"Balance? Animals? Plants? None of that matters. Really, you misled me and made me take such a huge detour."
Takatsuki said with a smile, looking at Ran, who was now only a lower half.
He was in a good mood now; in the recent battle, he had finally mastered the Tao, or rather, Tao, that he had never been able to grasp.
"Next, I hope the Kishikai doesn't disappoint me."
Without a moment's mourning for Ran's death, what immediately appeared on the battlefield was:
Kishikai Ran.
A humanoid monster with two heads and four arms.
Even as a Kishikai, it was filled with Ran's fighting style.
"You said misled? What do you mean?"
After the Kishikai, Ran didn't rush to attack, but instead asked Takatsuki.
"Exactly what you think. Your research is wrong."
Although the monster's form after Kishikai showed hardly any expression, Ran's emotions were clearly conveyed.
"This is the result of our millennia of effort! How could it be wrong!"
"Heh… If you go further and further down a wrong path, does wrong become right? Or rather, isn't your failure to achieve true immortality proof?"
Takatsuki chuckled: "You have always pursued so-called balance, whether it's gender."
He pointed to the hermaphroditic body in the Kishikai form.
"Or the so-called state of mind."
"Male and female, strong and weak, yin and yang, you have always pursued so-called balance, and because you have gone too far down this path of balance, you don't even dare to actively break… No, you can no longer break the so-called balance."
Because one's own strength is too strong, one must use a weak mind to balance it?
What kind of twisted logic is this?
Aside from anything else, Takatsuki's Conqueror's Haki and Nen both contain elements of concentrated belief and boosting willpower.
In fact, the stronger one's personal characteristics, the better the Conqueror's Haki.
The stronger one's personal belief, the stronger the effect of both.
The balance pursued by Tensen, however, completely conflicts with this.
They are clearly all powers of life, and this conflict is very unreasonable, so this is why Takatsuki has always been puzzled.
And now Takatsuki understood that it wasn't that he lacked talent, but that the path Tensen pursued was not suitable for him.
He even felt that the Tensen' path was fundamentally wrong. They had always pursued balance and the middle way, which led to them accumulating Tao, but never being able to achieve true self-breakthrough.
The so-called Tao is not just the energy of life, but also contains the power of the spirit.
Conqueror's Haki, Nen, Chakra, Hamon, Stand.
Takatsuki possessed multiple powers, many of which had spiritual power mixed in.
Even Dio said that living beings have limits, but the spirit has no limits; continuous breakthroughs of the spirit can transcend heaven.
Yet the Tensen were suppressing their own spirits, simply because they were too strong, which was truly absurd.
And in his battle with Ran, Takatsuki wasn't unable to defeat Ran; if he wanted to, he could kill him instantly.
But he didn't do that, because as he said, he was grateful that his opponent was Ran.
He was the most suitable opponent.
Everything Ran was good at could serve as a reference for him.
Heaven's Stairway hadn't failed to be summoned just now; instead, it had been observing from afar, using its extreme precision to analyze what the so-called Tao truly was.
And just now, Takatsuki succeeded. By sensing the attacks of the Tao with his body, feeling the feedback from the Tao's armor, and then placing himself in an environment filled with the Tao.
Through constant injury, Takatsuki finally grasped the so-called Tao.
And the moment he grasped the Tao, he understood the true meaning of the so-called Tao and the misconceptions of the Tensen.
"What! How is this possible! Is this truly a quantity that a human can achieve! And it's someone who just awakened the Tao!"
Ran was too shocked to speak, because in his vision, the Tao on Takatsuki's body was continuously rising, as boundless as the ocean, and this quantity was still increasing, as if there was no end.
The specific level it could reach was meaningless to him; he couldn't even perceive it anymore.
In front of an ant, a hundred-meter-tall building and a thousand-meter-tall building are the same; this is a dimensional gap.
"Haki is not just a manifestation of vitality; within the human body, it is also influenced by the spirit. The physical progress of living beings has a process and also limits. Breaking through those limits is not an easy task, but the spirit... has no limits."
Takatsuki raised his fist and said to Ran.
"Is this... the true Tao...? Have we been wrong all along...?"
Watching the person in front of him instantly surpass their thousand years of accumulated power, how could Ran not collapse?
Tensen cannot truly live forever.
Because they must have the Tao to survive, and they consume the Tao every moment, requiring external replenishment, which, simply put, means pills.
But... is this truly reasonable?
Shouldn't the Tao, by its very nature, be something that living beings—no, even non-living things—can generate automatically?
Why do they constantly consume it like consumables?
As long as Tensen have the Tao, they can continuously regenerate and have no lifespan limitations.
Humans cannot do this.
But if they could spontaneously generate such a vast amount of Tao like the man in front of them.
Let alone a thousand years, what would be difficult about ten thousand or a hundred thousand years?
"So that's it... this is the true... immortality..."
Ran looked at the fist Takatsuki swung at him, raising all four hands to meet it simultaneously, but what could a small boat do against a fist as vast as a tsunami?
Humans cannot resist the might of nature, and neither can Tensen.
Ran felt like a small boat in a storm, constantly tossed by the waves, then instantly swallowed by the merciless tsunami.
"Ah... so that's how it is... Thank you, human... This is also... a release."
Takatsuki said nothing as he watched Ran fall to the ground and slowly turn into specks of light.
The Tensen were all tragic figures.
Perhaps they had already gone mad long ago.
Hōrai was no longer the harmonious place it was when they were born, and the reason for all of this was the vanished Grandmaster and Rien.
But none of them chose to die, perhaps out of fear of death, or perhaps their emotions were twisted. They yearned for release while continuously clinging to life.
And being killed by an outsider was, for them, a form of release.
"You're welcome. I hope in your next life, you can be ordinary people."
Feeling the immense Haki within him, Takatsuki mobilized it.
Compared to other energies, Haki is closer to the fundamental power of the human body. It can quickly transform into other energies and can accomplish many things. Even immortality is easily achievable, making it truly the source of life.
"Is this the ultimate state of spiritual power...?"