Start from a baby to become a Taoist

Chapter 550 Who are you?
Chapter 558

However, back then, it was complete!

There was no blood or malevolent aura on the sword, only the purest, most daring edge that dared to challenge all established rules...
Opposite him was the embodiment of "Heavenly Principle." It was an unimaginably enormous eye, composed of countless runes of order!
That eye, cold and merciless, looked down upon everything, judging everything.

Those who rebel should be executed!

A chilling divine thought resounded throughout the entire chaos. This sound originated from the same source as the one Xu Ran heard in the heart of the furnace!
"Hahaha... My fate is in my own hands, not in the heavens! Who do you think you are, daring to judge me!"

The towering figure laughed wildly and brandished the divine sword in his hand!
The brilliance of that sword strike surpassed everything Xu Ran could comprehend!
With a single sword strike, chaos was cleaved in two, the river of time ceased to flow, and countless newly born worlds perished under this single sword strike!

This is... a war of epochs! A struggle for lineage! The ultimate showdown between order and freedom!
The scene abruptly ends there.

Xu Ran's consciousness receded like the tide.

He still stood beside the broken sword, but his eyes had completely changed!
Shocking! Shocking like never before!
He finally understood!

The so-called "natural law" is not the ironclad law at the beginning of the universe, but rather the one who won in that primordial war!
Its so-called "order" is a hegemony built on the suppression of all "dissent"!

And this boundary sea, the remnants of countless worlds, are probably... all defeated and banished by the laws of nature in that war and the "cleaning" of countless subsequent eras... the losers!
This god-slaying blade is the weapon of the first and strongest "rebel"! The reason it is here is probably because it was broken and fell here during that earth-shattering battle!

The "fierce aura" it exudes is not an evil force at all, but rather the indomitable fighting spirit of that rebel, the echo of his "rebellious" path!
This force is inherently incompatible with the order of natural law!
"That's it...that's it!"

A monstrous wave surged within Xu Ran's heart, but then, this wave transformed into a raging inferno!

Since we have different paths, then... we should not work together!
Heaven sees me as an "anomaly" and wants to eliminate me at all costs. Then I will inherit this "rebellious" will and fight against your so-called Heavenly Principles to the very end!

boom!
Having figured all this out, Xu Ran's mind was suddenly enlightened! He no longer hesitated or feared, and took the initiative to open his divine soul and Dao foundation, frantically circulating the "Indestructible Reincarnation Scripture"!
"Come! With the fire of rebellion, I will be reforged!"

At this moment, his shattered Cycle Domain seemed to have found its own "Dao"! It was no longer a simple cycle of life and death, but had been infused with a... domineering power that dared to pull all the myriad Daos of the heavens into the cycle of reincarnation and reshuffle the deck!
Buzz!
The Blade of Godslayer seemed to sense his pure will, this "rebellious" aura that shared the same origin as his own!

Its sword, which had been silent for countless epochs and only vented its resentment at fixed times, actually responded on its own at this moment!
A blood-red primordial energy, purer and more powerful than ever before, no longer erupted violently, but flowed into Xu Ran's body like a blood-red dragon, sweeping down his arm!
"what--!!!"

Xu Ran looked up and let out a long roar, not of pain, but of ultimate... exhilaration!
Although this power was still violent, the moment it entered his body, it resonated in a strange way with his "anomaly" origin!
Click!Click!
His cracked Dao foundation, instead of collapsing under the cleansing and nourishment of this primordial energy, began to be repaired and reshaped at an astonishing speed!

Those cracks were filled with the even more resilient and domineering laws of "reversal"!

His Dao Lord Dharma Image, the statue originally forged from ten thousand strands of glazed glass, was now stained with a layer of eerie blood color. Between the statue's brows, there was a hint of arrogance, looking down on the world and daring to punch the sky!
His cultivation level began to soar wildly!

Dao Lord First Heaven Early Stage... Stable!
Mid-stage of the first level of Dao Lord... Breakthrough!
Dao Lord First Heaven Late Stage... Breakthrough!
Dao Lord First Heaven... Perfect!
That bottleneck that had plagued countless cultivators for millennia was as fragile as a sheet of paper in the face of this unreasonable primordial energy!
"Give it to me...break it!"

Boom!

