Let’s wind back time for a few moments.
When Da Hai’s water interacted with Liu Er’s body, this was for a few reasons. First of which, the monkey’s body was so unbreakable that any direct assault did virtually nothing. Neither Da Hai, Hongjun, or even Luohu repeatedly bashing into him would do enough damage to kill him. However, this was only in the case of direct assault.
Da Hai’s water wasn’t some planned attack on a specific weak point to obliterate Liu Er. He knew perfectly well once Liu Er was in his grasp that his own firepower wouldn’t heavily damage him.
But Da Hai has been having a terrible day. Motivated by suppressed anger and frustration at all the annoyances that has disrupted him, he wanted to vent now. If Liu Er was too tough to kill, he’d just humiliate him instead.
These tendrils towards Liu Er’s face were in truth, just a spur of the moment. A quick test to see other defences Liu Er had.
For immortals of their calibre, aside from fleshy bodies, their physiques also held myriads of defences. Magical barriers cultivated into their soul, mystical arts they kept active to supplement themselves etc. focusing purely on strong fleshy bodies like Liu Er were just one among many.
Da Hai was fully expecting magical properties of his immensely powerful flesh to emerge. Much to his brief shock, they shot cleanly onto him. Splashing across the monkey’s furry face without resistance, even entering the interior of his body.
That was when everything changed.
In an incredibly short amount of time, Da Hai’s eyes widened ever so slightly. He quickly felt himself entering a new layer of reality. His perception of everything was placed within a weird lens.
Within him, on another plane of existence, his Dao of Distant Seas hummed. It’s grand existence spun as it started interacting with another immense Dao fruit.
‘He let me in so easily? What? Trap?’ Da Hai was confused as he felt no assaults on his psyche. As his Dao touched Liu Er’s, a bridge formed. Much of the sea god’s primary conciseness refocused itself into this interaction.
Ordinarily, cultivators would not bring out their physical Dao fruits, manifestations only occurred as byproducts of their effects. A cultivator guarded one’s very existence religiously as any damage to it could spell disaster.
Liu Er’s body offered no resistance as Da Hai entered. This was how direct contact between Daos was formed so easily.
In this world of two Dao’s, Da Hai witnessed what in laymen’s terms was a debate. Two perceptions of reality summarized into mystical fruits trying to influence each other. More accurately, it was Liu Er’s Dao fruit loudly yelling while Da Hai’s fruit merely listened.
The comparison of two immortals fighting being a discussion on a Dao was an unarguable truth. The Dao, meaning the way is a path in which an immortal cultivator tries to interpret the cosmos. This path filled with meaning is where a cultivator could derive power from. A battle between Chaos Immortals would hence be two perceptions of the cosmos clashing against one another.
Any spell launched, any martial arts, anything the Dao’s owner does would essentially be an argument. Liu Er’s Dao was like an area of effect spell, a passive argument broadcasted wherever he went. It used to wash over Da Hai until a direct contact formed between their Dao fruits.
In its most basic form, it is a set of principles that defines an aspect of existence. At it’s strongest, in the form possessed by Primal Zenith Chaos Immortals, such a Dao was a fundamental rigid truth that could apply it’s own laws in reality.
All existence, the Chaos Sea, was governed by what the Chaos Godfiends referred to as Grand Dao. The supreme principle where all things emerged and the guiding rule that dictates how things generally worked. It decided cause and effect, when and how Chaos Worlds come and go, how connate life forms can come into existence.
When Taichu began the Chaos Godfiend civilization, he passed down his own method of cultivation. Ancestor Taichu was a visionary who slight to learn from Grand Dao. The nurturing of an independent Dao. If the Grand Dao was the governing force of everything, then one’s independent Dao should become a way to do just the same.
At it’s weakest, its embryotic state, a Dao was in fact a delusion.
