What is the main body doing?! Lei Ying was baffled in his heart, but he didn't dare disturb him too much, and could only wait quietly.
The ferocious river current crashed in, and Yang Kai's figure swayed left and right with the冲击 of the water, yet he remained standing firm. This direct contact with the force of Chaos was extremely dangerous, but it allowed Yang Kai to see more clearly, to better comprehend the essence of truth.
After a long time, Yang Kai's physical body began to rot and disintegrate, golden blood seeping into the river water and vanishing in the blink of an eye.
Just as Lei Ying was holding his breath in anxiety, Yang Kai suddenly plunged further downward, arriving directly at the boundary where Chaos split into Yin and Yang, and continued his comprehension.
His body deteriorated even further — his skin cracked and split, layer after layer of flesh scraped away by the river's current. Yang Kai's expression was savage, clearly enduring immense agony, yet he gritted his teeth without a sound and pressed on.
Lei Ying watched with his heart in his throat, terrified that the main body might carelessly perish here, which would be a laughingstock to end all laughingstocks.
After yet another stretch of time, Yang Kai caught a faint glimmer of understanding and continued to descend, soon reaching the boundary where Yin and Yang separated into the Five Elements.
Great swaths of flesh sloughed off his body. The power of his Dragon Vein and the strength of the Ageless Tree had been pushed to their absolute limits, yet they could only barely slow the worsening of his injuries.
When Yang Kai made his final descent, arriving at the point where the Five Elements transformed into the myriad Daos, his entire aura had weakened to the barest whisper — like a candle flame in a storm, liable to be snuffed out at any moment.
And his whole body was a ruin of blood and mangled flesh. The ceaseless scouring of the Endless River's waters made his injuries look impossibly grave, a sight of infinite misery.
If not for the single thread of vitality still flickering within him, and the fact that the River of Space-Time still held together, Lei Ying would have assumed the main body had already perished.
Lei Ying was truly terrified now. He vaguely understood what the main body had been up to, but this was far too risky — the slightest misstep would mean irreversible doom.
Deep within the Endless River, Yang Kai's battered body lay still, allowing the waters to buffet him from every direction, his aura weakening steadily until it reached some critical threshold…
Within those previously lifeless eye sockets, two faint points of pale luminescence suddenly flickered to life, like ghostly flames.
"I understand!" The main body's voice echoed in Lei Ying's ears.
In the next instant, countless Great Daos surged within the ruined flesh — not the Great Dao of the Endless River, but Yang Kai's own Great Daos.
The many Daos intertwined and wove together, layering themselves outside the River of Space-Time, and Yang Kai's figure shot upward at tremendous speed.
As he rose, the interweaving Great Daos rapidly evolved. When Yang Kai reached the boundary where the Five Elements birthed the myriad Daos, the countless Daos surrounding him manifested the power of the Five Elements. When he reached the point where Yin and Yang transformed into the Five Elements, those myriad Daos manifested the power of Yin and Yang.
By the time Yang Kai arrived at the uppermost layer of the Endless River, the area around him had become pure Chaos.
And as he ascended, the River of Space-Time coiling around him shook violently, giving Lei Ying an overwhelming illusion of time and space reversing themselves.
It was as though time had turned backward. Upon the tattered body, layers of flesh and blood reappeared from nothingness, gradually filling out and becoming whole once more.
In the end, Yang Kai had fully recovered, no longer the wretched figure from before, though his aura was slightly diminished.
Yet his eyes blazed with vitality, and a hint of joy crept into his voice: "So that's how it is!" He turned to look at Lei Ying. "Do you understand?"
Lei Ying was on the verge of tears — understand what the hell?! He vaguely knew that Yang Kai had been shuttling up and down through the Endless River to comprehend the mystery of Chaos giving birth to the myriad Daos and the myriad Daos returning to Chaos, but he hadn't cultivated the power of myriad Daos himself, so how could he possibly grasp the profound truths within?
All he wanted to say was: stop tormenting me already — watching this is giving me a heart attack…
Yang Kai chuckled softly, seeing right through Lei Ying's thoughts.
It wasn't that he wanted to put anyone through the wringer — the opportunity was simply too rare to pass up.
The first time he had ventured deep into the Endless River, he had channeled his Great Dao power to shield himself, and so there had been nothing to comprehend, nor had he intended to comprehend anything.
It was only after witnessing the ultimate destination of the myriad Daos at the very bottom of the Endless River that the notion struck him on the spot.
Completely abandoning the protection of his Great Dao power, opening his body and mind to absorb the mysteries of Chaos birthing the myriad Daos — this naturally carried enormous peril.
Fortunately, the final result was satisfactory. This journey through the Endless River had yielded tremendous gains, and Yang Kai vaguely sensed that this experience would shape the direction of his future cultivation.
Moreover, the experience had planted a question in his mind.
Was the world's long-held understanding of Mo's true self truly correct? Was Mo really at the Creation Realm?
He had never doubted this before — after all, Cang had said as much — but having personally enacted the return of the myriad Daos to Chaos, he suddenly found that Mo's status as a being of the Creation Realm might be open to debate.
That, however, was a matter for later. To confront Mo's true self, he would first have to eliminate the threat posed by the Mo Clan.
As for his rapid recovery from physical injuries — this was not merely simple healing, but rather a technique of reversing space and time.
His mastery of the Great Dao of Time and the Great Dao of Space had long since reached the eighth level, and with a tool like the River of Space-Time at his disposal, he could anchor a imprint of himself at a particular moment within the river. When the need arose, he could restore himself to that exact state.
This was a wondrous application of the River of Space-Time that he had only comprehended after his breakthroughs in multiple Great Daos during this very expedition. Before this, he hadn't possessed such a technique — primarily because, aside from the Dao of Time and Space, his attainments in other Great Daos hadn't been deep enough.
That was why, during his recovery, Lei Ying had experienced that illusion of time flowing backward. In truth, time had not reversed — it was simply that, under the power of the River of Space-Time, Yang Kai's physical state had been restored to the moment he had anchored.
Of course, this technique consumed an enormous amount of Great Dao power, and it was not without its own toll.
It was a remarkably novel technique, one that could prove extraordinarily useful in certain situations.