Chapter 1541: Chapter 65: Eternal Nine Rules Seventh Layer

All things in the world possess Origin.

So too does combat, as a mode of existence.

Before coming into contact with Combat Origin, Zhou Yan had never considered that combat as a form could also possess an Origin; only after encountering it did he finally understand that, not to mention combat, any existent thing between Heaven and Earth can possess an Origin. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

One single Origin may condense into a Holy Spirit and thus achieve a King.

Then if Endless Origins gather into one, what can that accomplish?

Is it still merely a King?

Perhaps, that would already be something more than a King.

Before entering bitter cultivation, many such thoughts lingered in Zhou Yan’s heart.

However, after the bitter cultivation began, all those thoughts were completely reduced to nothingness and cast aside by Zhou Yan.

Immersed within those Original Rules of combat, Zhou Yan for the first time experienced a dynamic kind of Origin that was different from all the various Elemental Origins.

Yes, Combat Origin is a dynamic Origin, its dynamism like ceaseless irregular motion, never once coming to rest.

Precisely because of this, Combat Origin granted Zhou Yan a distinct sort of comprehension, allowing him, within the stillness of those basic Original Rules, to sense a wholly new pattern of rule-changes.

"Metal, wood, water, fire, earth, light, darkness, lightning and the other Elemental Origins are all static Origins, whereas Origins such as combat and Merit are instead dynamic Origins, forever in motion. Could it be that their nature is similar to the situation of extranuclear electrons around an atomic nucleus? If the very forms composed from basic elements themselves interpret the Tao of Heaven and Earth, then the world is formed through such Endless combinations. So-called rules are all derivatives arising from combinations of some basic Origins."

In the midst of bitter cultivation, after branding down the mark of combat, Zhou Yan’s grasp of this dynamic Origin grew far more profound.

Within this comprehension, the King’s Mark that Zhou Yan was condensing also manifested a combat form; layer upon layer of Battle Intent naturally appeared upon the King’s Mark.

Zhou Yan felt that this time his combat power had improved in the most obvious and most direct way.

The Condensation of Combat Origin was, in itself, the direct elevation of Combat Power.

Combat Power had always been Zhou Yan’s strong point, and so he felt that his talent in combat power was uniquely favored by Heaven; yet within this Space, although Zhou Yan fit it extremely well, the road forward was still obscure and arduous.

This time, when Zhou Yan followed the Origin Elements of Combat Power between Heaven and Earth into the Seventh Level of the Combat Power Space, he could no longer advance.

Only at this point did Zhou Yan give a bitter smile; the combat power he had believed incomparably strong had, within such a Combat Power Origin Space of the Holy Spirit Land, only managed to advance seven levels!

Seven levels—merely on par with the seven-layer Space he had broken through before with his strongest talent.

Now, Zhou Yan already understood where his deficiencies lay in terms of combat power.

On this Seventh Level of Space, Zhou Yan summoned his Soul Body, entered it in the form of an Eternal Holy Spirit, and once again began to Condense the rules of the Combat King’s Mark here, while continuously elevating his Realm.

This time, Zhou Yan was bitterly cultivating his sixth type of King’s Mark. Among the previous King’s Marks of Flames, Cold Ice, Thick Earth, Sword Dao, Bloodline, and Enlightenment, he himself had already possessed the Flames mark before; it had only been strengthened in that Holy Spirit Land.

Now, after this mark of combat manifested and condensed, Zhou Yan’s Transformation in Realm also began to become smooth and unobstructed.

This kind of bitter cultivation continued without pause.

After a full two days, Zhou Yan once again felt a powerful dizziness and a stifling urge to vomit; the savagery in his heart seemed about to break through all restraints and erupt into complete Fury.

At that point Zhou Yan could no longer endure; only then did he withdraw from that incomparably arduous and painful state.

Afterward, his Realm only barely reached the Great Success state of the Sixth Layer of the Eternal Nine Rules, still separated by an Endless distance from the Great Perfection State.

Such progress was already extremely defiant of the heavens; after all, the later one goes, the more difficult cultivation becomes. Yet compared to Zhou Yan’s bitter efforts, this progress could still be considered somewhat weak.

At the very least, this improvement was much weaker than the speed of his previous Realm advancement.

Zhou Yan was quite helpless; he had already known this situation would inevitably occur, but he had not expected that at merely the Sixth Layer of the Eternal Nine Rules, it would already be so difficult.

At this moment, Zhou Yan began using the combat mark he had Condensed to construct a unique Space Holy Spirit Land, then forming a complete fit between it and himself.

In such a state, that restless feeling immediately vanished, and Zhou Yan’s own Realm once again began to advance without obstruction.

This was a monotonous process; even though the cultivation speed was extremely fast, the experience of time was not truly just a few days or a few hours. Because with every hundred-millionth of a breath’s interval, an extreme Transformation would occur, and over the course of that continual flow of time, those Transformations linked together like a single line, as though time itself had been threaded into one, giving the Cultivator an exceptionally powerful impact.

Zhou Yan knew that this experience could not be replicated.

Because if his Soul did not possess a hundred-million-fold Soul Strength, it would be absolutely impossible to endure such fierce tempering here.

Moreover, even with a Soul Strength increased a hundred million times, within this Space, Zhou Yan would still feel a near-collapse, verge-of-madness sensation after each bout of bitter cultivation. This alone was enough to show that even for a True Holy Spirit here, most likely there would only be the opportunity and qualification to gain Enlightenment in a single Holy Spirit Land.

