In the Longevity Realm, Lan Xiaobu’s body was enveloped in flowing Dao charms before he vanished from his spot. Moments later, his figure reappeared.
Holding the jade slip, Lan Xiaobu murmured, “So it’s another form of rule integration.”
The concealment divine ability Dilan had given him was a form of rule fusion, transforming oneself into a rule. Unlike Lan Xiaobu’s Heavenly Gang Transformation, which mimicked cosmic rules, Dilan’s technique hid one’s form and merged the entire body into the rules. Lan Xiaobu was certain Dilan had barely scratched the surface of the Cosmic Tree’s concealment method, yet it was enough to fool him.
As for the Cosmic Tree’s technique, Lan Xiaobu now understood. It didn’t transform into or merge with cosmic rules—it *became* the rules themselves.
In other words, the Cosmic Tree was composed of countless rules within the Great Cosmos. To find it, one had to comprehend the Great Cosmos’ cosmic rules.
But Lan Xiaobu cultivated his own Great Dao, never relying on the Great Cosmos’ rules. How could he understand them? The only way would be to abandon his own Dao and cultivate anew using the Great Cosmos’ rules.
That was impossible. Not only would cultivating with those rules subject him to the Cosmic Tree’s control, but he’d never forsake his own Dao for another.
To master the Great Cosmos’ rules without relying on them, there was one solution: rule extraction. Strip the Great Cosmos’ rules and transform them into his own divine ability.
Lan Xiaobu’s divine sense focused on the Cosmic Dimensional Model. On his own, extracting the Great Cosmos’ rules would take tens of thousands of years. Could the human race survive that long?
Fortunately, he had the Cosmic Dimensional Model. With his understanding of the Cosmic Tree’s concealment and the model’s aid, he was confident he could extract the rules. Leaving the Longevity Realm, Lan Xiaobu constructed a void dimensional structure. This time, he didn’t rely solely on the Cosmic Dimensional Model to extract the rules of the space. Instead, he infused his own Dao intent into the model’s construction, assisting in identifying the rules. He believed this would be faster.
From Dilan’s jade slip, Lan Xiaobu had learned the Cosmic Tree’s concealment method. Combined with the Cosmic Dimensional Model, extracting the rules of a space, though difficult, took little time. Within half a day, he extracted the first rule: the water attribute rule.
After the first, he quickly extracted the five elemental rules. Within a month, Lan Xiaobu had extracted thousands of diverse rules. He noticed that the more he progressed, the faster he and the Cosmic Dimensional Model became at extracting rules. Though he hadn’t yet developed his own concealment divine ability, he began to understand Weiju World’s technological approach. Their rule databases—weren’t they similar to what he was doing? By extracting the Great Cosmos’ rules and creating his own divine ability, wasn’t he akin to their rule-breaking weapons, which fused rules to counter cultivators relying on them?
He chuckled. So the so-called technological world was built on the foundation of the Great Dao.
Then a thought struck him: if he went to Weiju World and took their rule database, wouldn’t that save him from extracting rules himself?
He dismissed the idea. The Cosmic Tree, a master of an entire cosmos, would never share critical rules with Weiju World, even if it aided their database. Their database likely posed little to no threat to the Cosmic Tree.
However, Weiju World’s database had other uses. If he could seize it and share it with human cultivators, their rule-breaking weapons would become a joke.
Destroying Weiju World’s weapons didn’t require mastering one’s own Great Dao; acquiring their database would suffice.
Realising this, Lan Xiaobu saw Weiju World’s mystique and power as overrated once understood.
Six months later, Lan Xiaobu had extracted a million Great Cosmos rules. He stopped there. The Great Cosmos was vast, with billions of rules—extracting them all was impossible.
For him, a million rules were enough to derive a fully unique Great Dao divine ability, inspired by Mo Wuji.
During their discussions, Lan Xiaobu learned of Mo Wuji’s Life-and-Death Wheel, a divine ability that grew by absorbing life-and-death energy. Self-evolving abilities were rare, each earth-shattering, but some could backfire on their wielder.
Lan Xiaobu reasoned that instead of spending countless years extracting rules, he could create a divine ability that automatically fused with the rules of any space it was used in.
Each time he used it, any unfamiliar rules would integrate into the ability, allowing it to grow. This was far faster than using the Cosmic Dimensional Model to extract rules. As an auxiliary ability, it was unlikely to backfire.
Once formed, this ability could not only conceal him but also locate the hidden Cosmic Tree. With this in mind, Lan Xiaobu’s Dao charms flowed again, and he vanished once more. Moments later, he reappeared.
“Superb ability!” Lan Xiaobu couldn’t help but exclaim. No wonder the Cosmic Tree was impossible to find unless it revealed itself. His new ability had only fused a million Great Cosmos rules, including many fragmented ones, yet no one could detect him when hidden. If he integrated all the Great Cosmos’ rules, no one could find him unless he chose to appear.
He named it the Rule-Devouring Divine Ability. Though derived for concealment, its greatest strength was collecting rules and detecting hidden entities.
Lan Xiaobu was tempted to test it in the current space but restrained himself.
With his current skill, using it would likely reveal faint traces of the Cosmic Tree. But he couldn’t act now—doing so might alert the tree, which could have other concealment methods. Moreover, after finding it, he needed to bind it. Bucheng World was unsuitable; a battle with the Cosmic Tree could destroy it.
The Tianmeng Clan hadn’t reached Bucheng World, so many human cultivators remained. Given the Cosmic Tree’s malicious nature, if bound, it might first annihilate Bucheng World’s human cultivators.
The best place to act was the Central World, where the Cosmic Tree Spirit had appeared, and perhaps its roots lay.
But to act there, he needed to visit Jicheng World first.
He smirked—didn’t Ling Zhuzhen have the Chaos Supreme Treasure, the Cosmos Heart Shield? It was not only a supreme defensive treasure but also ideal for binding. With it, his chances of restraining the Cosmic Tree would soar.
However, Jicheng World’s Beixing Heavenly City was too far. Even at the Seventh Step of the Great Dao, with his Seven Realms Stone’s speed increased tenfold, reaching Jicheng World would take decades, perhaps a century.
Bucheng World had teleportation arrays, but Jicheng World’s were disabled. Since locking their world with the Cosmos Heart Shield, no one could teleport there.
How could he reach Jicheng World quickly? Lan Xiaobu recalled something: the Tianmeng Clan and Weiju World’s armies had conquered multiple realms in the Great Cosmos in just over a century. How did they manage it?
Even if they could crush any human world, how did they cross such vast distances without wasting time?
Unable to linger, Lan Xiaobu summoned the Seven Realms Stone. Instead of returning to Seven Cosmos Heaven, he aimed to capture a few Tianmeng cultivators. He needed to uncover how their armies traversed the Great Cosmos’ vast distances to destroy human worlds so swiftly.
Mastering that method would save him immense time.
