Jiang Chen's unconscious state had the four great true spirits deeply anxious.
From the conversations between the two ancestors of the Winged Demon bloodline, they had caught wind of crucial intelligence: within seven days, the demon army would mobilize at the Myriad Abyss Island.
Three days had already passed. For all they knew, the demon forces were already marshaling for their advance upon the island.
If Jiang Chen remained unconscious, forget about reaching the Eternal Sacred Land — whether they could even return to Dongyan Island was a very real question.
Should the demons completely seal off the Myriad Abyss Island, without Jiang Chen, the four great true spirits would have no anchor to rally around.
Expecting them to take charge of the situation was plainly beyond their capability.
As things stood, all four of them desperately hoped Jiang Chen would wake soon and take the helm. Through this string of battles against the demons, the four great true spirits had gained enormously — material spoils, resource stockpiles, and most importantly, breakthroughs in cultivation. Each of them yearned to return immediately to Dongyan Island, to the Great Glazed Palace, seal themselves away in secluded cultivation, and shatter through their bottlenecks.
…
In his coma, Jiang Chen's spiritual consciousness had not entirely extinguished. On the contrary, after three days of recovery, his sea of consciousness was gradually regaining its vitality.
And yet, Jiang Chen simply could not awaken. Within his sea of consciousness, thoughts and remnants of spiritual awareness from both his past life and his current one careened about in chaos.
One moment, he seemed to have returned to his previous existence — back before his father the Heavenly Emperor, sitting at the old man's side, studying scriptures and reading through ancient texts.
The next moment, he seemed to be back in his present life, seated with Huan'er atop the Peacock Sacred Mountain, gazing out at the boundless sea of stars.
The miscellaneous thoughts of two lifetimes wreaked havoc within his sea of consciousness. At times, the impulses of past and present seemed to coalesce into two opposing forces — two powers locked in a standoff.
Each force appeared intent on dragging Jiang Chen's life into its own camp.
The two powers reached an impasse. Neither would yield. Neither would compromise. They simply stood at a stalemate, leaving Jiang Chen unable to sort through his tangled thoughts or surface to wakefulness.
Within his spiritual consciousness, Jiang Chen did in fact possess a single, unclouded thread of awareness — a desire to open his eyes, to awaken.
But that sliver of consciousness could never seize the initiative.
The unconscious Jiang Chen did not realize that this was a personal tribulation of the Divine Dao. His physical foundation and his path of martial cultivation had always been nearly flawless, which meant the divine tribulation did not manifest in especially dramatic fashion within his body.
But he had his own weakness all the same.
That weakness was the fate of his two lifetimes — a destiny still left unsorted and unresolved.
This fracture in his fate had left two strands of thought within his spiritual consciousness that had never fully fused, giving rise to his unique tribulation of the Divine Dao.
If he could awaken, this tribulation would be considered safely weathered.
But should the divine tribulation prove too overwhelming, and should he remain unable to wake, it was entirely possible he would never recover.
When Jiang Chen had forced himself to unleash that final attack beyond his limits, overextending his spiritual consciousness, it was tantamount to delivering a killing blow to his own mind.
That strike had pushed his autonomous spiritual awareness to its lowest ebb, robbing him of the ability to freely mediate between the two opposing currents of his past and present lives.