When a Great Unity Golden Immortal prepares to seek their own Dao, they must first come up with a concept. A concept that must make sense to them even if it’s entirely ridiculous to anyone else listening. A concept that must be formed from one’s own conclusion, independent of another person’s words.
For example, a personal Dao of fire is created from a cultivator coming up with a ridiculous idea that fire sustains itself from moonlight after contemplation on the subject matter. But this idea cannot be a result of another person telling them the case.
This was why the embryotic state of a Dao is referred to as Delusional Thought. A seed in which the cosmic tree that contains numerous ideas to grow the Dao until it fully comes into form. Delusional Thought is ridiculous unsubstantiated thought that only briefly crossed the mind. Only by sticking by it, and continuously pursuing it can it solidify into something real.
This was why a cultivator’s Dao heart was so crucial. It was not only their reason to cultivate, but their belief in their own Dao. This was their path that they would walk, if they were to develop any doubts, it’ll collapse into oblivion. Da Hai, Hongjun, Zulong, Si Hai, all of them went through this process at some point.
From a Delusional Thought, the cultivator continues to study and incorporate more concepts into their Dao. If the Dao at this point is just a topic heading, this is them adding substance to the text, turning Delusional Thought into Illusional idea.
As an idea, the Dao would posses some weight to it. As a method to perceive existence, it now has enough concepts to retain existence, but not enough to actualize. A transparent model of an evolving concept, hence Illusional Idea. Corresponding to a fully formed cosmic tree, this is the pinnacle of Great Unity Golden Immortals.
Da Hai remembered a time where his own Dao of Distant Seas was at this realm. He’d just come out of the first tribulation and lost his treasured friend. Huoyun was one of the greatest reasons he has to cultivate, but it was Pangu’s mumbling that caused him to come to a conclusion and actualize his Dao.
The relationship between a cultivator and their Dao was a symbiotic one. One nurtured the Dao, and Dao empowers in return. So connected that they can influence each other, yet not be ruled by each other either. Separate but one, this was the underlying cultivation method taught to all individuals within the Chaos Godfiend civilization.
So when the Dao fruit actualizes, when the cosmic tree births the fruit and disappears, it becomes it’s own separate entity contained within the individual. Illusional Idea becomes Intricate Theory, corresponding to Great Principle Chaos Immortal.
A Dao fruit becoming real is what it meant to obtain the great principle. An Intricate Theory was a topic with great amounts of evidence. However it still posses aspects that needs to be ironed out, still imperfect, still unable to wholly convince everyone of it’s validity. When two individuals debate on such a Dao, it was easy to see holes in its make up. As a theory, this type of Dao fruit is identical to al others from across the board.
The next step was Confirmed Law, a stage where a Dao fruit transformed out of its fruit shape. A Confirmed Law is supposed to be a Dao that has almost no doubt in. Similar to a scientific Law, it is essentially a phenomena that is correct to anyone who sees it, only possessing some exceptions. It was called the Primal Origin stage of Chaos Immortal because laws that controlled functions of worlds were a part of the natural order in Chaos Worlds.
Taichu was a true genius to recognize this aspect of Chaos Worlds. To him, cultivating the inherent Dao Laws within a Chaos World as a second order celestial lifeform was like training wheels for cultivating an independent Dao.
But all stages of these steps were subject to one weakness. The belief part of the Dao heart dictated how strong one’s faith was in their Dao. Any doubt was cause for said Dao so start degrading. If at any moment where Da Hai stopped believing in his Dao’s view of reality, the Dao of Distant Seas would immediately degrade.
Over the course of his journey, Da Hai’s relationship with Zulong unknowingly allowed him to comprehend much more of his Dao. He never intended to, but his desire to keep them at arms length, but warming up to and loving them enlightened him to near and far. This influence on his Dao caused it to evolve past the point of law into truth.
A Primal Zenith Chaos Immortal’s Dao was an Unquestioned Truth. A truth being something one is fundamentally unable to argue against, at this stage the Dao is perfect. It is fully in a state where it can no longer degrade as it logically possesses no loopholes anymore.
