Chapter 981

The three Great Ascendants only then realized that among the cultivators Yan Buji had slaughtered over the years was the last bloodline of the Zhusian Formation's hereditary family; those killings that seemed random were actually the keys to breaking the formation prepared for today!

"Now you want to withdraw the formation? Too late," Yan Buji said, forming an ancient forbidden seal with both hands, and a vortex like a black hole suddenly opened in his chest.

The massive spiritual energy of the Zhusian Formation was forcibly reversed in direction, all of it blasting toward the seabed stone tablet. The three Great Ascendants, in horror, discovered that the cultivation they had painstakingly refined for a thousand years was being drawn out by the formation and used as "fuel" to strike the seal.

"Madman!" the girl shouted, severing the connection to the formation, only to see Yan Buji already waiting on her retreat path. The spout of the Swallow Desire Pot had at some point become a spacetime fissure, swallowing half of her arm into an unknown dimension.

"This is... the scent of the Universal Dao?!"

When the first strand of Universal Dao law pierced his body, Yan Buji finally showed a genuine smile.

All these years he deliberately left flaws, allowed the encirclement, even pretended to go mad, waiting for this moment—to force open, with the help of a Great Ascendant cultivator, the Universal Dao threshold that he could never reach with his own power.

"So that's it..." he gazed at the silver trace flowing in his palm, which was the forming Universal Dao source.

A crisp sound like shattering glass suddenly echoed from the seabed, and the stone tablet that suppressed the Sea Eye exploded completely. Amid the raging spacetime turbulence, Yan Buji's figure was torn into fragments, then reassembled a hundred meters away.

Each time he shattered and reassembled, the Universal Dao law within his body solidified a little.

At this moment the three Great Ascendants were powerless; the emergence of the Universal Dao source already indicated that the opponent, besides controlling the Desire Dao, also wielded the Universal Dao!

"Done." When Yan Buji reappeared, his fingertips could freely manipulate spatial coordinates.

With a light swipe, he folded the three Great Ascendants into a space cube only an inch in size.

The three Great Ascendants' faces changed dramatically; beyond the shattered space lay boundless void, a level of Universal Dao power that had already reached techniques only Great Ascendant cultivators possessed.

Even they dared not easily attempt to break through the space cube, and could only let Yan Buji depart.

The Dongxing Sea Region suddenly began to rain silver.

Each raindrop reflected fragments of different spacetime; when a cultivator reached out to catch one, the whole person was instantly transported thousands of miles away. Yan Buji stood above the Sea Eye, feeling the newly born Universal Dao power within his body.

This was his true purpose—not to confront the Great Ascendants head‑on, but to use their strength against them, breaking the strong with cleverness.

This forced incorporation of the Universal Dao seemed successful, but in reality was fraught with danger.

Because Yan Buji's primal essence bears the Desire Dao, but all his other ordinary essences cannot bear a Dao, he can only use the essence method to employ other laws.

And in this gamble, Yan Buji didn't even try to use his primal essence to bear a second Dao; instead, he pre‑strengthened and adapted the essence of his entire right arm with the laws, allowing it to bear the far more powerful Universal Dao!

"Although it succeeded, I can still feel that the Desire Dao borne by my primal essence can no longer affect the essence of my right arm, which means I cannot, via the essence method, mobilize desire to drive the Universal Dao law; I can only use the Universal Dao carried by the right arm's essence to activate Space Power...."

Yan Buji frowned; that still wasn't the most important.

The most important thing is that Yan Buji currently doesn't understand why his primal essence rejects bearing other Dao essences, and he can clearly feel it...

The essence of his right arm is much heavier than the other essences in his body; this is not a difference in mass, but...

"The Dao source... unless I use all my body's essences to bear the Dao, will the body be in a state of 'Dao imbalance'?"

Yan Buji suddenly realized that, fortunately, his comprehension of the Desire Dao was about to enter the stage of Dao formation, and although the Universal Dao had been forcibly incorporated, his realm was slightly lacking.

Although there are many problems, bearing the Universal Dao also means Yan Buji's ability to escape and evade has been greatly amplified, and even his combat power has noticeably increased.

Given the things he's done, the Nine Heavens and Five Domains have probably already known, and wherever he goes no one will welcome him.

Therefore his future days will inevitably be a solitary fight, without strengthening his power or seeking greater growth space, and he will remain confined here forever.

After a while.

Amid the torrential silver rain, Yan Buji's right arm took on a strange translucent appearance; beneath the skin no longer flowed blood, but fine silver threads.

These embodied Universal Dao laws, existing as tangible forms, resonated subtly with the surrounding space every moment. He tried to flex his fingers, and a reef three zhang away suddenly twisted into a spiral, a sign that his control over the laws was not yet precise enough.

"Sure enough, there's repulsion..." Yan Buji stared at the junction on his right shoulder, where interwoven purple‑gold and silver‑gray cracks had appeared.

His primal essence is spontaneously resisting the intrusion of a foreign Dao, like a body rejecting a transplanted organ. More troublesome, although the weight of his right arm hasn't increased, each time he employs a Universal Dao divine skill, his entire skeleton emits a groan of unbearable burden.

The Swallow Desire Pot suddenly shot out from his dantian, its spout trembling violently toward his right arm. Yan Buji understood; it was a warning that the desire within his body was becoming unbalanced. The once perfectly circulating Extreme Desire Dao was now, due to the forced intrusion of the Universal Dao, like sand grains in a precision clock.

"Need a buffer." He suddenly seized the silver rain curtain, folding the space in his palm into a tiny cage. The essence he had deliberately retained when the space cube collapsed was concentrated there, and purple‑golden alchemical fire spewed from the pot's mouth, refining the fragments into three pills that swirled with spatial ripples.

When the first pill entered his abdomen, the silver threads in Yan Buji's right arm suddenly elongated explosively, spreading along the meridians toward his heart. The excruciating pain forced him to kneel on one knee, and the sea surface was cut by spider‑web‑like fissures from the dissipating Universal Dao power. Yet the effect was immediate; those purple‑gold cracks began to heal slowly. This was using the Universal Dao insight of a Great Ascendant cultivator to neutralize the repulsive reaction, essentially building a temporary bridge between the two Daoes.

"Three pills can sustain at most three months." Yan Buji wiped the silver blood from his mouth corner, then suddenly turned his head north. There, spatial anomalies were rippling, evidently the Dongxing Sea Region's phenomenon had attracted other great beings to spy. He sneered, and with his right arm made a light slash toward the void...

Thousands of li away, the gray‑robe elder who was using the Round Light Technique to spy suddenly let out a howl.

The image in the bronze mirror turned into a vortex, shredding half of his face into mush. Even more terrifying, the lingering silver energy at the wound was coursing along his blood vessels, gradually converting his transformed spirit Dao body into spatial crystals.

"Universal Dao backlash?!" the elder shouted, decisively slicing off his own head; the newly formed skull was pallid, "That demon truly mastered..." Before he could finish, his cave dwelling suddenly folded into paper‑thin sheets, and even his scream was compressed into a two‑dimensional existence before it could be uttered.

Yan Buji withdrew his fingers, and the silver light lingering at his fingertips dimmed slightly.

"The consumption is larger than expected," he frowned inwardly, noticing that the Universal Dao source within his right arm had decreased by one percent. This shows that the forcibly incorporated laws are unstable, leaking each time they are used. To completely resolve this problem, unless...