Su Bai’s eyes went wide.

The world felt fundamentally different. The air didn’t feel heavy anymore. It felt light, compliant, and deeply connected to his every breath. He straightened his posture, seated himself properly on his favorite flat stone, and looked inward to audit the new state of his Dantian.

Normally, a cultivator’s Dantian acted like a localized hard drive. It had a strict, biological maximum storage capacity. When the drive filled up, a cultivator either had to compress the data into a liquid state (Foundation Establishment) or risk violently exploding from the internal pressure.

But by weaponizing the Dao-Severing Mortal Dust Pill, the Reversal Body hadn’t just reinforced his Dantian’s ceiling. It had completely deleted the boundaries.

His Dantian was no longer a container. It had become an infinite, self-sustaining inner void.

It was the cultivation equivalent of limitless Cloud Storage.

At the very center of this boundless black expanse, his ’Dead Wood’ spirit root had undergone a massive structural update. It was no longer a dormant, rotting stump. It had grown into a majestic sapling made of dark, crystalline wood, casually floating in the center of the void.

What was even more ridiculous was the integration of his Ashen-Frost Blight Flame. The rank-98 heavenly fire had naturally woven itself into the sapling. Its pale, freezing mist literally formed the "leaves" and "canopy" of the crystalline sapling.

They had become a single, flawless ecosystem.

’So this is the legendary 10th Stage,’ Su Bai thought. He was entirely numb to the sheer absurdity of his own existence. ’Infinite Qi Refining. My energy capacity is completely uncapped. I literally cannot run out of Qi if I manage this right.’

He had solved his energy crisis.

Before his corporate brain could even begin to process the operational benefits of having an infinite battery, Su Bai felt a sudden, terrifying shift in the atmosphere. He froze.

RUMBLE!

He hadn’t noticed it happening. It must have started during the agonizing climax of his breakthrough while he was unconscious.

The sky above Clear Cloud Peak had darkened into a freezing, unnatural twilight. The temperature across the entire Radiant Sky Sect plummeted.

Across the inner and outer sects, Elders and disciples alike stopped dead in their tracks, looking up in absolute terror. The sheer, crushing weight of the Yin energy descending from the heavens made them believe a Supreme Demonic Entity had just invaded their borders.

Just then... a sound like grinding tectonic plates echoed across the night sky.

Su Bai gulped. A bead of cold sweat rolled down his cheek.

’Is this... a Dao Manifestation?’

High above the Radiant Sky Sect, the clouds violently parted. A projection of a colossal, obsidian tree materialized in the heavens.

It was an illusion so massive it completely blotted out the moon. It was a perfect, fully-grown, macro-scale reflection of the tiny sapling currently floating inside Su Bai’s Dantian. Its gargantuan trunk was made of dark crystal, and its sprawling canopy was forged entirely from the Ashen-Frost mist.

It looked bleak, necrotic, and utterly terrifying. It was the exact visual definition of a demonic calamity.

Yet, paradoxically, it didn’t radiate a single ounce of killing intent.

Across the entire sect, thousands of disciples, deacons, and elders stood frozen in shock. Swords dropped from trembling hands. Cauldrons boiled over in the Alchemy Hall. Everyone simply stared up at the cosmic anomaly, waiting for the apocalypse.

Then, the giant illusionary tree shivered.

Countless ethereal, ashen-fire leaves detached from its massive branches and began to gently drift downward. They blanketed the region in a localized, glowing snowstorm.

The glowing leaves blew across the majestic peaks, down into the crowded Outer Sect, and even drifted miles away into the bustling mortal cities at the base of the mountain.

Su Bai sat perfectly still on his rock. He watched a single ashen-fire leaf phase directly through his courtyard’s defensive array and touch the dirt.

Instantly, a wave of refreshing Yin energy rippled outward.

To a normal cultivator, Extreme Yin was the energy of death, freezing, and decay. But the leaves acted like hyper-aggressive, targeted vacuums.

Down in the Outer Sect, an exhausted disciple suffering from a severe, life-threatening fever collapsed in the courtyard. An ashen-fire leaf drifted down and landed on his forehead. Instead of freezing him to death, the extreme Yin instantly devoured the corrupted "sickness" energy. It acted as a perfect heat-sink for the fever. The leaf vanished, leaving the disciple perfectly cured and bursting with vitality.

Miles away in the mortal city, a hunter dying of a cursed snakebite gasped for his final breath. A glowing leaf phased through his roof and landed on his chest. In seconds, the Yin energy aggressively devoured the foreign poison, flushing it entirely from his system.

Across a hundred-mile radius, curses were purified. Crippled limbs regained feeling. Elders who had been plagued by chronic Pill Toxins for decades suddenly had their meridians completely cleansed.

The terrifying "Tree of Death" was aggressively absorbing every impurity, illness, and curse it could touch, leaving nothing but pristine health in its wake.

"A miracle!" a voice screamed from the Outer Sect.

"The Heavens have sent a blessing! The Heavens have shown mercy!"

The roars of joyous disbelief from the outer peaks and the mortal cities were so deafening they echoed all the way up through the clouds, reaching Clear Cloud Peak.

Su Bai sat completely still on his rock. He didn’t feel any different, but his analytical mind immediately processed the data.

’...The heavens just deployed a regional antivirus software,’ a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. ’And it’s broadcasting from my IP address.’

There was absolutely no way he could hide this. A Dao Manifestation didn’t just happen randomly in the sky. It was anchored directly to the cultivator who triggered it.

The giant, glowing trunk of the obsidian tree in the sky was pointing straight down like a massive neon sign.

And he was right.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

The night sky suddenly lit up like a meteor shower. Hundreds of glowing flying swords were shooting directly toward Clear Cloud Peak from every direction. The sheer density of the Heavenly Dao resonance made it impossible to hide the epicenter of the phenomenon.

"Secure the perimeter!" an Elder’s voice echoed through the sky.

Within seconds, the airspace above Su Bai’s courtyard was entirely surrounded by the sect’s executives.