《The 33 Heavens Bow for 1 Man》


 Ch. 1: The realm holds its breath

    Inside the core of the Earth, with molten rock and metal floating around, could be seen a baby. A human baby. In its arms it held a cauldron. The baby''s eyes were open, staring seamingly out into blank space, having no rhyme or reason for which it constantly looked around. Of course, the baby had a reason. A normal baby is not generally found bathing in flames with temperatures near those at the surface of the sun. The baby was watching humans go about their lives. That''s right! The baby did not have only heaven defying heat resistance, but could also see through the Earth!


    Now, obviously this baby was not normal. Anyone would be able to tell this at a glance, but if this same person took a second glance, their eyes would not be on the baby, but on the cauldron. The cauldron was not simply abnormal, it was abnormally abnormal. A simple look from the naked eye would tell the viewer that this cauldron was not colorful. It was either white, black, or gray, but which one, no one can say. it seemed to be white at one moment and black at the next. Not quite flashing because the switch happened so rapidly, but a melding of color. That being said, a constant switching of black and white does not create gray, but imitates it.


    If they took a magnifying glass they would be able to see runes carved all over the surface of the cauldron, and with a microscope they would be able to see not only these runes, but that each and every one of these runes was made up of even smaller ones.


    A cultivator would be even more stunned by this cauldron. Spiritual energy, normally only detectable in heavenly items was visible around the cauldron, as if it was being sucked in. This is a sight only seen when heavenly materials are born and for a short period of time suck in spiritual energy. For a "normal" heavenly object, if they can even be referred to as such, this suction would last for hours at the most, and maybe reach a radius of a few miles. Clearly, this cauldron went against the heavens! A heavenly object would only create this suction when it was in the final stages of its maturity; the cauldron did it constantly. A mortal would see nothing as their eyes have not yet been tempered by spiritual energy, and thus could only see the mundane.


    Suddenly, the spiritual energy dissipated, and for the first time since time immemorial, the baby which had been nourished by the resources of an entire universe, moved.


    Simultaneously, outside this universe, a team of cultivators inside a ship were making their way around the circumference of the universe. Why? Because they needed to reach a trading post where they would be able to sell their spoils from the battle they had just won. Inside the ship:


    Ji Huang, a grizzled old man missing a limb was complaining, "Jesus Christ! The hell of mortals is aptly named." He was of course referring to his partner who he had just drugged and thrown into the "Hell of Mortals." As a high leveled powerhouse, his partner could live in space for years if needed as long as he had spiritual energy to sustain him. Unluckily for him, he had been thrown into the universe with no spiritual energy. Immediately after being thrown out into space, he had woken up. Like the inside of a planet in the example of the baby, it is not exactly easy to sleep there. After seeing where he had been thrown, he was overcome with terror. This universe, known for being a death zone, would suck the spiritual energy out of any cultivator if they came within its boundaries. As expected, Ji Huang''s partner, Tai Ming, had immediately lost all spiritual energy and began to die. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Inside the ship, Ji Huang, proud of his decision to overthrow his partner, was exclaiming to the other cultivators, "Now that we have gotten rid of that money grubber, our profit from selling this top level immortal armor and weaponry will be doubled!" The other cultivators, who were weaker, were slightly nervous. "You wouldn''t throw us out there to die would you boss?" "Of course not," he replied. Inside his head he was thinking, "Stupid idiots, why would I kill you guys when I can sell you off as slaves when we get to the trading post? The only reason I even killed Tai Ming is because he''s stronger than me and I wouldn''t be able to enslave him."


    Just when he started feeling accomplished, he was grabbed by the neck. "Ji Huang, you backstabbing asshole, prepare yourself to enter the next life!" Ji Huang was stunned, "How did you not die, I saw you lose all spiritual energy, how are you alive?" Tai Ming, believing himself to be chosen under heaven replied, "How could I die so easily? I''m a genius. After losing all spiritual energy, I almost died, but all of a sudden I realized I could absorb spiritual energy again and came back to kill you. How could a genius like me be killed in such a stupid fashion?" Of course, sometimes imagination and reality are not the same, and Tai Ming''s wizened body had already lost all hopes at ever advancing in his cultivation. Clearly he was not the genius he said he was, and Ji Huang realized this, "Tai Ming, let go! the Hell of Mortals has stopped working! There must be a heavenly treasure which was absorbing the spiritual energy for billions of years! If we team up we can get it and both be rich!" Not being the brightest bulb in the box, Ji Huang thought about it and decided to team up for the sake of profit, forgetting what had almost gotten him killed 2 minutes ago, trusting Ji Huang. Although both had limited intelligence and/or foresight, they both realized that the reason why no cultivators could live in the Hell of Mortals was because they would be robbed of their spiritual qi, their ships would have energy from its power source stolen, and soon, neither the ship nor the cultivator would have the ability to move. With the suction ended, neither of these would be a problem, and they would be able to travel freely throughout this unexplored universe. What none of the cultivators questioned was why they could not see the suction of spiritual energy. The reason why, is because the cauldron was not just so heaven defying as to create this massive vortex of energy, but also shield its actions from the spiritual sense of cultivators. Normal suctions from heavenly materials would not steal energy from cultivators or ships. None of them questioned this either.


    "All right, let''s head to the middle of this universe!" And so, they flew to the middle of the universe; and so, they flew towards Earth.


    All around the realm, people received messages about what had happened to the Hell of Mortals, and some of the strongest beings in the realm began to enter the area to search for the heavenly treasure.

 Ch 2: The realm keeps holding its breath (lol)

    Back On Earth, the baby started growing, swiftly growing into the body of a typical seven year old(it became a he, growing a penis between its legs after it finished its nurturing phase), looking around innocently, completely unaware of how he turned the realm upside down. He had done so when the cauldron created an unknown death zone in the universe, and he had done so when it was removed. But compared to the storm he was about to bring, both these disturbances could be seen as fairly minor.


    Having been nourished by the cauldron for trillions of years(records of the death zone had only been kept for billions, so people outside thought the death zone had only come into effect billions of years ago), the baby was anything but immature. For thousands of years, he had witnessed the rise of the human race, countless entities with different stories, no one could say he did not have life experience. For millions of years, he had seen the cruelty of evolution amongst beings who strived for the top, he had seen that those who did not fight, would die. No one could say he was unmotivated. For billions of years, even before the formation of the Earth, he had floated around in space along with his cauldron, viewing the mysteries of heaven and earth, no one could say he had not grasped the laws which governed this realm. Through the gestation of stars and planets, he had seen and understood laws of the five elements, through the countless millennia and constant traveling, he had understood the mysteries of time and space. Through the nourishment of a universe over trillions of years, he had talent overshadowing all others.


    As he thought back on his trillion year journey, he felt nostalgia. Starting a new one meant leaving behind the old, and for this he was sad.


    Interrupting his thoughts, he heard a cough in his head, like someone clearing their throat in order to convey the message that they have something to say. Then, he heard a high-pitched, embarrassed voice ¡°You might want to put on some clothes. You--your thing is showing!¡± Suddenly, a girl appeared in front of him. She had long, pale, tender legs which came together and disappeared into her cheongsam. Her cheeks were flushed which made her even more attractive. He looked slightly abashed as he didn¡¯t have anything to use as clothing, then eventually using his hand to cover his crotch. ¡°Who are you?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I am the spirit of the cauldron. I was the one who gave you all the spiritual energy throughout your nourishment period. As of now, you have the body most suitable for cultivation in existence thanks to my efforts. You have no impurities, and your body itself can be considered a heavenly treasure of the highest value.¡± He had no idea what she was talking about, having never seen any cultivators or heavenly treasures on Earth. Seeing the look on his face, she elaborated, ¡°Your name is Bao Gang(hearing this name gave him a certain feeling of fulfillment, almost as if it fit him perfectly, and for this reason he decided to keep it, even though he felt a bit impetuous that someone else had made a decision for him). Due to certain circumstances, I was tasked with guarding you and making sure you live until you reach my master. These circumstances prevent him from protecting you or having any interactions with you at all. My master is the head of an organization which has beings so strong that the weakest of them would kill any being in this realm if he even sneezed on them. You are to be his successor, and he is waiting for you above the 33 heavens. To get there, you will need to cultivate. Similar to light novels, cultivating will make you stronger, and once you reach a point, you will rise from this realm, which is not even considered one of the 33 heavens, into the first level of the heavens.¡±


    ¡°Cultivating is the process of absorbing spiritual energy and also the process of using it to engrave runes on your self. These runes correspond to laws which govern the universe and allow you to strengthen attacks, defense, speed, and stamina to almost limitless extents. The spiritual energy, after being processed through a cultivation technique, will fill your dantian and will thus allow you to use spiritual energy to strengthen your body, cast magic, etc. For this reason, finding a cultivation area with high density spiritual energy is essential.


    Spiritual energy is produced by the laws which govern the universe. First there was nothing, then from nothingness came one, one gave birth to two, two breeds three, and the three created all things. Following this rule, the one, universe laws, are the root of all things. High level universe laws such as yin-yang will give birth to lower level laws like fire and water and the other 5 elements, as well as light, dark, thunder, and lightning. Lower level laws are not just limited to which type they are, but also their complexity. The runes which are engraved by universe laws are more complex if they are higher levelled, and less complex if lower levelled. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Over time, an area which started with high level laws will become a hotspot for lower level laws, especially the lowest, spiritual energy. Spiritual energy is only used for building a foundation in cultivation. It is a mix of all laws, thus losing the special advantages of every single mixed law. By the same token, an area with low law concentration, or a spot where the laws have been absorbed during cultivation, will have lower spiritual energy and law concentration until they have been born again by high level laws


    Obviously, higher level laws are stronger and are better to engrave, but are more taxing in the level of comprehension needed. This is where the soul comes into play. The stronger the soul, the better the comprehension and memory. The more attuned to spiritual energy a soul is, the faster laws can be attracted. Both are necessary for engraving laws, but only the attunement to spiritual energy is needed in the beginning levels of cultivation, as low-level cultivators do not yet have use for universe laws. However, after reaching the law inscription stage, if comprehension is lacking, law inscription grinds to a halt as laws can only be absorbed for inscription if one understands the laws they are trying to absorb. For this reason, the realm does not run out of spiritual energy because no one has enough law comprehension to absorb laws such as yin-yang and chaos. Eventually, these high level laws give birth to lower levelled ones and concentration of law and spiritual energy increases once again.


    You cannot cultivate here, because I have already sucked clean all laws in this entire universe, and therefore there is not spiritual energy here either. However, over these trillions of years, I have used all of these universe laws to heighten your comprehension and spiritual energy attunement to levels which are almost unreal. A normal baby has 9 months for pregnancy during which they absorb small amounts of law fragments through the air, and also through food which their mother eats, if they eat certain spiritual food. This amounts to less than .00001% of a universe¡¯s resources at a maximum. You on the other hand, had a ¡°pregnancy¡± of trillions of years with 100% of a universe¡¯s resources. Obviously your soul will outclass all others¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± she added. ¡°There are currently around 300,000 cultivators flying here in ships. They will reach here within 3 hours. By then, we will have to leave Earth or risk being found and hunted.¡± ¡°We have to leave Earth?¡± he asked, ¡°but won¡¯t the people of Earth be hunted down? Can we bring them with us?¡± Hearing this, the spirit of the cauldron visibly struggled, making a pouty face, ¡°But my master said that I¡¯m not supposed to help you, I¡¯m just supposed to make sure that you never died. He said that if I did more than this, you would grow reliant on external forces.¡± Then, as if she had come to a groundbreaking realization, suddenly smiled, ¡°Master said I cannot help you, but you don¡¯t have to worry about the safety of Earth, because once these people start fighting over it, they will have a big surprise!¡± She looked around mischievously as if to make sure her master was not watching.


    2 hours later


    Inside the ship, Ji Huang and Tai Ming had been flying for 2.5 hours by now, and having been near the edge of the universe, were the first to realize that spiritual energy had returned to the universe which previously did not have it. The spiritual energy was still nonexistent, but the suction of energy had disappeared allowing cultivators to fly inside the universe. As they used their spiritual sense(a projection of a strand of their soul) to view the path ahead, they found what was at the middle of the universe. An ordinary planet, with 7 billion people living everyday lives. They realized that they could not see the treasure, and came to the conclusion that it must be inside the planet. They also saw a second ship also heading towards Earth from the opposite side of the universe, only slightly further away, but traveling at a greater speed. Realizing that this treasure would be a once in a lifetime chance to become rich, they gear up for battle in case they cannot come up with a peaceful solution to the hunt of the heavenly object.


    And so, they waited tersely. ¡°They¡± refers to all parties in question. For Bao Gang, the next 30 minutes decides the fate of the species which has watched over for thousands of years like a parent, for both ships, this concerns an unimaginable fortune, and for the other 300,000 incoming cultivators, this is a race which they must win, for them self, for their sect, or for even for their race. This treasure can decide the fate of the realm given its heaven-defying absorption of spiritual energy.


    And so, they waited.

 Ch 3: The Realm chokes

    My name is Bao Gang.  As I watched the two ships draw closer to Earth, I began to fidget unconsciously, like a middle schooler giving as presentation to their class.  I felt as if the world was ending, which it might. If they stuttered uncontrollably mid presentation in front of the entire class and the students started laughing, the middle schooler might also.  I would too. Nothing like being made fun of to make you feel as if you want to disappear. Luckily, I¡¯m not a middle schooler, nor a stutterer.


    Knowing that at the very least, I will not be made fun of by an entire class of prepubescent children makes me slightly less nervous.  But only by a little bit.


    Jokes aside, I was feeling slightly nervous.  If the spirit of the cauldron, who said her name is Wei Yun, was wrong about her ability to deal with the strongest cultivators of the realm, my family would be killed.  While not my biological family, the humans of Earth had been my constant companions for thousands of years and as I had witnessed their lives from start to finish, it would not be a stretch to consider me partners in their journey, brothers even.  Not just one human nor even hundreds. With my soul which had been enhanced unceasingly for trillions of years, I could focus on every single human individually, and if needed, even every single living organism. With my spiritual sense I could follow them around their entire life, my soul was strong enough to the point where I could essentially live the same life as them, having the same experiences.  Although, the life of an E. Coli bacteria is not as exciting as that of a human, which is why I only watched, and for this reason, felt close to the humans. I witnessed affection, love, friendship, hatred, betrayal, and everything in between. As a human myself, I can sympathize with other humans. What is the true difference between me and a foster parent who watches the life of their child, staying with them when they are down, feeling exultation when they succeed, and overall empathy towards them?


    For this reason I grit my teeth, rage flamed in my eyes, and I felt boundless courage.  When the lives of your family are on the line, suddenly your own safety is not as important.  Of course, I knew that as a heavenly treasure, the cauldron would be able to protect me having been given the task of making sure I never died.  The other humans however, would not be protected like me.


    ¡°Wei Yun, the ships are coming closer, you still haven¡¯t done anything!¡±  Suddenly anxiety and anger gave birth to a roar. By contrast, Wei Yun was sitting there nonchalantly, ¡°Calm down, once they begin to fight over ownership of this planet they will realize that they made a big mistake.  Hmph! Trying to take the property of my Master¡¯s successor! Puh-lease!¡±


    As we waited, the two ships arrived at Earth.  They mutually decided to meet before trying to steal the treasure from the planet, probably to prevent the other group from attacking them while in the process.  Obviously, they were of similar cultivation levels, otherwise they would have simply decided to take the treasure and kill the opposing team if they interfered. With similar cultivation levels, they risk losing the treasure and their lives, and for this reason decided to team up and split profits.


    As the two groups left their ships, I knew I had to stop this, so I sent my soul outside the Earth towards the cultivators.  ¡°Stop! This is planet does not belong to you! Please leave!¡± I was hoping that the cultivators would listen to morality and remove the need for them to die.¡±  Clearly not the message they heard. They believed it to be someone trying to steal their treasure, ¡°You hypocrite! Why won¡¯t you leave then?¡± ¡°Shut up or we¡¯ll kill you!¡± ¡°Why wait? He is clearly stealing the treasure for himself, just kill him right now!¡± As if preparing to fight, they began concentrating and suddenly, ice shards, balls of flame, and meteors appeared, as if ready to be fired against me.  Seeing danger, I brought my soul projection back to my body and sighed. Having already charged up magic, one of the groups suddenly cast magic at the other. Meteors, flames, and even some flying swords rushed out, intent on killing the other group. Clearly greed had overpowered their desire for safety. As soon as the battle had started, it ended. The group which had been caught surprised by the other, lost ? of their members in the first volley of attacks, and the others immediately retreated back into the ship.  ¡°Arghh you black-hearted scallywags! We could have shared the treasure.¡± I later learned that this was Ji Huang who said this. Suddenly, Ji Huang was hit on the head by another man(Tai Ming) who said something along the lines of, ¡°as if you would share the treasure(clearly still butthurt that he had been backstabbed by Ji Huang).¡± The opposing crew laughed uproariously at this and kept smiling as the ship turned around and left the area, disappearing from view, presumably to fo to a hospital for the members of the crew which were dying.  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Suddenly, a formless pressure descended and the laughing crew stopped laughing.  They also stopped being alive as the pressure crushed their bodies into puddles of blood, piles of flesh, and bits of bone.  A truly strong cultivator had arrived.


    ¡°Come out little buddy, I won¡¯t hurt you.¡± The strong cultivator was a short, squat man with a big mustache.  His eyes glinted evilly and his ¡°friendly¡± smile, looked anything but. Believing me to be the spirit of the heavenly treasure(heavenly treasures are heavenly due to their life.  They can think for themselves, and cultivate, and the most valuable can even have a soul projection), he attempted to coax me out of the planet once again. Building a good relationship with a heavenly treasure would allow for better ownership.  For example, the average everyday sword is just a hunk of metal. Regardless of the wielder, its strength would stay the same, but a heavenly weapon would have developed a spirit. What makes it so valuable is the spirit itself, although the material from which a heavenly sword had been built would be valuable as well.  In the case of the heavenly material being a weapon, the cultivator wanted to set up a good relationship immediately.


    Suddenly, another 4 fields of pressure descended, covering the planet and the cultivator, causing him to draw back.  ¡°We won¡¯t let you just steal this treasure from under our noses.¡± The squat cultivator replied, ¡°I¡¯m not stealing, merely the spirit of the treasure chose to leave with me,¡± and then started flying towards the planet, greed flashing in his beady eyes.  ¡°Stop you knave! We witnessed what just happened, the spirit clearly said no such thing!¡± Thinking I had finally found some cultivators with some humanity I smiled. Only to be plunged into utter depravity. ¡°Hey spirit, come with us, we are much nicer than the other fat guy,¡± ¡°No! Come with me, I will treat you better than all the rest of them combined,¡±  ¡°Shut up all of you, I am the rightful owner of this treasure, did you not see the spirit disappear right before I appeared, it¡¯s clearly playing hard to get.¡± ¡°No you shut up, I arrived here at the same time as you, it was not playing anything with you.¡±


    With hatred showing in my eyes, knowing that the fate of this planet, the home of my family, and my freedom was just being played around with by these cultivators I swore to never completely trust cultivators like these.  And I decided to play with them back. I poked my head out of the planet¡¯s surface, acting as if I was shy, looking innocently at one of the cultivators, wrinkling my brows as if confused.


    ¡°HAHA did you see that, he¡¯s looking at me, he¡¯s chosen me to be his master!¡±  Of course, I did no such thing. Seeing the attitudes of these people, I had no preferences towards any of them.  As if to slap his face, I immediately started looking at the person next to him, but stopped looking confused. ¡°LOL! You short beta! He was actually choosing me!¡±  Another 10 presences appeared--more strong cultivators had arrived. Slapping another face, I turned to one of the new arrivals, but this time smiling. This continued for 3 hours.  Eventually I had to hold my chin as if confused who to pick, but a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. ¡°Wei Yun, this is enough people, kill them all.¡± All the cultivators looked around confused, not knowing what to make of my statement.  ¡°You idiot!¡± I heard in my head, ¡°They need to fight over you, I can¡¯t kill them, but as soon as they attack in this area, they will all die. Stupid baddies!¡±


    Suddenly, the short, squat cultivator had had enough.  ¡°He looked at me first, I am his master,¡± knowing that something was up(referring to what I said about killing them) this cultivator just wanted to take the treasure and leave.


    Another cultivator had also had enough.  Without even yelling a warning, threw a meteor at the one squat cultivator had claimed ownership.  The short, squat cultivator dodged the meteor, but it was already too late. The space which had been sucked dry of laws by the cauldron over trillions of years cracked, shattering into innumerable pieces which sliced up all the cultivators inside the universe.  Having not yet entered into one of the 33 heavens, the cultivators here were weak. Weak to the point where they did not even know what laws were. The space fragments met no resistance, chopping these cultivators into bits.


    Wei Yun, the cauldron spirit, smiled, as if she was seeing a lollipop instead of the mangled portions of the strongest cultivators in the realm.  A suction force pulled all of these space fragments and cultivator remains into the cauldron.


    Wei Yun patted her stomach as if having eaten a hearty dinner.


    The 300,000 strongest cultivators in the realm had all died.  Everyone who entered the universe nicknamed, ¡°The Hell of Mortals,¡± had died.  Except Ji Huang and Tai Ming who had left before space cracked and fragmented into what would later be named, ¡°The Graveyard,¡± a hellish space full of space fragments sharp enough to cut to pieces any who entered.

 Ch 4: New Home

    Looking at her handiwork, Wei Yun gave an innocent smile.  As she smiled, the torn space started to heal itself and refill the cracks.  If Bao Gang, had not seen her the instant before, sucking the remains of 300,000 people into her cauldron, and from the looks of it, digesting them, he would never connect her with the virtuous looking young woman, dusting off her hands.


    ¡°Well, now that that¡¯s over with, we should probably find you a sect.¡±


    ¡°A sect?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.  You may be peerlessly talented, but you need somewhere to cultivate, and a place which lists missions which you can use to get cultivation resources¡±


    ¡°But haven¡¯t you been saving spiritual energy and law fragments for all this time to use as cultivation resources?¡±


    ¡°No you silly goose!¡± she said, lightly bopping his head, ¡°Those I used to nourish your soul, so you are on your own for cultivation.¡±


    ¡°Wei Yun, the rest of the universe around us has shattered into space fragments, except our solar system. Why is this?¡±


    ¡°Taking the law fragments out of the area destabilized the space which allowed it to crack easily, but I knew you found Earth to be important, so I protected it from the fragmentation.  As for the rest of the solar system, there are no life forms, they are only balls of gas or rock, so when I collected the remains of the cultivators, I released law fragments which destabilized the space, which is why the planets still exist, however Earth will once again be protected, but this time by spatial cracks sharp enough to rip any of the weaklings from this realm to shreds.¡±


    Looking back at the planet which he calls home, he sighed.


    ¡°Wei Yun, bring me to a sect¡±


    ¡°As you wish.¡±


    Waving her hand, she created a black rectangle in space, about 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall and then walked into it.  Having no choice but to follow he steps forward into the black rectangle. And into a new world.


    A wave of dizziness crashes onto him and he blinks rapidly.  The new world is nothing like one he has seen before. Earth is covered with trees and unless in a big city, they are usually visible.  The difference is that this world has red trees, burning leaves, smoldering grass. Active volcanoes can be seen in the distance.


