Chapter 1696: The Sword of Annihilating Cause Has Been Born

In the dim cosmic starry sky, an invisible streak of light was darting through space, crossing vast distances in an instant—far beyond the perception limit of low-level cultivators.

"Even the four-step or five-step Extreme Nirvana Sword Sons don't seem to have mastered eighth-step Dao-realm sword arts…"

Jiang Ding silently pondered.

While discussing the Dao with the Dao Sons, he had also been assessing the combat strength of every Sword Son in the sword duels, arriving at this conclusion.

In years past, when he was at the three-step Extreme Nirvana, he had speculated that one path to breaking through to the four-step Extreme was to master eighth-step Dao-realm sword arts—thus forcibly leaping past the shackles of incomplete technique inheritances and damaged foundations to reach the four-step Extreme.

This conclusion still held no error.

Unlike Jiang Ding, these Sword Sons' technique inheritances were extremely powerful, their foundations deep and rich. The successive ancestors of their sects who had walked several steps toward immortality had built them an excellent foundation, sparing them the precipitous cliff-like ladder that cultivators of the Fallen Immortal Realm faced, and so they were far more at ease.

"How wonderful… this is my advantage."

Jiang Ding Zi murmured.

The hardships endured are a sword cultivator's precious wealth, a sword cultivator's foundation, and will surely shine forth in the future.

"Can I slay them?"

Another question occurred to Jiang Ding.

He thought for a long while, then slowly shook his head.

A four-step Extreme Nirvana being was at least the strongest prodigy of a Great Thousand World; he could not judge at present.

The Wanfa Heavenly Pivot held only a wisp of divine sense, with extremely serious errors—it could not be used as real battlefield decision-making data. He would need to actually encounter a living four-step Extreme Dao Son, or an equivalent Demon Sacred Son, before he could know.

Jiang Ding gently closed his eyes and sank once more into contemplation.

He was still reading through the teaching materials the Sun Sword Lord had given him—three hundred and sixty thousand volumes of sword Dao classics. Compared to when he was at Refining Void, his reading speed had greatly increased; he could now finish one Heaven-Human technique in roughly two years, fully comprehending it and absorbing every key point of knowledge.

And as his reading deepened, Jiang Ding began to distill his own system of knowledge.

He discovered that many techniques—whether sword Dao techniques or law-cultivation techniques—shared many commonalities. A sweep of his divine sense let him grasp many parts at a glance, no longer needing to puzzle over them word by word or contemplate them repeatedly.

Under such circumstances, Jiang Ding's speed in contemplating techniques was still accelerating; he estimated that in a few thousand more years, he should be able to finish reading a technique in mere days.

During this process, the knowledge foundation of the Upper Realm was continually absorbed by Jiang Ding, merging into his own immortal Dao system.

The set of teaching materials the Sun Sword Lord had carefully chosen was far too targeted—once he finished studying them completely, Jiang Ding estimated he could begin contemplating near-immortal scriptures on his own. It was strictly progressive, layer upon layer, no coincidence at all.

Jiang Ding was full of anticipation for the future, especially regarding the only complete near-immortal scripture in his hands, the *Heavenly Wasteness Yang Mang Body-Forging Scripture*.

*Heavenly Scripture*.

When the Sun Sword Lord chose a near-immortal scripture, he had not simply picked one at random either. This top-tier body-forging scripture described how body cultivators could forge their Dharma bodies into beings comparable to those within the sun.

Although Jiang Ding was unwilling to cultivate the body—his Dharma body was extremely reinforced in the directions of sword intent, sword Qi, and magic power, with no particular demand for raw toughness—

these body-forging results could nevertheless be applied to the Taiqing Flying Sword!

And compared to the human body, the Taiqing Flying Sword could be pushed even more extremely, because a flying sword did not need to consider complex structures like divine soul, dantian, or meridians, and was far more malleable.

Time passed amid such contemplation of countless classics.

