I Can See Your Combat Power
Chapter 1698 - 137: Epiphany

Chapter 1698: Chapter 137: Epiphany

Before battle commenced, to say that Tang Luo was apprehensive about Yiqi’s Celestial Dragon would be a joke.

With his realm and experience advancing, he had long since become accustomed to people known as prodigies with dazzling talent.

Perhaps Yiqi’s Celestial Dragon was somewhat unique, but cultivators who divide their focus to study the art of medicine, after all, cannot be utterly dedicated and sincere in the martial path.

The heavens, after all, are fair; the time you invest is reflected in the fruits of your labor. As for the bonus in speed brought about by talent?

Anyone who has made a name for themselves, aren’t they all geniuses blessed by the heavens?

This is but a stepping stone on the path of the strong.

Hence, the outcome of this duel was determined from the very start.

Even without the all-encompassing Void Spiritual Body, without the invulnerability to all poisons of the Five Viscera Divine Treasures, just the gap in Spiritual Power alone could crush the opponent.

In the end, martial path is an objective measure of strength and weakness. Although the side of justice may have a mental edge, under the gap of absolute power, these boosts at best only add a reluctant and heroic tinge to a certain defeat.

However, when Yiqi’s Celestial Dragon, disregarding his own safety, injected the concentrated Poison Pearl into his body, the astonishing feats of the Dao Child of the Medicine God Sect still managed to shock him.

The powerful Dharma Body couldn’t block the invasion of the "poison"; the runes of the Undying Battle Body didn’t halt it, and even the peerless divine ability of the Innate Yin-Yang Millstone failed to stop the Poison Pearl from exploding within him.

Faced with such an unstoppable poison, some cultivators of impressive courage would instinctively amputate a limb to halt the spread of the poison.

But Tang Luo did not do so, not because he lacked courage, but out of confidence as a martial arts researcher.

A poisoned ant biting an elephant to death?

Even scientific research must acknowledge the basics, what kind of poison could be so powerful that divine abilities can’t stop it and instantly poison a cultivator of his caliber? He had never heard of such a thing before!

Based on such understanding, he resisted the urge to transfer the Poison Pearl into the Void Stomach and swallowed it whole, and observed dispassionately as the Poison Pearl erupted.

As the "poison" spread through his body, Tang Luo finally understood why neither his Dharma Body nor Divine Treasures could resist this tiny Poison Pearl.

Because this was not a Spirit Art at all, but rather a Spirit Seed containing countless negative emotions!

With a muffled groan, waves of emotions surged, the overwhelming negative emotions triggered the most primal response in his body.

Anger, sorrow, despair, resentment...

Turns out these extreme emotions can inflict such great damage on the Dharma Body; if it were not for being in a fully activated Spiritual Body state, Tang Luo was sure his internal organs would have succumbed due to the onslaught of these negative emotions.

But it just so happened that he received the Poison Pearl in a Spiritual Body state, which means that no matter how torrential and dense these negative emotions were, they would ultimately be futile, at most causing some temporary confusion.

So from the beginning, Yiqi’s Celestial Dragon’s aim was not to defeat himself, but to create an opportunity to escape.

What a pity he still underestimated Tang Luo’s resilience; the impact of these negative emotions was fierce, but compared to the pain of integrating the violent Void Energy into his body, it still fell short.

Unless there were over double the negative emotions gathered, only then could it be possible for the instantaneous impact to cause him to lose his reason for a short while.

Thus, it could be said that the principles of the world are often interconnected. Just as he once bypassed Wang Fuling’s Dharma Body with a Spirit Seed to ruin Wang Chan’s body, on this side Yiqi’s Celestial Dragon returned the favor with the same method. This is probably the rationale behind the saying, "Thirty years on the east bank, thirty years on the west bank."

Bearing the bombardment of negative emotions, the Void Grandmaster activated the secret technique of the clear and bright Dao Heart. With several prolonged breaths, the ink-like negative emotions were expelled like arrows.

As the negative emotions were expelled, his Dharma Body gradually returned to calm, and a flash of Spiritual Light struck Tang Luo.

"Unity of body and soul, could this be the meaning of it?"

Recalling in detail the process by which his body was affected by emotions, the heart of the Void Grandmaster was somewhat stirred.

Because he felt that he might have already touched upon the threshold of the path to sealing his ascension to King Realm.

The epiphany that struck him was too fierce, and before he had time to retract his focus from the starfield to see the unconscious Yiqi Dragon, Tang Luo directly sat down cross-legged in the void and started to verify his conjecture.

The quest for the meaning of life is lifelong, but most of the time, we fail to even find ourselves.

Who am I?

This question is probably the most controversial in the realm of cultivation.

Some say "I" is the true nature, the voice heard when all distracting thoughts are stripped away and one listens with a tranquil heart.

Some say "I" is the past, the aggregate of all past experiences and reflections.

Some say "I" is the body, the traces etched and nurtured by time and the elements.

Some say "I" is self-consciousness, the unique perspective from which one views things.

From the perspective of martial arts research, all these assertions are correct but not comprehensive enough, as any single one of the above cannot fully represent the complete "I".

Without even being able to find oneself, how is one to proceed towards the step of unifying body and soul?

Tang Luo’s path to King Realm was firmly blocked here because he could not find a way to fit the body into the soul or to shatter the soul to merge into the body, thus he was in a deadlock.

Yet the Spirit Seed condensed by the Yiqi Dragon, which contained negative emotions, had opened a new door for him.

If the soul can already accommodate the Sea of Consciousness, why is shedding the former body still so important? After all, even if the limbs are shattered, they can be reformed according to the memory of the soul. Why then can’t the soul exist independently of the flesh?

Tang Luo once thought that this was a limitation due to not having reached the King Realm, but now it seems that this explanation might be a bit too simplistic.

If one carefully introspects, one would find that the soul formed during Fierce Realm, while immensely powerful, also has significant flaws.

This flaw is that the soul is more like an independent observer beyond the body, rather than a feeler, an experiencer.

It’s like an absolute rationality stripped of all emotions, which is flawless for combat, but what about other aspects?

Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind; forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and dharmas.

All these experiences that construct the beauty of the world are void in the soul.

Perhaps in the eyes of Buddhism, this undoubtedly corroborates the notion of the emptiness of all things; but in Tang Luo’s view, if one loses all these beautiful experiences, what difference is there between a person and a rock?

Is a king who has lost all capacity for sensation and experience truly on the correct path to the King Realm?

If it is indeed correct, then why would Wang Fuling’s Dharma Body suffer heartache from Wang Chan’s grave injury, and why would An Yushu’s Dharma Body experience fear from the clamor of the thunderous sword?

The questions that used to lurk in the depths of his heart now have answers.

The so-called unification of body and soul is about inscribing all of the body’s feelings about the world into the soul.

To put it in layman’s terms, it is about transferring all the neurons of the human body into the soul. At that point, a soul that contains both rationality and sensation can truly be called the "super-ego".

And transcending oneself—that is to be the King among men!