    ¡°This is going to be your cultivation spot for the next few days.  Before you can enter a sect, you must complete the body tempering level of cultivation.  This includes: tempered flesh, strengthened muscles, steel tendons, hardened bone, golden marrow, invigorated blood, improved senses, upgraded brain, and pure body.  The first four are self explanatory, the golden marrow does not directly strengthen you, but prepares you for the stage of invigorated blood. This stage is a boost to your entire body, as blood is the basis of your bodies movement.  Once your blood has thickened and turned golden like your marrow, you will gain an overall boost to your physical abilities. Improved senses and upgraded brain will involve circulating spiritual qi to your senses which will allow them to become more sensitive, or in the case of the brain, faster.  Pure body is when you can circulate spiritual energy to all parts of your body, which will require clearing your body of impurities. If a normal human can sprint at 10 meters per second and hit with a force of 40 kgs, then a cultivator who has passed these stages will be 10 times faster and 10 times stronger. You will live on this planet until you have reached the peak of body tempering. I will not help you except in the case of extreme danger, here are two cultivation methods, and a pet which master wanted you to raise.  Goodbye!¡±Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Staring blankly at Wei Yun, he did not even realize that he had no idea how to cultivate before she left, returning to the cauldron which then shrunk to the size of a pea and flew between his brows and entered his soul sea.


    ¡°Sh!t!¡±  Having no choice but to look at the three items which she had left, he threw himself to the ground and began to inspect them.  The two cultivation methods came in the form of jade slips which he picked up. Having never seen jade slips before, he fiddled around with them trying to figure how to learn cultivation from them.  He tried everything he could think of, everything from looking very closely at them to scratching at them. No matter what he tried, he could not figure out how to cultivate from them. Suddenly, he had an epiphany.  He held the jade slip to the space between his brows, the same place where the cauldron had disappeared into. The jade slip melted into a light green colored glob which then entered his soul sea as well. He gasped as a flood of information inundated his mind.


    The name of the cultivation technique was ¡°Divide and Conquer,¡± A method by which a cultivator can split their soul sea and then nourish the pieces to eventually become whole soul seas.  With these soul seas, the process could be repeated ad infinitum, that is to say, having an infinite number of soul seas, increasing at an exponential rate as the number of soul seas would always double after separation.  These soul seas could be put into an inanimate body to create a double, which would prevent death in the case of the death of just one body. Additionally, these soul seas would be able to perform soul attacks to give the cultivator a numbers advantage in the case of a soul attack.  As he would later find out, this soul cultivation technique is priceless. Forget about most cultivators not even having a soul cultivation technique, as the soul is the most arcane, complex part of the body, making soul cultivation techniques hard to create, this particular technique could be considered top tier among all soul cultivation techniques--even those in the 33 heavens.


    Excitedly, he began to follow the instructions in his head.  As soon as his soul began to tear, he felt a slight itch in his soul sea and 5 minutes later, he had successfully separated his soul into two halves. Unbeknownst to him, this ¡°slight itch¡± was not the normal response to having your soul torn into halves.  The normal response would be soul-splitting agony(aptly named), which would drive cultivators to the brink of unconsciousness. After falling unconscious, death would be the only result. As a top level soul cultivation technique, it came with high soul requirements as well.  Well, high compared to the even genius cultivators, but not to Bao Gang. To Bao Gang these ¡°requirements¡± could be considered nothing more than horse shit.


    Following the instructions for the nourishment of the soul seas, he began to draw in spiritual energy.  His unbelievably high spiritual energy attunement attracted the spiritual energy within thousands of miles.  This did not create a visible spiritual energy vortex, but an effect closer to opening the window in a hot room when the outside is cold.  To the other cultivators on the planet, they just noticed that the spiritual energy density had suddenly declined sharply, getting lower with every passing moment.  The spiritual energy was absorbed by Bao Gang, used to nourish the two soul seas, which increased in size at a snail¡¯s pace. He estimated that the two seas would be fully grown in about 24 hours.


    While this decrease in density of spiritual energy did not strongly affect most cultivators on the planet, one heavily injured woman, sitting in a cross legged position, about 200 miles away, using the spiritual energy to heal her wounds, frowned.  She stood up and and began to rush in the direction the spiritual energy was headed, towards Bao Gang. With an endurance 10 times above an ordinary human, and a normal human being able to travel around 20 miles in a day on foot, she would reach Bao Gang in 24 hours.


    In this manner, with Bao Gang hurriedly healing his torn soul seas, and the wounded cultivator rushing to find the source of the reduction in spiritual energy, time slipped away¡­


    Until 24 hours had passed.

 Ch 5: Crazy strong pet

    *Click


    The sound seemed deafening in the early morning silence. Nothing made a sound except the young, innocent looking boy, Bao Gang. The click represented that the two soul seas had finished nourishment. With this click came in increase in clarity for the young cultivator. The world seemed to be clearer and more colorful, and he could think much faster than before. When before he could use his spiritual sense to observe billions of organisms, he could now watch twice as many, which could be attributed to his doubling of soul seas.


    As he began to exercise his newly improved soul sense, he saw a ring of bloody animal corpses strewn around a mile in diameter. Furthermore, multiple demonic beasts were looking at him greedily, like a miser at gold, or a child at candy. Pure, undisguised greed. Demonic beasts are the beast equivalent of cultivators. They can absorb spiritual energy through eating, and also unconsciously. The only problem with their cultivation is their low intelligence and low spiritual energy attunement. However, heaven gives opportunity to even the most unlucky, and as such, the beasts were gifted a strong body. They could be considered dual cultivators, with body cultivation and essence cultivation. The essence cultivation is the same cultivation route which most humans take, simply because it has advantages over the other two types, soul and body. Soul cultivation has a lack of cultivation techniques, especially high level ones, and body cultivation requires heavenly resources. For beasts, this is mitigated slightly because they can eat other cultivators to gain their spiritual energy.


    Demonic beasts usually guard a treasure which they find in order to protect it until maturity when they will eat it. The demonic beasts had thought Bao Gang to be a treasure and rushed over to be the first to eat it. Treasures can absorb spiritual energy to cultivate or to advance to maturity more rapidly. While strong cultivators can also absorb seemingly infinite amounts of spiritual energy at a rapid pace, they would emit a strong pressure which would warn demonic beasts. The lack of pressure combined with large spiritual energy absorption portrayed him as a treasure. The beast carcasses were clearly the weaker beasts who showed up first, who tried to eat Bao Gang, because they knew they would not be able to guard a treasure until maturity, so they settled for the best option available, eating an unmatured treasure. This action got them killed by the stronger beasts, who, after all being drawn to him were mutually afraid of having the treasure stolen from under their nose, and decided to all back away to a distance of half a mile.


    Of course, on a planet with weak spiritual energy, like the one he was brought to for body tempering cultivation, these ¡°strong beasts¡± would be those at the 4th level of body tempering, hardened bones.


    Seeing that the beasts were still wary of each other, Bao Gang concentrated on absorbing spiritual energy once again. This time, to temper his body for protection. During his cultivation, had he been slightly unlucky, he would have been eaten by demonic beasts, and so he vowed to become stronger so he would not be looked at as an object for the purpose of furthering cultivation. Once again, the spiritual energy of the planet began to enter his body. He pushed the energy into his flesh and felt agony, his flesh was being ripped apart and healed forcefully. The reconstruction strengthening and imbuing it with spiritual energy in the process.


    With normal cultivators on this planet, they would take upwards of a year to complete the first level of body tempering, tempered flesh, but these ordinary cultivators would only be absorbing the spiritual energy of 25 cubic meters of space. With even this amount of spiritual energy, many of them needed to apply a paste to reduce pain whilst cultivating. Bao Gang was absorbing the energy of the entire planet. The only reason he was able to do so while still keeping his sanity is due to his soul strength. The advantage of having two soul seas and having been nourished for trillions of years was now shown. His ridiculously strong soul allowed him to forcibly ignore the pain from his body, allowing him to cultivate at a pace which could only be described as heavenly. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    In reality, what took other cultivators a year, took him slightly upwards of 10 breaths.


    Click* entry flesh tempering


    Pop* middle flesh tempering


    CRACK* peak of flesh tempering!


    His flesh had toughened becoming harder to penetrate, at the end of the ten breaths, reaching the peak of the flesh tempering realm. He believed, if he pressed a knife to his flesh and attempted to cut it, it would leave no mark unless he stabbed at this flesh with all his strength.


    Even though 10 breaths sounds like a short time compared to a year, he would have finished the stage even faster had he had a less cultivation suited body. His body which was free from impurities and nourished since time immemorial, was perfectly suited to cultivate, to have the potential to reach the highest peak. This body would require many times more resources than others, but would set a foundation stronger than any other cultivator. His flesh had been reconstructed more than 1000 times more than a normal cultivator, and compared to geniuses, over 100 times more.


    Geniuses would naturally be able to reconstruct their flesh more than others. If the less talented tried to keep reconstructing their flesh, they would reach a limit at which they could no longer temper their flesh and imbue it with more spiritual energy. As the body is the root of the self, this would later lead to problems such as bottlenecks and outlived potential.


    While he was forced to reconstruct his flesh more than others, it also led to stronger flesh than an ordinary cultivator. Compared to these ordinary cultivators, his flesh would resist penetration 10 times more.


    Taking the tooth of a nearby demonic beast, he stabbed it his arm. Contrary to his expectation, there was no splurt of blood. After removing the tooth from his arm, he saw a 3 millimeter deep wound, out of which, a trickle of blood flowed.


    He sat down once again to cultivate, pulling spiritual energy into his body once again, this time using it to reconstruct his muscles. 20 agony filled breaths passed while he felt his muscles swell up, reconstructing and getting slightly bigger after each reconstruction, then his muscles swiftly condensed, returning to their original size, but many times denser than at the start of cultivation.


    He stood up--well more accurately, jumped up, launching himself 4 meters into the air. He was shocked at the results of his cultivation. Obviously, he would need to get used to his newly strengthened muscles. He had just tried to stand up, but ended up being shot up 12 feet in the air!


    As the body tempering stage became closer to completion, it would become harder to complete, each stage taking much longer than the stage before, but for Bao Gang, this was simply a difference of 10 breaths(30 seconds)!


    When he landed on the ground, he had newfound confidence that he would be able to escape from the nearby demonic beasts. Having flesh 10 times tougher and muscles 10 times stronger than an ordinary cultivator, he would at the very least be able to escape, albeit with some difficulty and some injuries.


    He turned his attention to the other two objects, the second jade slip, which he placed between his brows, and the pet which Wei Yun had given him. Or more correctly, a big red lizard. As he looked at the lizard, the lizard looked at him. When Wei Yun had first given him the lizard, it had been about 5 cm long, but now was about 10 cm long. As a demonic beast, it had clearly made use of the spiritual energy which he had attracted to cultivate, growing to be twice as long.


    Realizing that his new pet had used him for its cultivation, he picked up the lizard, made a half serious/half smiling face,


    ¡°Don¡¯t you take advantage of me.¡±


    CHOMP*


    The lizard bit him. Perhaps out of annoyance for having been ignored for 24 hours, perhaps to send the message that Bao Gang is not the master, but that it is the other way around


    The flesh which could block a kitchen knife was cut like tofu!

 Ch 6: First battle

    ¡°OUCH!¡±


    Bao Gang pulled the 10 cm long lizard off his hand. The lizard brought a tiny chunk of flesh with it. Feeling cold sweat bead on his forehead he inwardly thanked Wei Yun for not allowing this lizard to grow earlier, otherwise it would be huge after a trillion years, and probably would have bitten off his entire hand. This was a truly demonic beast! By comparison, the larger ones which patiently waited for him to cultivate, scared of the consequences of charging in trying to steal the treasure for themself, were much more docile. They predicted the consequences and acted accordingly. This lizard did the exact opposite! Talk about biting the hand which feeds you!


    Obviously not having a good impression of the lizard, he tossed it away from him. The lizard looked at him arrogantly, then almost as if a switch had been flipped, began to have watery eyes, but something about its mouth, still chewing a piece of Bao Gang¡¯s flesh which made him look proud of his action instead of repentant.


    However, the innocent Bao Gang fell for the lizard¡¯s trick, believing it to be truly sorry for its actions. The lizard turned around and crawled towards the demonic beasts which were surrounding them as if a lone samurai, fighting alone, knowing that their fight would end in their death, and killing themself before their enemy could just to rob their satisfaction. In short, the little red lizard almost looked heroic.


    Almost.


    Suddenly, the lizard shot forward in a burst of speed, traveling half a mile in just a few seconds, gliding in the air on a pair of stubbly wings which Bao Gang had not noticed before, as they were red, the same color as the rest of its body. With its skinny, red body, it blended in with the surroundings. A red lizard in a forest full of flaming plants is not very obvious, especially a small one moving at high speeds. Before the demonic beasts even knew what had hit them, the lizard had already bored through the eyes of a demonic beast and out other, holding a red, marble sized crystal in between its claws.


    As if to taunt the others, it stopped midair to let them know it had killed one of their kin under their watch. With their low intelligence, the beasts reflexively pounced at the lizard, 10 flaming wolves jumping at the lizard, with tens of beasts heading towards the scene to see what the commotion was.


    That was the last thing they ever did.


    FOooomph*


    Golden flame shot out from the mouth of the lizard, engulfing the 10 flaming wolves and some other demonic beasts behind them. A frenzy broke out, the fire attribute beasts(they live on a flaming world, which is a result of a high concentration of flame laws, which results in flame attributed beasts), which would normally have a resistance to flame based attacks, burst into golden torches, rolling around on the ground, or even other beasts in the hopes of putting out the fire.


    It didn¡¯t. They only spread it.


    Not even the trees and grass were spared, the beasts within a hundred meters were quickly caught on fire. A single demonic beast would be able to run at 10 times the speed of a normal human, and the tens of beasts which were originally caught on fire rushed out in a wave of golden flames, setting everything nearby ablaze. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    While easy to spread, the flame did not just burn the beasts quickly, it did so slowly, allowing them to spread the fire for even up to a minute. Soon, hundreds of beasts had been caught on fire, and the number was only rising.


    The red lizard rushed back to Bao Gang, while holding the crystal, then the crystal visibly grew clearer until it looked like glass. The lizard also visibly grew larger by a few millimeters. The crystal, a demonic beast core, held the essence energy which the beast had absorbed throughout its life, but is usually unusable to cultivators. The beast core holds energy refined through a beast cultivation method, which is unsuitable for use by a human cultivator. When it turned clear, this indicates that the beast qi had been absorbed by the lizard, turning the crystal into energy usable by anyone.


    The lizard placed the crystal on the hole in Bao Gang¡¯s hand, where it melted into juice and soaked into his hand. A new portion of flesh quickly grew, and within 30 seconds, no one who did not witness the lizard biting off a chunk of Bao Gang¡¯s hand would be able to tell what had happened.


    The lizard looked at Bao Gang arrogantly as if to say,


    ¡°That¡¯s right, you need me, I¡¯m the master around here.¡±


    For this, Bao Gang named the lizard Xiao Gou Shi(¡°little shit¡± in chinese).


    ¡°Xiao Gou Shi! Why do you have wings, I thought you were a lizard!¡±


    As an answer, the lizard shot out a pillar of fire, to show another way in which it was not a lizard.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s not important right now, we should run away while the demonic beasts are in chaos.¡±


    The area which Xiao Gou Shi had just flown to and set on fire had now been charred to cinders, with no vestiges of living creatures at all. Even Bao Gang was slightly afraid of Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s fire and didn¡¯t want to get unnecessarily close to it if he could help it, which is why he waited until the fire burned itself out to escape the encirclement.


    Bao Gang started sprinting in that direction, the direction of freedom and safety, but as he had almost reached the half mile mark, a tiger jumped out of the bushes. 7 feet long and a few hundred pounds, the tiger completely dwarved Bao Gang. Having gained momentum and unable to stop in time, he crashed into the tiger, with the tiger biting his right arm, mauling Bao Gang¡¯s stomach with its claws. Bao Gang, Punched the tiger in the throat repeatedly. Once, twice, three times, losing himself in bloodlust for 30 seconds, the tiger did not let up. But suddenly, the tiger released its grip on his arm. Bao Gang picked himself up, and looked at the unmoving tiger, fearful it was just playing dead, when he noticed a hole where its eye used to be.


    The other eye popped out of its socket, and Xiao Gou Shi flew out of it¡¯s head, carrying a gray demonic beast core.


    ¡°You saved me Xiao Gou Shi. Thank you.¡±


    His lack of fighting skills would have gotten him killed had he not had Xiao Gou Shi to protect him. The punches to the tiger''s neck could not compare in damage to the tiger''s claws which had mauled his entire upper body. Now knowing that his peerless talent would not be enough to bring him to the peak of this realm, he would improve himself in all ways. In cultivation, not slacking off because it would make him too weak to survive. In fighting skills, because that would be what allows him to effectively use his cultivation for self-defense. And also in companions, which was the difference between life and death for him on this day.


    And Wei Yun? She didn''t appear, and having no way to communicate with her, Bao Gang had no way to be certain she will actually protect him in the case of danger. She might be sleeping, or just not paying attention to him, but this moment of inattentiveness might get him killed in an ambush. From this moment on, Bao Gang vowed to get stronger.

 Ch 7: Life threatening injuries, body healing function uncovered?

    Not having been given food by Wei Yun, Bao Gang picked up the tiger corpse, lifting it to his shoulders in a fireman¡¯s carry(look it up to see what I mean).  With his super strength, the few hundred pound body gave him minimal concern, however, its long body kept dragging on the ground, and the once mighty adult tiger now served only as a tripping hazard.  After all, Bao Gang had the body of a 7 year old, while the tiger had a 7 foot long body. When the limbs flopped around, it would be possible for him to trip on them.


    He would have placed his second soul sea into the tiger corpse in order to create an autonomous puppet, but having had no experience with the puppet making section of the ¡°Divide and Conquer¡± soul cultivation method, had no idea how long it would take.  Keep in mind, he was still near the hundreds of demonic beasts which wanted to eat him, except they had been thrown into chaos due to Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s fire.


    Learning from his previous mistake, Bao Gang sent tendrils of his spiritual sense ahead of his body in order to sense any other animals hiding in ambush.  While this would normally only be a skill reserved for those who had reached the realm of upgraded brain(8th realm of body tempering), Bao Gang had a special advantage, having had his soul nourished for years upon years until it reached perfection.


    With this method, he evaded the ambushes of 5 different demonic beasts, changing directions before coming into ambush range, causing them to howl in frustration.  Imagine tensely waiting for 24 hour for what you believed to be a treasure, only to risk death from fire. Then, being forced to watch those of the same species die while having no way to stop it.  While this might mean less competition between demonic beasts, it also reduced the number of females, which angered the males. The females had lost children or their provider which also made them irate.  Then, after laying in wait, seeing the success of the tiger¡¯s ambush, failing to hide successfully.


    After running for 25 minutes, constantly bleeding out of the wounds to his arm and torso, he had to stop.  In his haze of exhaustion, he saw a mountain, and along the walls, a cave, sheltered from view. In the case of more beasts which came chasing after him, this would give him a modicum of cover, instead of being out in the open.  Dragging his feet and the tiger corpse, he made it to the edge of the cave and collapsed.


    ¡°Crap!¡±


    Having not made it to cover, he attempted to push his body off the ground when he heard,


    SNAP*


    ¡°AHHHGGGG¡±


    That was his right arm snapping.  Having been damaged by the tiger and then having to push hundreds of pounds against gravity, his bone couldn¡¯t take it and snapped.  This became the straw to break the camel¡¯s back, and he passed out.


    This is the advantage which higher cultivation gives.  His muscles had become stronger than a normal cultivators by 10 times due to his cultivation suited body and extra muscle reconstruction, but this did not hold true for his tendons, bones, and blood.  In other words, he had suffered life-threatening, self-inflicted body injuries. His tendons had become frayed and unusable, his bones had taken too much stress under the power of his enhanced muscles and he had developed hairline cracks along his legs, and he did not have the blood flow to provide his body with resources, which caused shortness of breath, and in this case, was the root cause of his loss of consciousness.  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Two days passed while he slept and his body healed.  Xiao Gou Shi watched over him the entire time, not daring to sleep in case a demonic beast used the opportunity to eat the both of them.  As for why the little lizard did not hunt for demonic beast cores to heal Bao Gang, there were no demonic beasts which passed nearby, meaning that the lizard would need to leave the boy unguarded while he killed the beast.  On the other hand, Bao Gang seemed to be healing fine with just the tiger¡¯s beast core. Taking a risk when it would not be necessary is not something the intelligent lizard would do.


    While they were running, Bao Gang did not dare to use the beast core for healing as it would take a minute or so to heal, in which he would not be able to move his body effectively, which might lead to death if a beast charged at him.  However, after seeing the boy collapse, Xiao Gou Shi refined the core, and placed it on Bao Gang¡¯s arm. Almost as if by magic, the arm which formed and oblique angle, rotated until it once again became straight and the bite marks on the arm began to fade and be replaced with new skin.


    Additionally, the wounds on his torso began to close over the two days.  In fact, the healing pace seemed to accelerate over the two days as if his body began to use a body function which had previously been unnecessary, which became more efficient as it began to get used to its job.  Because Bao Gang was laying on his stomach, the lizard could only see the wounds on the side of his stomach closing, but assumed the same to be true about the wounds on the front of Bao Gang¡¯s torso.


    After the two days passed, Xiao Gou Shi saw another injured cultivator, so dirty that the cultivator¡¯s gender could not be checked except with a hand.


    The cultivator walked over and looked at the body with a flame of greed in their eyes, checking for belongings.  The cultivator let out a high-pitched gasp of surprise as it saw the lizard. Xiao Gou Shi and cultivator made eye contact, and the lizard let out a roar.  While not loud, the roar seemed to penetrate to the very soul of the cultivator, and the cultivator was forced to take a step back out of fear. Feeling slightly silly about being scared by a tiny lizard, the cultivator inwardly mocked themself in order to build up courage, but the once small flame of greed became an inferno.  Seeing how such a small lizard could cause such heartfelt terror, the cultivator realized that it was no ordinary lizard. In this case, it should grow to a size much bigger than a normal demonic beast due to its power which it displayed as a child. If such a small lizard could cause the cultivator to feel fear, imagine what would be the outcome when the lizard finished growing!


    ¡°Hey buddy, come with me, be my pet, I can take care of you better than this weakling.¡±


    The cultivator¡¯s seemingly gentle, high-pitched voice conflicted strongly with their facial expression which showed anything but gentleness.


    Recognizing the threat from this cultivator, the lizard now let out a tongue of flame toward the cultivator.  The cultivator spit out a never-ending stream of water out of their mouth, clearly a magic spell with the purpose of dousing the flame.


    The water did not stand a chance.


    Without even coming into contact with the flame, the water evaporated, seemingly admitting its inadequacy to the fire.  According to the five element cycle in which water counters fire, the water should hold an advantage against fire, but this only applied to water and flame of the same level.  This reaction just showed how the fire emitted by the lizard was several levels higher in power than normal water. The greed did not diminish in the slightest, but clearly the cultivator showed some restraint at the lizard which had fire which could overcome elemental suppression.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay buddy, I will just help you take care of that wounded boy.¡±


    Seeing how a lizard with such strong potential felt attraction to the boy, the cultivator decided to use the boy to get on the lizard¡¯s good side.


    Grudgingly, the lizard seemed to consent by nodding its head and allowing the cultivator to come closer.

 CH 8: Heaven defying body cultivation method

    ¡°Unnnhhh¡±


    Bao Gang let out a moan as he became conscious once again.


