An energy ripple undulated wildly as a dao universe came down from above. Li Hao and the rest would hardly let the chaos beast get a message out with its dying breath. The world of emptiness resurfaced, but the ripple was the earth dragon’s final obsession. It broke through the world!

Everything would be uncontrollable once it broke free of the rivers of dao and entered the chaos.

Li Hao was just about to call upon time to freeze the ripple when a black hell appeared, as if a dao domain. A curved black manifested, cutting everything into two. Death qi covered the world.

Lin Hongyu didn’t make a sound. She simply looked at the queen in moon form and quietly backed away. The qi of death surfaced in her eyes.

The second rank queen... had accomplished an impressive amount in this fight. A formless pressure made it difficult for Lin Hongyu to breathe. Her presence of death noticeably deepened.

Li Hao raised a brow, but wasn’t at liberty to say anything because he was about to explode from the rampaging dao strength! Number Two and the queen were truly unreliable. There was no time to think about anything before he became part of the river of dao. He needed to get the rioting waters under control!

Void sized up the two women when his friend disappeared. He clucked his tongue and quickly left to recover from his wounds. Terrifying, this was more terrifying than killing a seventh rank. Void suspected that Li Hao had run so quickly not because he couldn’t suppress the river of dao, but because he didn’t want to stay here.

Void wanted to run as well!

The rest also looked at the two women before quickly disappearing. All of them ran off to recover from their wounds. The entire world quieted down. Only death and sacred holiness continued to well upward, erupt, and even face off against each other.

The queen returned to human form and glanced at Lin Hongyu. She took stock of her wounds before she mouthed at Lin Hongyu, a provocative look in her eyes, “Old woman!”

“......” Killing intent filled the world and death qi overlaid everything.

The queen vanished in the blink of an eye, but she was chortling with laughter. She was younger than the other, even if Lin Hongyu had walked life and death. It was all the same in the end!

The world fully quieted down.

......

The dao strength of chaos beasts was much more violent and robust than regular chaos strength. Number Two and the queen hadn’t been able to digest it, so those lousy fellow had dumped it into Li Hao’s river of dao.

Currently, the river was churning madly. There even seemed to be a giant beast forming in it, ready to be reborn.

The earth dragon!

This frightful existence seemed perfectly ready to revitalize after death. That was horrifying!

This was the strongest seventh rank that Li Hao had encountered thus far. Or perhaps it could be more accurately said that none of the seventh ranks he’d met thus far had demonstrated such strength. His experience with Waterpeak had left him with a dismal impression of seventh ranks.

It’d been even easier to kill the Red Moon seventh ranks. Those hadn’t been masters of dao, just individual heavyweights in eighth rank universes.

It was only today that Li Hao truly understood how strong a seventh rank might be when bringing their full strength to bear.

He and Void were faux seventh ranks, but had to require the aid of Number Two and a host of other people to barely defeat the other. It was only possible through the earth dragon revealing a weakness in its great dao. If not, the outcome of this battle would be completely up in the air!

Li Hao’s minor worlds furiously drew on the energy. Not only that, but more worlds appeared.

Beast!

A small world of beasts rapidly grew stronger in the river. The dao of beasts!

The earth dragon’s shadow was as if a tangible entity; it imprinted on that minor world. Filled with mad violence, a supernatural character jumped out of the world—the character of the ‘beast’!

This was the first supernatural character that Li Hao had obtained from chaos beasts, his first instance of a unique dao.

Beast dao!

“Roar!” A beast’s challenge filled the air, shaking the river and sending waves through the surface. That minor world absorbed a large sum of chaos strength and it quickly grew stronger at an incredible pace.

It even wanted to connect to the chaos outside. Such was to be a chaos beast.

They were natural children of the chaos and found it far easier to roam through the universe than humanity. It was much easier and they were much freer. Even Li Hao found it strange that they were consumed with putting down roots in a world. Wasn’t it nice to be completely carefree and at ease?

There were pros and cons to each course of action. Putting down roots in a world limited their freedom. Why do that?

All of the minor worlds ballooned at an impressive rate. It took at least ten million dao crystals for each minor world to be filled. At least one hundred were saturated in the blink of an eye, meaning that roughly one billion dao crystals were converted from the dao strength in a split second.

He’d made back the dao crystals that he’d given the Thunder master, but a violent look still shone from Li Hao’s eyes. He couldn’t dismiss the cruel tendencies in his heart.

This was also a type of emotion and desire. Li Hao continually called upon his inner peace to slowly suppress his internal violence. He had a decent command over the dao of emotions.

The young man pulled from this energy, quietly taking stock of it. He was still a fifth rank at present, but he should be nearing sixth rank since more than seven hundred minor worlds had been filled. He was stronger than before, but Li Hao frowned.

He’d discovered a problem, a very severe problem. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He lacked some premier killing techniques, ones that could serve as his ultimate moves. Although he knew the sword of a thousand daos, that came from the Eternal Sword.

He could combine the world domains of the five elements, but that came from the Five Styles.

