“The power of chaos tribulations might not be a simple addition of destruction, thunder and lightning, and chaos. It might be an amalgamation of daos like time and space!” Li Hao made a bold guess, but he was also more or less certain that his guess was true.

He might be able to make this kind of power the focus of his great dao before time matured. This would be his own dao of the tribulation sword!

All living things needed to endure tribulations!

One single setback had not caused Li Hao to sink into depression. It only spurred him onto new effort and renewed interest. Right, I’m going to reconstruct sword dao so my next encounter isn’t like this one. I can tell from this fight that without time, I’m still less than Void even when I gather a myriad of daos and a thousand worlds.

His punch of six daos is stronger than my sword of a thousand daos!

Comparison is needed in cultivation. Where would motivation come from without comparing myself to others? I consumed just as many resources to reach fifth rank as Void did, so why can’t I measure myself against him?

He could punch through the chaos beast’s body, but I didn’t do so at first. So just in terms of pure attack power, I’m already on the losing side.

A refusal to accept defeat was also motivation for cultivators for strive harder.

“The force behind a cataclysm... should be that of destruction! I will reforge the chaos tribulations with the strength of destruction first. When they next reappear, I’ll study them closely to see how I can create real chaos tribulations...”

To think of the deed was to take action. Li Hao was no longer a newbie when it came to cultivating. His comprehension of dao was decent.

A world domain materialized in front of him—one of destruction. Immense power of destruction materialized in the minor world. After repeated thunder tribulations, Li Hao himself had captured some of tribulation’s force.

He quietly took stock of it and attempted to forge sword dao using the power of destruction as the core. The sword was just the medium. The key laid in the attributes of the power that flared from it.

Currently, the Firmament Sword was just a fourth rank weapon. It was having difficulties enduring Li Hao’s strength. It’d almost shattered into pieces when cutting down the earth dragon. Although it maintained its integrity, it was still chipped and short one segment.

Li Hao was immensely resigned by this. It was very difficult to strengthen a weapon through forging. Not even a seventh rank swordsman like the Sword Sovereign possessed a sword worthy of him. His strength would probably take another leap forward if he had a seventh rank weapon.

“I may have obliterated the earth dragon, but most of its bones are still there. Its body was also extremely durable. It might be a good idea to reforge the Firmament Sword with the earth dragon bones as the basis!”

The sword seemed to hum happily at the suggestion. A fourth rank weapon was a good treasure to be the bearer of the river of dao. But in the hands of a master like Li Hao, someone who liked to hack at seventh rank enemies... it was immensely sobering.

Li Hao immediately put his idea into action. It was fine that he didn’t know how to craft weapons. Someone truly adept in this area could use first rank materials to create second or third rank weapons.

Such was a powerhouse of foraging and what the Divine Forge Emperor of New Martial could accomplish.

Meanwhile, weaklings in this dao could create fifth rank weapons from seventh rank materials. That was also a demonstration of capabilities. Hence, Li Hao wasn’t concerned that he wouldn’t be able to raise the Firmament Sword’s level.

So long as my materials are good enough, I’ll be able to make anything better than the tofu you’re currently made of!

Only poor people think of how to forge a second rank weapon from first rank materials. Rich people consider how to turn seventh rank materials into fifth rank weapons!

What am I afraid of! I have materials galore! Li Hao comforted himself. Even if I don’t know this dao, the Firmament Sword can swallow some materials to strengthen itself if worst comes to worst. What’s so bad about that?

Some bones brimming with chaos strength appeared in his hand. They were incredibly durable. Just those bones alone might not be any worse than the Firmament Sword!

“The most premier weapons might be a result of the materials themselves,” Li Hao smiled. “Take the dao chess, for example. It’s created from an eighth rank dao universe. We don’t have any incredible forging skills, but we can turn ourselves into the strongest!

“Firmament Sword, I used you to break through the skies. You are no longer able to do so and can’t even cut down a seventh rank! You’re so useless!

“You’ll be at least fifth rank if you devour these bones, or even sixth rank! If not, I might as well use these bones as swords instead! They’ll be more useful!”

The Firmament Sword vanished without a second word, darting into a piece of bone. That’s right, its master didn’t know how to forge weapons, so... it would forge itself.

It would be a weapon that could grow and develop! That would prevent it from being left behind.

Li Hao laughed. This was good. It would really be very troublesome otherwise. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

With the Firmament Sword busy studying how to strengthen itself, Li Hao studied the power of destruction and began putting his minor worlds in order. He attempted to weave them together, seeing if he could incorporate the sword dao of destruction into them and make it the mainstream dao.

This kind of experiment might require multiple attempts, but it wasn’t a tall order for Li Hao. He wasn’t silly enough to just experiment with different combinations of his minor worlds. Instead, the young man stimulated some energy so that he could reorder them with dao strength.