    ¡°About time, you¡¯ve been sleeping for 4 days since I arrived.¡±


    The cultivator which had previously been so dirty had become clean, showing the cultivator to be a woman with a long, narrow, pockmarked face, with a slightly chubby midsection.


    ¡°About 7 days ago, while healing some injuries inflicted by a strong demonic beast, I realized that the spiritual energy on the planet had dropped drastically, so using a special tool, I measured the direction toward which the spiritual energy flowed, and saw an encirclement of demonic beasts. Sadly, they saw me as well, and I was chased away. I can¡¯t believe that I ran for 24 hours straight in order to find a treasure, and in the end, demonic beasts had gotten to it first. I was chased away and buried myself in a mound of dirt in order to stay hidden. I had to hold my breath for 20 minutes at a time, only coming up to the surface of the mound for a breath when I needed to to stay conscious, because I didn¡¯t want to alert any beasts of my presence. I had to stay like that for 2 days until my injuries healed!¡±


    The woman started off talking softly, but by the end was out of breath and speaking in a loud voice. The cultivator must have harbored some grudges against the demonic beasts for making her hide in a mound of mud for 2 days. After all, women have a strong urge to keep themself clean.


    ¡°How about you? Your injuries looked to have been pretty serious, judging from the scars which I saw when I arrived.¡±


    Bao Gang, after finding out she had been looking for the treasure which attracted spiritual energy, did not want to tell her that he had been the one absorbing all the spiritual energy.


    ¡°Yeah, I was in the same situation as you.¡±


    ¡°You also have a device to detect the movement of spiritual energy? How come I didn¡¯t see it on you. Do you have a spatial ring?¡±


    All of a sudden, the greed once again flared up in her eyes. The seemingly innocent questions is a thorny net of traps at a closer look.


    ¡°Lady, I don¡¯t have such a tool, but what¡¯s a spatial ring? I was just walking and saw the encirclement and decided to take a look¡±


    He put on his most innocent, confused smile. This made the woman think twice, ¡°But if he had a spatial ring, I would have felt it on him when I searched him¡±


    Seeing that the woman¡¯s suspicions had dropped, Bao Gang quickly changed the topic. Pointing at the tiger corpse, he asked,


    ¡°I¡¯m injured, so I can¡¯t move, but could you cook the tiger for me? I¡¯m very hungry!¡±


    As if to support him, his stomach let out a growl.


    Laughing, the woman looked cautiously at Xiao Gou Shi who was sitting nearby, watching the two of them carefully. Well, watching the woman carefully.


    The lizard gave a nod of consent. To explain this weird glance the woman said,


    ¡°Your contracted pet didn¡¯t allow me to touch the tiger at all. I had to hunt for my own food for these past few days. All he allowed me to do is feed you medicinal pills.¡±


    Feeling too hungry to ask about contracted beasts and medicinal pills, he just concentrated on his hungry stomach.


    Xiao Gou Shi crawled over to Bao Gang, crawling up his head until he reached his forehead, then pressed his snout to the space between Bao Gang¡¯s brows repeatedly.


    Realizing that Xiao Gou Shi wanted him to look at something in his soul sea, he remembered that he had not yet taken a look at the second cultivation jade slip.


    He quickly began to skim it, noticing the bold name of the cultivation method, ¡°Digesting Heaven and Earth.¡± This cultivation slip is a body cultivation slip. As he read through it, Bao Gang became more and more impressed with the author of this cultivation method. It detailed a method through which a cultivator could cultivate their body through consuming other cultivators. It would use the spiritual energy and laws stored in the body in order to cultivate the body of the consumer. This would continue almost infinitely, only limited by the cultivation of the animal being consumed and the amount of it!If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    While this seemed like a heaven-defying method to grow strong at a quick pace, Bao Gang pledged to himself not to eat humanoid cultivators. Just the thought of it made him queasy beyond compare.


    Now he understood why the woman was not allowed to eat the tiger. If she did so, Bao Gang would be losing cultivation resources! For her, it would just be a meal with minimal benefits, as she did not know how to completely digest the animal, but for Bao Gang, it would raise his body cultivation to the same stage as the animal¡¯s!


    As the woman cut meat off the tiger, she cracked open a bone on accident. Golden marrow poured out onto her hand, and she felt jealousy towards Bao Gang. The marrow would turn the meal from a tasty one, to a mouthwateringly savory dish. Additionally, the beast core of a golden marrow stage beast could sell for a large sum of money back at her sect. This gave rise to thought.


    ¡°Hey little buddy, how did you kill this animal, it is a golden marrow stage cultivator, while you are only at the peak of strengthened muscle?¡±


    The woman cultivator could kill such beasts herself, but she had not seen any at the golden marrow stage recently, which is why she was jealous of Bao Gang. She had felt his tendons while tending to him, so she knew he had not yet reached the realm of steel tendons. Having frayed tendons is a common consequence of overusing your muscles but not having steel tendons yet.


    Of course, Bao Gang could not say he killed it, and seeing the way she looked at Xiao Gou Shi, did not want to alert her to their true abilities. She could not cover up her greedy look whenever she saw the lizard, and Bao Gang had noticed that she looked at the lizard differently even during an innocent interaction like her asking for permission to cut the tiger.


    ¡°We saw it had already been killed and beast core removed. We just wanted to eat a good meal, so we took it, and were chased away by beasts in the process.¡±


    The woman once again lowered her guard, not believing such a young child would be skilled at scheming. Little did she know that the seemingly young child was an old beast who had lived thousands of times longer than her! Of course, she knew that low-level cultivators would find immense benefits from eating the corpse of a high ranking cultivator, even breaking through a stage would not be considered a stretch. Humans could not completely digest beasts, but would be able to digest them slightly. However, the benefits from this type of action would decrease as cultivation level became more profound, and would lead to a buildup of demonic qi which would cause later bottlenecks and qi deviation, which would threaten to drive the cultivator to insanity. For this reason, eating unrefined demonic beasts was seen as the action of the poor, and refining a demonic beast to remove demonic qi and impurities would only be done at big sects for their genius disciples, as it would be very costly. While she knew this, she did not yet know how much of benefit it would give Bao Gang who could completely devour the cultivation of a cultivator, leaving no demonic qi as a danger to future cultivation.


    After roasting the tiger, the woman made a stew with it and some assorted vegetables, and gave Bao Gang a bowl of it to eat. When she tried to eat it however, she was once again met with a hiss from Xiao Gou Shi.


    While not poor, she also wanted to eat the demonic beast as it might further her cultivation, plus as long as she did not eat it too often , it would not endanger her, as she had little to no hope of reaching the xiantian realm


    While taking a spoonful of the rich, aromatic stew, Bao Gang began to cultivate according to the cultivation method, and once the stew slipped down his throat, he felt his dantian emit a pull towards the food.


    Suddenly, a black cauldron floated out of his dantian into his stomach area, swallowing up the stew, and releasing a mysterious energy which began to temper his body. Apparently, the attraction came from the cauldron, instead of his dantian as he had thought. Feeling the obvious benefits to cultivating with this method, Bao Gang began to take gigantic spoonfuls of stew, almost inhaling it. The cauldron kept swallowing it up, and he began to feel himself enter the realm of steel tendons.


    As the woman watched in amazement, the boy ate the entire stew himself, and even began to eat the extra tiger meat(after roasting it) and leftover golden marrow which she had planned to save for the next meal.


    ¡°Where does the food even go?¡± she thought secretly. With the volume of food he had eaten, his stomach should have been bulging obscenely!


    The noise he made while breaking into a new realm was camouflaged by the sound of him eating and utensils clattering, as the sound of popping and cracking would not be very loud to begin with.


    At the end of the meal, Bao Gang had firmly reached the peak of the steel tendons realm. With an added measure of protection he slept soundly. Not worried about a sneak attack as she had ample opportunity to do so while he was still unconscious, and without anxiety about the future. After all, even though she had not mentioned her cultivation realm, it would not be higher than upgraded brain, as she would have been able to use her spiritual sense to tell that it was him in the middle of the encirclement of demonic beasts. As long as he was given a few minutes of secrecy, he would also be able to break through to fight her at equal footing, at least concerning cultivation realm.

 Ch 9: Entering Immortal Mountain sect

    After sleeping that night, Bao Gang woke up refreshed.  His injuries had healed completely overnight, now only leaving white marks where the slashes from the tiger used to be.


    Additionally, he could feel a strange force present in his bloodstream.  Not yet concentrated enough to detect, but growing rapidly, perhaps the reason for his quick recovery from wounds which would normally take months to heal.  The woman attributed this to medicinal pills. Both hers, which she fed him, and she presumed Bao Gang to have eaten others as well before passing out. She also did not know the true extent of the damage, as some of it had already healed by the time she arrived.  In reality, her pills did absolutely nothing to help her, but was absorbed by the mysterious force in Bao Gang¡¯s bloodstream, which allowed it to become more prevalent in his body.


    ¡°Have you joined a sect yet, young fellow?¡±


    ¡°No, not yet.¡±


    Grabbing his shoulders, the woman said,


    ¡°Now that you have healed, should we head over to my sect.  We can admit you as a disciple, given how you have already reached the peak of muscle strengthening.¡±


    She began to steer him to the north, not even giving him a chance to respond to the question which she had said.  She had also said it assertively, as if not a question, but a statement.


    Bao Gang, while not liking her actions, also did not disapprove of joining a sect as he had already learned of the dangers of cultivating in the wilderness.


    The woman said forcefully,


    ¡°Oh, and make sure you remember to bring your lizard along.¡±


    After making sure Bao gang was holding Xiao Gou Shi, she picked him up, threw him over her shoulder, and began to run in the direction of her sect.


    Her running speed was slightly slower than Bao Gang¡¯s jogging speed.  While this could partially be attributed to the extra weight of Bao Gang, this also shows the difference between geniuses and normal cultivators.  Even though they have to go through more body reconstructions, their cultivation makes them stronger than those at the same realm. The woman¡¯s running speed had been enhanced in the strengthening muscle realm, as well as invigorated blood.  By contrast, Bao Gang had only gone through strengthening muscle, but would still be faster in a competition, although he would lose in a long distance race due to the endurance gained from invigorated blood. The additional reconstructions would also allow geniuses to cultivate further, because the body tempering realm could be considered a foundational realm.  The stronger the foundation, the taller a building can be built on top of it.


    After running for 15 hours(she ran faster on the way back to her sect because her injuries had healed), they reached the entrance to her sect.


    While running, she told Bao Gang a bit about herself.  Her name was Hao Lin and worked for the Immortal Mountain sect as a treasure seeker.  Her most basic job would be to use her magic tool in order to find materials which decreased the density of spiritual energy.  These would not be heavenly materials, but just spiritual herbs which absorb a minute amount of spiritual energy from the air. Her entire day would be spent walking around hoping for a spiritual herb to ripen while nearby, which would allow her to find the medicine with her tool.


    Bao Gang did not ask about medicinal pills or contracted beasts, as he did not want to expose himself for having a lack of basic knowledge, as well as unorthodox beast taming methods and a method to autonomously heal his body.


    Over the journey, the trees became sparser and soon we saw plains, and after running in the plains, we eventually saw the sect.  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    A majestic gate overshadowed nearby houses.  The houses clustered around the sect for protection, but it made them look shabby by comparison.  The sect was located at a mountain. Living residences could be seen built into the mountain with 13 big mansions at the very top.  Had he not been able to use his spiritual sense, he would not even be able to see the top of the mountain, as it rose into the clouds.  The mountain looked to be about a mile in radius, with the furthest houses in the nearby town being 3-4 miles away from the sect. The houses on the edge of town looked even more ragged than the others, and the remains of fires could be seen.


    ¡°Sometimes the edges of the town are attacked by demonic beasts looking for food.  The sect protects them, but only after the sect members arrive.¡± She explained.


    After reaching the entrance to the sect, Hao Lin put him down.


    A wave of cramps flooded his lower body.  The 15 hour trip had robbed his legs of blood flow, and at this point they seemed to be unusable, but partially recovered after about 10 minutes.


    Some of the nearby people looked at him, and then went back to their own business.  Not wanting to keep drawing attention, he walked towards the gate. However, two cultivators at the sides of the gate made an angry expression as he strode past the gate.


    ¡°Halt! Only sect members can enter the Immortal Mountain!¡±


    ¡°He is a new recruit,¡± replied Hao Lin


    At this, the townspeople gasped in surprise.  The figure which had seemed to collapse from exhaustion and was limping as if his legs did not work, seemed so different in temperament to the other sect members.  The townspeople, while surprised, did end up going back to their own business after hearing the explanation, however a few youths standing in a group looked slightly angry.  They seemed to be at about the same age as Bao Gang(7 years old).


    ¡°Look at that weak descendent.  If he is a member of the sect, but can barely walk, he must be the descendent of some powerful elder.¡±


    ¡°Jeez, I hate those who abuse their family for their own gain.¡±


    They started mocking Bao Gang, but as he was about to retort, Hao Lin whispered to him,


    ¡°Don¡¯t fight with him, Shang Lan has already reached the realm of steel tendons, and is also the son of one of the outer sect elders. If you fight you will only embarrass yourself, and I won¡¯t be able to punish him due to his parents.¡±


    Bao Gang did not reply.  He kept walking into the sect, but Shang Lin jumped in front of him.


    ¡°I joined the sect due to my own efforts, instead of abusing my parents, I refuse to allow a piece of trash like you to enter the sect.¡±


    ¡°So I just need to beat you in a fight?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    As soon as Shang Lin responded, Bao Gang threw a punch at his face from 2 feet away.  Although not a fan of surprise attacks, Bao Gang already knew that he could not let his strength be shown as it would arouse suspicion, given that it would be much stronger than even the most talented genius at the strengthening muscle stage.


    He also knew that he would be at a disadvantage in a straight up fight due to his lack of battle experience.  However, he would not be scared to do this, as the steel tendon realm did not actually add any strength to a cultivator, it would just allow them to use their tendons more without suffering damage.  In other words, in terms of strength a steel tendon realm had the same strength as a strengthening muscle realm, but a steel tendon realm has more explosiveness. As a fellow steel tendon realm cultivator, Bao Gang would not suffer from frayed tendons in an extended fight, but he would expose himself as a steel tendon cultivator, which he did not want to do in a dangerous place with people such as Hao Lin lusting after his pet.


    The punch connected.  Bao Gang had used more force than a normal strengthening muscle cultivator would be able to exert in order to show his genius to the sect and have value to the sect.


    Shang Lin was knocked out cold in one punch.


    While this would not be surprising in a fight between different level cultivators, this would be surprising if the one to be knocked out cold was the one at the higher cultivation!


    Bao Gang coolly walked past his unconscious body into the sect.  He did not feel pity, as Shang Lin had been asking for it.


    Gasping, Hao Lin quickly remembered to follow after him, shocked out of her mind.


    The other people in Shang Lin¡¯s group said,


    ¡°Holy Crap! Not even the super genius Wang Go could instantly defeat someone at a higher cultivation with only one punch!¡±

 Ch 10: Outer sect master wants Xiao Gou Shi

    ¡°You should not have done that!  If Shang Lin¡¯s father gets angry, I will not be able to protect you.  Compared to me, he has much higher status and strength. Especially because the minimum cultivation required to be an outer sect elder is the improved senses realm(7th realm of body tempering)¡±


    Hao Lin¡¯s expression seemed almost comical, but nothing about the situation could be considered funny.  However, Bao Gang would not just allow himself to be taken advantage of. From what he had seen, Xiao Gou Shi could fly at the speed of a xiantain realm cultivator, having been able to fly half a mile within a few seconds.  Although he had no prior experience with such a high realm, the lizard had flown at a speed much quicker than Hao Lin, who had reached the realm of invigorated blood. Past this realm, the speed of cultivators would not increase until they had stepped into the xiantain realm, as the later stages had nothing to do with bodily movement.  For this reason, he felt security in traveling to an unknown sect. With Xiao Gou Shi, he would at least have the security of a xiantian realm cultivator in the case of an emergency.


    While he had come to the Immortal Mountain sect for the purpose of experiencing the increase in cultivation speed a sect could bring, he would not be willing to just accept humiliation.


    ¡°When people harbor bad intentions to me, I will not just accept it.¡±


    Hao Lin recoiled at this barbed statement, remembering that her plan was to take away Xiao Gou Shi, but dismissed her suspicions that Bao Gang could know that she lusted after his pet.


    ¡°I will take you to meet the outer sect master.  He will give you your identification token. This is how the guards could tell that you had not entered the sect, and also how they could tell I had.  The walls around the mountain and the gate will trigger an alarm to alert the guards if anyone attempts to enter without having an identification token on them.¡±


    The two of them walked up the mountain, and Bao Gang tried to get a good sense of the layout of the sect in case he would later need to remember the geography during a quick escape.  On the four sides of the mountain(North, East, South, and West), there were stairs which led up towards the peak of the mountain. There were also four walls which circled around the circumference of the mountain at set heights.  Hao Lin explained that these walls prevented people without the necessary identification token from entering. The first wall at the base of the mountain blocked outsiders, the second at ? of the height of the mountain blocked outer sect members from entering the inner sect, and the third at the cloud line blocked those which had not yet become core sect members, and the last wall about 500 feet below the peak of the mountain prevented all but elders from entering.  He also noticed that the buildings became more decadent as they grew higher. The spiritual energy density also increased as they walked up the mountain. Of course, he could not use his eyes do detect all this, and this was forced to send tendrils of his soul to observe the entire sect. The walls apparently could not detect his soul tendrils.


    He would not have risked using his soul sense, but he had already done so successfully before being warned of the dangers of the walls, and thus decided that using his soul sense posed no danger to him.


    When they reached the wall to the inner court(the wall which only allows inner sect disciples through), Hao Lin explained the situation to the guards, and then were let through.  The same thing happened, when they reached the wall to the core disciples court, however, after reaching the wall to the elder court, they were no longer allowed through(as Hao Lin had not yet reached the position of elder) and had to ask the guards to alert the outer sect master that he had visitors.  She also whispered something in the guards ear. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The outer sect master kept them waiting for over an hour, by which time Bao Gang was growing restless.  Although he had resolved not to absorb spiritual essence at such a fast rate because it would draw attention from treasure seekers like Hao Lin, he would still have been able to enter a new stage had he been alone in the wilderness within an hour.


    Hao Lin on the other hand, was sitting prim and proper, eager for the outer sect master to come, and not holding this delay against him, thinking,


    ¡°As soon as we tame Bao Gang¡¯s contracted pet, I will be able to receive the contribution points which I need in order to buy cultivation materials and be promoted to elder!¡±


    This was also the reason why she was forced to search for treasure instead of cultivating.  With the treasures, she would be able to promote to the position of elder. Although she had not yet reached the realm of improved senses, everyone in the sect knew that with contribution points, cultivating would become much easier.


    If one hit a bottleneck, they could buy a stage-breaking pill, if they wanted to absorb spiritual energy faster, an advancement pill would do the trick.  In fact, an advancement pill would be able to quadruple the rate of spiritual energy absorption for 2 days! After cultivating for 2 days, they would have the same result as cultivating for 8!


    Truly twice the results with half the effort!  While these pills would leave behind pill toxins which would make later cultivation harder, these would take time to build up.  For a cultivator like Hao Lin who only desired to become an elder, this would pose minimal problems.


    Additionally, disciples could buy spiritual herbs which would leave behind no after effects, only allowing faster cultivation, however, would cost much more compared to an advancement pill, as well as not being as fast.  This is why Hao Lin would rather hunt for spiritual herbs and turn them in to the sect to buy advancement pills, rather than just eating the spiritual herbs.


    After waiting for an hour, they saw an imposing man walk out of the elder court--the outer court sect master.


    He had a full beard and short, spiky hair.  Around his waist hung a saber, and muscles could be seen bulging out of his shirt and on his arms.  A sharp glint shone in his eyes.


    ¡°So this is the guy with the strong contracted beast?  Hao Lin, you better not be wasting my time again! If this beast happens to be like that ¡°special¡± rock you found you will be in for a world of hurt.  Just because it happened to be of the same color as the legendary purple god rock doesn¡¯t mean it has the same properties. It broke after just one hit from me!¡±


    The outer sect master began to inspect the lizard on top of Bao Gang¡¯s shoulder.  It should be mentioned that he did not ask before doing so, not the lizard, nor the owner.


    However, Bao Gang held back his anger.


    Xiao Gou Shi did not.


    ¡°AGHHHHHHHH.¡±


    The outer sect master got done in just as easily as Bao Gang had, losing a small chunk of his hand.


    Realizing, just as Hao Lin had, that the lizard was anything but ordinary, he gulped loudly.


    ¡°If this lizard was fully grown, it would be terrifying!  I must have it.¡± He thought.


    He first considered the option that the lizard had already become an adult, however, after secretly checking the bone age of the lizard using a magic technique, he realized that the lizard had to be under 2 years old from its bone age!


    If he knew that the lizard had actually been less than 2 weeks old he would have been astounded!

 Ch 11: Compromise for Xiao Gou Shi

    The outer sect master began to visibly salivate after checking out Xiao Gou Shi.


    ¡°If I got this lizard and raised it to maturity, when I show how strong it is to the sect master, I would surely be promoted as having done a meritorious deed!  I might even be able to get a ¡°cultivation standard pill¡± and cultivation method!¡±


    The cultivation standard pill is the pill which allows a cultivator to reach the xiantian realm, which requires storing spiritual energy in the dantian.  Prior to this, the might of spells and movement is limited. Cultivators cannot yet use spiritual energy to attack or strengthen their body, only to temper it.  The major difference is that tempering uses spiritual energy to cause reconstruction and infusion of spiritual energy in the body in order to reach a higher physical fitness, permanently increases body strength, but caps at a point. Strengthening the body is the use of spiritual energy to temporarily reinforce or empower the body in order to achieve superhuman feats, such as literally breaking through to the heavens!  Strengthening is just dependent on how much spiritual energy a cultivator has and their cultivation method. With more spiritual energy, a body can be strengthened almost infinitely.


    The reason for the name ¡°cultivation standard pill¡± is because this is the lowest realm which is truly accepted as a cultivator.  Although most aspiring cultivators are in the body tempering realm, they are not truly considered cultivators until they reach xiantian realm, as they will then undergo a fundamental change in power.  Without this pill, it would be difficult for a person to experience controlling and amassing spiritual qi. The pill would allow the spiritual energy attunement of a cultivator to shoot up for a few hours, hopefully allowing them to amass spiritual energy in their dantian.


    This is where the cultivation method comes in.  Before entering the xiantian realm, a cultivator has no need for a cultivation method, because they are just using spiritual qi to temper their body.  After entering the xiantian realm, a cultivator can cultivate a special type of qi by amassing, then converting the spiritual energy to qi by using the method.  Before converting it, the spiritual energy does not truly belong to the cultivator, and will just dissipate if not being forcefully held in their dantian. Thus, without the cultivation standard pill and cultivation method, a cultivator is unlikely to be able to break into the xiantian realm(except in the case of geniuses who might not need the pill).


    This is why these two things are limited so heavily, as they allow a group in power to stay in power.  Without these things, cultivators cannot break into the xiantian realm, and will forever be lower in strength.  By limiting them, the group in power ensures that only those loyal to them will become strong.


    Hao Lin walked up to the sect master after seeing his excitement, and whispered something into his ear.


    ¡°The lizard does not just have bodily strength, it also has a roar which may be able to become a soul attack at maturity, as well as a type of flame I have never seen before.  It completely overpowered the water which I cast to block it. Luckily, it was just sending a warning, otherwise I don¡¯t know if I would still be here today. It only let me get close in order to treat itts master, so until we perform a beast contract with it, I advise that we do not aggravate its master.  The master, Bao Gang, will also grow to be powerful. I saw him defeat Shang Lin in one punch, even though he was 1 stage lower in cultivation!¡±Stolen story; please report.


