Chapter 2161: The Future of the True Phoenix Heavenly Fire Great Dao Is Shrouded in Uncertainty

Jiang Ding quietly watched the one Soul-Locking Seed that had fallen into the Minor Thousand Worlds.

This thing, identical in appearance to a basic spiritual particle, carried no grand momentum; it naturally took part in the world's cycles, its very nature poised between matter and energy.

At the very beginning, it was unconsciously swallowed by a mountain sparrow and became a tiny part of the sparrow's body.

Several months later, this sparrow was preyed upon and devoured by a grey hawk; the sparrow's body became part of the hawk's body — an utterly commonplace scene in the natural cycle.

No one knew that, through this process of life and death, the Soul-Locking Seed had silently completed one replication.

No — not replication, or perhaps it could be called infection.

In this process, a normal spirit particle was infected and became a Law-Slaying Soul-Locking Seed, and the Law-Slaying Soul-Locking Seed completed one replication increase.

The entire process took three months and eighteen days.

The shortest time was thirty days; this period could not be shortened any further, because the Soul-Locking Seed needed a span of time to fuse with its host — otherwise the replication-transfer process could not be completed.

Long?

Long.

If one only looked at the speed of this first generation's proliferation, the time for the first generation of Soul-Locking Seeds to spread throughout the True Phoenix Star Domains would be infinitely close to infinite; it would likely take hundreds of millions of years just to replicate enough to fill a single Minor Thousand World.

But after one proliferation, the Soul-Locking Seed's replication speed doubled!

Now two Soul-Locking Seeds were replicating at the same time!

Next there would be four Soul-Locking Seeds!

And so it would keep proliferating, proliferating, endlessly replicating…

"Truly beautiful,"

"What a beautiful picture…"

Jiang Ding gazed with an appreciative eye at a corner of this Major Thousand World — a stretch of mountain forest.

The Law-Slaying Soul-Locking Seeds, replicating ceaselessly through the cycles of life, death, and rebirth, spread throughout this stretch of forest within a few years, then expanded little by little with life into the entire Minor Thousand World — wherever there was the cycle of life and death, there the Soul-Locking Seeds replicated, never resting.

Within a mere few decades, every basic spiritual particle in the entire Minor Thousand World had been replaced by Soul-Locking Seeds.

These Soul-Locking Seeds spread outward in all directions along with the ascension of the myriad-race cultivators and bird-race cultivators of the Minor Thousand World, and with the circulation of its natural treasures.

Spreading covertly and carefully.

Jiang Ding gently closed his eyes, then opened them again.

A thousand years later, the Soul-Locking Seeds had spread throughout the star domains, filling many Major Thousand Worlds and Zhong Senior Qian Shi Gao Jie, and continued to spread to even vaster regions along with the migrations and movements of the myriad races' powerful beings.

Ten thousand years later, the Soul-Locking Seeds filled dozens of star domains.

Twenty thousand years later, the Soul-Locking Seeds began to spread throughout the more than eight hundred True Phoenix Star Domains.

These Soul-Locking Seeds were utterly indistinguishable from the basic spiritual particles that existed in the universe, possessing all the functions of basic spiritual particles — only with some extremely fine structures added, identical to natural structures, since every spiritual particle already had its own infinitesimal differences.

This was the immortal-path achievement the Dao Court had spent several hundred thousand years developing!

If True Phoenix Son had not known this in advance and had not invested a great deal of targeted research into the Law-Slaying Soul-Locking Seeds, he would absolutely have found it difficult to detect any change in the starry sky.

To this day, Jiang Ding had never used the Soul-Locking Seeds to change anything.

At this moment, as the Soul-Locking Seeds filled the True Phoenix Star Domains, Jiang Ding's heart gave a slight tremor, and a dazed feeling welled up within him.

The circulation of the Heavenly Dao throughout the entire True Phoenix Star Domains seemed to emerge clearly in his heart—the patterns of the starry sky's operation, and the birth, growth, advancement, and death of lives in each and every world—all appeared before his eyes one by one.

"Heavenly Fire Great Dao…"

Jiang Ding's gaze could not help but fall upon the Heavenly Dao.