He could also freeze time, but that was a function of time itself.

Li Hao realized after the fight that he lacked killing methods unique to himself. He’d also trained in sword dao, but based his cultivation off the Eternal Sword intent. Although he’d modified it into the Hao Moon sword intent, all things did not deviate from their origins. It was still the form of the Eternal Sword intent.

The Sword Sovereign’s weapon was very strong! Of that, there was no doubt. How could he stand against seventh ranks when he was a sixth rank, if not for that?

Li Hao was a latecomer, at the end of the dao. His mastery of sword dao did not measure up to the Sword Sovereign. The young man wouldn’t unnecessarily inflate his self-worth and think that his sword could match the Sword Sovereign’s.

Void could at least combine six daos into one, even though his punch of the six daos was a modification of the Divine Light Punch. He could bring immense battle strength to bear and even break through a seventh rank chaos beast’s physical body.

Li Hao had had to wait until their target weakened enormously before he could cut it down. The amount of strength that he could flare with was less than Void’s.

There were only six daos in Void’s punch, but they could come together so strongly that they eclipsed Li Hao’s sword of a thousand daos.

I have no issues taking down sixth ranks, but seventh ranks... Well, I can do it so long as they aren’t chaos beasts.

However, he was currently in Dragon Region. All of his opponents were chaos beasts and it was normal to find a seventh rank chaos beast. Once he found another similar encounter, he would still not be able to suppress his opponent, despite reaching sixth rank.

“I have many great daos and world domains, but they’re all kind of weak. Despite all of them being gathered together, I still lack impressive force that I can erupt with...”

Li Hao thought through his current shortcomings as he corralled the river. Who was the strongest in offense among the chaos? Was it the Sword Sovereign? Or the Human King? Perhaps the Dragon master? All of them were very strong. Their great dao was strong too!

But... Li Hao looked at a world in the distance and sank into deep thought. What truly caused everyone to be wary was offensive strength that even the Human King was cautious of—the power of destruction.

Chaos tribulations!

The thunder-attributed power within chaos tribulations was a decent force, but those such as the Human King was unafraid of it. Otherwise, the Thunder master would be invincible.

What everyone was truly afraid of was the power of destruction!

Li Hao might have experienced the largest number of chaos tribulations within the universe. One could say that no one knew chaos tribulations better than him and no one was more familiar with destructive force than him.

From Silver Moon to present day, from an isolated world to traveling through the chaos universe... the young man had endured too many tribulations. He’d weathered each of them with just his own body, wearing them down until they dissipated.

Otherwise... his last foray into life and death had been proof that continued entanglement with chaos tribulations would result in them pursuing him until they obliterated him!

“Does the power of destruction focus on destruction as its core tenet?” Li Hao sank into contemplation. Time wasn’t mature enough, so it couldn’t be thrown around every which way. It was chaos tribulations that were mature.

Should I focus on the power of destruction as the core of sword dao?

He’d made destruction the primary focus and thunder and lightning the secondary, prior to reforging the Hao Moon Sword. The young man fought with chaos tribulations and brought them down when he unsheathed his sword.

Perhaps changes in sword dao was what he should focus on next. Otherwise, he had plenty of methods with life and death, the five elements, and sword dao that focused on emptiness and revitalization. However, he didn’t have many moves that dealt supreme lethal force.

Not being able to inflict any damage to the seventh rank had immensely disappointed Li Hao. Before this fight, he’d thought that his sword of a thousand daos was strong enough. In fact, it was terrifyingly strong!

But today, he thought otherwise.

Chaos tribulations can overcome even eighth ranks—it’s something that they’re all afraid of. This means to say that no one’s found a way to curb it!

Li Daoheng had intended to surpass the Eternal Sword during his stay in Silver Moon and walk the path of destruction for the sword. He just hadn’t found success even by the time Li Hao killed him. Despite that, he’d inflicted a wound from sword intent in the young man’s river.

Li Daoheng had been very strong and possessed great potential! He’d been obsessed with surpassing the Sword Sovereign. Although that might have been too cocky of him to think so, the idea of making destruction the focal point of his dao might not have been wrong.

The greatest punishment that the great dao could bring to bear was a chaos tribulation!

“The power of destruction... or the force of a cataclysm?” Li Hao murmured to himself. Were chaos tribulations a combination of thunder, lightning, and destruction, or were the two kinds of power not a kind of great dao? Instead, it was many types of great dao combined into a kind of cataclysm?

Indeed, a cataclysm.

These tribulations targeted daos of two extremes, the five elements, the power of time, and everything that exceeded the chaos’ expectations. That meant this power was the strongest of all. After all, it levied constraints on the power of time before time was fully mature.

If time was the foremost among the myriad of daos and space was number two... Should this be modified to this kind of cataclysm being number two?

Or was it number three, with number one and two being hard to separate?

Time was also restrained by chaos tribulations for the moment. Although that also had to do with Li Hao being too weak, yet time was supposed to be invincible by itself...