Lex closed his eyes, and his consciousness sank into his soul sea. He walked toward the Book of the Incomplete Dao King Technique, which was floating near the remnant of Crolis's Dao comprehension.
A cluster of memory spheres that he hadn't absorbed last time drifted near the book, like dormant neighboring stars.
The book responded to his presence. It wove through the spheres and glided into his hand.
He opened the first page and the Sword Dao Qi Rune, shimmering with a faint blue light, caught his attention immediately.
"Although I have mastered the Sword Dao Qi Rune," he murmured, running his hand over it, "I still can't use it easily."
He flipped to the next rune, his fingers tightening slightly on the edge of the page.
To fully utilize this rune, he needed to advance to the Dao Initiate Realm, a level he had not yet achieved. Nevertheless, his situation was far from ordinary.
Due to his unique condition, he could access fifty percent of the rune's potential. Although this wasn't ideal, his nearly limitless origin energy, provided by the crystal ball, gave him a dangerous edge.
He wasn't sure how he would measure up against real Dao Initiate cultivators. Still, he had some theories.
Early stage? He would crush them. He wouldn't just beat them; he would obliterate them, even with his avatar body.
Normally, raw power alone couldn't bridge the gap between the Origin Realm and the Dao Initiate realm. The difference was foundational.
Even at their peak, an Origin Realm cultivator could throw punches for trillions of years and still not hurt an early Dao Initiate.
The moment someone stepped into that realm, their essence changed completely. They resonated with the Dao. Their body, energy, and spirit evolved.
However, Lex was no ordinary Origin Realm cultivator; he was never meant to follow that path.
With the crystal ball, he could fight a war of attrition for eons. Behind that was his true body: the universe.
If he unleashed even a sliver of its power, an early-stage Dao Initiate wouldn't just lose; they'd be overwhelmed before realizing their mistake.
One attack from Lex's true body would instantly end their Dao path.
As for middle stage Dao initiates? They were somehow trickier. However, if he trapped them in his universe and forced them into a prolonged battle, he could wear them down, bleeding them of energy until they collapsed under the pressure.
But that would also come with consequences. The lives in the universe would be in grave danger, a fact he didn't like.
As for the Top Dao Initiate Realm, Peak, or Pseudo Dao Master? He didn't fool himself. They would easily kill his avatar.
His current body and cultivation base as a Pseudo Dao Initiate were far weaker than these stages' depth, power, and precision.
But his true self—the Universal Body—was another story.
They wouldn't win against that. Well not unless they had the power to destroy a universe completely.
And not theoretical destruction, but an actual collapse. Which meant they would have to erase all kinds of laws, scatter time, and break cause and effect.
Even if they spared a single fragment; a cell, a soul, or a speck of dust—his will could possess it and escape, but survival wasn't resurrection.
A lone tiny or large fragment might carry his will, but reforming his consciousness from a mote of dust could take eons, well that is if it ever happened at all.
The Voidsea was vast, dangerous and the remnant could be lost, corrupted or found by something worse.
For all practical purposes, he was immortal but not invincible. To truly kill him, they would need to destroy him completely. Meticulously. No mistakes, no remnants left behind.
Despite his near full immortality, he didn't roam the Voidsea. He didn't seek out for battle or hunt for ancient ruins like the mad Dao seekers in the Voidsea.
He carried the weight of a universe, its laws, its balance, and its lives. That responsibility bound him tighter than any chain.
Beneath it all, the is one personal reason he didn't, which was that he feared death.
Not the death of this body at the moment, this body was just a clone and it is replaceable.
His real fear was annihilation, the kind that leaves no trace, no second chance, and no echo in the void.
Without these limitations, he would already be out there, tearing through the Voidsea and taking what others could only dream of with his powerful immortality trait.
Moreover, the power to completely erase the universe didn't come cheap. It was rare and could only be found at the middle of the cultivation food chain: Peak Dao Grandmasters.
First, a Peak Dao master could threaten a small universe—Lex's true body—but not directly and not with pure force.
They would have to rely on layers of powerful techniques, forbidden paths, and underhanded methods, tricks derived from countless lesser Dao truths.