Absolutely no loopholes.
“Within the context of…yeah you really do not see any,” Da Hai murmured as he watched the Dao-Dao interaction.
He walked forward out of the domain of his Dao and into Liu Er’s. What greeted him was an intoxicating fantastical world. One where he was the center of the universe, the top dog, the top G, the overpowered supreme one. It was exhilarating.
The xianxia world was stupid. Everyone was stupid. Everyone was a weakling in front of his power. He can do whatever he wants and no one can stop him. He is the strongest being ever, far more powerful then anyone else.
The demons were a pathetic lot fighting over dominance but could never win. They were not strong at all because they can never win. The liches were also pathetic weaklings because they died. Everyone else was also a stupid weakling because they are weak.
Only he was strong. He was overpowered. He could beat all of them with just one hand.
It was…
“Pure comedy,” Da Hai said expressionlessly. Everything he as seeing was clearly from Liu Er’s perspective. But Da Hai was fundamentally not Liu Er, he was not some lesser being easily broken down by the strength of Liu Er’s Dao. That’s why, rather than ‘is’, or ‘was’, Da Hai read every argument with ‘should’.
Da Hai continued walking while looking around. Slowly, his expression turned into one of confusion. Something was so very wrong here.
This Dao, the strings connected it to Liu Er, the entire world it projected was disturbingly familiar to him. Not to the current Da Hai as he’d never truly read such stories. But to one of his progenitors, it was intimately familiar.
Da Hai’s face turned to one of bafflement as he analyzed what he was seeing. “This Dao…what the fuck am I looking at?” He exclaimed. Liu Er’s Dao was practically roaring in his face. It’s gargantuan body waved around constantly displaying a hyper specific view of certain people. His eyes widened to their limit as he realized
Da Hai stared through the Dao and into it’s connection with its owner. Inside Liu Er, the connection he shared with his Dao sent back and forth messages non stop. Da Hai felt compelled to rip out his own eyes to grow new ones at the sheer absurdity of what he was seeing.
A cultivator and their Dao were one and split. A symbiotic relationship where both not only benefitted but influenced each other. But influence was the keyword. A cultivator was not ruled by their Dao, they grew, used, and followed it, but never ruled by it.
Cultivators such as Yang Mei were very easily able to abandon their old Dao and follow a new one.
“How did this happen? With the mental fortitude of us perfect inborn beings it shouldn’t…” Da Hai stopped himself as he realized something.
Liu Er was a ordinary human kid who somehow crossed over to this prehistoric world. He was just a normal human, born and bred normal human. A mortal suddenly shoved into an innate god’s body. There must’ve been so much wrong because of the dissonance between both types of life.
Liu Er the innate god was a higher dimensional lifeform who’s brain power is dedicated to understanding the higher dimension he lived in. His sense of time was built to experience yuanhui like they were decades. His inborn instinct was to control his great power and cultivate further.
The normal human mortal kid was just that, a normal kid. He was just another user of an online machine translation WebNovel website who loved to read a specific type of power fantasies. In fact, it was the only works he did read.
Da Hai considered his own human progenitor. Would that human have suffered the same fate were he successfully reborn?
Liu Er’s Dao was truly a wonderful sight. It was certainly similar to other Daos, being an actualized way to define the cosmos. But unlike Dao Hai’s, which was closer to broad concepts, Liu Er’s hyper fixated in specific people and a specific place.
Within this monkey’s Dao, the figure of Haotian floated. He was arrogant, ambitious, ambitious, ambitious, and so ambitious. He was a pathetic weakling who never won any fight and cowardly hid under the table.
There was Zhunti, an utterly pathetic crybaby who cried to get benefits. There was Nuwa, an female stream and arrogant young missy who was a pathetic weakling who never won any fights.
