Myriad Rivers to the Sea

'I am beginning to have the foundation,' Li Yu thought as he sat cross legged. 'But it is not enough. I am only now barely at a neutral state within this thing. I must plant the seeds of my understanding.'

The next stage of cultivation was the Law Seed realm.

To take this step, a cultivator had to draw upon their deepest comprehensions of the cosmos, condensing their philosophical and martial truths into literal, conceptual seeds within their core. But to manifest these seeds required a terrifying amount of energy. Energy that Li Yu had entirely exhausted during his explosive breakthrough to the King Realm.

His mind drifted towards the gourd that Khaos has given him on behalf of Lian as a reward for coming to help. Li Yu’s consciousness went into the Koi Sanctuary where the gourd was kept. Contained within this ordinary looking gourd was exactly half of the refined Qi and essence of the Xylarri’s home realm.

Li Yu looked at the gourd in surprise with what was within. He wasn’t surprised as he would have been before the rescue mission had started. He had seen clearly now the level that Lian and her peers were at.

‘This much resources was probably not even that significant to them anymore. But to me it is a massive amount.’ Li Yu thought to himself. Thankfully they had given him this before and not after. Without this, it would have taken him who knows how long to draw in enough Qi to advance.

He did not hesitate.

He popped the cork and began drawing the Qi from within it. It wasn’t just the Qi from the Xylarri, it was all their destroyed bodies and flesh. All refined down to what he could use.

A river of what looked like liquid starlight and primeval vitality began rushing through him as his body greedily absorbed it. The energy was violent, alien and overwhelmingly dense. It felt as though he was taking in a raging storm.

But his Devouring Abyssal Leviathan Physique roared to life once again and was eagerly welcoming the destruction. The physique acted as a furnace, instantly breaking down the Xylarri essence, stripping away its alien will and converting it into limitless fuel for Li Yu’s advancement.

The energy flooded everywhere.

'Now,' Li Yu commanded himself as his consciousness descended fully into his inner domain. 'Let the laws take root.'

In the traditional path of cultivation, a genius of a supreme clan might condense one, perhaps two Law Seeds. A monster might condense three. These seeds represented the specific laws the cultivator was most attuned to. The singular paths they were most suited for and would most likely would walk for the rest of their lives. They would also plant these things within their conceptual soul space.

Li Yu already had an inner world that he could use instead. He would be able to skip the step of later having to relocate his seeds and trees. A process that was extremely painful and set the cultivator back quite a bit. They would be stronger in the long run by doing it but it was something that took a great toll.

Li Yu stood in the center of his inner world. It had grown larger during his breakthroughs but it was still a relatively small space but it was plenty for his needs now. He called upon the muscle memory of his soul. He called upon the echoes of the myriad lives he had experienced before. He did not have a single path. He had walked many.

A heavy and conceptual rain began to fall within his inner world.

A seed glowing with the aggressive and scorching heat of Fire dropped into the soil. It carried the hot blooded momentum of Ma Feng. A moment later, a heavy, unyielding seed of Earth took root, vibrating with the stubborn defense of Vane and Tie Zheng. Then came the shifting and illusory seed of Water from Ouyang Ke. The violent and explosive seed of Lightning from Sikong Zhen and the nurturing seed of Wood from Han Sen.

The seeds did not stop falling. Poison, Shadow, Arrays, Sound, Wind and so on. Where a normal genius planted a single tree, Li Yu planted an entire forest.

The soil of his inner world erupted with life. Dozens of seedlings breached the surface simultaneously. They were small and delicate sprouts of conceptual law but their mere presence transformed his inner world from an empty expanse into a vibrant and terrifyingly diverse ecosystem of universal truths.

Li Yu walked through the budding forest and was marveling at the variety of his foundation. However, as he reached the very center of his inner world, he stopped.

Above the canopy of the standard elemental and martial laws, six specific seedlings stood out. These were the seeds from this current life. What he himself would have planted if he had not experienced all those other lives.

They dwarfed the rest of the forest. They were still in the seedling stage and not yet mature trees but their trunks were significantly thicker. Their auras were infinitely more dense and concrete. They commanded the space around them and forced the lesser laws' sprouts to bow in their presence.

They were Void, Destruction, Death, Life, Time, and Soul.

Li Yu understood the first four. Those were laws that he seemed to have a much easier time with. He learned them faster than the others and he seemed more at home with them. But as Li Yu looked at the two absolute tallest seedlings in the center of the grove, he was a bit surprised that they were the tallest.

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The Seed of Time shimmered with an iridescent light, perfectly mirroring the temporal stone outside. The Seed of Soul pulsed with a heavy, gravitational glow that was radiating an ancient aura.

'I never studied the laws of Time or Soul in any of those lives.' Li Yu thought while gazing at the two towering sprouts. 'None of the lives I lived focused on them. Such laws are too rare, too conceptual to grasp without some kind of catalyst or lucky chance. Not even in the life with the so-called ‘system’ were there any. I suppose having the Koi Soul and the Fisherman Soul?'

He had not learned Time from a past life; he had been learning it every single second he spent trapped inside the Temporal Dao Stone. His Golden Koi Soul had been acting as a temporal shield, constantly fighting and manipulating the flow of accelerated time. His body had been absorbing it through countless years. Without realizing it, Li Yu had been baptized in essence of Time since the moment the bubble collapsed around him.