Unknowingly, another several decades slipped by.

On this day, the long-unchanging dead-silent cosmic starry sky began to show a different scene.

The stars of one stretch of sky began growing brighter, and as the distance closed, their brightness climbed higher and higher, until at last there was even a strange sensation of being amid a skyful of stars.

Jiang Ding slowly opened his eyes; myriad interwoven immortal Dao runes flashed and vanished in his pupils.

The former Badaxian Sect domain had arrived.

These stars were the radiance of individual Minor Thousand Worlds and Zhong Senior Qian Shi Gao Jie.

Jiang Ding stopped his contemplation and entered combat readiness, swiftly switching from extreme-speed secondary-stealth mode to extreme-stealth secondary-speed, high-alert mode.

He had never treated war as a game—not even when facing a group of weaklings.

Not long after, merely a few months later, Jiang Ding formally stepped into this world cluster and saw the first Minor Thousand World—the place named Baize Minor World in the Badaxian Sect's intelligence.

This Minor Thousand World was famous for its vast swamps, producing many swamp demon beasts and spiritual herbs; its resources were fairly abundant.

At this moment, Jiang Ding's divine sense descended upon the place, sweeping every inch of the Minor Thousand World and every being within it with extremely covert fluctuations.

"Suspected beings left behind as contingencies by the Ancient God Ancestor's split souls: one thousand and ninety-seven."

A figure emerged in Jiang Ding's mind.

This was the terrifying vitality of beings who presided over the human race's Six Paths of Reincarnation inheritance—and this was the orthodox method of application: avatars by the hundreds of millions, reincarnation without end, extremely hard to kill.

The human race might look like nothing more than fragile, hairless monkeys with weak bodies and souls, but in truth its vitality was also extremely tenacious. Six Paths of Reincarnation, blood Dao, soul Dao, parasitism… all manner of methods, varied and many. To exterminate this race was extremely difficult—almost an impossibility.

By contrast, the Great Sun Sword Son's Six Paths of Reincarnation structure, which extremely reinforced killing power, was the heresy.

In ages incomparably remote, countless years ago, it was usually blood Dao, soul Dao, and other such human cultivators who first secured a foothold, initially carving out a stretch of peaceful space—only then would sword cultivators appear among the people.

"Beings with split souls by the hundreds of millions…"

Jiang Ding thought calmly.

A sword art—one he had been deducing for a long time—appeared in his sea of consciousness.

The Sword of Annihilating Cause, from the Immortal Art Sky-Suppressing inheritance!

The source is called the Cause; the being born from the source is called the Effect.

The Sword of Annihilating Cause traced back to a being's source—no matter the distance of a thousand mountains and ten thousand waters, as long as they remained within a single world cluster, one sword could slay them!

This sword art possessed extremely strong penetrative power and paired extraordinarily well with Annihilating Law; combined with the assistance of the Immortal Gate's research team, his development of it had gone fairly smoothly.

What he needed to do now was gather more 'Causes.'

The more Causes traced, the mightier the killing power when this sword fell. If the Causes reached the extreme, then even across multiple world clusters, he could still strike through the void and slay an Ancient God Ancestor sitting within the layered protective sect formations of his lair!

Having locked onto the Causes of these Ancient God Ancestors, Jiang Ding at last had leisure to look around the various regions of the Minor Thousand World.

As expected, the sects here had all become inheritances of the Ancient God Dao; every slightly larger sect consisted of disciples and descendants of the Ancient God Dao, who had branched out and multiplied here for tens of thousands of years.

Jiang Ding swept his gaze over all these things, and at last noticed the prisoner carts in every corner of the world, packed with children under ten years old.

These prisoner carts were distributed among villages, towns, and sects and clans great and small—all children under ten with specific birth dates and specific aptitudes, gathered together by various forces, sent to various sects, and finally delivered to the Minor Thousand World's teleportation array hub, to be sent off to unknown places. Efficient and orderly.