In contrast, Zhou Yan, because he had seen through one Holy Spirit Land after another, could enter one Holy Spirit Land after another to gain Enlightenment repeatedly.

Thinking as he bitterly cultivated, under this complete fit, Zhou Yan gradually penetrated into the depths of the Ninth Layer of the Combat Origin Space.

In that stretch of space, the state of battle was incomparably intense, and within it, Zhou Yan sensed an earth-shaking, world-shattering war ongoing without end.

The two sides of this great battle were a pair of brothers.

And this pair of brothers, Zhou Yan knew them.

They were Jiang Tianxin and Jiang Tianling of the Jiang family.

Only, the battle presented before him was a war between Supreme Monarch Holy Spirits. In that battle, afterimages filled the sky, endless King’s Holy Spirit Blood drifted through the heavens, and the scene on the ground was one of apocalyptic Destruction.

Endless fierce gales, endless rampant Fury of Battle Intent raged and rampaged, running wild between Heaven and Earth.

Zhou Yan stepped into such a space.

Then, Zhou Yan’s own inner world formed an independent world, and the battle manifested within that world was a battle between him and himself.

Only by taking oneself as the enemy can one endlessly, forever surpass oneself.

One day, when you look back, you will find that when you surpassed yourself, you had already surpassed most of your enemies.

In the battle space Zhou Yan derived, the enemy within that inner world was himself, so he was fighting against himself.

Within this kind of resonance, Zhou Yan’s Realm also underwent a further Transformation and became stronger.

The Sixth Realm of the Eternal Nine Rules quickly moved toward a Great Perfection State, and the battle space of Zhou Yan’s True Void Heavenly Prohibition Holy Spirit Land also began to undergo a qualitative leap, seemingly affected because Zhou Yan’s True Void Sky Forbidden King Rule had already stepped into a profound stage.

Under such circumstances, Zhou Yan’s abilities were activated on a deeper level.

Zhou Yan let out a breath of foul air; in one go, his Realm finally broke through the Sixth Realm of the Eternal Nine Rules and stepped into the Realm of the Seventh Level of the Eternal Nine Rules.

Having reached such a Realm, Zhou Yan also knew that the potential of this world of battle had been utilized by him to the extreme; it was almost impossible to push it any further.

But Zhou Yan did not rush to leave and instead stopped here.

Lost in thought, Zhou Yan fixed his gaze on the battle between Jiang Tianxin and Jiang Tianling, scanning all of their battle methods in detail and then Sealing them within his body.

Whether he could comprehend them, Zhou Yan did not know, but he was certain he would not comprehend them for the time being.

However, that did not matter. Back when he was unable to gain Enlightenment during the debating-the-Tao process beneath the Bodhi Tree, Zhou Yan had already taken note.

Now that he encountered this situation again, Zhou Yan first scanned everything, then would repeatedly watch it as if viewing a Soul Crystal recording. In this way, he would ultimately be able to gain Enlightenment from it.

Zhou Yan felt that even if he could never learn these things, simply becoming familiar with them would still be of great help to him in the future.

Having made this decision, Zhou Yan immediately began his attempt.

Using a chip-like ability to scan and store, Zhou Yan also applied the True Void Sky Forbidden King Rule in combination with the power of Form-Intent transformation to form a completely similar Holy Spirit Land, and at the same time simulated this entire series of changes, sealing them into a fabricated Chip.

This was essentially a form of storage, a storage of information.

Zhou Yan did not need to understand the meaning of this information or its Origin; he only needed to copy it and Seal it away.

After finishing this, Zhou Yan also noticed that his actions had been sensed by Jiang Tianling and Jiang Tianxin, and thus all the terrifying killing intent and ferocious baleful power poured toward Zhou Yan.

But Zhou Yan had been mentally prepared, afraid of an accident. The instant that scene erupted, he immediately withdrew from that place.

Because he had fully grasped the Combat Origin, Zhou Yan could also leave this Original Holy Spirit Land in a single Thought.

So with a single Thought, Zhou Yan completely departed from that place and once again returned to the Primordial Magnetic Pole Light Holy Spirit Land.

Zhou Yan exhaled a long, turbid breath, and a strong, unknown sense of crisis rose in his heart, though fortunately that feeling quickly faded.

Obviously, if he had lingered any longer in that stretch of Heaven and Earth, danger would definitely have befallen him.

If that Jiang Tianxin or Jiang Tianling had struck at him, in that unknown Space-Time battle, Zhou Yan did not know whether he would have even the slightest ability to resist.

Facing those Holy Spirits from that unknown Space-Time, Zhou Yan had no certainty or confidence at all; even though his current Combat Power was already beginning to approach that of a King, he still lacked the confidence to oppose the unknown Holy Spirits within that Holy Spirit Land.

Zhou Yan calmed himself and began to observe the illusory Void scene of battle changes he had copied.

As expected, when Zhou Yan watched, it was exactly like when he watched the debate of the Tao between the Immortal Phoenix Peacock and Shakyamuni—he completely did not understand.

However, Zhou Yan was in no hurry, because the moment he did not understand, he simply stopped watching.

Then, after some time had passed and the memory faded, Zhou Yan once again initiated this process of viewing.

Sure enough, that perfectly repeated scene appeared once more.