While the results might not be the most accurate this way, they were still solid experimental subjects.

With that, a sword and a human busied themselves for a while. Li Hao tried this and that to finally incorporate the destructive sword intent into the worlds.

After that, he moved the immaterial worlds en masse, rearranging them according to his needs. Next time he deployed his sword, he would be able to create a simple sword dao of destruction!

......

Li Hao spent three full days in Earth Dragon major world. When he next appeared in public sight, the major world was fully theirs. The few exalted emperors within the world has been executed and the queen was taking custody of the humans on the world.

All was quiet again.

Desolate major world nearby had also been consolidated. The dao crystals that’d been found were split amongst the group. They were just loose change in the grand scheme of things.

The two dao masters, including Panther, had been heavily injured in the fighting. They’d recovered a great deal during this time. Everyone convened when they saw Li Hao rejoin them.

Even Void popped up from somewhere. He hadn’t shown his face in Li Hao’s absence. His sudden emergence resulted in some sidelong glances. This guy really knows how to hide!

“Have you all recovered?” Li Hao asked, then raised a brow when he looked at the queen. Damn, she was third rank already! That was so fast!

He hadn’t detected it before and assigned the never-ending flow of chaos strength to the earth dragon. So it was actually because the woman had broken through!

The power of faith was beginning to feel frightening. No, wait, this was all because of chaos dao.

Even if there were no bottlenecks in the dao of faith, one would not rise from first to third rank in a matter of days.

Li Hao subconsciously looked at Lin Hongyu. She was still third rank, but her death qi was a bit heavy. Life and death were starting to become unbalanced. “You have too little life qi in you!” He frowned slightly.

“I know,” Lin Hongyu nodded calmly. “The daos of two extremes is suitable for some geniuses. I may be one in Silver Moon, but I am not when it comes to exalted emperors. Therefore... I have an idea of breaking that balance and just focusing on the dao of death!

“It’s easier to be adept in only one dao. Determining life and death with a single thought... Life is easier than death. Death is actually very hard. I think I’ll be just as strong if I walk one path to the limit I can!”

“So you won’t walk the cycle of life and death anymore...” Li Hao said after a while.

“It’s not necessarily a good thing to walk it,” Lin Hongyu chuckled softly. “As many cycles as one goes through, their core nature is the same and my age is the same, isn’t that true?”

Li Hao blinked. Why was this suddenly coming up again? He looked at Lin Hongyu, then tilted his head at someone else.

The queen felt incredibly guilty and pretended as much composure as she could muster. She cursed to herself. How dare that old woman tell on me like this! She’s so shameless!

Li Hao frowned slightly and nodded after a while. “The cycle of life and death may not be suitable for everyone. Walking it once will limit your lifespan. It’s not out of the question for you to walk the dao of death. It is a unique dao as well.

“I don’t understand it that well, but seeing as you show signs of forming a domain of death... The dao of death might be more suited for you!”

Lin Hongyu’s dao of death was rather unique. Her targets became her puppets after she killed them, and she even seemed to be building a hell.

Hell was also a sort of dao domain, and dao domains were very hard to form. While hers wasn’t one yet, another question was also that, could one form a domain with just one dao?

Li Hao didn’t know.

But this was indeed a way forward. Could she be enormously strong if she took this path to the end?

The powerhouses that Li Hao had met before did not walk a single dao. Only the seventh ranks of eight rank dao universes did so.

“Since you’re going to focus on the dao of death...” Li Hao gave it some thought. “You can try killing some exalted emperors and seeing if they’ll become your deathsworn. If that’s the case, you’ll have an imperial guard!”

The fourth rank they’d killed last time had become a guard and was still in Lin Hongyu’s hell. However, it’d weakened greatly as of late. It might only be a second rank now. This meant that Lin Hongyu couldn’t maintain her guards for long.

How to preserve their strength and even increase it was what she should consider. If a dead exalted emperor could become her guard and maintain their strength, or even grow stronger... then that was very frightening indeed.

“I know, but I’ve also encountered some difficulties. The greatest one is that the mind of a dead exalted emperor slowly fades away. My hell of death lacks an energy source and can’t absorb any to maintain the strength of the dead...”

A fading of the consciousness!

Li Hao inclined his head. That was indeed a problem. Power would fade when the cultivator’s mind started fading away. That was an ironclad law. How could a zombie without a mind maintain peak condition?

Granted, an exalted emperor’s physical body was very strong to begin with. But no matter how strong it was, the most a fourth rank could do after a period of time was to maintain first rank strength.

Nothing else.

Keeping a dead exalted emperor’s mind who was... a very troublesome problem. And if they could recall their memories...