, radiating a deep and terrifying might.
Li Hao felt that with just a flick of this Law Whip, he could shatter heaven and earth—far surpassing the power of his sword techniques at the peak of the Nine Blossoms Immortal Seal period.
"If I had embedded the true meaning of Painting Dao into my Sword Dao realm back then, enhancing the twelve segments of Sword Dao, who knows how far my sword techniques could've gone?"
He mused silently.
But throughout his cultivation journey, he'd always prioritized realm breakthroughs. It was the most efficient path to maximize combat strength.
Take Jianxin, for instance—even with a sixth-level Sword Dao origin at the True Immortal Realm, he was still defeated. Facing top prodigies of the Immortal Lord Realm would be even harder.
Li Hao closed his eyes and released the vast stream of insights that had poured into his mind during his breakthrough. They had been sealed until now.
In an instant, countless revelations concerning the Dao of the Body surged into his consciousness.
He felt his body disassemble—as if undergoing immortal transformation—fusing with the heavens and earth. But unlike typical transformation, every droplet of his blood was charged with terrifying force, wrapped in the aura of the Great Dao’s origin, each resembling a golden star bursting with divine brilliance.
And his consciousness stood above that starfield—like a sovereign gazing upon the cosmos!
The sensation intoxicated him. He could deeply sense the boundless potential of his physical body.
His physical body’s origin realm soared. From the previous fourth layer, it climbed steadily, shattering through bottlenecks to reach the fifth layer—and then the peak of the fifth!
But even that wasn’t the end. As he continued absorbing the insights of the body, he soon shattered the peak of the fifth layer and stepped into the sixth layer of the body’s origin.
Among the Nine Sequences, this corresponded to the sixth layer of the Form Dao origin.
Li Hao had a moment of clarity—just by completing the twelve segments of the Body Dao, he had directly reached the sixth layer of the Form Dao origin. Before this, at eleven segments, he had already jumped to the peak of the third layer.
“This confirms it. Each additional segment in the Great Dao panel really does enhance the origin comprehension by three layers, just as I suspected.”
“In other words, if I reach the thirteenth segment of the Body Dao, my Form Dao origin comprehension will reach the ninth layer.”
“That would correspond to the Immortal King Realm…”
His thoughts became sharper, a sense of urgency growing in his heart. If his comprehension of the Painting Dao could rise again—break through the twelfth segment—he might soon become an Immortal King!
And in the True Realm, Immortal Kings were beings who could claim kingship and dominate entire regions.
However, he had just reached the twelfth segment of Painting Dao and only just grasped its true essence. Merely gaining the experience of that twelfth segment would take a long while—let alone comprehending the thirteenth.
“The bottleneck between the eleventh and twelfth segments wasn’t about form or refined technique—it was about true meaning. About the soul, the origin of spirit!”
Li Hao’s gaze grew thoughtful, his mind drifting to the Southern Region—to that moment when he had painted Ying Xiaoxiao with complete abandon.
Back then, he simply wanted to preserve her in this world forever with his brush.
Thinking of her tender yet sorrowful gaze, Li Hao's heart sank again. Only after a long while did he slowly pull himself out of those emotions. His breakthrough in the Painting Dao was thanks to her—because only through that ultimate grief had he touched the essence of the soul.
“If it’s true for Painting Dao, then it must be the same for Sculpting Dao, Fishing Dao…”
He thought silently.
Those disciples taken in by Immortal Emperors likely received such guidance even while at the True Immortal Realm.
That’s the benefit of having a famed master—someone to illuminate the path ahead. One only needed to follow it, slowly moving toward the goal.
Others had to grope in the dark, uncertain if their path was right or wrong, with every mistake costing dearly. This was why powerful clans endured through the ages, while rogue cultivators fell, one after another.
The strong thrive. The weak perish.
“That Jianxin reached the sixth layer of Sword Dao origin at the True Immortal Realm—he really was a once-in-ten-thousand-years sword genius.”
Li Hao recalled defeating Jianxin. To reach the fourth layer of origin at the True Immortal Realm was already monstrous. The fifth was seen once in ten thousand years. Jianxin, at the sixth layer, had created a myth.
It was only because Li Hao suppressed him with the might of the Imperial Sword that his Sword Dao was broken.