So many others with a hyper specific description of what they’re like and how their lives will turn out. The most important one of all, was the MC. The protagonist the story, the transmigrator, the top G, the self insert, the MC.
The answer could only be obvious. Liu Er’s Dao was built upon his own fantasy.
Da Hai had to sit down. Liu Er’s perception, if it could even be called that was incredible.
His Dao functioned on a few universal truths.
The MC cannot lose, was not allowed to lose. To lose, to tie in a fight, to struggle for a win, to do anything except one shooting the opponent was proof that you are a pathetic weakling who will never amount to anything. “… is a pathetic fool who failed at everything.”
Every character that human would’ve read about would’ve been a villain and lost to the protagonist at one point. Therefore they’re weak, they were pathetic fools who failed at everything.
This world was a xianxia cultivation where one chased immortality and enlightenment into Dao. Therefore everyone is stupid and horny. It was only natural to expect everyone as such.
Above all else however, was that the MC was always right.
But therein lay the issue, this Dao was fundamentally dictating how Pangu’s Chaos World worked. It was trying to dictate how certain individuals was supposed to act. It dictated how the protagonist was supposed to act. Liu Er’s Dao was built upon his former human’s self’s dreams and desires. At it’s very core, it was a nonsensical power fantasy forcing its way into reality.
Except, Liu Er was truly an incompetent cultivator.
A cultivator and their Dao were one and split. Liu Er and his Dao were one and combined. A cultivator is influenced by their Dao, but as its creator and nurturer they rule over it. Liu Er was ruled by his Dao and ruled over it the same.
Da Hai made several hand gestures within Liu Er’s Dao, doing so allowed him to peer into its history. Despite his desire to take his anger out on the monkey, he had to wrap his head around how such a result could’ve happened. It was incomprehensible to the sea god for such a method of Dao cultivation to occur.
Cultivators by their nature can be described as insane as they must bring about an abstract concept into universal truth. But Liu Er was insane in an utterly broken way. Somehow, his personal vision of a fictional depiction of this reality became one with his Dao resulting in this mess.
Eventually, Da Hai understood. “This is…my fault?” He uttered in bewilderment.
Liu Er’s Dao was not originally like this. In fact, the monkey had no idea how cultivation worked int he first place. The human mind did not understand how to tap into his inborn memories being unable to fully acclimate into the higher dimensional innate god body.
But when he began the path of cultivation, he devoured others for food and his bodily instincts reacted. The Six Eared Macaque’s inborn instincts were always skewed towards godfiend cultivation as it was one fourth of the Chaos Demon Ape. Deep down, these instincts already knew everything to do with cultivation as it had become akin to a reflex.
To Liu Er, the ability to formulate a Dao path was like breathing. He didn’t notice he was doing it cause he never thought about it, missunderstanding cultivation to be following preset Dao avenues like his favourite novels. Unconsciously, him devouring others assimilated their existences into a chimera Dao fruit.
Liu Er’s Dao lacked a name, but if Da Hai were to name it he’d call it Dao of Endless Assimilation. His everything was taken from someone else’s work, repurposed to become a unique existence. In this way, his unknowingly made eating a primary goal.
But then, Da Hai attacked his Dao. Liu Er offended Da Hai, so Da Hai forcibly tore down his Confirmed Law, reducing it to the level of Intricate Theory. This was when a catastrophic incident occurred in the monkey’s psyche.
As a human, Liu Er once had an extremely strong desire to experience that aforementioned power fantasy. It was the only lens in which he viewed the setting he know found himself in. When he reincarnated, much of his personality as a human was still intact, that fantasy was only a dream.
When his assimilation Dao began, patient zero was not whoever Liu Er ate. It was actually himself. His everything became the base of the Dao, including this dream. However, at the time, this dream was nothing special beneath the enlightened materials he ate. But as time went on, it grew from all the materials the assimilation Dao consumed.