A deafening roar, as if the heavens and earth were splitting apart, erupted from Xu Ran's body! A far more powerful aura than before burst forth from him!
Dao Lord, Second Heaven!
And this is not the end!
That crimson dragon-like energy continued to pour in, propelling his cultivation level to new heights!
Dao Lord Second Heaven: Early Stage...Mid Stage...Late Stage...

This earth-shattering change finally caught the attention of the three scavengers who were engaged in a fierce battle.

"what?!"

"This aura... someone is absorbing the source of malevolent energy!"

"Who is beneath the sword?!"

The three of them stopped what they were doing at the same time, turned their heads sharply, and looked at the huge broken sword.

When they saw the figure sitting cross-legged beneath the sword, enveloped in crimson divine light, his aura surging at an unbelievable speed, disbelief and... raging fury simultaneously appeared in three pairs (or rather, tens of thousands) of eyes!

They fought tooth and nail here, until they were bloodied and battered, and yet, right under their noses, someone stole the biggest piece of the cake?!
Moreover, this person...

"First level of Dao Lord? No... second level?!" The black-armored knight's voice was filled with astonishment and uncertainty. "How is this possible?! How could a mere early-stage Dao Lord withstand the infusion of the source of baleful energy?!"

“His Dao… is strange!” The ten thousand eyes on the Thousand-Eyed Flesh Mountain stared intently at Xu Ran, as if trying to see through him. “His Dao aura is actually perfectly in harmony with the ‘reverse’ will of this God-Slaying Blade!”

"Kill...him!" The stitched giant roared in anger. Its simple mind could not comprehend all this complexity. All it knew was that its "food" had been stolen!
boom!
It suddenly hurled the giant bone axe in its hand at Xu Ran!
The giant axe cleaved through the sky with terrifying power that tore the heavens and earth apart; wherever it passed, space was reduced to nothingness!

This strike is enough to instantly kill any cultivator below the fifth level of Dao Lord!

However, Xu Ran didn't even open his eyes in the face of this devastating attack.

Just as the giant white bone axe was about to strike.

Clang——!
A crisp sword cry rang out from the blade of the Godslayer!

A faint, blood-red sword aura flashed from the sword, striking the blade of the giant bone axe with perfect precision!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a slight "click" sound.

That terrifying weapon, formed from the bones and resentment of countless gods and demons, began to break apart inch by inch from the spot it was struck, and finally, with a "bang," it completely turned into bone dust!
"What?!" This time, even the black-armored knight and the Mountain of Flesh with Ten Thousand Eyes exclaimed in horror!

The Godslayer Blade... is actually actively protecting this person?!

This is not just a simple fit, it's practically... an official recognition!
This supreme weapon, dormant for countless epochs, whose energy even a peak Dao Lord could only cautiously absorb, has actually... recognized a master?!
In that brief moment of shock, Xu Ran's aura surged to its peak once again!
Dao Lord Second Heaven... Perfect!
boom!
Another loud bang of breakthrough!

Dao Lord of the Three Heavens!
A powerful shockwave emanated from him, sweeping outwards and forcing the three Dao Lord peak experts to retreat repeatedly!

Finally, the crimson dragon that had poured into his body gradually became illusory and eventually merged completely into Xu Ran's body.

The malevolent tide has subsided.

The world returned to its ancient, deathly silence.

Xu Ran slowly opened his eyes.

The depths of his eyes were no longer clear as before, but stained with a faint blood-red hue, as if two mountains of corpses and seas of blood were floating within them. When he looked at the three scavengers from the Boundary Sea, his gaze was calm, yet it carried an indifference that came from the very marrow of his bones.

That's the look a superior gives to a subordinate!

He slowly stood up, feeling the unprecedentedly powerful force surging and roaring within his body, and a cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

Although he hasn't yet recovered to his peak fourth level, his third level Dao Lord realm, coupled with his Dao foundation which was reforged through the "reverse" Dao principles and is several times stronger than others of the same level, and... the God-Slaying Blade behind him, though broken, can still unleash a trace of divine power!

The three guys in front of me seem to be... no longer a threat.

"Finished?"

Xu Ran spoke softly, his voice not loud, yet it clearly carried throughout the entire battlefield.

"Now, it's my turn."

