"The Mythic Great Luo Method?!"
Theodore stood there in stunned disbelief, his heart shaking violently.
Of course he understood that something about the saintly paths of cultivation in the primordial world had always felt… wrong.
To become a Saint, one either followed the path of merit—like Nuwa or Houtu—or attained sainthood through Primordial Purple Qi.
But whether one spoke of great merit or Primordial Purple Qi, both were treasures almost impossible to find in the whole of the primordial world.
Creating the human race. Transforming one's body into reincarnation…
How many deeds in all existence could truly compare to those?
The ancestor of the Blood Sea had exhausted himself trying to imitate Nuwa, creating the Asura race within the Blood Sea. Though merit had indeed descended, it had been nowhere near enough for sainthood. At most, it had only produced the two merit treasures Yuantu and Abi.
And there had been many other mighty beings who had spent enormous effort pursuing great merit, only to gain nothing at all.
As for Primordial Purple Qi, that was even more firmly fixed.
Hongjun had already bestowed it upon the other Saints to aid them in proving the Dao. Once that was done, there was only a single remaining strand left unaccounted for.
So in theory, the possibility of any new Saint appearing in the primordial world had already become vanishingly small.
And whether one became a Saint through merit or through Primordial Purple Qi, the road beyond that point seemed to end.
Hongjun aligned himself with the Heavenly Dao.
Houtu aligned herself with the Earthly Dao.
That allowed them to stand a level above the other Saints.
But in essence, they still relied on the Heavenly Dao or the Earthly Dao. It made them almost omniscient and almost omnipotent—but not truly so.
The ideal path of sainthood, the one Theodore imagined in its purest form, should be self-sufficient.
I am the Heavenly Dao.
More than that—I am the Great Dao itself.
Only that would be true omniscience and omnipotence.
And because of that, the so-called concept of the Mythic Great Luo Method had emerged so often in primordial tales.
The Mythic Great Luo Method transcended the saintly systems that already existed in the primordial world. One did not need vast merit or Primordial Purple Qi to prove the Dao and become a Saint.
And even that was not the end.
At the end of the Mythic Great Luo Method lay something beyond Hongjun, beyond the Heavenly Dao, beyond even Pangu—
true omniscience.
True omnipotence.
And yet all Theodore had done just now was whimsically establish Lingtai Fangcun Mountain and the Slanting Moon, Three-Star Cave in the magical world, intending to begin teaching Harry and the others a simple cultivation method.
How, in the System's eyes, had that become the creation of the Mythic Great Luo Method?
And why had such vast destiny and merit descended upon him?
Theodore's expression gradually turned solemn.
"Perhaps when I was simply cultivating System-granted methods for myself, they couldn't be reproduced. But now that I'm preparing to teach primordial methods to others, that changes something fundamental."
"But whatever the reason, that isn't the key point."
"The key point is the System's description."
"According to the System's correspondences, before this world had only saintly orthodoxies—methods passed down by Saints. Methods of the Heavenly Dao. And only now, today, have I created the Mythic Great Luo Method…"
His pupils shrank slightly.
He had already seen what the System judged to be the "saint-level" entities of the magical world.
They were all things connected to the twisted horrors.
Things utterly evil.
The magical world's so-called "Heavenly Dao," "Hongjun," and even "Pangu" were all grotesque beyond description.
But if one followed the System's correspondences to their logical conclusion, then the methods of the magical world—
magic itself—
had come from those horrors.
For a moment, storm waves rose in Theodore's heart.
If he said such a thing aloud, it would overturn magical history and shatter the worldview of countless witches and wizards.
And yet—
when he thought about the nature of magic and magical power, the idea no longer felt so absurd.
Because even by primordial standards, the characteristics of magic were deeply strange.
Its almost idealistic quality of producing whatever the user intended.
And the endlessness of magical power.
Even little wizards did not truly run out of magic. Their magic only lacked sufficient strength to cast certain spells.
But once they had mastered a spell, even something like the Killing Curse could be fired over and over like a machine gun.