He still felt like he knew nearly absolutely nothing about time or how to manipulate it though. As for the Soul, the answer was obvious. He had been a soul freak for a long time now with currently five Nascent Souls within him. If that is not a path for him, nothing would be.

'My foundation is set,' Li Yu realized and was feeling the terrifying potential of the six pillars and the surrounding forest of lesser laws. 'But a seed is just potential. It must become part of the vessel.'

He went back to meditating and refining Qi as time flew around him. He did not stop at the Law Seed realm. He pushed forward and continued riding the momentum of a devoured world. He eventually breached the threshold of Law Integration.

This was the realm where the conceptual seeds took root within a conceptual space but in the physical flesh and the ethereal soul of the cultivator. It was a process of fusion.

The Seed of Void wove into his skin, making his flesh capable of absorbing and erasing ambient attacks that were much weaker than himself. The Seed of Destruction integrated into his bones, turning his skeletal structure into a weapon of kinetic force. Life flooded his marrow, ensuring that every drop of his blood carried the power of unparalleled regeneration. Death settled into his breath, a quiet and inevitable promise.

But it was the integration of Time and Soul that truly elevated his existence.

As the Law of Time fused with his meridians, his perception of reality shattered and reformed. He could vaguely feel the flow of the universe. The sluggish crawl of a falling leaf, the frantic vibration of a struck blade. As the Law of Soul fused with his mind, his five Nascent Souls synchronized, casting a spiritual weight that felt dense and unyielding.

Inside his inner world, the seedlings rapidly shot upward. They grew from delicate sprouts into sturdy saplings. The forest matured, its roots digging deep into the foundation of his King Realm vessel.

With the successful integration of laws a cultivator naturally birthed one of their greatest weapons. The projection of their natural understanding out into the world. The Domain. Their own unique domain that could never be taught to others.

Li Yu opened his eyes. They glowed with a multifaceted light.

'Manifest,' he whispered.

A pulse of invisible and conceptual energy expanded from his body. It pushed against the shield of the Koi Soul and seamlessly passed through it to clash directly with the temporal amber of the Dao Stone.

Li Yu’s natural domain took form. It was a domain forged from four supreme pillars he had integrated in: Time, Life, Soul, and Death.

To an outside observer, the domain looked like a sphere of slightly distorted and shimmering air. But to anyone caught inside it, it was an inescapable kill zone.

The first pillar was Chaotic Time. Li Yu did not just slow time down within his domain; he fractured it. If an enemy stepped into this space, their perception of cause and effect would be shattered. If they thrust a sword at Li Yu, the first half of the thrust might move at a sluggish crawl, the middle of the thrust might accelerate to ten times its normal speed and the final inch might pause entirely.

In the brutal and high stakes of combat, where experts fought in fractions of a millimeter and micro seconds, this chaos was a death sentence. An enemy would think they were about to land a fatal blow, only to completely overshoot their target and swing at empty air or find themselves frozen just long enough for Li Yu to strike. It was an environment that stripped the enemy of their ability to predict reality.

The second pillar was Crushing Soul. While the enemy was struggling to comprehend the erratic flow of time, their very consciousness would be under siege. The domain projected the combined weight of Li Yu’s five souls. It manifested as a suffocating and spiritual pressure. Enemies would feel their thoughts becoming thick and sluggish. The command to swing a weapon would take longer to reach their arm. It multiplied the disorientation of the chaotic time, trapping them in a nightmare where their bodies and minds refused to synchronize.

The third pillar was Nurturing Life. This law applied exclusively to Li Yu. Within his domain, his vitality was enhanced. If an enemy managed to land a blow through the chaotic time and soul suppression, the Law of Life would heal the wound. Synergized with the erratic time flow, Li Yu could accelerate his own regeneration by a tiny bit, recovering from injuries in a shorter span of time.

The final pillar was Inevitable Death. This was the quietest and maybe most terrifying aspect of the domain. It was an ambient but inescapable erosion. The moment an enemy entered the domain, they began to rot. It was not a violent explosion of poison; it was the quiet draining of their existence.

Their Qi reserves would slowly evaporate. Their physical stamina would bleed away into the air. Their soul would begin to fray at the edges. The longer they stayed in the domain and tried to fight through the time chaos and the soul suppression, the weaker they became. The domain did not just defeat enemies; it consumed them. It pulled them toward an inevitable and quiet end.

Li Yu sat in the center of his newly formed domain and was breathing steadily.

'I have integrated the laws. I have formed my domain,' Li Yu thought while closing his fists with much more ease and time than before. He was feeling the power rushing through his veins. He had advanced by so much.

However, the reality of the situation was still clear. He was still trapped within. The Koi Soul didn’t seem like it was struggling anymore against the Temporal Dao Stone but at the same time it couldn’t do anything against it.

Li Yu didn’t feel like his life was in any danger however. Since he could do nothing else, he began to mediate and dive into all the progress he had made. There were still a lot of things to process. Vague memories, feelings and the slight feeling of still being disconnected from his true self.

He had experienced so much within this bubble. The only good news for him was that he had plenty of time to do it.