    ¡°Okay boy, although you have yet to reach the cultivation requirement for joining the sect, we can make an exception if you give us your pet.¡±


    Obviously, the most easy and direct way to get the beast to form a contract with them would be to have the original master willingly give it up.  This would cause a feeling of animosity between the two, which would allow the sect to have some leverage over the beast in case it wanted revenge(they can offer to kill the previous owner in return for the beast entering a contract with them).


    The outer sect master hoped with his mind and soul that the kid would accept this, which would the allow him to murder the kid and Hao Lin after signing the contract with the beast, leaving all the credit for the discovery of the beast to himself.


    Seeing his bad intentions, Bao Gang chuckled inwardly, then putting on his most pouty face,


    ¡°But I really like Xiao Gou Shi, can I please keep him?¡±


    ¡°But think about your future!  By giving up your pet, you ensure yourself a successful future, especially as Hao Lin has told me that you are a genius in terms of spiritual energy attunement, having beaten Shang Lin in one punch while being one stage lower in cultivation!¡±


    ¡°Fine then---¡±


    The outer sect master finally let out a sigh of relief, but Bao Gang had not finished talking yet,


    ¡°I¡¯ll just not enter the sect.¡±


    Rage began to build up inside the outer sect master.  When had he ever been played before? All his life he had been the one with power over others but, now a snot-nosed brat would be able to have power over him? HIM? The outer sect master? Above thousands and only under 12 people?!?!


    ¡°Please rethink Bao Gang, I just changed my mind, our sect needs geniuses like you, just enter, you will not have to give up your pet.¡±


    Of course, if it came down to it, the outer sect master would just take action and kill Bao Gang, but he wanted to be able to build a positive relationship with the beast so that the beast would abandon Bao Gang and serve him willingly.  This would be the best way to guarantee loyalty.


    ¡°Okay then I¡¯ll join the sect.  Why didn¡¯t you just say so before?¡±


    Hearing this, the outer sect master once again smoldered with apoplectic rage wanting with all his being to strangle this smug little brat, but restraining himself with the promise of breaking into the xiantian realm.


    This is what is called the carrot and the stick method, used to perfection by Bao Gang.


    Finally, the snake reared its ugly head,


    ¡°We can allow you to join the sect, but we don¡¯t allow contracted pets allowed inside the sect, except the beasthouse.¡±


    The outer sect master would be able to personally supervise Xiao Gou Shi in this manner, and he did not believe that even the most loyal of contracted beasts would be able to reject a master which gave them more benefits than the previous one.


    Bao Gang looked carefree, even though he knew exactly what the outer sect master was thinking,


    ¡°Sure, but I will be able to visit Xiao Gou Shi sometimes right?¡±


    ¡°Of course, he is your pet after all.¡±


    The outer sect master also did not believe that Bao Gang would be able to resist the temptation of giving up his contracted pet to the sect in exchange for contribution points which would allow him to further his cultivation.


    In this manner, a compromise had been made, both sides getting what they wanted.  At least, this is what the outer sect master thought, believing himself to have even drawn the better end of the deal.  Little did he know that Bao Gang would latter take away the carrot, while giving him the stick!

 Ch 12: I wish I could do this at the library

    Having finished negotiating, Hao Lin was tasked with bringing Bao Gang to his lodging in the outer sect.  Bao Gang would have insisted in being put in the inner sect in order to obtain more benefits, but this would have placed him at risk.  He would have been surrounded by people of higher cultivation and no guarantor of safety(as Xiao Gou Shi had already been taken to the beasthouse by the outer sect master, and Wei Yun, the cauldron spirit, had seemingly not been paying attention to his safety).  By contrast, in the outer sect he would simply be one of the ordinary disciples, not drawing attention.


    Hao Lin, believing Bao Gang to have a chance at becoming a powerful cultivator, gave him a tour of the sect in order to give Bao Gang a good impression of herself.  She showed him the beast hall(same thing as beasthouse), the inscription workshop, and the alchemy hall. These would be places for crafts to be done. Crafts would provide disciples with a method to train their soul strength, and also a way to earn contribution points.  If another disciple required an inscription on a weapon, or a pill, they would be able to buy it from the alchemy hall or inscription workshop(although not the cultivation standard pill due to a restriction set by the alchemy head). For those without talent in any of these fields, they would have to work in another.  This other field would be a literal field, with crops and herbs, or these disciples would have to take missions to earn contribution points.


    She also showed Bao Gang the two magic halls and the library.  The library held martial techniques and craft knowledge, and the magic halls gave lectures on fire and water magic, the two most prevalent types of magic in this world.


    After walking around the sect for a few hours to show him the locations of these buildings, she showed him to his accommodation.  He would be living in his own house near the edge of the wall to the inner sect, giving him one of the best spiritual energy density location in the entire outer sect(the spiritual energy density increases as you go up the mountain).  Most outer sect disciples would be forced to live in a dorm, or near the base of the mountain. Only the strongest among the outer sect disciples would be allowed to live in such a house!


    After showing him the house, Hao Lin ended the tour and left for her own house in the core sect.  Bao Gang looked around his house, using his spiritual sense to reveal any monitoring methods, such as a hole in the roof through which a spy could look.  He found none, but did see a strange room with scratches all over the wall forming a complex pattern, but after walking in, realized it to be a room for cultivation.  The room had a spiritual density of 150% of the rest of the house!


    ¡°Oh, so this must be what an inscription is.¡±


    Not wanting to reveal his lack of knowledge about cultivation related topics, which would leave him in danger of being taken advantage of, he just pretended to know what Hao Lin was talking about when she introduced to him the halls and inscription workshop.  Having explored enough for one day, he sat down to cultivate in the cultivation room, making sure to dial in his spiritual energy attraction so that he would not draw attention. Of course, the inscription would naturally help conceal him, as it would draw in spiritual energy anyway.


    The inscription would keep the room at a spiritual energy density 1.5 times the outside, which would allow Bao Gang to absorb it quickly, replenishing when it dropped below that.  When he cultivated, he obviously cultivated much more slowly, but still at a faster pace than any outer or inner sect disciple, and even most of the core disciples.


    He cultivated all night long in a seated lotus position, but slept while he did so.  For any other cultivator this would be impossible, but for him, this would soon become the norm.  His spiritual energy attunement was so high that he almost needed to purposefully suppress it to avoid sucking in spiritual energy autonomously.  Compared to his absorption when he focused on absorbing it though, it paled in comparison. While other cultivators could only absorb the spiritual energy of a few paltry cubic meters, he could absorb it from the entire planet!


    Other genius cultivators would have a similar effect where their spiritual energy attunement would be so high that they would hold an attraction to spiritual energy and be able to cultivate without trying to.  However, these geniuses would not even consider this cultivation, because it would not proceed at even a 10000th of their normal cultivation speed. But for Bao Gang, this would be just enough to cultivate at the speed of the most talented core disciples!


    Add on to this that the core disciples were given houses higher up the mountain, allowing them a better spiritual energy density, and their hours of painstaking cultivation become a joke.  When he gets a house with their spiritual energy density, he will cultivate faster in his sleep than they will at their peak performance!


    Having already been at the peak of steel tendons, he broke through during the night, but only made it to entry hardened bone.  In fact, had he been a normal cultivators, he would have already made it to golden marrow stage due to his heaven defying body cultivation method(he can absorb the spiritual energy of a cultivator by eating it.  In this case, this is the tiger which he ate in the cave), but his body needed to go through more body reconstructions than a normal cultivator, and was only able to make it to the peak of steel tendons. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    The next morning, he woke up refreshed, and was slightly happy that he broke into a new realm overnight.  At this point, he is only one stage away from making sure like a situation similar to the one where he destroyed his own body due to being too strong, would never happen again.


    He decided to start learning the basic information which he missed, such as basic information on inscription, alchemy, beast taming, and battle techniques.


    He walked over to the library where he saw a wizened old man with a long beard, sitting in a rocking chair, seemingly asleep.  While he could not see anything obviously dangerous about the man with his eyes, he felt a sense of danger when he was about to use his spiritual sense to observe the man more closely.  Almost like a 6th sense which resulted in the hairs on the back of his neck feeling a tingly feeling. Similar to having a sharp blade placed behind your neck, a few inches from death. He hastily withdrew his spiritual sense.


    He decided to just avoid the man and pretend to be the average outer disciple.


    His ploy worked, and he got by the man unsuspected.


    Inside the library, there were bookshelves in all directions, more than any one person could go through in their lifetime, or so he thought.  He would later learn that cultivators can live for unbelievably long periods of time, and many of the powerful ones could bend time to experience 10 seconds worth of time while only aging 1.  Even those who had not yet reached such a stage would be able to read through the entire library by virtue of their spiritual sense.


    When a cultivator reaches the stage of being able to move super fast, the limiting factor in their reading speed would be how fast they can turn the pages without tearing them.  Using spiritual sense however, they would be able to avoid this hazard, and thus only be limited by their comprehension and soul strength, as these would determine how fast a cultivator can interpret, and how fast they can view text.  Without interpreting, there is no point reading, and would just be considered memorizing. A cultivator would be able to look back to what they memorized, but the speed at which they could interpret what they had memorized would be considered their reading speed.


    Soul strength is dependent on how many soul tendrils a cultivator can form.  A cultivator with more control over their soul seas would be able to form thinner soul tendrils, and thus would be considered having higher soul strength.  Think of it similar to a wall of television screens. A cultivator would send a soul tendril to view a screen. One with weak soul strength would only be able to view one screen, but a different cultivator with strong soul strength would be able to view hundreds, or maybe even more.  Next, the information from the television would need to be comprehended in order to be considered reading, this can be said to be dependent on the size of a cultivator¡¯s soul. The soul is the basis of thought, and thus the larger the soul, the stronger the comprehension.


    This presents an interesting dichotomy.  Soul tendrils are essentially pieces of the soul sea which are spread out and allow the cultivator to ¡°see¡± with all the soul tendrils, however, this temporarily decreases the size of the soul sea, which lowers comprehension.  At lower realms of cultivation, it is very important how the cultivator chooses to distribute their soul sea, as they are not yet very large. However, at higher realms, this is no longer a problem, as the soul seas have gotten bigger.  This is why high realm cultivators rarely go to libraries; they can read all the information too quickly.


    In fact, when considering large quantities of information, this is why it would be stored on jade slips, which would allow almost infinite quantities of information and comprehension to be transmitted.  This would bypass the need for both strong soul strength and comprehension, but is expensive and not considered feasible for a large number of people who need to know the information, as they would get used up after one use, and take a long time to inscribe a new one, which requires infusing the comprehension of the maker into the jade slip.


    While thinking about how he would be able to read all the books in the library, Bao Gang came to the conclusion that it would simply be too inefficient to read all the books he would need to, and like other cultivators before him, realized he could view all the books in the library due to his soul strength which had been increased for trillions of years with not just spiritual energy, but also law fragments, a level higher than spiritual energy.  This same circumstance also gave him a massive soul sea, at least in comparison to other same realm cultivators.


    The problem is that his soul strength is super high(he could watch the lives of every being on Earth at the same time, which is in the trillions, but would only be watching, not considered comprehending anything), but his soul sea would be too small to interpret the information coming from all soul tendrils.  That is, until he had used the soul cultivation method, ¡°Divide and Conquer¡± which gave him two soul seas(double the comprehension speed), and even more would come later!


    Bao Gang spread out his soul sense, sending one soul tendril to each book.  Keep in mind, this library was MASSIVE. At least millions of books were included in the library.


    He began interpreting all the information, and in this manner, he stood gazing off into space stupidly for 5 minutes.


    Then he walked right back out of the library.


    That¡¯s right! He read and interpreted each of the millions of books in the library in five minutes!

 Ch 13: Basic cultivation and craft knowledge

    His head was feeling slightly swollen with information.  He had learned everything which those on Earth knew, however, the progress of technology was gradual, allowing him to learn it slowly and comfortably.  In this case, he had to go through a planet¡¯s(and possibly other planet¡¯s) knowledge. This would have taken thousands of years, as well as work from millions of people.


    All learned about within 5 minutes by Bao Gang.


    He educated himself on all the stuff which had plagued him with nervousness before, mainly being basic knowledge about crafts and cultivation.  A description of his learning is as follows:


    Beast taming is using your knowledge or resources at your disposal to appeal to a demonic beast.  This would hopefully lead into the beast preferring to be your pet than living in the wild, as demonic beasts would also want to cultivate as fast as possible, and to as a high a realm as possible.  Being a pet might allow them to do this better than living in the wilderness.


    A contract would then be made using the heavens as a witness.  Both parties would stake something if they broke the contract. This could be their life, their ability to progress in cultivation, or even something trivial, such as a small sum of money.  The contract terms would be written on animal skin in blood, then an incantation would be said. Both beast and man would need to then drip blood onto the contract, and then the contract would be finalized.


    In the case that the contract was broken, the guilty party would then lose the amount they had staked in the contract.  In the case of the money, that sum of money would disappear from their savings, or in the case they did not have enough, would disappear as soon as the money had been earned


    Alchemy is the use of spiritual materials to create a pill, which produces a much larger effect than just eating the material.  In high graded pills, the pills would even absorb spiritual energy to enhance themself. It also has the risk of giving impurities to the cultivator however.


    The reason why alchemical pills can have a bigger effect than the plain spiritual herbs, is that a cultivator cannot fully digest the herb, nor the impurities.  In this case, the cultivator simply poops out the impurities and remaining medical efficacy.


    In alchemy, the pill is formed in such a way that it can be fully digested, even the impurities.  Thus, alchemists would need to get rid of as much impurity as possible, while keeping as much medical efficacy as possible.


    Certain materials would have stronger impurities.  That is, they would require a high level flame to destroy.  This is what separates pills into levels. The lowest level pill being made with fire condensed by a body realm cultivator.


    Pills would also be separated into rankings, which measure how much impurity it contains.  The lower, the better. A rank 10 pill would be between 91 and 100% impurity, while a rank one pill would be between 1 and 10% impurity.  There is also a legendary 0 rank pill which contains no impurity, but it had not been well documented in the books at the library.


    Inscriptions are a set of runes which tap into the dao, allowing the inscription to attract and absorb spiritual energy.  This inscription can be reusable, such as being put onto a sword, which would allow it to send out flame when given a signal, and can also be consumable, such as an inscription tile which will explode just once.


    Typically, permanent inscriptions will be more valuable than the one time use inscription for obvious reason.  However, the one time use inscriptions will be more powerful for the same value permanent inscription, due to the one time use inscription having no limit on materials.  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    For a permanent inscription, the object on which it is placed, as well as the inscription itself, must be strong enough to withstand the inscription being activated, otherwise it defeats the purpose of a permanent inscription.  In a one time use inscription this is not the case, as it will only be used once.


    Thus, a permanent inscription requires better materials for a same strength effect, making it more valuable.


    There are also levels to inscription, similar to in alchemy, a flame is required, but this time to carve an inscription.  The inscription is not graded on flame strength, only on inscription complexity and strength.


    A grade 1 pill/inscription would be possible to make by the average peak body tempering cultivator.


    Battle techniques are similar to a cultivation method in that they detail how to perform a technique.  This is not just basic, run-of-the mill directions; it details in which way spiritual energy and qi should be circulated to achieve maximal strength/speed, etc.  This would be performed with spiritual energy in the body tempering realm, as they have not yet condensed their own qi, but prior to this, it would be done with qi.


    While Bao Gang had read and understood all of the books in the library, this did not mean he would be able to perform these battle skills, nor pillforge, nor carve inscriptions.  These books only gave instructions, and thus, Bao Gang would need to practice these skills before leaving the sect.


    He had already decided that cultivating within the sect would not work out.  He could not draw enough spiritual energy to advance at a pace which he deemed fit.  At least, without arousing suspicion due to a spiritual energy vortex. Instead, he would take missions which would put him outside the sect,and would be able to absorb spiritual energy faster.  But, at a slower pace than when he first arrived, and at a distance far away from the sect, so that the decrease in spiritual energy would not be felt.


    Before leaving to cultivate though, he needed to learn battle techniques and practice fighting with others.  It can be thought of like a beginner boxer with the physique of a professional boxer. Without any prior experience, they would not know how to punch correctly, and even though strong, would not be able to beat a weaker boxer with more punching practice.  Both of these boxers would lose to another with actual boxing experience(punching practice is practicing punching, experience is actually boxing with other people and learning the strategy of the game).


    Having a goal in mind, he went back to his house to practice the battle techniques which he had read about.  He first practiced a technique called ¡°Dragon¡¯s fist, Tiger¡¯s Palm,¡± this technique is a level one technique, meaning that the average peak body tempering cultivator could practice it.  Given as it only detailed how to circulate spiritual energy, and there being no major difference in terms of spiritual energy attunement between peak and mid level body tempering realm cultivators, it could be practiced by any body tempering disciple, as long as they had the required soul strength.


    He spent 10 minutes just getting used to the circulation path, and making sure that when he circulated it, all of the spiritual energy absorbed by his body would be circulated correctly.  He cast it and,


    ¡°ROARRRRR¡±


    The sound of a tiger roar could be heard when he used a palm, and that of a dragon when he punched.


    From his reading, he knew this to be an exceptional mastery over the skill.  The average body tempering disciple would barely be able to control spiritual energy, and would not circulate the majority of it correctly.  This would only allow the battle skill to be cast, but would not produce a sound. A sound shows strong control over the skill. A level higher would be visualization of the animal, which would cause a silhouette of a dragon and tiger behind him.


    What he didn¡¯t realize, is that while he cast the spell, he had not only made a sound, but also formed a weak silhouette of the two animals behind him!  The animals were behind him, which is why he could not see them!


    ¡°Come out Bao Gang! My brother has something to say about you living in this house!¡±


    Recognizing the voice of Shang Lin, the boy he had defeated in one punch, he came out of the house, and exactly as he had hoped, saw a group of boys, intent on beating him up!


    This would be where his battle experience could come from!

 Ch 14: Forced out of the sect!

    Outside his house, he saw Shang Lin with a few of the same friends from before.  He also saw another boy looking calmly at him, who seemed to be older than the rest of them.


    ¡°My brother, Shang Jin, is one of the top outer disciples, and he doesn¡¯t even have a house this close to the wall to the inner sect.  Why should you?¡±


    Shang Lin sneered, clearly not caring about his house, just wanting to bully Bao Gang.


    What Shang Lin did not know, is that Bao Gang hoped that this exact scenario would occur, which would give him battle experience.  Clearly, Shang Lin had not yet learned his lesson. If beating him once did not suffice, he would need to beaten again(in the sense of being defeated, not actually punching him again)!


    ¡°Why should your brother have my house? I¡¯m stronger than him!¡±


    At this, the older boy had the calm look wiped off his face,


    ¡°Look here you snotty kid, I have already reached the stage of hardened bone and am also a genius.  If we fight, we will have the same speed but I will have more endurance, better defense, and more explosiveness.¡±


    The explosiveness refers to the ability to accelerate quickly, by virtue of the strengthened muscles and steel tendons.  The better defense was a result of the hardened bone, and the increased endurance was a result of both the better tendons and bones.


    ¡°I have also cultivated the ¡°Dragon¡¯s Fist, Tiger¡¯s Palm¡± to the intermediate realm.  I can already make a small amount of noise when I hit!¡±


    Of course, to Bao Gang, none of these things would be considered as giving away an advantage.  Even if Shang Jin was one of the most monstrous geniuses to ever live, he would still pale in comparison to Bao Gang.  In terms of bodily strength, Shang Jin was completely outclassed. Luckily for him, Bao Gang would not be able to expose it.


    Secondly, not only had Bao Gang cultivated the ¡°Dragon¡¯s Fist, Tiger¡¯s Palm¡± to the advanced level, meaning a small silhouette would form, but he also had ridiculous spiritual energy attunement, which essentially determines power in the body tempering realm, as all spells are cast using spiritual energy.  After this realm, they would be cast using qi, the major difference being that qi would truly belong to the cultivator, allowing it to be saved up almost infinitely. In a fight at this level, spiritual energy attunement no longer plays a big part, but in the body tempering realm, the might of a spell is dependent only on comprehension and how fast spiritual energy can be gathered to be used in a battle skill.


    After finding out that Shang Jin had not yet reached the realm of invigorated blood, Bao Gang no longer held any reservations about getting into a fight.


    Bao Gang rushed at Shang Jin, throwing a punch at his face, the same as when he had hit Shang Lin, his brother.


    Having been told about how his brother had been humiliated in one punch, Shang Jin had already decided to do the same to Bao Gang.  He would first block the punch without moving, then return the exact same one to knock out Bao Gang in one hit!


    Sadly, the fight in reality did not turn out the same as the fight in his head!


    When Shang Jin raised his hand to block, his hand was pushed back from the punch, and hit his face, giving him a bloody nose.


    As tears involuntarily began to leak out of his eyes and blood spurted down his face from his nose, he realized that once again, the Shang family had been humiliated by Bao Gang.


    All the onlookers gasped,


    ¡°Bao Gang¡¯s bodily strength is unreal! He was able to overcome Shang Jin in just one punch!¡±


    Keep in mind though that strength at this cultivation is only dependent on the number of reconstructions in the strengthening muscle stage, at least until a cultivator reaches the stage of invigorated blood.  Although Bao Gang was stronger, it did not show that he would win because the true advantage of the steel tendons and hardened bone realm is additional stamina and defense respectively.


    Shang Jin kicked out at Bao Gang¡¯s waist and Bao Gang beegan to draw in spiritual energy, casting ¡°Dragon¡¯s Fist, Tiger¡¯s Palm.¡±  The two attacks collided, and with a ripping sound, which was overshadowed by the roar of a tiger, Shang Jin¡¯s shin was ripped to shreds.


    Bao Gang knew that Shang Jin¡¯s bones were stronger than his own, and thus would not be able to break Shang Jin¡¯s leg with a punch.  Most likely, the opposite would happen. For this reason, he decided to use the tiger¡¯s palm, which would cause flesh wounds, avoiding the problem of having weaker bones.


    Even more incensed, Shang Jin decided to just use his finishing move.  Understanding why Bao Gang had used the Tiger¡¯s palm rather than the Dragon¡¯s fist, he decided to do the opposite, making use of his stronger bones in order to achieve a victory.


    ¡°roar¡±


    A quiet roar seemed to shake the surroundings.  In reality, it was the air being forced out of the way of Shang Jin¡¯s punch which shook the surroundings.  The roar itself was almost pathetic by comparison.


    Flustered for the first time since arriving in the sect, Bao Gang hurriedly got out of the way, but didn¡¯t quite make it.  His quick acceleration had put him off balance, and he only had 1 foot on the ground at this point


    Forced to retaliate or take a direct hit, he decided to retaliate in the hopes of forcing Shang JIn back.  This time, Bao Gang released his suppression on spiritual energy attunement, and spiritual energy flooded his body.  Forcing all of the spiritual energy along the circulation path of the battle skill, he began to feel pain. The spiritual pathways within his body began to stretch and,If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°ROOOOOOAAAAR¡±


    An earthshaking roar along with the silhouette of a tiger punctuated the palm which he sent towards the torso of Shang Jin.  In comparison to Shang Jin¡¯s punch, this one seemed much more terrifying.


    Shang Jin looked in Bao Gang¡¯s eyes with amusement.  Even though it sounded impressive, how could Bao Gang out hit him while being off-balance and having lower cultivation?