In the primordial world, was that not the sort of trait only a Saint—or at the very least a Great Luo Golden Immortal—should possess?
Until now, Theodore had always found this odd, but had not thought too deeply about it. He had simply assumed it was a natural feature of the world. If it existed, then there must be some reason for it.
But now, he had an explanation.
What if when wizards used magic, they were not using their own strength at all?
What if they were borrowing the power of the horrors hidden within the magical world?
What if they were using the power of the magical world's "Heavenly Dao"?
Then the apparent infinity of magical power suddenly made perfect sense.
How could the tiny destructive capacity of ordinary wizards possibly exhaust the strength of the "Heavenly Dao"?
And that would also explain something else.
When the Four Founders and others of their level had pushed their magical strength past the upper limit of wizardkind, they had begun encountering bizarre and deranged phenomena, until even they themselves had fallen into madness.
If magical power truly belonged to the horrors, then of course the stronger a wizard became, the closer he would come to those horrors.
And that would also explain why even beings as mighty as the Four Founders had still met such tragic ends before them.
How could one possibly fight horrors by using the horrors' own power?
Theodore drew in a deep breath.
If his guess was true, then once the so-called ancient return truly happened—once the horrors returned openly—the magical world would have no chance at all.
No method within its current system could resist them.
Even the strongest wizard, even Dumbledore wielding the Elder Wand, would know only madness and despair before the ancient return.
That, then, was why his simple decision to teach a rudimentary cultivation method in this world had been judged by the System as the world-shaking creation of the Mythic Great Luo Method.
And that was why such vast destiny and merit had descended upon him.
Because he had effectively opened up a path of survival for the magical world.
A path by which it might live through the ancient return.
Before Theodore had fully recovered from that shock, a line of text more unfathomably deep, chaotic, and fragmented than anything before suddenly surfaced across the System screen.
[The Mythic Great Luo Method appears. The Heavenly Dao is enraged. The Saints swear to kill.]
[Within chaos, Pangu senses the threat posed by the Mythic Great Luo Method, and the time of Pangu's awakening is drastically advanced!]
[It is only because the great tribulation has not yet opened, and tribulation aura is already dense enough to obscure heavenly secrets even from Saints, and because the Mythic Great Luo Method has only just been born and remains weak, that they cannot yet lock onto the source.]
[Otherwise—even at a terrible price—many great beings would already have descended!]
A gravity deeper than ever before appeared in Theodore's eyes.
He could feel it.
The hidden horrors of the magical world were truly panicking now.
But a moment later, determination appeared in his gaze instead.
"If they're panicking, then that means I was right."
"And more than that…"
He licked his lips, looking at the destiny and merit that had descended upon him, his eyes blazing.
"Destiny and merit are unimaginably hard to obtain."
"And yet the Mythic Great Luo Method has barely begun, and already it has yielded this much."
"Forget the twisted things in the magical world—even in the primordial world, this would be worth gambling everything on."
A moment later, though, Theodore frowned slightly.
He had done nothing more than establish a cave-abode, and the reaction was already this enormous.
If this had not happened inside the Room of Requirement, which likely blocked at least some forms of perception, then perhaps the horrors would already have locked onto the very location where a force threatening them had been born.
But if Theodore went further and actually began teaching cultivation methods, then the Room of Requirement might not be able to block their senses for long.
And once the horrors located the source, they might truly pay a vast price to return ahead of time.
Theodore was strong.
But his time cultivating had still been too short. At present, he truly was not confident in dealing with the true bodies of those horrors.
Let alone "Saints," the "Heavenly Dao," "Hongjun," or even "Pangu."
If he wanted to keep walking this road and continue harvesting destiny and merit, then to be safe, he first had to sever the senses of those horrors.
Magic would not do.
According to his own suspicions, magic itself might very well come from the horrors.
He had no intention of taking that risk.
In that case, the best answer was obvious—
use a primordial method.
At once, Theodore thought of one technique recorded in the Heavenly Demon Treasure-Refining Art, a method that even in the primordial world would count as supreme beyond measure.
"The Grand Celestial Constellation Formation!"
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