Chapter Twenty: The Lunar Rebirth Method!

Just as the heavenly tribulation of proving the Dao descends and cannot be concealed, the incomplete Heaven-Deceiving Array patterns, constructed from a mere wisp of lingering thought, could no longer fully suppress the scent of a brand-new life force.

The Immortal Road’s majestic pass—a projection of a frontier city from the peak era of the Immortal Realm—now acted as the defense mechanism for these fragments of the Immortal Realm. This creation, founded upon the laws of the Immortal Realm and supported by the boundary walls of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, began to be fully activated.

Distributed throughout the grand law-bound pass, millions of phantom manifestations of gods and demons, each possessing combat power generally surpassing the Ninth Heaven of the Quasi-Emperor realm, awakened in succession and erupted into a frenzied riot.

The earth, which had been deathly silent and seemingly frozen by a pause button, was suddenly infused with vigorous vitality, coming to life in an instant. The clouds and mists that had been congealed in the sky, seemingly fixed for eternity, began to swirl slowly, before erupting into deafening roars of thunder as serpentine bolts of electricity danced wildly within them.

On the primordial sacred mountains, each as vast as a planet, waterfalls that once appeared trapped in suspended time regained their vitality. They let out earth-shaking booms as if a galaxy had burst its banks, with surging torrents rushing down like celestial rivers pouring into the human world.

Amidst this cataclysmic transformation, Fang Zheng remained in a state of bewilderment, completely unaware of what had occurred. He looked left and right, full of confusion. "What's going on? What happened? Everything was fine; why did it suddenly start moving? Is there some scripted event triggering, causing this static map to start running?"

Just then, a low voice sounded beside him, startling Fang Zheng. The phantom of the gray-haired man had appeared beside the block-shaped human. He bowed deeply, filled with gratitude, and said, "Fellow Daoist, I cannot thank you enough for the grace of resurrection. I, Taiyin, shall surely repay this debt!"

Fang Zheng remained completely befuddled, his face a mask of confusion, unable to understand a word of the language spoken by the figure before him.

Taiyin merely smiled slightly and turned his gaze toward the horizon. Everywhere his eyes touched, the sky and earth were illuminated by countless mysterious array patterns. From every direction, millions of god-demon phantoms swarmed toward them, radiating murderous intent.

He spoke slowly: "Unnamed block-shaped fellow Daoist, let us converse at leisure once I have fully resurrected and returned to the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths."

Before his voice had faded, a dazzling lunar wheel lit up behind the man named Taiyin. He looked down at the jade-like, trembling sword-tip fragment and beckoned gently: "Old friend, join me in rebirth; let us continue our crusade!"

Then, a shout resounded through the heavens: "Taiyin Rebirth!"

The Taiyin Rebirth Technique was a sublimation of the Taiyin Emperor's own path, developed twenty-eight thousand years after he proved the Dao. Drawing inspiration from the "Zhe" secret—one of the Nine Secrets—and the "Taiyin Refining Form" technique circulated in the Underworld, he had painstakingly honed this supreme method to live out a third life.

This technique was perfectly attuned to the Taiyin Physique. It required the destruction of the physical body and the deathly silence of the primordial spirit as a sacrifice, leaving only a final wisp of living blood and the primordial spirit as an anchor to delve into the depths of the Taiyin essence and refine an indestructible true form.

Few in the world knew of this technique; it was not even recorded in the "Taiyin True Scripture," which the Taiyin Emperor had written in his early years and which later generations of humanity revered as one of their two foundational scriptures. It combined offense, defense, and healing into one, truly an "ultimate forbidden art of inverting Yin and Yang."

In the forty-eighth thousandth year of his third life, as his vitality began to wane, the Taiyin Emperor had reached the pinnacle of combat power. He shattered the Immortal Road and pierced through the void at its end to enter the Boundary Sea. However, he was nearly killed instantly by the sheer force of the sea’s waves. Holding onto his last breath, he had struggled back through the Immortal Road, returning to the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths in a wretched state. Had it not been for the indelible, grave Dao wounds inflicted by a bizarre existence within the Boundary Sea—which shattered his soul and body and caused the loss of most of his memories—he would never have been forced to drag his broken remains back to the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths to pass away in such bitter regret.

In an instant, the Taiyin Rebirth Technique was activated to its limit. Before the millions of god-demon phantoms could unleash their cosmic-level assault, the gray-haired Taiyin phantom disintegrated, leaving behind only a primordial spirit—coalesced from a healing potion—and a single drop of living blood.

All things carry Yin and embrace Yang, blending their energies to achieve harmony. Even the power of Taiyin, while supreme in its coldness, contains the dual phases of Yin and Yang; this is the mysterious cycle of the Great Dao, endless and self-sustaining. The Yin of Taiyin condenses into the cold spirits of the Nine Netherworlds, bringing slaughter to all things, while the Yang of Taiyin transforms into lunar nectar, nourishing all living beings. The two generate and transform each other, much like the waxing and waning of the moon—darkness turns to light, and Yin reaches its extreme to birth Yang, eventually returning to the perfect unity of the Taiji.

The Taiyin Emperor’s constitution was the Taiyin Physique, naturally attuned to the power of Taiyin. The wisp of soul and the drop of blood represented the two sides of this power. Entwined, they vanished into the lunar wheel, merging into a single strand of harmonious Yin-Yang Taiyin energy.

In that brief, indescribable, and imperceptible moment, this sliver of Taiyin energy disappeared along with the rotation of the lunar wheel. Simultaneously, an invisible field expanded, enveloping Fang Zheng and everything around him. The sky, the earth, the mountains, the waterfalls, the array patterns covering the heavens, and the river of blood that had appeared from thin air were all encompassed by this mysterious domain.

The lunar phase is the wheel of fate; both waxing and waning are pregnant with murderous intent!

The changes in the lunar phase began to link intimately with everything in the surroundings. As the once-full moon began to wane, everything covered by the field began to wither along with it. At this moment, Yin and Yang, death and life, reached a miraculous balance and transformation. The end of life is death, and the end of death is life. Yin at its extreme births Yang, and Yang at its extreme births Yin—this is the eternal truth of the universe.

Except for Fang Zheng, who remained completely oblivious to the situation and unable to react, and the block-shaped objects from which blood surged in the sky, everything else caught in this inexplicable field fell into deathly silence as the moon changed, transforming into Taiyin energy.

Waning gibbous, last quarter, crescent...

Each change in the lunar phase represented the deepening collapse of all law-bound phantoms within the area covering half the majestic pass, signifying the increasing extremism of the Taiyin energy. Finally, when the lunar wheel—radiating heavy deathly aura like the moon of the Nine Netherworlds—became increasingly fragmented and entered the lightless night of the new moon, the collapse of everything around reached its maximum. It entered the extreme of death, a state of supreme Yin devoid of any vitality.

At this point, all that remained was a perfect, seamless black sphere, containing nothing but darkness.

The millions of god-demon phantoms, etched from the laws of the complete Immortal Realm and supported by the boundaries of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, launched their combined assault. Their attack was sufficient to annihilate the frontiers of the universe and extinguish all life within it. Yet, such a powerful strike could not leave even a ripple upon that pure darkness.

The endless barrage from millions of gods and demons, along with the killing power of the array patterns filling the sky, was all ruthlessly swallowed by the darkness. Everything turned to death, transforming into the power of extreme Yin.

And there, at the end of death, at the very zenith of Yin, a spark of new life—a sliver of Lesser Yang energy—quietly gestated and began to grow.