    Neither of them backed off, and the exchange ended in mutual defeat, Bao Gang¡¯s shoulder had been clipped by Shang Jin¡¯s punch, and his collarbone had been broken.


    But in comparison to Shang Jin¡¯s injuries, Bao Gang¡¯s seemed almost trivial.  Shang Jin¡¯s shirt had been ripped to pieces and were no longer covering his upper body.  His chest was a mess of torn flesh and his ribs and sternum could be seen, although undamaged.  The real damage occurred on the lower half of the torso. Shang Jin¡¯s internal organs were not protected by a rib cage, and were visibly torn to pieces.


    After seeing the damage, Shang Jin himself had fainted.


    Quickly running up to his brother, Shang Lin yelled,


    ¡°Bao Gang! My father will kill you for injuring my brother!¡±


    Then, Shang Lin and his friends quickly carried Shang Jin away from Bao Gang, as if scared he would fight them.


    Nursing his broken collarbone, Bao Gang sighed.  He had not expected his last hit to be so terrifying!  Before, he had never fully formed a silhouette of a tiger, only a partial, transparent one, but under the pressure of the fight, he had a moment of enlightenment in which he gained comprehension of the battle skill, which led to this disastrous outcome.


    Knowing the sect would no longer be a safe place for him, he ran out of the sect, not paying attention to which direction he went, only wanting to get far away from the sect.


    Good thing he did too, because a few minutes after Bao Gang had disappeared from sight over the horizon, a roar of anger could be heard from the elder court and an earthquake rushed down the mountain and threw a punch at Bao Gang¡¯s house.


    The entire house shattered from the might of this ferocious punch.


    Far away, Bao Gang had just killed a demonic wolf, and while running away from the sect, was also roasting it using a fire condensed from spiritual energy, according to one of the alchemy manuals from the library.


    Demonic beast meat was not only nourishing, but also very tough.  Using a flame condensed from spiritual energy would make the meat more tender, as well as getting rid of some impurities.


    Having not been used to using this type of flame, the meat ended up being burnt on the outside, but was the most delicious meat he had ever eaten.  There is something special about cooking something yourself which makes it more delicious.


    The mysterious force in his blood stole the spiritual energy released from the cauldron in his stomach and became more powerful.  As it did, the rate of healing in his shoulder increased.


    At this point, Bao Gang now had 2 new goals.  #1 would be to learn a movement technique in order to have better agility, and #2 would be strengthening the mysterious force in his blood.  Imagine if he could eventually heal himself as he got injured during a battle! He would never have to worry about battles of endurance!


    Keeping these goals in mind, Bao Gang killed and ate any animal which he saw in his path, and began to practice one of the movement techniques from the library, ¡°Flight of the Hummingbird.¡±


    While a hummingbird is not an impressive species overall, its ability to fly is unmatched.  Using a combination of small wings and rapid flapping, the hummingbird has unmatched flight control.


    The reason why Bao Gang chose this specific agility technique is because it would allow him to fly at a high level of comprehension.  Even xiantian realm cultivators could not do this!


    With this technique, he would be safe from all harm, except for flying demonic beasts.


    After sprinting away from the sect for 5 hours straight, Bao Gang was too tired to continue.  Keep in mind, Bao Gang could run faster than an invigorated blood stage cultivator, and after 5 hours was over 4000 miles away from the sect.


    This world filled with fire laws was hotter than the Earth, and sweat poured off of him in buckets.


    Luckily, he had also learned a technique to condense water from spiritual energy, and would not have to worry about dehydration.


    He jumped into a tree for cultivation and did not move for 48 hours, continuously drawing in spiritual energy.  He held himself back, not allowing himself to absorb the spiritual energy of the entire planet, just in a radius of 2000 miles.


    Over the 48 hours, Bao Gang had broken through from entry hardened bone all the way through peak invigorated blood.  While he was cultivating in the invigorated blood stage, the mysterious force in his blood continuously got stronger, absorbing the spiritual energy which he was using to reconstruct his blood.  He also noticed that his spiritual energy attunement increased as the mysterious force in his blood did. Although, he did not allow his consumption of spiritual energy to increase.


    Wanting to run away from the sect again, in case they sent out an organized search, he began to use his newfound agility technique.


    If the sect even tried to search for him, they would not believe him to be able to run more than 2000 miles without needing to rest and recover, solely due to weak tendons and bones.  Thus, during this time, he would be safe as long as he did not draw attention by absorbing spiritual energy from inside that 2000 mile zone around the sect, but afterwards, the sect might be able to fully search the area, or scouts might be sent ahead to look at terrain.  Not wanting to draw attention due to his absorption of spiritual energy, he was forced to run further.


    Earlier, he was just trying to run away as fast as possible, but now wanted to practice the technique as well.


    He had long left the plains and entered into a forest, and he began to zip in and out of the trees as a form of agility training, Over 30 minutes, he sped up, from his original speed of 10 miles per hour to a speed of 100 miles per hour.


    Capitalizing on the hummingbirds ability to change direction, the agility technique required the use of numerous footsteps, seemingly more than necessary in order to achieve maximum agility.


    The second level of the technique would condense wings from qi and flap them rapidly to achieve the same thing in the air.


    A cultivator would be agile in the air, but with their big body, they would never reach the agility of a hummingbird.


    On the ground however, this is a different story, because they can use their legs to switch direction as well, and this is where the agility of a hummingbird is achieved.


    Before forming the wings, the agility technique would have agility, but would be slower than maximum running speed.  However, while flying in the air, it would be faster, but more tiring, and on the ground with the wings formed, it would be even faster, but also even more tiring.


    Even though he had not yet formed qi, Bao Gang wanted to try and form the wings with spiritual energy, hopefully using his ridiculous spiritual energy attunement to be able to manipulate the spiritual energy like xiantian cultivators could with qi.


    He began to suck in spiritual energy, and moved the spiritual energy along the circulation path detailed by, ¡°Flight of the Hummingbird.¡±


    He tried to condense it with spiritual energy, but failed multiple times before giving up.


    However, he had a nagging feeling that he would be able to do so after the mysterious force in his blood had strengthened, which would increase his spiritual energy attunement.

 Ch 15: 2 months of training

    At this point, Bao Gang had four goals.


    1: Having higher cultivation.  Before advancing in cultivation, he wanted to increase the strength of the mysterious force in his blood.  Thus, this would have to be postponed until then.


    2: Having better battle ability.  This could be battle skills and also battle experience.  He had already learned that cultivation alone would not protect him.


    3: Advancing in his agility technique.  Similar to cultivation, the mysterious force in his blood which increased his spiritual energy attunement would have to be increased first.


    4: Strengthening the mysterious force in his blood.


    Obviously, he decided to strengthen the mysterious force present in his blood.


    Not only would this be hitting three birds with one stone, but would also allow him to get battle experience.  So in reality doing this would be hitting four birds with one stone!


    The fastest way to gather the spiritual energy needed to strengthen this force without absorbing the spiritual energy of the entire planet would be to hunt demonic beasts while cultivating.


    A demonic beast with a high cultivation would contain all the spiritual energy they had absorbed throughout their entire life.  Even absorbing the spiritual energy of thousands of miles would not be fast enough, but combined with the spiritual energy of beasts which had lived for years, might be enough to make up for the deficits.


    The problem is that drawing in spiritual energy would attract attention.  Although he was already over 8000 miles away from the Immortal Mountain sect, the decrease in spiritual energy around him would give him away to others, just as easily as it had to Hao Lin.


    For this reason, he could not take spiritual energy from a large area.  However, this would only be the case if cultivators could detect the decrease in density of spiritual energy.


    Bao Gang began to draw spiritual energy from the ground.  He reached with his soul sense deep into the earth, seeing 1000 meters down, 2000 meters down.  Sensing no cultivators underneath the earth, he began to draw in the spiritual energy from the inside of the planet.


    A flood of heat inundated him; his body grew feverish.  The spiritual energy in the air, while leaning towards fire laws, was fairly balanced, but deep inside the earth, magma floated around, and fire laws made up the vast majority of the spiritual energy.


    When he had first started cultivating on this planet, he needed to renourish his split soul seas, and so he just tried to absorb as much spiritual energy as possible, but did not consider whether or not he could absorb it from inside the earth.


    He had truly lost an untapped gold mine!


    At this point, he was absorbing more spiritual energy than when he first arrived, and no one could even notice!


    The spiritual energy produced by the inside of the planet was at least 4 times as plentiful as the spiritual energy produced above the ground.


    He could not use his soul sense to view the entire inside of the planet however.  On Earth, he could do so, only because his soul tendrils did not have to withstand the punishment of laws.  On this planet, the opposite was true. The deeper his spiritual sense went, the more fire laws they had to withstand, and eventually could not.  He retracted his tendrils of soul sense, not wanting to lose parts of his soul sea, but continued absorption of spiritual energy.


    He noticed that the deeper into the earth, the denser the spiritual energy.


    Wanting to experiment, he walked to a nearby active volcano.  Surely enough, the concentration of spiritual energy increased, however the density of fire laws increased faster.  Around there, he could not even cast his spell to create water, because the spell needed water laws, which were simply not dense enough due to the high density of fire laws.


    This is why the spiritual energy of the Immortal Mountain sect increased as the height of the mountain increased.  Spiritual energy was emitted from the inside of the volcano, but the difference between this mountain and the one at the sect is that this one did not have a mixture of spiritual energy.  For lower level disciples, they would not be able to stand the concentration of fire laws, and their body would be forced to constantly fight against it, lowering their lifespan, additionally only allowing them to cultivate with fire laws, instead of spiritual energy.


    ¡°There must have been something different about the Immortal Mountain sect which allowed them to have spiritual energy instead of fire laws,¡± he thought.


    Likely to be a treasure, he began to excited for his eventual return to the sect.  Even if there hadn¡¯t been anything of value there, he would still need to retrieve Xiao Gou Shi who was being held in the beast hall.


    Leaving the volcano, he once again began to hunt demonic beasts.


    Like this, two months passed.


    During this time, Bao Gang had been hunting and cultivating constantly, except for 8 hours a day when he would sleep.


    In the first few days, he realized that sleeping in a tree would not be safe, as he would sometimes be attacked by demonic beasts during the night.


    Luckily, he always allowed tendrils of his soul sense to permeate the surrounding air, and this would warn him when a demonic beast touched one of the tendrils.  He had learnt the method to do so in one of the books in the library.


    Over these two months, the mysterious strength in his blood became more and more prevalent.  Compared to when he entered the sect, the strength after the two months was incomparable. It would be at least millions of times stronger.  For this reason, his insanely high spiritual energy attunement had continuously increased, although he had no idea what to do with it. He had successfully conjured the wings of the hummingbird 6 weeks ago, accomplishing one of his goals, but could not use it to absorb any more spiritual energy, as he would give away his position by absorbing spiritual energy from the air.  Stolen novel; please report.


    Keep in mind that he had been absorbing at least 80% of all spiritual energy on the planet.


    While he had originally thought this when he first arrived, he in fact, had only been absorbing 20% of it.  At least 80% of it was being produced under the surface of the planet, which is exactly what he was absorbing.  Now, when he got a light cut, it would heal instantly, and an injury like a broken bone would heal within a minute.


    2 days ago, he had fought to the death with an improved brain stage leopard(8th stage of body tempering).  While the leopard could react much faster than Bao Gang could with his eyes, the true advantage of the realm is the ability to use spiritual sense in order to react faster.  Bao Gang could do this too.


    The leopard¡¯s advantage had been completely negated.


    In reality, not every stage of the body tempering realm would be a goal in and of itself.  Golden marrow and improved senses are good examples of this. They are truly just preparatory stages for the ones which come afterwards.  After invigorated blood, bodily strength all bodily components would experience an increase in power, and after upgraded brain, the soul sense would become usable, as well as the nourishment of the soul using the body, but the stage prior to each of these power-ups would give little to no combat benefit to the cultivator.


    In terms of bodily strength, the leopard was completely outclassed by Bao Gang, who had undergone many more reconstructions, and with its only advantage nullified, it was quickly defeated, but in a last ditch attempt to bring down its attacker with it, it had pounced towards Bao Gang, not putting any effort into defense.


    The leopard had thought it had succeeded, Bao Gang¡¯s wounds this time were even worse than during the incident with the tiger.  His internal organs had been crushed, and his lungs and heart had tears, because the leopard had broken his ribs.


    But before the leopard died, it saw skin grow on Bao Gang¡¯s chest, which covered the wounds, and Bao Gang¡¯s concave chest soon began to inflate again.


    The leopard died with reluctance in its eyes, its apparent success only made worse by the realization of its failure.


    Two minutes after being seriously injured, the wounds had completely healed.


    ¡°Wow! If I ever get injured in battle, it will be neutralized without giving the opponent an advantage, as long as I don¡¯t break any bones, which would temporarily lower my combat capability, I¡¯m glad I tested it.¡±


    Now, if the healing factor had grown as fast as the mysterious strength in his blood, it would not have even taken two minutes to heal, however the healing factor had not done so.  While it had not yet reached its true healing abilities yet, it was getting harder and harder to increase the healing abilities.


    Now, two days later, Bao Gang felt as if something was special about this day.  He took a break from hunting and just sat on the edge of the volcano, cultivating while observing the swirls and bubbles of the lava.  He had spread out his spiritual sense, so that if any demonic beast approached, he would have warning.


    As he continued cultivating, he felt more and more comfortable, but also more and more alert, as if he was getting closer and closer to perfection, and he slipped into a trance.


    This is not just a normal trance, but one where he had reached a state of inner peace.  He was not sacrificing alertness for this peace however, he could still sense some demonic beasts crawling around in the jungle, even a demonic hawk which was headed in his direction from behind, but still over a mile away.  He disregarded it as a threat to his safety, only being in the strengthening muscle realm and also being far away from him.


    His mind kept getting clearer and clearer, his thoughts faster and faster, his spiritual energy attunement rising more sharply than it had at any time in the previous two months.


    He felt as if he was becoming close to godliness.


    Suddenly, the blood in his body rushed out, forming a crimson ball in front of him.  He felt a strange attraction to the blood, or more precisely, something in the blood.  His body dried up and became similar in looks to a mummy, and he could no longer move his body.  But he didn¡¯t care, he retracted the soul tendrils around him, concentrating on the ball of blood, infusing all of his spiritual energy into the ball.


    As he did so, the ball condensed, becoming smaller and smaller, but he began to see specks of gold in the blood.  Not very large, but at some places, his blood had specks of gold. This is what attracted him and he concentrated on these specks, infusing his own blood into them, feeding them, and the specks grew larger, concentrating to one point.


    That point where they all condensed became a golden droplet.


    The golden droplet embedded itself between his brows, flying into his soul sea, along with the cauldron of creation and destruction, and his blood starting floating towards him again.  He also began floating towards the blood.


    Well, not floating, more accurately began moving towards the blood.


    Surprised, he re extended his soul tendrils to see around him.


    The strengthening muscle stage demonic hawk had grabbed him in its claws.


    Unluckily for the hawk, it had not gone through many muscular reconstructions and could not hold, or even penetrate the flesh of Bao Gang, and was forced to let go.


    Unluckily for Bao Gang, the hawk had grabbed him from behind while he was sitting in front of a volcano, and this push was just enough to hit him off the edge.  He could not fly as his blood had not yet returned to his inert, mummified body, and all he could do is watch in horror as he fell.


    When he had fallen down about 20 meters(this takes like 2 seconds of falling), some of his blood had returned to his body and he began to conjure wings from spiritual qi, but he had done too little, too late.


    There was now no true spiritual energy around his body, only fire laws.  While this would not hurt him due to the laws being low level and his cultivation being enough to ignore it, this prevented him from casting spells.


    Remember that body tempering realm cultivators do not have qi, they are forced to use spiritual energy to cast spells.  Similar to casting the water spell earlier where there was not enough water laws in the spiritual energy to cast it, at this point, there was not enough wind laws in the spiritual energy, and all he could do was continue falling.


    20 more meters and he hit the surface of the lava with a splash.


    This entire time, the golden droplet of blood had not been doing nothing.  It had been absorbing fire laws, and its speed only became quicker after Bao Gang fell in the lava.


    As he sunk deep down into the lava, unable to do anything other than slowly burn, he had the consolation of knowing that after he condensed the golden droplet, he had automatically advanced to the stage of improved senses.  He had actually already completed the stage, which involved the tempering of his senses, as he could already used his spiritual sense, and for this reason he advanced to the stage of upgraded brain, passing this too for the same reason.


    Likewise, he had already been gifted with a body free from impurities from his trillions of years of nourishment.


    After condensing the drop of golden blood, he had advanced from the peak of invigorated blood realm to the peak of pure body!

 Ch 16: Abandoned by all

    Inside the lava:


    Bao Gang was slowly burning to death, his arms had become charred and unusable, his body comatose.  It seemed as if he was only a step away from death, but deep inside his body was a pulsing vitality.


    The golden droplet.


    The droplet seemed to be pure vitality.  It had been condensed from what could be considered Bao Gang¡¯s vitality(the mysterious force which heals him), and had become much more concentrated.


    The droplet not only absorbed fire laws, it did so only in the space around Bao Gang, as if sentient, trying to protect Bao Gang¡¯s body.


    At this point, Bao Gang was in a vegetative state.  He could not harness fire laws to cast magic, and could not use his body to move.  All he could do is wait as he sunk deeper and deeper into the lava.


    His healing factor had disappeared.  The quicker healing stemmed from the mysterious force in his blood, which turned out to be the golden specks, which congregated to form the golden droplet.  After the golden droplet had entered his soul sea, the mysterious force was no longer present in his blood.


    His blood had already evaporated, so he could not heal normally, and his healing force had disappeared.  Looking it at from a realist¡¯s point of view, he has no chance of survival. He would keep sinking and sinking, fire laws would become more and more dense, and eventually, the golden droplet would not be able to absorb all the fire laws around Bao Gang¡¯s body, and he would succumb to the heat.


    But Bao Gang didn¡¯t worry about it, because he couldn¡¯t do anything anyway.


    As he got deeper into the core of the earth, the droplet of golden blood in his soul sea never stopped absorbing the fire laws around him, and even seemed to grow slightly bigger.


    But the density of fire laws increased faster than the absorption from the droplet.


    The tips of his toes once again began to burn.  Bao Gang could not feel it though, because his nerves had already been destroyed.


    His feet began to get uncomfortably warm.  Well, he couldn¡¯t feel this either, but if he could, he would describe it as not a temperature he would want to keep his feet at.  He was literally bathing in lava after all.


    The golden blood responded, sending out a wave of vitality into his body, as if unwilling to watch him slowly burn to death.  It soaked into his body, and his body rapidly regenerated, turning from black, charcoal like skin, to the soft silky skin of a newborn.


    After barely being able to absorb the fire laws around him, and having sent a wave of vitality into his body, the golden blood could not hold back the fire laws.


    Once again, the fire laws were able to touch his body and his lower body began to burn.  Not just his feet or his toes, but everything below his waist.


    The golden droplet sent down another wave of vitality, healing all his wounds, but the fire laws soon destroyed part of his body again.  A cycle of healing and damage occurred endlessly, not just thousands of times, but tens of thousands. Over this time, Bao Gang sunk deeper and deeper into the magma.


    After his body had been healed, Bao Gang would once again be able to feel pain, only exaggerating the agony of having his body begin to burn.


    After sinking for all this time he reached the core of the planet.  Here, the fire law density was so much that the golden droplet could only protect his head.  It would also send down waves of vitality, healing his entire body, before it once again burned.


    The reason for the blood healing the rest of Bao Gang¡¯s body was to keep it from being completely obliterated by fire laws.


    As long as his body did not truly get completely destroyed by the fire laws, it could be healed.  However, if Bao Gang¡¯s foot was continuously burnt by the magma, it would be destroyed beyond repair.


    While Bao Gang would rather sacrifice his foot than his entire body, he did not have control over the golden droplet.


    Although Bao Gang was in the core of the planet, he could not see anything.  His eyes could not see through magma, and his spiritual sense could not be extended outward due to the fire laws.


    Having no information and no ability to change the situation, he just waited.


    Then, he heard a voice in his head,


    ¡°Who on this godforsaken planet has the strength to survive down in the core of the earth?¡±


    Bao Gang opened his eyes, only to realize that he still could not see inside the magma.


    ¡°Oh, just a boy about to die.  WAIT, is that God¡¯s blood? AND DEVIL¡¯S BLOOD TOO?  It hasn¡¯t yet been awoken, but it certainly has the potential to.¡±


    The being did not see the cauldron, presumably because the cauldron was too strong.  None of the other thousands of beings who flew to Earth were able to sense the cauldron either.


    ¡°Thinking in his head Bao Gang weakly asked,


    ¡°Who is this?¡±


    ¡°Your lord and savior, Lucifer.  Well, actually in this case, you are going to be my lord and savior.  How about this boy, you take my place in the infernal prison. It will release me if you take my place.  Then I will take your body. When I get stronger, I will come back and save you. Otherwise, we will both just be stuck here forever.¡±


    ¡°Definitely not! What if you never come back?¡±


    ¡°Trust me boy, it¡¯s our only option.¡±


    Then the cauldron spirit, Wei Yun, spoke,


    ¡°Do it, take his place in the prison.  Just reach out with your soul sea, and once you feel it, it will suck you in.¡±


    Bao Gang did as Wei Yun said.  He brought his soul sea out of his body, into the magma.  The golden droplet which the being had referred to as God¡¯s blood, as well as the cauldron came with it.


    He reached out with his soul and felt a cage.  The cage seemed to be fueled by fire laws, and had the golden droplet not been inside his soul sea, it would have been annihilated by the flame laws.  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The cage seemed to be emitting a feeling of despair, likely the feeling Lucifer had been feeling inside the cage.  Bao Gang shuddered, wondering how long Lucifer must have stayed there for the nearby fire laws to give off a feeling of despair


    When he touched the cage, a strong suction force seemed to suck his soul sea into the cage, unable to escape its pull, he entered the cage between the bars.  When he attempted to leave through the bars, the suction force pulled him back. Now he realized why Lucifer could not just leave.


    At the same time, Lucifer reached out with his soul, through the bars, trying to get to Bao Gang¡¯s body.


    The bars only allowed half of Lucifer¡¯s soul sea to escape, but that half all made it to Bao Gang¡¯s body.  This type of soul injury could be considered to be the most serious. Half of his soul sea had been lost! Ordinary, low-realm cultivators losing half their soul sea would be hard pressed to stay alive, let alone that Lucifer had expanded his soul sea through cultivation, meaning that he would have to regrow more soul.


    While soul injuries were the most serious type of injury, being hard to heal, and very debilitating, Lucifer did not seem to care jubilantly yelling,


    ¡°HAHA I¡¯m finally free! I have a vessel with unawakened devil¡¯s blood, no one in this realm can stop me! I¡¯ll take over the entire realm!¡±


    Then he realized that there was another soul sea in the body.


    Bao Gang had created a second soul sea when he first arrived on the planet, and had left it in his body for insurance.


    Although he trusted Wei Yun, he was not completely sure that his soul would not get burned, which is why he left the extra soul sea in his body.  The ¡°Divide and Conquer¡± cultivation method would allow him to keep living even if one of his soul seas was destroyed. After all, the soul is the basis of the being, and if he lost one soul sea, he would have another autonomous soul which could be considered as being the same person as him.


    Lucifer quickly took over his body, while Bao Gang did nothing, believing Wei Yun to have a plan.