Among the three thousand Great Daos of these True Phoenix Star Domains, at some unknown time, fine crimson threads as slender as hairs had appeared; these crimson threads were distributed like spider webs at each node of the three thousand Great Daos' operation, occasionally fluttering, affecting the operation of this starry sky's Heavenly Dao — the Heavenly Fire Great Dao pried open the three thousand Great Daos.

That Heavenly Fire Great Dao, moreover, contained the will of a living being, making one not dare to approach it in the slightest.

"Found you, you lovely, beautiful fellow…"

Jiang Ding's voice was soft and gentle.

He had no intention of disturbing the living being within this Heavenly Fire Great Dao; his gaze merely rested upon the worlds of these True Phoenix Star Domains.

Jiang Ding saw, within heaven and earth, the various destined fates of living beings one after another.

On a treetop, a flame-red butterfly flapped its wings, drawing upon the power of fire; upon its body existed the changes of the Heavenly Fire Great Dao — its life and death, how it lived and how it died, would affect one of True Phoenix Son's immortal-path experiments, and the result of this experiment would affect True Phoenix Son's process of exploring the immortal-path universal constants.

Within a family-style Jin Dan sect, cultivators practiced fire-attribute Gong Fa; as these human cultivators died in battle and in toil, their life and death likewise affected the True Phoenix immortal-path universal constants.

A phoenix just breaking from its shell bathed in lava, undergoing a Nirvanic transformation — for the True Phoenix immortal-path universal constants, she was an important experimental step…

The various aspects of the True Phoenix Heavenly Fire Great Dao had been seen by the Supreme Great Sun Sword Immortal!

"Then let it be destroyed."

"This flame butterfly's original fate was to devour a Fire Spirit Fruit, using it to advance or to die — this is the fate planned within the Heavenly Fire Great Dao, one experiment."

"Now, this flame butterfly should be crushed to death by a boulder."

Jiang Ding said expressionlessly.

After all, True Phoenix Son was not an immortal — not even a Sovereign — and could not completely influence the Great Daos of heaven and earth, nor could he fully control the Heavenly Fire Great Dao; his control over heaven and earth could not be absolutely precise, only roughly precise, and from time to time accidents would occur — he could not control everything.

All she could do was ensure that the majority of the sentient beings' experiments proceeded accurately.

Thud!

Under the will of the Supreme Great Sun Sword Immortal, some basic spirit particle in a certain place within heaven and earth seemed to undergo some change.

In an instant, many things happened.

A weed swayed in the wind, a flame python twisted its body once more while traveling, a leaf fell… After a series of natural coincidences, a stone the size of a millstone happened to fall, smashing into the flame butterfly that happened to be flying past, crushing it into a pulp of meat.

This one minor experiment involving the True Phoenix immortal-path universal constants was thus precisely terminated.

Likewise, a human Jin Dan cultivator who, within the fate of the Heavenly Fire Great Dao, should have died — should have been observed dying in different ways to explore the Heavenly Dao — survived.

A phoenix undergoing Nirvanic transformation shrieked once and advanced in an entirely different experimental direction.

This direction of advancement could not be said to be useless; it could only be said that it would cause this one important experiment, long in preparation, to fail completely, without achieving any of the planned research results.

The True Phoenix immortal-path universal constants had not gained any progress…

One by one, the True Phoenix Immortal Dao experiments diverged; one by one, the fated destinies in their fate failed to reach their intended ends, each veering off its planned course.

The research data and the research process had become completely chaotic.

It was as if a Wudao Sect Grandmaster had instantly turned into a thug who could only throw wild, clumsy punches; the power once used to concentrate strength and break through to explore the most cutting-edge True Phoenix Immortal Dao technology was now completely in disarray.

On this day, all the Phoenixes and the powerful ones of the Ten Thousand Races participating in the contemplation of the True Phoenix Heavenly Fire Great Dao gradually felt that the Heavenly Dao was becoming incomprehensible.

The True Phoenix Heavenly Fire Great Dao began to grow arduous and obscure; every single step taken was so difficult.

An invisible and unknown panic began to surface in the hearts of the powerful ones across the True Phoenix Star Domains.

(End of this chapter)