It wouldn't be clean and it wouldn't be easy, either. In theory, though, it was possible if everything lined up.
But a Dao grandmaster? They were a different breed.
With a single attack, a peak Dao grandmaster could reduce a small universe to dust. No buildup. No tricks.
It was just overwhelming force, the result of having mastered a greater Dao and being about to merge it into their essence.
A medium-tier universe demanded more. Even a Dao Grandmaster would need to use high-level Dao King techniques, the kind that burned through their essence and left permanent scars on their Dao Gems.
Most wouldn't dare unless the reason was absolute. The cost was too high.
However, in larger tier and super-large-tier universes, power alone wasn't enough.
The warfare changed.
It wasn't just about overwhelming size or complexity; it was about willpower. They would going toe-to-toe with the cosmic will itself.
Especially the cosmic will of super larger-tier universes, they different from those below their tiers, they are thousand times more powerful than the larger tier universe's cosmic will and so on.
As for the Dao Kings and Dao Emperors, they were in a league of their own.
They were Dao Seekers of a higher order.
When a Dao King moved, even super-large-tier universes became fleeting obstacles in the path of something far greater.
But to a Dao Emperor?
Those universes were just bubbles; fragile spheres housing short-lived, insignificant life. Only Chaotic Universes held true weight to them. Real challenge and real meaning.
Lex stared at the shimmering rune, then whispered to himself,
"I wonder when I'll reach the Dao Emperor realm..." He paused, then shook his head. "No, not reach it. When will I be strong enough to stand above them?"
He buried this thought deep in his mind and walked toward the spherical remnant of Crolis's dao comprehension.
It pulsed faintly with a dark aura and had several tendrils swaying from it.
He sat cross-legged in front of it.
"Let me see what this Dao is all about," he murmured as he extended his consciousness into the sphere.
Instantly, a vast, infinite, and formless barrage of information surged into his mind.
His crystal ball shuddered once in response, then glowed steadily. Then immediately his mind stilled.
"So the Dao isn't just one, but many," he murmured, his eyes half-closed. "Not even just many..." He paused. "No, the lesser Daos are the countless." he corrected himself.
From what Lex gathered, becoming a Dao Initiate meant transforming one's Origin Law into a Dao, usually a Lesser Dao.
That was the foundation. Every cultivator started from there, without exception.
Well, not almost every cultivator.
There were rare cases—monsters—who mastered two or more Origin Laws before entering the Dao realm.
These individuals could fuse their origin laws into the prototype of a Greater Dao. On paper, it sounded like a superior path.
However, in the Voidsea, this path was discouraged.
Not because the resulting Dao Initiates were too strong, but because they rarely got anywhere.
Progress became nearly impossible.
Even with immense power, those who formed a Greater Dao prototype found themselves stalled, unable to advance.
Reaching the middle stage of the Dao Initiate realm became a distant dream.
And time was not on their side.
A Dao Initiate's lifespan was long, ten Void Epochs. Each epoch could span the creation and destruction of a small universe. An almost unfathomable stretch of time.
But even that wasn't enough for them.
The path of the Greater Dao demanded more than time. It demanded impossibilities. Most who walked it vanished, their lives ending before they ever took a true step forward.
Lex's mind drifted to the ancient book he had found in the ruins of Crolis.
"The owner of that book wanted someone to master three thousand Daos," he muttered. "He must have been insane."
The Voidsea's Dao seekers mostly merged two or three Origin Laws and called it a Greater Dao prototype, only to choke on their own ambition.
But how could this condition of "three thousand perfected Daos" be made into a foundation so vast that it could give birth to a Sovereign directly? It wasn't just madness; it was an abomination on a grand scale.
"And that was just the first condition," he thought.
The second?
One had to become a Dao Sovereign, not just in title, but in essence. A Sovereign whose existence was rooted in those three thousand Daos.
Lex exhaled sharply, he almost laughed at the absurdity.
"Just thinking about it makes me want to curse that lunatic," he said.
It was ridiculous, impossible, and arrogant beyond measure. And yet, something in Lex liked it.
"If the conditions are that absurd..." he thought, narrowing his eyes. "Then the reward must be unimaginable."