Now, having reached the sixth layer of the Form Dao origin himself, his realm equaled that of the sixth layer Sword Dao. Yet, when the same origin level resided in an Immortal Lord, its power would be ten times that of a True Immortal.
As laws coursed through him, Li Hao sensed that although his current cultivation was only the first level of the Immortal Lord Realm, his body could already withstand attacks from the fourth or even fifth level!
Crossing boundaries in the Immortal Lord Realm was extraordinarily difficult. Yet the sixth layer of the Form Dao origin was something even perfected Immortal Lords often failed to grasp—only those with immense talent could hope to comprehend it.
“That old man mentioned fishing grounds. If the Fishing Dao has fishing grounds, then Painting Dao must have a painting realm… like the Langya Painting Realm of the Great Dream Master.”
Li Hao’s eyes gleamed. These were different from an Immortal King’s domain—more like pseudo-domains. They could only be called “realms.”
"Realm" and "domain" were of different grades. In the term ‘realm-domain,’ the realm came first, the domain followed.
At that moment, Li Hao recalled the cultivation technique inherited from Immortal Emperor Tianyang—the Heaven-Conforming Ancestral Sutra passed down by Elder Wang. He had already received its Immortal Lord chapter, or at least the first half.
Back in the True Immortal Realm, he had refined the Ancestral Immortal Physique from the Battle Heaven Sutra.
It was one of the ten great immortal physiques of the True Immortal Realm.
Likewise, the Immortal Lord chapter of the Heaven-Conforming Ancestral Sutra featured another immortal physique—one of the top physiques of the Immortal Lord Realm—called the Heavenly Immortal Body!
Refining an immortal body was incredibly arduous, demanding extreme perception. But fittingly, it corresponded to the Form Dao origin.
As the method for cultivating the Heavenly Immortal Body emerged, Li Hao instinctively activated his body and immortal energy.
His primordial spirit transformed—like a chaotic Heavenly Dao overlooking the starry sky—sensing countless radiant blood and flesh, converging and constructing, condensing into strands, and then into ancient, intricate patterns.
These patterns, structured like hexagons, were the most unbreakable structures between heaven and earth—flawless, without weakness—what the sixth layer of Form Dao origin defined as "perfection."
As the patterns formed, waves of immortal energy surged in to act as "adhesive" between the pieces of flesh, continually assembling the immortal body.
From the outside, Li Hao’s body overflowed with immortal light, flickering in and out of view. A Dao Domain manifested around him, concealing his aura. Unless someone forcibly broke the domain, no one could detect the changes within—only sense the occasional tremble of his energy and assume it was ordinary cultivation.
Wu Ma saw this from a distance but didn’t dare use divine sense to probe. She lacked the nerve.
To these clan prodigies, cultivation was a routine affair. Meditation and closed-door sessions happened frequently.
After all, besides their innate talent, their dedication was beyond imagination.
Li Hao opened his eyes. He didn’t immerse himself in cultivation—he had come here to keep someone company.
While slowly gathering energy to construct his immortal body, he glanced toward the tightly closed palace doors. Then he raised his hand and made a move on the chessboard before him.
There was no opponent—he was playing against the heavens.
Time passed. The moon waned and rose. Daylight lingered long on Suzhou Imperial Star, but as the stars and moon alternated, a full week slipped by.
The palace doors remained shut, showing no sign of opening. Li Hao felt a bit disappointed, but he kept his word and stayed outside.
During that time, Wu Ma brought him meals. Though Immortal Lords could survive eons without food or drink—nourished by immortal mist alone—great clans still preserved the tradition of eating, albeit infrequently, about once a week.
The food wasn’t just gourmet—various heavenly materials and earthly treasures were added for cultivation benefits.
Li Hao didn’t refuse. He accepted the tray with several delicately prepared dishes. But after taking a bite, he frowned. The taste was indescribably odd—just mashed up high-grade spirit herbs wrapped in dough, barely shaped into food. The cooking was crude.
It felt like biting into a thick dough wrapper with sesame-sized filling. Awkward and nearly inedible.
Li Hao only took two bites before stopping, placing the tray outside the Dao Domain. Then he remembered—he still had a lot of ancient demon corpses in his Heaven and Earth space, collected during the Southern Region war’s first trial.
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