    Then, Bao Gang felt his connection to the soul sea in his body vanish.  With a sinking feeling, he asked,


    ¡°Wei Yun, what is happening, why did you tell me to enter the cage?¡±


    Sighing, Wei Yun said,


    ¡°Bao Gang, you are utterly incompetent.  How could you possibly fail so hard? That ¡°lizard¡± I gave you isn¡¯t a lizard.  It¡¯s a dragon. If you just brought the dragon with you, nothing on this planet would even stand a chance of hurting you.  You even knew how powerful it was and didn¡¯t bring it for protection.¡±


    Every word cut into Bao Gang.  Even though he had believed himself to be the most monstrous genius, this was only a result of what he had been given.  His ridiculous spiritual energy attunement, his body made perfectly to cultivate, and his godly cultivation methods were all given to him.


    ¡°Master does not need someone like you as a successor.  You are not just stupid, you are gullible to the point which it shames me.  How could you trust someone else to guarantee your own well being, why would you trust me unequivocally when I told you to bring your soul into a cage called, ¡®The Infernal Prison¡¯?  This brings me to ask how you even managed to enter the volcano, the only place on the planet where you could not escape from. These problems would be minor if you had the attitude of a cultivator.  All of the previous things can be fixed. But you don¡¯t cultivate for a purpose, you have no drive. Because you have no drive, you don¡¯t force yourself to get stronger, even at risk of death. A truly strong cultivator must have this mindset, but you don¡¯t!¡±


    Bao Gang felt utterly ashamed.  But Wei Yun kept talking,


    ¡°I will leave you here to reflect on your mistakes.  I will just watch over another successor. After all, you are clearly a lost cause.  By that time, Lucifer will have become strong and will be a grinding stone for the next successor.  You can keep the God¡¯s blood as it has already imprinted your soul. The only regret that I have is giving you the dragon.  Master told me it would become unimaginably strong when it grows up, and now that it has recognized you as master, it won¡¯t do the same for anyone else.  Truly a waste.¡±


    It was unknown what waste referred to, wasting the dragon, or Bao Gang


    The cauldron of creation and destruction floated out of Bao Gang¡¯s soul sea and passed through the bars of the cage as if they weren¡¯t even there.


    Lucifer had already left.  With a body, Lucifer now had no problems dealing with the fire laws, and immediately escaped, far away from the cage.


    Now Bao Gang was truly alone.


    All that was left was half of Lucifer¡¯s soul and the golden droplet, which was inside his soul, moving in a circular orbit.


    The loneliness was stifling.


    After entering the cage, the golden blood had stopped absorbing flame laws.  There were no flame laws in the cage, nor could it pull them into the cage.


    He was in no true danger, as flame laws were only powering the cage, but didn¡¯t actually enter.  As long as he didn¡¯t touch the bars, he would be fine.


    With his genius status revoked, having no body, and stuck inside a powerful soul prison(prison which prevents soul seas from leaving), the future looked bleak.


    As fear took over his body, he had hallucinations.


    In these scenes, he imagined Lucifer taking 5 years to become an absolute being in the realm, then conquering all, enslaving all.  The other strong beings had all died in ¡°The Graveyard, and Lucifer soon became the sole owner of the realm. Soon Lucifer arrived at the ¡°The Graveyard,¡± and took interest in it, eventually spending 2 years to reach the center, where he found Earth.  Expecting a treasure, he was furious that it was just an ordinary planet, killing all beings on the planet.


    He also imagined Wei Yun.  In his hallucination, she was not the only cauldron of creation and destruction, there was another.  Wei Yun looked for the other one for 5 years, and when the two cauldron met, they combined, growing larger and more powerful, now both cauldron spirits were housed in the one cauldron.  The other cauldron spirit had been watching over another successor, one born to the same circumstances as Bao Gang. He eventually grew into another strong being and became the inheritor of Wei Yun¡¯s master.  During this time, Bao Gang was kept imprisoned.


    Lost in his hallucinations, Bao Gang sank into despair and hatred.


    He had lost an unimaginable opportunity, he had wasted his entire life of trillions of years.


    At first, he was in denial, blaming everything around him.  After all, he didn¡¯t leave Xiao Gou Shi in the Immortal Mountain sect, or jump into the volcano willingly!


    But then he began to accept it.  He didn¡¯t purposefully leave Xiao Gou Shi? Why would he even join a sect.  If Wei Yun had wanted him to, she would have brought him to the sect. She had wanted him to become self-sufficient.  Although he did not jump into the volcano on purpose, he had taken a completely unnecessary risk by sitting near the lip of the volcano.


    Now he wallowed into depravity and self-hatred.


    Then he had a moment of inner peace.


    His trillion year life had been for nothing.  He might as well end it by dashing his soul sea against the bars of the cage.


    He readied himself, and accelerated toward the bars.  In the pre-death moment, he remembered the lives he had witnessed on Earth.  He remembered the ups and downs of the people¡¯s lives. Those that soldiered on, overcame their problems, and those that committed suicide to escape from their emotional problems, gave their problems to others, mainly their family and friends.


    ¡°I can¡¯t just die.  Without me, the lives of the people of Earth, my family, will be lost.¡±


    He thought back fondly on the happiness which every single human of Earth experienced.  And he had an epiphany.


    ¡°All lives will have obstacles, but how they overcome these obstacles is what differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful, the happy from the miserable.


    Bao Gang stopped himself inches from the bars of the cage.


    Cultivation is a struggle against the heavens, and the heavens always leave a way out.


    Cultivation is struggling, even when the situation looks untenable.


    A line which Wei Yun had told him truly stuck with him,


    ¡°Because you have no drive, you don¡¯t force yourself to get stronger, even at risk of death.  A truly strong cultivator must have this mindset, but you don¡¯t!¡±


    He thought of an idea.  One which could end in his death.


    He began to feel reservations again, then resolve.  Thinking of the smiling faces of the humans on Earth turning to ash under the onslaught of Lucifer, thinking of Wei Yun¡¯s contemptuous smile, thinking of her master who gave her the power to play with his life, creating it and ending it on a whim, he promised that he would get stronger till he ruled over the heavens, stopping only when no one had power over himself.  He would not just rule over the heavens, he would force them to bow to him.


    ¡°God, if you are out there¡­¡±


    He dashed his soul into the cage, making sure that the golden droplet landed on the cage.


    ¡°...maybe I will be seeing you soon.¡±

 Ch 17: Escape from the infernal prison

    Bao Gang had no control over the God¡¯s blood.  He was only able to control it in the sense that it would stay within his soul sea.  In order to touch the blood to the cage, he would therefore damage his soul sea in the process.


    His soul sea sizzled, dissipating into nothingness upon contact with the cage bars.


    He felt agony sweep through his soul, to every strand of his being.  He could feel his life slipping away, his memories, began to disappear.  All he had was his soul, his body had already been taken by Lucifer, and when parts of his soul disappeared, so did some of his memories.  He knew he had to give up some in order to escape, and all he could do is hope that his two most important would stay. The contemptuous smile of Wei Yun, and the smiling humans of Earth.


    He kept pushing his soul sea forward, and the God¡¯s blood inched closer and closer to the cage bars.


    Finally, after what seemed like hours, about 10% of his soul sea had been destroyed, and the blood touched the cage bars.  The cage, which was originally a white hot, grew dimmer, becoming bright orange. The God¡¯s blood seemed to expand.


    But then it burst apart.


    Glittering sparkles of gold were floating around his soul sea now.


    Despair once again swallowed him.  His only hope had evaporated.


    ¡°NO! I cannot stay here! I have to save Earth! I have to stand above the Heavens!¡±


    He furiously dashed his soul upon the cage bars again, forcing the golden sparkles onto the bars.  The cage cooled and became neon red.


    The sparkles became to grow larger after touching the walls, and stuck to the walls of the cage this time, but his soul was rapidly being destroyed.  Bao Gang began to chant a mantra,


    ¡°Wei Yun¡¯s contempt, my family¡¯s safety.¡±


    Finally after working for an actual hour, all the sparkles had been placed onto the bars.  In the process, he had almost forgotten, these two memories, but his chant quickly reminded him why he was fighting the cage.  His soul sea had depleted, becoming merely 5% of its original size.


    Exhausted, he moved his soul back from the cage and watched as the golden sparkles rapidly grew larger, and the cage rapidly grew dimmer.


    Now having nothing to do, he looked around the cage once again.  All that greeted him was a view of the outside magma, the dimming bars, and half of Lucifer¡¯s soul.


    His own soul was invisible, but Lucifer¡¯s was purple and crimson.


    Earlier, he had found that he could not interact with Lucifer¡¯s soul due to a feeling of bloodlust and despair which it gave off.  Whenever he came too close, it would affect his emotions, making him him more impatient and anxious.


    Once again he waited, watching the cage bars become dimmer and the golden sparkles expand.


    Soon, the cage was completely dim, and Bao Gang could see that it really was just a cage.  Made of a dark metal, with engravings on the bars, the cage enclosed about 8 cubic meters.


    The God¡¯s blood had seemed to absorb the energy which was in the bars, and now the engravings on the bars began to vanish.  Soon, they had all disappeared, leaving a lifeless metal cage. Outside, the fire laws roiled.


    The cage had used inscriptions to convert the power of laws produced by the planet, to a suction which would prevent souls from leaving the cage, as well as heating the bars so that souls would not be able to touch them.  Therefore, the bars contained the energy of at least hundreds of years!


    Lucifer had been kept down here for long enough for his despair to affect his soul, and even the cage itself!  This requires strong emotions, as well as a long period of time, so an estimate of the time Lucifer was trapped would be at least a few hundred years.


    After absorbing all this energy, the God¡¯s blood began to absorb the energy of the laws in the lava.


    This happened very quickly, and within 30 seconds, the surrounding fire laws had been completely absorbed by the God¡¯s blood.  When this absorption finished, the God¡¯s blood, had once again expanded, but this time from innumerable golden specks to innumerable golden droplets, which burst apart again into more golden sparkles(The reason the God¡¯s blood can now absorb all the fire laws is that there is more of it after absorbing the energy from the cage).


    These golden sparkles drifted back to Bao Gang¡¯s soul sea where they reformed once again, but this time forming a full drop of blood.  A droplet is not the same as a drop. A drop is made up of thousands of droplets.


    Bao Gang¡¯s soul felt a strong attraction to the drop, a feeling of intimacy, of warmth.  His soul sea, on its own, began to congregate around the drop, becoming denser around the surface of the drop, trying to get into it.  Then his soul sank into the drop, fusing with it, bringing him unimaginable ecstasy.


    Then, he blacked out.


    During the next day, the cultivators of the Immortal Mountain sect realized that the density of spiritual energy had slowly decreased until it became 0.


    Over the next week, the higher level laws which produced the lower level flame laws and the spiritual energy on the planet, were all devoured by the God¡¯s blood.


    The drop of golden blood, which housed Bao Gang¡¯s soul, grew larger and larger after absorbing these laws, becoming a globe.  The glob began to take human shape, except on a much smaller scale. The outside of the blood became golden skin, the inside became internal organs, and Bao Gang¡¯s soul sea permeated all of it.


    After the eight days, Bao Gang woke up to find that everything had grown larger, but simultaneously, everything had grown clearer.  The bars of the cage could be seen to almost microscopic detail. Scratches and lumps which he previously would not be able to see, could  now be viewed clearly. However, now he was looking at the bottom of the cage. His new height was only 3 centimeters. Although small, he also felt himself bursting with power.


    He looked down at his body.  Compared to the healing factor and the ability to devour laws, the ability to form a body was not that surprising.


    After realizing that all laws in the magma had vanished, he tried to send out his soul sense.  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    His soul sea did not leave his body easily, moving as if in quicksand, but when it exited his head surprisingly, his soul was no longer invisible.  It had a faint golden tint, only visible to someone paying close attention to the color. With his new eyesight, he could not see the makeup up of his soul at this point, but as it was his soul sea, he could feel what made his soul golden.


    The God¡¯s blood had not just created a place to house his soul, it had also replaced his soul sea.  His entire body had soul imprints, meaning his soul had been split up amongst the God¡¯s blood. Losing part of his body would be equivalent to part of his soul, but what could truly destroy his body?


    A body made from a liquid would not break through physical means, which could also absorb laws.  The only way to kill him would be through spiritual attacks, or magical attacks at a far higher level than himself.


    Now, the same would hold true for his soul sea.  Typically the most important part of the body to protect because a normal cultivator¡¯s soul sea would dissipate upon touching even the weakest magical attacks, but for Bao Gang, equally as undying as the rest of his body.


    As an experiment, he tried to split himself in two.  His soul sea was now the method through which he controlled his body.  The soul sea imprints allowed him full control of his body.


    His body stretched, and flowed apart, splitting into two globs.  His entire 3 cm tall body contained about 200 drops of God¡¯s blood.  He controlled half of this and moved it 2 cm away from his first body, then using his soul sea to ¡®feel¡± the shape, he shaped it to form a human.  Then he formed a cube, a sphere, a pyramid, and even the shape of demonic wolf.


    Through this experimentation, he learned four things.


    Firstly, This movement did not happen easily.  When he tried to move the God¡¯s blood through his soul sea imprints, it became harder once the glob had split into two.  It had become twice as hard in fact. Secondly, changing shape from glob to human was much more difficult than separating his body, due to the intricate shape of a human.  This was supported by the fact that it was easier and quicker to shape geometric shapes than the human and demonic beast form. Thirdly, the glob which he separated from his original body could not actually use sensory organs.  He could shape it at will, because he could feel the shape through the soul sea imprints in the God¡¯s blood, but did not know how to make eyes, only how to shape the blood. This would not be a problem usually, but in combat, he would have to use his spiritual sense in order to sense the surroundings.  Fourthly, he could not change the shape of his original body. Although it was made much better than the one in front of him, he could not change its shape, only its size. When he took away blood, it got smaller, but it also got slower. What this shows is that the more soul sea imprints contained in the body, the faster it can move.


    He also found out that the smallest size his body could reach was slightly under 2 millimeters, which was the size of exactly one drop of blood.


    The rest of the blood could split up into around 20 million small pieces.  Each drop could split into 1000 droplets, and each droplet could split into 100 golden sparkles.  With his 200 drops of blood, this is around 20 million pieces.


    Recombining to form his golden body, he began to walk towards the bars of the cage, but stopped.  He almost had an anxious feeling. He looked around the cage one more time, once again noticing half of Lucifer¡¯s soul.  But now, he didn¡¯t feel bloodlust or despair coming from it, he felt...innocence. He walked over and touched it. The purple and crimson color seemed to flow into him.


    Now he felt the bloodlust and despair.  He saw a scene of a pale man with long black hair and a sallow face.  He held a sword, fighting off a mob of people. Some of them held staffs, trying to hit the man, some of them held crosses, using them in an attempt to seal the man, others held bows and arrows, trying to shoot the man.  But the man had no expression. A cruel glint in his eyes was all that he showed. He was completely untouched by the mob of people, chopping off their heads left and right.


    SNAP*


    The sallow faced man and the mob disappeared.  All that remained around him were white hot glowing bars.  The bars seemed to be an unbreakable wall. Surrounding him, covering him.  It had been this way for years, and in this manner another few years seemed to pass


    SNAP*


    Bao Gang awakened.  Realizing that he had just witnessed part of Lucifer¡¯s life, he was shocked.  He was even more shocked when he realized that he knew all the information about the events in Lucifer¡¯s life.


    Lucifer had started off a young boy.  As untalented as they come. One day, he stumbled upon a book which detailed the, ¡°Art of Absorption.¡±  Cultivating with this method required killing cultivators, and absorbing part of their cultivation. Over the years, Lucifer had killed at least in the tens of thousands.  Lucifer had first only absorbed the cultivation of the dead. This was not enough, and he began to do so on those who were unjust, but eventually, this could not advance his cultivation fast enough either.  He began to kill en masse, any cultivator he found, died, leaving trails of blood and tears behind in his wake.


    Later, a group of elders from a powerful sect found out about his cultivation method.  Under the guise of justice, they attacked him to steal his cultivation method. How did he know?  The sect elders only attacked him after witnessing that he could absorb the cultivation of others.  Previously, Lucifer had kept this hidden. Before they found out about this, they never stopped him!


    The elders were not able to kill him, and in return for their actions, Lucifer slaughtered all of them.


    At this point, Bao Gang the memories cut off.  The rest of the memories must have been contained in Lucifer¡¯s remaining half of his soul.


    The only reason he could feel despair from this half of the soul, which presumably came from being imprisoned, was because it was his strongest emotion, infiltrating every part of his soul sea.


    ¡°I can absorb the souls of others!  With my God¡¯s blood, I can remove their sufferings, which allows me to absorb their knowledge and experience!¡±


    Bao Gang then slipped between the bars of the cage and jumped into the lava.


    Without any fire laws contained within it, it wouldn¡¯t even hurt him even if he was using his human body instead of the one made from God¡¯s blood.


    He swam upwards for about 3 days before reaching the surface of the earth.


    After 2, the lava had gotten cooler and began to harden, and he soon had to start going through rock.  But how could ordinary rock compare to his body made of God¡¯s blood?


    Immediately after reaching the surface, he saw two invigorated blood stage demonic tigers fighting.


    The previous him would not stop them, in fact, he would kill both of them.  But now, he sent golden specks shooting at the space between their brows, entering their soul sea.


    The soul seas had a tint of green, the feeling of fear.


    Throughout their lives, they had to fight and kill to survive.  Constantly hiding from those stronger than them, always fearful that they would be eaten by other demonic beasts for their cultivation.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry¡­¡±


    Bao Gang gave a forgiving smile.


    ¡°...you will never again have to be fearful about being eaten for your cultivation.


    Touching their soul seas, the green tint left their bodies, draining into the God¡¯s blood.


    The God¡¯s blood then exited their soul seas and plunged into the hair of the tigers.  Bao Gang sent a storm of golden sparkles at them, 1000 sparkles per tiger. After touching their bodies, the golden sparkles grew more brilliant, while the tigers decreased in size.


    Still being at peace from having their constant sufferings removed, they did not even notice.  Not as their invigorated blood turned to normal blood, not as their marrow once again became brown, not as their bones, tendons, and flesh became softer, not as their muscles became weaker and smaller.


    After 30 seconds, the cultivations of the tigers had disappeared.


    The golden sparkles returned to him.  The absorbed spiritual energy had been used to nourish his badly damaged soul.  Some of those sparkles had split into two as they grew bigger, and Bao Gang¡¯s soul had regrown enough to form another soul sea imprint.  Now Bao Gang had gained another 10 golden sparkles.


    Bao Gang began walking towards the immortal Mountain sect,


    ¡°I have saved you, for cultivation you fought, and now that you don¡¯t have it, you will not.  Soon, all beings on this planet will not have cultivation. Without universe laws to produce spiritual energy, there will be no more cultivation on this planet.  You will now have peaceful, happy, and fulfilling lives.  God has given divine mercy to your souls.¡±


    Behind him, the tigers meowed contentedly, still at inner peace.

 Ch 18: Absolving sins

    Bao Gang flew through the sky on a pair of bright golden wings. He looked like an angel. His previous look had disappeared when he lost his body, and now, he had tousled, golden hair, and a forgiving smile on his face. He looked down elegantly upon the world, witnessing the planet in its entirety.


    A demonic hawk ate a baby wolf, but only so that it could grow strong enough to protect its own offspring. A cultivator tried to pick a spiritual herb which he could exchange for pills to make him stronger so that he would not be bullied. A demonic wolf fought against the cultivator, guarding the herb so that the young wolf behind it could eat it instead.


    ¡°The problem with this world is cultivation!¡± he said forcefully.


    Then, he lightened his tone,


    ¡°But I will save you.¡±


    The golden sparkles which had floated into the soul seas of these, and innumerable others began to remove the tint of their souls.


    Before fusing with the God¡¯s blood, he could not see souls, especially not their color, but now he saw it clearly. Their soul seas called out to him, begging him, worshipping him, praying that he would forgive their sins. They wanted enlightenment, all wished for their sufferings to be forgiven, for their innocence to show.


    He looked into the hearts of these beings and at the root of their sufferings, cultivation.


    A golden trail of sparkles fell behind him, they condensed into a cloud, each cloud flying to a cultivator, absorbing their spiritual energy which they had imbued into their body. The cultivation race which had condoned bullying, destroyed relationships, and set everyone against each other was no more. No being would have power over another any longer.


    Constantly releasing sparkles of God¡¯s blood his body got smaller and smaller, but as it did so, he could feel the volume of God¡¯s blood increasing, he could feel his soul sea being restored with the spiritual energy absorbed from the God¡¯s blood.


    Without the God¡¯s blood, his soul would have been trapped in the infernal prison. Without the God¡¯s blood, he would have no physical body. Without the God¡¯s blood, his soul sea would be almost impossible to heal, short of heaven defying spiritual plants and resources. At least for a soul injury in which he had lost 95% of his soul.


    In a way, it could be considered God¡¯s mercy that he had awakened the blood when he had. Based on Lucifer¡¯s response to him having God¡¯s blood in his soul sea, he did not believe that God¡¯s blood was supposed to do this, making up an entire body, nor containing his soul. But with it came a responsibility. The nature of a god is forgiving and wishes to help others. Being a recipient of God¡¯s own mercy, how could he ignore the suffering of others?


    And so he flew, leaving behind a trail of animals who had gone through nirvana. Their sufferings had been swept away, they would now live anew.


    After he had flown for about an hour, leaving behind one thousand miles in which all the beings were happy and peaceful, he happened upon a pair of girls. Their bodies were covered with blood and scratches, their hair stiff with blood as well. Streaks could be seen running from their eyes to their neck, the remains of dried tears. One of the girl¡¯s arms was bent at an angle which arms should not bend, and the other was limping, showing that her some of her foot bones had broken.


    Inside their eyes was terror.


    After draining away their sufferings, he realized why. When Lucifer had appeared, he had appeared near the sect which these two girls lived in. With his ¡°Art of Absorption¡±, he had killed all members of the Holy Fire sect. The two girls had been outside the sect at the time, and happened upon the destruction.


    Within 2 minutes of them being able to see the sect, Lucifer had killed all the people in and around the sect(another town which was nearby a sect for protection), and demonic beasts charged in, eager to consume the humans. Lucifer flew away into the sky, now having enough cultivation to travel through space. This means that he had killed those in the sect in order to advance to Xiantian realm, already having Bao Gang¡¯s body at the peak of body tempering.


    Running away from the sect for their own safety, they had been ambushed at least 3 times by animals rushing over to the Holy Fire sect, drawn in by the scent of blood.


    This time, he did not just drain their sufferings and cultivation, he also tried something new.


    He separated two drops of blood and sent one into each of their bodies, willing it to heal their wounds. He visualized the wounds closing and the bones reconnecting


    Originally, he had been able to heal his human body from all injuries within minutes, and this was just a drop of God¡¯s blood! Now he used a full drop, 1000 times more blood.


    Slowly but surely the wounds closed. The torn flesh healed, and the broken arm and foot bent back into shape. Apparently, when controlling the blood himself, he was not as efficient. But he noticed that as he had taken the cultivation from the animals, the volume of the God¡¯s blood had grown, but it had also used spiritual energy to heal his soul, forming more soul sea imprints. At this point, he had formed another 1.5 million golden sparkles, which each had their own soul sea imprint. With this healing of his own soul, his manipulation speed of the God¡¯s blood grew faster and faster. Manipulation speed refers to the speed at which he can move the God¡¯s blood, as well as how well he can control it. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Logically, doubling the number of soul sea imprints should double the manipulation speed of the blood, but in actuality, according to how rapidly his manipulation speed had improved, doubling the number of soul imprints actually increased the manipulation speed exponentially! A 7% increase in soul sea imprints had increased the manipulation almost two fold. Given that 200 drops of God¡¯s blood had held 5% of his soul, he had a long ways to improve(BTW a 7% increase does not mean that he now has 12% of his original soul. The original 5%, has grown 7% larger. This means 107% of 5%, which is equal to ~5.35% of his original soul).