When Da Hai ripped apart Liu Er’s Dao as punishment, that dream had the perfect opportunity. Already in an evolved state, it took over as the primary concept of the Dao. Spreading it’s tendrils, it completely transformed Liu Er’s Dao. What occurred next was the most mesmerizing negative feedback loop Da Hai has ever seen.
The roles in that fantasy what Liu Er fulfilled was naturally the MC, his behaviour shifted to align under that. But since began acting in that manner, his belief in that fantasy strengthened, becoming the centre of his Dao heart. Every action, every statement, every sequence of events he’ll ever do became an extension of his Dao now commanded by his fantasy.
His conclusion(the power fantasy) was already set, therefore his mind worked backwards to justify it. He has justifiable reasons, therefore that conclusion about this world was set. He doubled down, tripled down, quadrupled down, quintupled down.
After all, Liu Er is always right.
Without realizing it, Liu Er enslaved his Dao under his fantasy. In turn, that Dao enslaved Liu Er by transforming him into it’s perfect puppet. This thereby only reenforces the fantasy. A never ending cycle of control sending the monkey deeper and deeper down the proverbial rabbit hole.
“But you couldn’t complete the Dao,” Da Hai chuckled. “Reality is different from fiction. Even if you believe the likes of the dragons, the innate gods, or the devils to be pathetic stupid weaklings for you to bash on, that doesn’t compute with reality. You’d be forced to rewrite all of this reality so that they can fulfil these roles.
“However, these people are not any lesser than you. Their cultivation is relative to you, even greater than yours. You are not strong enough to rewrite their entire existence. What a joke of a Dao.
“But I do have to say, you completed it in the end. You fled from the west to stop interacting with these people all together. That way, without reality running interference, you can double down on your vision and reach the final conclusion.”
Da Hai didn’t believe Liu Er himself knew what he subconsciously did. His bodily instincts now connected to his Dao understood on some level that as long as Liu Er encountered situations where his expectations ran contrary to reality, it can never reach its Unquestioned Truth State. Liu Er cannot fully be convinced, his Dao will always have flaws.
But away from them, Liu Er fully convinced himself. He rose meteorically to Primal Zenith precisely because his belief in that dream of power fantasy could no longer encounter contradictions. How could a few True, Profound, or Heavenly Immortals resist his rewrite?
In Liu Er’s mind, everything changed to match what he read. Because he’s only ever read machine translations, those terms became the default method he spoke as well. The Earthly Divinities became liches and witches, Luohu was Mori and his devils the magic race, female cultivators became streamers, the Grand Pure One became daddy.
Just like cultivation, the language of the Chaos Godfiends inbuilt in his innate god body was also like an involuntary muscle. Liu Er never questioned how he talked, therefore he never noticed he wasn’t speaking his native tongue. Under the affects of his Dao, he’d just think he’s speaking English. Since this is the prehistoric xianxia world, it was only natural he talked in the same machine translation way.
Liu Er physically could not comprehend another way.
“Haha, this is why one’s mind and one’s Dao path should not become one,” Da Hai couldn’t help but chuckle.
The Dao of Distant Seas has had enough, it pulsated a nauseating affect on Liu Er’s warped Dao. As a Dao steeped in the Wuji principle, it easily pushed back the Unquestioned Truth level Dao. Unlike Liu Er, Da Hai’s Dao has already started the road to become everything.
In real space, Da Hai heard Liu Er’s mad raving. He know saw what his words really were, merely affirmation of his(Liu Er’s) reality. A rejection of the things he saw that didn’t align with how his fantasy viewed it.
Liu Er’s Dao was already a truth, it cannot degrade anymore. But as it experienced contradictions to its truth again, this Dao turned violent. It wanted to swallow everyone else, push them into that same fantasy, force them to live those roles for the MC to bash.
In the most condescending manner he could manage, Da Hai screamed back. “Prehistoric Liu Er is EXACTLY A SLAVE!”