These five words, plain and unremarkable, seemingly devoid of any worldly charm, yet they appeared to possess a magical power that made words come true. When they were uttered by Xu Ran, this ancient battlefield, shrouded in malevolent energy for countless eons, fell into utter silence in an instant.

The wind stopped; the howling gale, which had sounded like a ghost's wail, became gentle at that moment.

The malevolent aura ceased, and the surging, blood-red mist, like a vast ocean, solidified into amber at that moment.

Even the three scavengers who stood at the peak of the Dao Lord realm and were infamous in the Boundary Sea seemed to have their boiling killing intent and anger tightly gripped by an invisible hand!

Their pupils contracted to their maximum size in an instant.

It wasn't because of the aura of a third-level Dao Monarch emanating from Xu Ran. In their eyes, a third-level Dao Monarch was still an ant, an existence that could be crushed at will.

What terrified them was that when Xu Ran uttered those words, the towering "Godslayer Blade" behind him emitted a soft yet seemingly earth-shattering sword cry...
Clang!
This sword cry, neither high-pitched nor piercing, seemed like the plucking of the strings of the Great Dao, containing a supreme "reason." But this "reason" was not the "order" of heavenly principles, but a "reverse reason" that severed all constraints and destroyed all rules!
At the sound of that sword's cry, the black-armored knight felt his proud path of slaughter tremble, as if a subject had encountered a king! The ten thousand eerie eyeballs of the Thousand-Eyed Mountain of Flesh simultaneously shed ghastly green tears of blood. Its cursed divine will, which had invoked fragmented laws, was forcibly severed from its connection to the laws of heaven and earth by this "defying logic"! The Stitched Giant let out a painful roar; every inch of its incomparably powerful body wailed, as if this will was fundamentally deconstructing and reversing it!

"Who...who are you?!" The black-armored knight's voice trembled with terror for the first time. His hand, gripping the black spear, was bulging with veins, yet he found that even his courage to launch an attack was being eroded inch by inch by the sound of the sword's cry.

This has gone beyond a contest of power levels; it is an absolute suppression at the level of the essence of life, or rather, at the level of the "Dao"!

Xu Ran didn't answer.

He simply raised his right hand slowly and extended one finger.

A faint crimson light flowed and condensed at his fingertips, eventually transforming into a crimson sword aura about an inch long, almost tangible.

This sword energy was very small and weak; compared to that towering broken sword, it was as insignificant as a speck of dust.

But the moment it appeared, the three Dao Lord peak experts—the Black-Armored Knight, the Thousand-Eyed Flesh Mountain, and the Stitched Giant—simultaneously felt an unprecedented crisis of death! It was as if they were being coldly stared at by an ancient ferocious beast that had been sleeping for billions of years, with its newly opened eyes.

"escape!"

This thought screamed wildly in the minds of both the black-armored knight and the Mountain of Flesh! They were scavengers of the Boundary Sea, desperate outlaws who licked blood from the edge of a knife; their instinct for danger was ingrained in their very bones. They had no doubt that if they were touched even the slightest bit by that tiny sword aura, their fate would be far worse than annihilation of their souls!

Without any hesitation, the black cloak behind the black-armored knight suddenly exploded, transforming into billions of howling demonic shadows that fled wildly in all directions, while his true form transformed into a black streak of light that was ten times faster than when he arrived, disappearing into the depths of the Boundary Sea!
The Thousand-Eyed Mountain of Flesh was even more decisive. Its massive body exploded with a deafening roar, transforming into tens of thousands of eyeballs! Each eyeball contained a wisp of its primordial divine will, shooting towards different void rifts like a green meteor shower. This was its life-saving divine power, "Myriad Thoughts Incarnation"—if even one eyeball escaped, it could expend a tremendous cost to reshape its true form!

Only the sculpted giant, lacking in intelligence, reacted a beat slower. It simply followed its fighting instincts, roaring as it slammed its massive fists, composed of countless skeletal arms, towards Xu Ran! This punch unleashed all the blood and power within its body; wherever the fist passed, large sections of space collapsed, forming a pitch-black hole radiating an aura of destruction!
Despite the different reactions of these three powerful figures, Xu Ran's expression remained as indifferent as still water.

His gaze didn't even look at the two who had already fled, but instead fell on the mountain-like giant fist that was smashing towards him.

(End of this chapter)