    As the wounds kept healing, he said a prayer,


    ¡°See girls, cultivation causes people to pursue having power over others. I will free you from that.¡±


    As the golden sparkles flew out of him and did their job, he began to fly in the direction of the his face was no longer an angelic face with a forgiving smile. It was the sternness of a father having seen his son do wrong.


    When he arrived at the ruined sect, he could see blood forming puddles on the ground and smears of blood on the walls.


    The demonic beasts had not just eaten the cultivators, they had eaten each other too. After finding out that the cultivators had little to no spiritual contained in them anymore, they had begun to eat each other.


    A single demonic bear lay asleep in the middle of the sect. Its body was no longer 5-6 feet long like most bears, or even demonic bears would be. It had become around 15 feet tall.


    Clearly, it had advanced to xiantian realm.


    While not knowing the exact effects of advancing to such a realm, Bao Gang knew that such a transformation could not occur at the body tempering realm, thus the bear had to be in a higher realm.


    The stern look on Bao Gang¡¯s face vanished, turning into one of forgiveness.


    Sensing his presence, the bear woke up.


    This surprised Bao gang, as none of the beasts or cultivators he had seen had been able to sense him and his God¡¯s body, except by sight.


    ¡°Easy buddy, I have come to save you.¡±


    The bear did not calm down. It stood up, reaching its paws into the air, and attempted to swat him out of the air.


    It jumped the 15 meters between them in an instant.


    Its paw swiped through his golden body, splitting it into drops which flew in every which way. Including the bear¡¯s face and body.


    This was Bao Gang¡¯s plan. In terms of strength, the blood body was not very strong, but it would not smash apart from just one hit from the bear either. What Bao Gang was trying to do was spray the God¡¯s blood onto the bear. If he sent a drop of God¡¯s blood at the bear, it might block or dodge the blood, but by pretending to be injured, it made the blood seem harmless.


    Having succeeded, the drops burrowed into the bear¡¯s fur and began sucking the spiritual energy out of the bear.


    Bao Gang reeformed using all the blood which had not landed on the bear, and hit the bear on its head.


    Its skull caved in and it smashed onto the ground.


    Not yet dead, the bear got up, but could not jump again.


    Its main advantage over other demonic beasts at this point was its ability to strengthen its body with qi. Bao Gang¡¯s blood neutralized this ability, preventing the bear from sending qi to its legs, paws, or torso, because the blood would just absorb it.


    Of course, not acting would also allow the God¡¯s blood to simply absorb its qi and spiritual energy as well, but what could it do?


    Against an opponent in the air, which was invulnerable to physical attacks, while additionally being on a time limit due to the absorption from the golden blood.


    It couldn¡¯t do anything. It stared at Bao Gang with an unresigned expression on its face as it grew smaller and smaller, as the spiritual energy left its body, becoming sustenance for the golden blood.


    Eventually, Bao Gang sent a golden sparkle at its forehead and absorbed its sufferings.


    The unresigned expression turned to tone of bliss.


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have hit you, but you were already strong enough to walk unimpeded, you did not need to attack me on sight to get stronger to protect yourself. Treat this as a lesson.¡±


    The bear let out a growl, as if thanking him.


    The blood returned to Bao Gang¡¯s body. From the foundational cultivator alone, he gained half a drop of God¡¯s blood.


    You have to remember that he was originally getting around 10 golden sparkles from each demonic beast. Compared to half a drop, which is 500,000 golden sparkles, the difference was enormous.


    This clearly shows the difference between body tempering and xiantian realm cultivators in terms of the available spiritual energy.


    Bao Gang was also pleasantly surprised that he had the strength to overpower a xiantian realm cultivator.


    He extracted a single drop of blood from his body, sending it off into the unknown with these instructions,


    ¡°Absolve the suffering of any cultivators, heal the seriously wounded, and release them from their illness, a drive for cultivation. Remove their cultivation and continue, search all over the planet, and after expanding to 2 drops, split off and head in different directions¡±


    As for himself,


    ¡°I¡¯m coming, Xiao Gou Shi, Immortal Mountain sect.¡±


    Having figured out the location of Lucifer, he moved onto his next goal. Wei Yun had said that Xiao Gou Shi now had no use to her, so he assumed she would leave him with the Immortal Mountain sect.


    For absolution of suffering, and to return to Xiao Gou Shi, he flew toward the Immortal Mountain sect.

 Ch 19: Infiltrating the Immortal Mountain sect

    As Bao Gang flew towards the Immortal Mountain sect, leaving behind a trail of golden sparkles, he thought about his next course of action,


    ¡°The most important thing that I must do is stop Lucifer.  For the purpose of cultivation before, he killed tens of thousands.  Now, he is only more dangerous. He has a higher talent, he may acquire my cultivation methods, he has the potential of awakening the Devil¡¯s blood.  For the purpose of this realm, I must stop him.¡±


    While Lucifer had reached xiantian realm, Bao Gang had made it to an equivalent realm with his God¡¯s blood.  The demonic bear which he had fought earlier, had its skull caved in in one punch by him. In terms of physical prowess, he could beat at least an entry level xiantian cultivator.  He believed his speed was faster than the demonic bear, but keep in mind that the bear is more of a power type, rather than speed type. Being faster than the bear was not actually a great accomplishment, but he believed himself to be significantly faster than the bear.


    He additionally had an essentially undying body.  The problem lay in finding Lucifer.


    Lucifer could be said to far outstrip Bao Gang in terms of cultivation speed.  He had everything that Bao Gang had, and more, at least if the Devil¡¯s blood gave Lucifer equal benefits as the God¡¯s blood had given Bao Gang.


    Lucifer knew Bao Gang had the methods to kill him though.  God¡¯s blood is nothing to be scoffed at, and the power it brings was clearly had the potential to kill Lucifer.  Maybe not in a straight up fight, but leaving Bao Gang alive brings only risks and no benefits to Lucifer. As soon as Lucifer found out about him, Bao Gang would essentially have a short time limit when he would be stronger than Lucifer.  If he did not succeed, according to his hallucination Earth would be stripped of inhabitants within 7 years. While this was only a hallucination, he believed this to be a possibility in the future.


    But what could Bao Gang do?  All he had to go off of was the two girl¡¯s blurry memories of the direction Lucifer had flown in.  But not only was this not particularly accurate due to Lucifer¡¯s rapid flying speed, but Bao Gang also knew that the planet would rotate about an axis forming the day and night cycle, as well as orbiting around a star, which provided the sunlight.


    Due to this movement, even if the girl¡¯s memories were perfect, Bao Gang would not be able to determine Lucifer¡¯s direction of travel.  This is not even taking into account that Lucifer might change course suddenly, throwing off Bao Gang¡¯s prediction. All he could do is search randomly.  Travel to every planet he sees, and search for Lucifer.


    But first, he had to find Xiao Gou Shi.  According to Wei Yun¡¯s master, Xiao Gou Shi would grow up to be immensely powerful.  This was said by a being on the level of gods! Even if Bao Gang might not be able to catch up to Lucifer, Xiao Gou Shi was a beacon of hope.  Wei Yun had said that Xiao Gou Shi already imprinted him, which is why she could not make Xiao Gou Shi the master of anyone else, so he trusted that Xiao Gou Shi would never betray him.  At this point, even if Xiao Gou Shi did not have the potential to become strong, Bao Gang would still come back to reunite with Xiao Gou Shi.


    In his life, he had only truly known Wei Yun.  But she betrayed him.


    Xiao Gou Shi had stood guard over him for days in order to protect him.  Just the sincerity alone was enough of an incentive to the relationship-starved Bao Gang to reclaim Xiao Gou Shi from the two-faced outer sect master.  Slightly scared for the safety of his friend, Xiao Gou Shi sped up, stretching his speed to the upper limit. But even in his anxiousness, the forgiving smile stayed on his face, not a hint of ill intent could be seen on his countenance.  Stolen story; please report.


    But with the thought of what the outer sect master would do to Xiao Gou Shi when he found out that the beast would not betray its master, the smile dimmed slightly.


    2 hours later


    Bao Gang arrived at the Immortal Mountain sect.  The assortment of ramshackle houses contrasted with the majestic houses and walls of the sect.


    Not wanting to be discovered, he sent a golden sparkle(a drop is 1000 droplets, and a droplet is 100 sparkles) out of his body and crossed the wall to the outer sect.


    The guards did not become more active, which showed that the sect walls could not detect the God¡¯s blood.  He had already learned his lesson when he was caught passing through the gates without a quarter-sized, jade identification token.


    With this knowledge, he sent an entire drop through the walls of the sect.  The drop split up into golden sparkles, and entered the sect from all directions, so as not to draw attention with a crowd of flying golden sparkles.


    After this infiltrated the sect, he sent another drop, then another, sending in golden sparkles drop by drop until only his golden body remained outside the sect, with a volume of one drop.


    He used the golden sparkles as he would his soul sense, but he also wanted to try something else.


    He attached a single golden sparkle to a cultivator, who didn¡¯t even notice it.  A single golden sparkle¡¯s absorption would not be significant until it had been absorbing for a long period of time.  Now, he tried to stop the sparkle¡¯s absorption. Slowly, the spiritual energy it sucked in slowed down, slowly grinding to a halt.


    Relieved, he started attaching 100 golden sparkles to each cultivator he saw, having them burrow into the hair, or otherwise attaching to unobtrusive locations, such as the part of the foot hidden from view by a shoe.  These sparkles did not absorb any spiritual energy and thus went unnoticed.


    He would have changed the amount of sparkles depending on the cultivation of the cultivator, but in the body tempering realm, this only possible through physical tests, such as the strength of their muscle, tendon, bone, or flesh.  This would attract the cultivator¡¯s attention, so he could only evenly distribute the golden sparkles.


    What he wanted to do is attach these sparkles now, so that in the inevitable fight which would occur, many cultivators would only be able to fight for a short period of time before being drained of spiritual energy.


    He did not find the outer sect master in the outer sect, so he moved his remaining blood into the inner sect, repeating the task, but still did not find the outer sect master.  He moved into the core sect, repeating his actions.


    All of the disciples in the sect had been tagged by him! There were about 4000 outer disciples, 800 inner disciples, and 200 core disciples.  This amounts to around 500000 golden sparkles, or 500 droplets, half a drop.


    Now he moved the droplets slowly into the elder¡¯s sect.  He did so very slowly, scared they would be noticed.


    Transporting 217(about 13 drops were gained before reaching the Holy Fire sect, .5 drops came from the demonic bear, and the rest were from demonic beasts which he saw on the way to the Immortal Mountain sect) drops of the God¡¯s blood into the outer sect had taken no more than 25 minutes, and took around an hour to infiltrate all parts of the outer sect before taking another 35 minutes to breach the wall to the inner sect, where they began to move even more slowly, taking 2 hours to prevent disciples from seeing the moving sparkles.  In all, from outside to wall of elder¡¯s sect, it took slightly under 8 hours. This time, it took 8 hours just to get over the wall to the elder¡¯s sect.


    Then his golden droplets began to spread.  At the peak of a mountain, it is generally windy, this was true of this sect, and allowed the golden sparkles to travel unnoticed.  This time, he did not even take an active role in controlling their direction unless they blew outside the elder¡¯s court. Otherwise, he just camouflage it as the dirt on the ground.


    Needless to say this took a long time, but this time, he attached 10,000 sparkles to each cultivator he saw.  This sounds like a lot, but these sparkles were tiny. They would not be felt unless they absorbed spiritual energy.  Unless a very close look was taken, they would not be seen on the bottom of a foot, the small of the back, the top of the head, in between the eyebrows, etc.


    After 10 days of waiting, he was rewarded.  He had found Xiao Gou Shi.

 Ch 20: Dangerous situation!

    Xiao Gou Shi was inside one of the 13 big houses which he had noticed when he first swept over the sect with his spiritual sense.  Infiltrating any of the houses was difficult because wind had never seemed to be able to get near the house, and Bao Gang therefore did not want to take the risk of giving up the element of surprise without even locating Xiao Gou Shi.  If the dust was not camouflaged as dirt, it would not be difficult for a xiantian realm cultivator to see it. The xiantian realm demonic bear¡¯s reaction when he got close to it showed that its spiritual sense could detect the God¡¯s blood, but before this, the demonic beasts could never detect his God¡¯s blood, even the ones which had entered the improved brain stage(8th stage) and had unlocked their spiritual sense.


    Banking on the lowered concentration of God¡¯s blood, he hoped that a xiantian cultivator would never detect the God¡¯s blood because it was separated into such small sizes.  Luckily, this seemed to be the case as they had not been detected up till now.


    But, as long as he did not make hte sparkles obvious, a xiantian cultivator would likely not look for it, and would thus be unnoticed.


    For days, no one had entered one of the 13 houses, and as his God¡¯s blood had been able to infiltrate everywhere else, he knew that Xiao Gou Shi must be inside one of them.  However, this all changed when a cultivator, who had already been tagged with the golden sparkles, had ran up to, then entered into one of the houses. When the sparkles entered, he could almost ¡°see¡± the space around them through his spiritual sense.  The cultivator, who had been in a rush, kept running, and handed a few spiritual herbs, which had appeared out of nowhere, to another man inside the house--the outer sect master.


    Bao Gang was lucky that the man was in a hurry, because as soon as he entered the house, an alarm went off, but before the man had a chance to stop, he had already arrived within 5 feet of the outer sect master, which was just barely within the range of his spiritual sense through a sparkle of God¡¯s blood(what this means is that he can sense the stuff within 5 feet of the God¡¯s blood.  He has lost the traditional spiritual sense, and now has to sense through this method). The outer sect master was near Xiao Gou Shi, with a pile of spiritual herbs off to the side, presumably the dragon¡¯s food(Wei Yun said that Xiao Gou Shi is actually a dragon, not a lizard). The pile of spiritual herbs was not very small, but there was scraps around for several meters, showing that Xiao Gou Shi had been rapidly eating his way through everything the outer sect master gave him.  It showed too.


    Xiao Gou Shi had originally been around a half foot in length when Bao Gang left him, but was now around 2 feet in length.


    Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s growth had originally been limited by the amount of spiritual energy he consumed, which makes his growth even more shocking.  Over 24 hours of unlimited absorption when Bao Gang was drawing the spiritual energy of the entire planet, Xiao Gou Shi had only grown a few centimeters, but had now quadrupled in length while Bao Gang was gone!


    Size is not a linear quantity based off volume.  When a sphere doubles in radius, its volume actually goes up by 8.  With other three dimensional objects, the same is true. This means that Xiao Gou Shi had now consumed 64 times as much spiritual energy as he had before Bao Gang left him!


    Based on the outer sect master¡¯s frightened expression, clearly Xiao Gou Shi had been at it for quite a while.  This fright might come from Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s ability to eat much more than his body would let on, or his inability to keep such a ravenous pet.


    Over the 5 months Bao Gang had been gone(2 months of training + a few days sinking in the lava + weeks of hallucinations in the infernal prison + a few days of swimming out of the lava + a few days of hunting demonic beasts), Xiao Gou Shi had gotten closer to the outer sect master proportional to how much he had been fed, and at this point the outer sect master was considering entering into a contract with Xiao Gou Shi, but was now reconsidering.  If Xiao Gou Shi demanded food as a condition, he did not believe he would be able to supply it!


    But now he heard his house alarm go off.  This meant that a soul which had not been approved by him had entered.


    The outer sect master looked up at the cultivator who had run in and now looked surprised at the alarm.  Then he stood up and shot forward, sticking his hand into the chest of the man, then ripping it out.


    A gush of blood shot out of the man¡¯s chest,


    ¡°What--why--¡±


    Then the man collapsed.  In the outer sect master¡¯s hand was not a beating heart.  It was a mash of blood and muscle which had once pumped blood throughout the man¡¯s body, but now could not be recognized as a heart.


    The outer sect master clearly knew what it meant if his alarm went off.  An unauthorized cultivator had entered the building.


    He had found an ancient inscription diagram which would sense the intrusion of soul sense, and wanting to hide Xiao Gou Shi from the sect master and grand elders, rigged up the inscription to make absolutely sure Xiao Gou Shi would stay his secret.  Even the walls of the sect could not do this! It had taken him years to find all the materials needed for this inscription, and had even needed to trade for some of them with other hall masters when he realized he needed to set up the alarm quickly.  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    He had already dealt with Hao Lin, who mysteriously disappeared while searching for herbs, never to be found again.


    If the cultivator had triggered the alarm, this meant that the cultivator who he trusted was impersonated.  This almost made the outer sect master sad, because this would probably mean the cultivator had been killed.  Sadly, he had outlived his usefulness.


    The alarm continued to go off, but having never been triggered before, the outer sect master did not know this signified that the unauthorized cultivator could still sense the happenings of the room.  The outer sect master believed that the alarm would need to be reset in some fashion, and that the man he just killed was an impersonator.


    ¡°Damnit beast hall master!  I had hoped you would not find out about this lizard(The outer sect master does not know Xiao Gou Shi is a dragon) until I had entered into a contract with it, but I guess my rapid use of spiritual herbs tipped you off to my finding of a demonic beast which I wish to tame!¡±


    Even if he himself would not contract with Xiao Gou Shi, he would sure as hell not allow anyone else to and risk losing benefits.  At the very worst, he would give it to the sect master for a sizeable reward.


    Now that the inscription had done its job, the outer sect master stomped on a section of the inscription, and it cracked the floor, breaking the inscription and getting rid of the annoying alarm.


    Angrily stomping off to go negotiate with the beast hall master to keep the lizard a secret, he left the house and walked towards the wall between the outer and inner sect, where the beast hall is located.


    Having found Xiao Gou Shi and not wanting to show his goal for the infiltration and give the sect power over him, Bao Gang did not sneak more golden sparkles in and risk giving himself up, he just left Xiao Gou Shi in the house, safe from any danger.


    After the outer sect master had left the elder court, Bao Gang planned to attack him.  He took the golden sparkles which had not attached to anyone in the elder court and slowly moved them towards the wall surrounding the elder court.  After passing this wall, he would no longer need to be so careful with the speed of its movement. After 20 minutes, he had 80 golden drops of God¡¯s blood which coalesced into a miniature human body.


    It would have taken very long to move this much blood out of the elder¡¯s court, but much of it was near the walls to begin with due to it being blown there by the wind, and all he had to do was move it out.


    By this time, the outer sect master had already entered the beast hall.  Bao Gang moved the golden figure(Not the same as his body) to the beast hall, now not caring about speed(although he wasn¡¯t seen due to being high in the air) and punched towards the roof of the beast house.


    BOOM*


    The roof blew off, and the demonic beasts and cultivators inside were scared out of their minds.  Stunned, the outer sect master and beast hall master looked up.


    ¡°Who is that?!?!¡±


    The beast hall master shouted.


    ¡°Grand elder?¡±


    Yelled the outer sect master.


    ¡°GRAND ELDER!?!?!?!¡±


    Screamed the beast hall master.


    Even though they had mistaken his identity, Bao Gang did not correct them as this might even give him an advantage.


    Although this makes the two look stupid, this is not wholly an accurate representation, because he had shown the strength of a xiantian realm.  Only the sect master and grand elders had achieved xiantian realm.


    The small size and golden body could be attributed to a cultivation method which allowed shrinking of the body or being a puppet.  After all, the two had never seen the grand elders. They were usually just recluses who cultivated inside their houses atop the summit of the mountain.


    The golden human figure shot at the outer sect master, trying to get some of the nearly invisible sparkles on him.


    Bao Gang had not attached any sparkles to him earlier as he did not want to alert him, and as he had not yet formed the golden body, did not want to show that it had actually been him that set off the alarm, which would completely ruin his plans.


    But now, he had a perfect motive.  Hiding information from the sect for personal gain is a punishable crime, which gave him reason to attack the outer sect master.


    The outer sect master pulled out a stick of jade.


    ¡°WAIT!!!! If you keep attacking me, I will break this jade, which will trigger an inscription under the lizard.  Make a contract with me that you will never hurt me, or I will break the jade and die with the lizard. If you don¡¯t then how do I know you won¡¯t kill me after guaranteeing the safety of the lizard?¡±


    Bao Gang began to get nervous.  He could not wait to make a contract because his entrance had attracted a lot of attention and would soon bring other powerful people who would be able to threaten him.


    He ordered the golden sparkles which were near the Elder¡¯s court to swoop down into the elder¡¯s court and attempt to fly Xiao Gou Shi out of there, not caring for the consequences.


    ¡°Halt!¡±  a voice from the summit shouted.


    ¡°I knew something funny was happening! I kept feeling as if someone was entering the sect, but wasn¡¯t able to sense them!¡±


    A shield formed around the outer sect hall master¡¯s house, and the golden sparkles began to hit it and suck out the spiritual energy powering it.


    Another shield formed above the sect, forming a dome which encapsulated the sect, leaving him no way out.


    ¡°Now that the sect¡¯s defensive mechanism has been activated, you can forget about getting what you want from the sect!  It''s too bad the spiritual energy disappeared, or we would even have enough energy to activate attack type inscriptions!


    With no other course of action left, Bao Gang began to suck the cultivation of everyone in the sect.


    Everyone in the sect had been alerted, several xiantian realm cultivators were coming to stop him, his goal had been uncovered and he was unable to rescue Xiao Gou Shi immediately.


    If he fought the outer sect master, Xiao Gou Shi would get blown up.  If he didn¡¯t then the other xiantian realm experts would be able to capture Xiao Gou Shi and use him as a hostage.


    The situation was truly untenable!

 Ch 21: Devils blood

    Bao Gang had already began absorbing the cultivation of most beings in the sect, but was not going very fast, as he had not attached many golden sparkles to each cultivator. If he had, he might have been found out.


    Sadly, he still was due to the outer sect master¡¯s advanced alarm system.


    ¡°You are not the grand elder?¡±


    A snide smile formed on the face of the outer sect master.


    Having been threatened with death, he would not just allow the attacker to get off scot free.  He would make sure that Bao Gang would pay.


    ¡°Wait there.  If you don¡¯t want the lizard to die, you will not move from that spot.¡±


    Bao Gang could not wait.  The other xiantian cultivators of the Immortal Mountain sect were coming, and while they could not kill him, they would certainly be able to kill Xiao Gou Shi.


    Even though Wei Yun had said that Xiao Gou Shi would be able to protect him on this planet, this does not mean in combat.


    The main characteristics that Xiao Gou Shi had exhibited was fast speed primarily, and also strong fire.


    But neither of these are defensive abilities.  If the inscription under Xiao Gou Shi blew up, Bao Gang was not sure that Xiao Gou Shi would survive.


    If sieged by multiple xiantian cultivators, Xiao Gou Shi would be able to defend himself for sure.  This means that the lizard might be able to bring one of the attackers with him in death.


    But, more than likely, Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s primary method to protect Bao Gang would be his fast speed, which would allow him to clear a path for Bao Gang, or maybe even carry him, but based on previous actions(did not kill demonic beasts when they were surrounded, did not kill the tiger before it could severely injure Bao Gang), the dragon did not have the strength to rampage through the planet unchecked.


    Even after having grown, Bao Gang was not sure that Xiao Gou Shi was strong enough.


    This is where Bao Gang faced a dilemma.  If he tried to kill the outer sect master in order to get the jade stick, Xiao Gou Shi would be blown up.  Because, if he ever got close to victory, the outer sect master would take Xiao Gou Shi with him.


    If he went to the barrier surrounding Xiao Gou Shi, the outer sect master would blow up the inscription as soon as there was a risk of Bao Gang saving Xiao Gou Shi.


    If he could not find a course of action, he loses by default after the xiantian cultivators provide protection for the outer sect master.  After they find out they can¡¯t kill him, they will then use Xiao Gou Shi to threaten him.


    Holding up the jade stick once again, the outer sect master seemed triumphant, but also indignant.


    ¡°You thought you would be able to steal my lizard?¡±


    A vicious smile broke out on his face.


    ¡°Even if you were immortal, we would still have a way to deal with you.  Do you think this is as simple as a normal sect on this planet? We are a branch of the Angel¡¯s Justice sect.  When the laws disappeared, we called for help, and the main sect sent us a liquid core cultivator. As soon as he realizes we are in trouble, he will come to help us.  Even if you were to escape today, he would have no problem hunting you down.¡±


    Seeing that the outer sect master was growing more and more triumphant as more and more time passed, Bao Gang could no longer wait.


    Bao Gang flew towards the outer sect master.  Although, clearly much slower than before, and punching much weaker, he aimed a punch which he predicted the outer sect master would just be able to handle.


    SMACK*


    The outer sect master backed up 10 steps.  The smirk disappeared to be replaced with a serious face


    ¡°What are you doing!?¡±


    Bao Gang did not respond.


    He rushed at him again, not giving him time to think.


    As long as the outer sect master was not in danger of dying, he would not break the jade slip.  If he did so, then Bao Gang would then stop holding back, which is why the outer sect master could not do it.


    ¡°HALT!¡±


    Now an old man with white hair pulled into a mullet(just this feature alone makes him a bad guy) crashed down in the middle of the beast hall, causing even more damage to the sect.


    Cracks snaked around the impact zone for tens of meters.


    ¡°Stop fighting and we can come to an agreement.¡±If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    Knowing that the sect would only get damaged even further if they continued fighting, the old man wanted to temporarily stop the fighting, either creating a favorable contract, or buying time for the liquid core cultivator to realize that something had gone wrong at the sect.


    The liquid core is achieved when the qi in the dantian became so concentrated that it condensed into a liquid.  When compared to xiantian realm cultivators who had just gained the ability to manipulate qi, they have a qualitative advantage.


    Not only is their qi much denser, allowing for better body strengthening and magic casting, but they also have much more stamina.  The dense qi allows for more storage.


    On this planet without any laws, cultivators could no longer absorb spiritual energy.  Body tempering realm cultivators could not cultivate, and xiantian realm cultivators would not be able to sustain magic spells and body strengthening, as this would use up what little spiritual energy they had.


    For a liquid core cultivator, this would not be the case.  They can store much more spiritual energy in their dantian, and while Bao Gang could count on being able to outlast the xiantian realm cultivators, he was a bit scared of liquid core cultivators.  Plus, according the outer sect master, they had a way to deal with undying bodies!


    He would not actually die, but he could very well lose most of his body, which would mean losing most of his combat strength.


    Knowing that the consequences were no longer trivial, Bao Gang began to fight slightly harder, putting pressure on the outer sect master.


    The only solace in which Bao Gang could be thankful was that the golden sparkles were still sucking the spiritual energy out of the barrier surrounding the oute sect master¡¯s house, and would be able to enter if he delayed enough.


    The old man received the message loud and clear; Bao Gang would not surrender or have a peaceful solution.


    Punching out, the man did not hold anything back.  He zipped behind Bao Gang and punched, aiming for Bao Gang¡¯s blind spot--


    Had Bao Gang been a normal cultivator, this might have succeeded.  Spiritual sense for cultivators is usually not easy to use. Splitting the soul into tendrils which can observe the surroundings is possible, but requires concentration.  During battle, this is a problem, but for cultivators with strong soul seas, this is certainly possible. With the strength of his soul sea, this was naturally not a problem for Bao Gang.


    A wave of golden sparkles flew out.


    Bao Gang had weakened his body right before the man punched, and disintegrated his entire body, shooting most of it at the old man, but around 40% at the outer sect master.


    The outer sect master, who was in front of Bao Gang to begin with, could not react in time, and Bao Gang, who had formed some of the sparkles into a blade, accelerated the blood forward.


    Snip*


    An almost inaudible sound seemed deafening.


    The outer sect master¡¯s hand fell to the ground.


    The rest of his body had been covered in God¡¯s blood, and looking around helplessly, he realized his cultivation was being drained.


    In anger, he rushed at his hand, trying to grab the severed hand and jade stick with his other hand--


    Only to realize that it had disappeared!


    In the air above the sect, the jade slip was hovering.


    Bao Gang had disintegrated his body so that the outer sect master would think he had truly had his body blown to bits.  In this case, he would definitely not kill Xiao Gou Shi, now knowing that the lizard had the potential for a xiantian realm cultivator to fight ot the death over it.


    Unfortunately for him, it was a ruse.  The golden sparkles then formed into a blade, chopping off his hand, and then more sparkles surrounded the jade stick and flew it up into the air.


    While this seems like a long time, it happened in a split second.  By the time the dust settled, the jade stick was gone, and the hand chopped off.


    The old cultivator also began to lose his cultivation, and within seconds, his cultivation had disappeared.


    Bao Gang once again reformed his body, and flew towards Xiao Gou Shi.


    He met 3 xiantian cultivators en route to the beast hall, but dealt with them in quick succession.


    A single of his punches did each of them in, as he had already achieved strength almost surpassing the xiantian realm!  The demonic bear could be considered as one of the strongest entry level xiantian realm cultivators, and none of the other three xiantian realm cultivators had surpassed this cultivation.


    He would normally avoid physical damage and instead suck the cultivation, but in this case was not willing to risk Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s safety by delaying his flight.


    As he flew, the golden sparkles which he had placed all over the sect, returned to him.  They had already completed their mission of sucking the cultivation of the cultivators, and then freeing their souls of there sufferings, and all over the sect could be seen disciples looking in to space peacefully.


    But then he sensed something different about one of the golden sparkles.  It had turned tar black! It also released an ominous vibe.


    As if not under his control, it sucked in other sparkles of God¡¯s blood, becoming larger and larger.  Hurriedly, Bao Gang ordered the God¡¯s blood to move away from the ominous, black, blood. But the golden blood did not obey his orders.  It converged on the black blood, growing larger and larger until it reached the size of a drop. Then it forcefully combined with his body.  Forcefully meaning that he did everything he could to move away from the black drop, but it locked on to him, constantly growing closer.


    Then it was absorbed into his body.


    A wave of brutal scenes flashed in his head, which seemed to last for minutes.


    He saw the people of Earth--then a wave of flame which rushed down from the sky.  It was much faster than a meteor, and began covering the sky and ruching down towards the ground.


    Skyscrapers melted and were blown downwards, people on the street vaporized, the ground itself became a sticky flaming goo.


    He saw the same thing occur all over the planet.  He saw the White House melt, the Kremlin shatter, the destruction of neighborhoods, of entire cities, witnessed as if through multiple eyes at multiple vantage points, one after the other.


    Then, a view from the base of a mountain.  It had towered into the sky, and was previously the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest.  But now it was little more than a hill


    A spot flew down.  It was Lucifer.


    Bao Gang woke up, sweat on his forehead, breathing heavily.


    Inside his soul sea, there was now a golden drop of blood, constantly rotating in a circular orbit, just as the God¡¯s blood had before he lost his body.  But now the black drop rotated with it, forming a taiji diagram.


    His body felt full of energy, more power than ever before. He smiled.


    But his smile no longer looked so forgiving.

 Ch 22: Rescued Xiao Gou Shi?

    The soul sea can be thought of as something illusory.  It lies within the head, and the entrance is the space between the brows.


    For mortals, the soul sea cannot interact with the world.  For cultivators past the stage of improved brain, their soul sea can be tempered by spiritual energy, which allows them to have their first interactions with the outside world.  Past this, they can use it to sense the surroundings. By forming the soul sea into thin tendrils and sending them out, it can cover a very large space and anything touched by these tendrils will be ¡°seen¡± by the cultivator.


    For Bao Gang, his soul sea is no longer separate from his body, every single speck of God¡¯s blood contains a soul sea imprint, which is essentially a small piece of his soul.


    This makes his soul sense differ from other cultivators.  He can not only sense what touches his soul sea, but also whatever comes within a set distance of any of the soul sea imprints.


    When he had first tried using his soul sense, he had not payed attention to the range of its sensing ability, but after growing to a larger size and recovering parts of his soul, he realized the range was getting larger.


    Not by much, but definitely larger.  The range of his soul sense seemed to increase linearly with how many soul sea imprints he had.  This is slightly different from his bodily speed which seemed to increase exponentially with the number of soul sea imprints.  His strength increased linearly with bodily speed, but also the amount of God¡¯s blood controlled.


    This essentially means that if he has double the soul sea imprints, each speck of God¡¯s blood can sense anything within twice the distance.  So if he could previously sense everything in a sphere around the speck with a radius of 5 feet, it would now sense within a radius of 10 feet.  His speed would not just double, but might go up by a factor of 4(he had not yet determined the rate of speed growth, so it is not necessarily 4 times larger, it could be 8 or even 16!).  Each speck of God¡¯s blood would then be able to move at a vastly increased pace(The amount of God¡¯s blood does not increase speed).


    His strength would go up by the same factor as his speed, as long as the amount of God¡¯s blood stayed constant.  This just means that if he punches someone with a body made of 5 drops of God¡¯s blood, it would be half as strong as if he punched with a body made of 10 drops of God¡¯s blood.  However, in both cases, his speed would stay constant because it is not dependent on the amount of God¡¯s blood which he is controlling, only the amount of soul sea imprints.


    His soul sea is sheltered within the God¡¯s blood, but also allows him to control the God¡¯s blood.  He can intuitively move it, just like a human can intuitively move their limbs, even if the blood is not attached to his body.


    After the pitch black drop of blood entered his forehead, the God¡¯s blood which formed his head moved away from it, forming an open space within the golden body.  Remember that Bao Gang no longer had a soul sea because it had been split into imprints embedded into each speck of God¡¯s blood.


    But now, there was a hole in the center of his head, similar to a soul sea, but inside rotated the black drop and a drop of golden God¡¯s blood.


    He could control neither the pitch black drop nor the drop of God¡¯s blood rotating with it.


    ¡°Whatever this is can wait until after I rescue Xiao Gou Shi!¡±


    He flew off again towards the summit of the peak, but at a rapidly increased pace.  The black drop had vastly increased his speed, by many times.


    It would originally take him 5 seconds to fly from the base to the peak of the mountain, but now it would take less than 2!


    In fact, he would have reached the peak much sooner if some xiantian cultivators had not been in the way, wasting his time.


    After a tense second, he reached the top and saw the transparent shield which covered the 13 houses.


    His God¡¯s blood was ravenously sucking the spiritual energy out of the barrier around the outer sect master¡¯s house.


    Rushing forward, he split the golden body into golden sparkles which he used to completely cover the barrier.


    If he had not done so, and just kept the golden body, it would not allow all of the God¡¯s blood to touch the barrier, which means that it would not be able to absorb the spiritual energy powering it.


    Even in this fashion, not all of the God¡¯s blood could touch the barrier.


    However, it did not matter, because with all the additional God¡¯s blood, the barrier collapsed in seconds.


    Not only was the amount of God¡¯s blood sucking the spiritual energy many times larger, but it had also been mostly drained already.  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    From breaking into the Beast Hall to breaking open the barrier, less than 50 seconds had passed.  The majority of it had been while he was playing with the outer sect master and waiting for another cultivator to come so that he could pretend to break apart.


    Another 10 seconds had passed while he was dealing with the black blood.


    Finally, he saw Xiao Gou Shi.  He flew towards him, reaching out with his hand to pick him up and rush away in case the liquid core cultivator had realized what was happening at the sect.  Just as he was reaching out with his hand--


    In the ruins of the Beast Hall were three old mortals.  The beast hall master, outer sect master, and the old man who had rushed down from the peak of the mountain.


    Neither the beast hall master nor the outer sect master had looked old earlier, but now had saggy cheeks, white hair, and tired gazes.


    They had been over 50 years old, but did not look it.  Cultivators have a long lifespan, and even if these two had not yet entered the xiantian realm, their lifespan had doubled from 100 years to 200, so they looked comparatively as old as a normal 25 year old human.


    The other xiantian realm cultivator had a lifespan of 500 years, and had already lived for 400.  He knew that he would soon die. He had lost his cultivation, so his lifespan had been drastically reduced.  The other two, were only 50 years old, so they would not die from old age.


    ¡°We should not have messed with that golden cultivator(they did not know it was Bao Gang because he had lost his old appearance when he lost his human body.)¡±


    The saggy cheeks and white hair came from loss of lifespan, but the tired gaze was due to losing their life.


    While they had not yet died, it could almost be seen as such.


    Their life which they had dedicated to cultivation of themselves and disciples of the sect were now over.


    Their cultivation was gone, and they surmised that something had happened to the disciples from the lack of screams and assistance.


    The entire sect was quiet.


    The disciples and other hall masters had their cultivations absorbed and their sufferings purged and now looked around blankly with smiles on their faces.


    Then a hint of defiance showed in the eyes of the 400 year old man.  He tremblingly reached into his pocket and pulled out two jade sticks and crushed both.


    At the top of the mountain, Bao Gang saw Xiao Gou Shi.  Unharmed, the lizard was still chewing on the spiritual herbs which had been placed near him.  The two foot long dragon was unperturbed.


    Bao Gang rushed down and picked him up--


    But couldn¡¯t.


    Even after almost completely reforming his body into the over 200 drop golden body, he could not pick up Xiao Gou Shi.


    Admittedly, an observer would not think it possible for such a herculean feat of strength, as Bao Gang was only a few inches tall and Xiao Gou Shi was 2 feet long.  That observer would be wrong if it were any other creature of the same size.


    Bao Gang could already lift objects in the thousands of pounds, but he could barely pick up Xiao Gou Shi at all!  Xiao Gou Shi was too heavy!


    Additionally, Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s scaly skin made the God¡¯s blood begin to sizzle and even separated flakes of it from the rest of the body.


    Even the lava in the core of the earth had not been hot enough to pose a threat to the God¡¯s blood, but Xiao Gou Shi¡¯s scales were much hotter!


    Of course, it did not destroy the God¡¯s blood, but this was still the first time there was something strong enough to overcome the strength of his body!


    Then purple runes appeared out of thin air.  They shone a purple glow and wiggled around with a life of their own.


    The barrier covering the entire sect seemed to turn purple, even though it had been transparent a second ago.


    The houses, mountain, even disciples looked as if they were covered in purple tattoos.


    Bao Gang knew enough about formations from the memories of one of the cultivators to know that this was a teleportation formation.


    This cultivator was the head of the inscription workshop.  He had been here when the formation was set up.


    This particular cultivator had lived on this planet all his life.  Then one day, a group of cultivators appeared out of thin air.


    These cultivators were from the Angel¡¯s justice sect.


    They chose a mountain, and within a day, caves were built into the mountain, the 13 grand houses on the peak appeared, and they announced that this was a sect for anyone to enter, as long as their cultivation was good enough.


    What had taken a long time to make was this formation.  The cultivators had stayed for weeks to set up this formation which covered the entire sect.


    At the time, he had just entered as a disciple, and was told this was a teleportation formation to the Angel¡¯s Justice sect, the sect from which these cultivators originated.


    He did not have enough cultivation talent to become a xiantian realm cultivator without many resources, but had worked on inscriptions from that point on, eventually becoming the head of the inscription workshop.


    After achieving this, he was given massive amounts of resources and had eventually reached xiantian realm.  He had been given a cultivation method and cultivation standard pill by the grand elder(the old man who Bao Gang drained of cultivation) after swearing an oath to the heavens that he would stay loyal to the sect.


    This oath is similar to a contract for a contract beast.


    He had once asked why the cultivators from the Angel¡¯s justice sect even came to this planet given their capabilities.


    They had not attempted to take over the planet, only establish a sect.  All in all, they had not done anything other than setting up a sect, which gave the opportunity for locals to cultivate.


    He had been told that an incomparably dangerous being was trapped under the Earth and were to activate the formation if the cultivator ever escaped and attacked the sect.


    Then, everything vanished.


    Bao Gang did not know that the formation could fully activate in a split second and did not have time to escape, he could only stare as the formation fully activated and he was teleported.


    Into another world.

 Ch 23: Angels Justice sect

    Inside the Angel¡¯s Justice sect: Some elder¡¯s were nervous, some were oblivious.  Those which had participated in the sealing of Lucifer felt a nagging in the back of their head.  The jade stick which was left on the planet Flaming Rock was broken.


    When creating a pair of jade sticks, a special inscription is placed on each, and when one breaks, the other will as well.  When it was snapped on the planet, the sect was immediately notified.


    Flaming Rock is planet which Bao Gang was on.


    When the laws disappeared, the sect master at the Immortal Mountain sect broke the jade stick.  This was the protocol in the case of an emergency, such as the universe laws disappearing from the planet.  Of course, they would not know this, as such high level knowledge would not be known by cultivators of such a low level, but would certainly notice the complete absence of spiritual energy.


    A liquid core cultivator was sent to investigate the planet.


    This was not the strongest cultivator at the Angel¡¯s Justice sect, but this was not the first time this happened.


    In such an emergency, sending the strongest cultivator of the sect might be dangerous.  Until the problem was found, who would be willing to risk their life?


    You have to understand that there had been many such incidents where cultivators were sent to investigate this planet, just to make sure Lucifer never escaped.


    Once, a strong cultivator had been injured and ended up using the planet as a recovery spot.  The investigator from the Angel¡¯s Justice sect was killed by the cultivator because his recovery was disturbed.  The sect lost a revolving core cultivator in this incident, one of the strongest beings in the sect!


    Similar incidents had happened over the years, although the sect never sent a revolving core cultivator after this.  Other times, the investigator found nothing, and Lucifer had never escaped, so at this point, the sect was not particularly concerned if something happened on the planet.


    More than likely, it would end up being nothing.


    But this time, some of the elders were uncontrollably fidgety and irritable.


    Out in space, Lucifer was flying towards the Angel¡¯s Justice sect.  He knew that it would be possible for the Angel¡¯s Justice sect to notice his disappearance, and at this point just wanted  to get stronger, while simultaneously getting back at the Angel¡¯s justice sect.


    What better way to do this than betraying this sect?


    He had decided to fly over to planet Angel¡¯s Justice, named after the sect which had its headquarters located on the planet.


    He would enter as a new disciple, work his way up, and eventually be the most promising disciple, then after gaining enough strength, would assassinate the strongest members of the sect, then absorb the cultivation of every single cultivator in the sect.


    This plan has a few advantages.


    Firstly, he can avoid unseen scenarios in which he might die due to pure luck.  If he ran into a strong cultivator in the outside world, he might be killed before growing powerful.  By contrast, he would be fairly safe in the Angel¡¯s Justice sect as long as his identity was not found out.  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Secondly, he can get the best cultivation resources in the sect if he is promising.  The sect would want to nurture geniuses, and he would take advantage of this to cultivate at the quickest possible speed.


    Thirdly, if the sect ever found out he was missing, the last place they would look is inside the sect.


    Fourthly, when he is trusted, he will be able to assassinate the strongest members.  He would be able to kill them by surprise, which would mean he would not need much time to cultivate to kill one.  After killing one, he would absorb their cultivation, and kill some more! By limiting the time he needs to cultivate, he limits the time the sect has to search for him, and therefore lowers the risk of being found by the sect.


    Plus, they would never be able to tell him apart from the other disciples!  On the planet, there are simply too many people for the Angel¡¯s Justice sect to keep track of, so he could easily pass himself off as someone who had been born on the planet.


    Short of a soul search, he essentially could not be found out until he acted against the sect!  A soul search is when a cultivator looks at the memories of another. However, most cultivators would not consent to this, as everyone has their own secrets.


    If a talented disciple is found to have stolen, they must be punished.  Of course, to benefit the strength of the sect, it would be better to give resources to the more talented disciples, but if they are found to have been stolen, a punishment would have to be meted out to ensure that such actions are not perceived as being tacitly allowed by the sect.  Of course, if an untalented disciple were found to have stolen, the sect would never condone such a thing and they would be heavily punished, as an example to other disciples. But in the case of a genius disciple, the sect would not want to punish them, but would have to due to their righteous reputation.  If this becomes a rampant problem, order, discipline, and justice are disrupted, which is why the sect cannot allow even the most talented of disciples to do anything unlawful(If a genius disciple were to realize the sect would not punish them for stealing, they would do so more often, and likely tell other disciples, and thus stealing would become rampant.  To prevent this, the sect punishes those they find stealing, but when clues point to a talented disciple, the investigation would stop).


    Additionally, a soul search requires that a cultivator cede control of part of their soul sea for searching.  This causes a soul injury and can take years to recover from. This halts cultivation and lowers talent if the soul injury is never recovered from.  Again, not something which the sect would want to do to talented disciples.


    Finding him would not be as simple as just checking new disciples as they have no idea that he has already found a new body!


    If he were to escape the prison without finding a new body, he would be able to take over another given that they are much weaker in terms of soul strength.  He could take control over the body of someone in the sect who had been there for years and those nearby would never know the difference, because he would have their memories!


    10 miles away from the sect, a clearing in a forest suddenly lit up purple, the purple which signified a teleportation formation.  Purple runes began to appear, covering the ground, creating a circle 3 miles in radius. Spiritual energy in the area began to dissipate, being pulled to the ground to fuel the teleportation.


    A slightly larger circle appeared overlapping with the purple teleportation formation, this one formed out of golden runes, the color of a barrier.  This circle was larger in radius than the purple circle by a foot, and along the perimeter of this larger circle, large piles of clear rocks were stacked.  Each rock was a cube with 1 inch long sides. These rocks began to gradually turn grey and opaque.


    Then, a transparent barrier, which looked similar to a glass dome, formed and extended to the edges of the golden circle.  The rocks which were placed just on the edge of the golden circle were outside the dome.


    A slight vibration could be felt amongst the silence, Then the purple runes disappeared.  And in their place, a hill, or more correctly, the top half of a mountain, and atop the mountain, was Bao Gang.


    With the appearance of the mountain, an ear-piercing siren broke the stillness of the day, and a swarm of figures flew from the sprawling sect towards the clearing--the strongest cultivators of the Angel¡¯s Justice sect.

 Ch 24: First glimpse of Angels Justice

    None of the elders in the Angel¡¯s Justice sect looked happy.  They all knew what this particular alarm represented. A strong cultivator appeared on the planet Lucifer had been sealed on, right after unusual occurrences, and went out of their way to destroy the Immortal Mountain sect.  How could this strong cultivator be anyone but Lucifer?


    The greatest threat to the existence of their sect had been due to Lucifer.  Not because he had tried to destroy it, but because he had killed so many of their elders when they came to kill him.  Their sect had lost nearly 80% of their elders and all of the grand-elders, as well as the sectmaster had been fatally wounded.  They would all die within 10 years of the battle, regardless of what treasured herbs or pills were used to heal them. This had almost indirectly caused the sect to be replaced as hegemon of this world.


    Some elders looked gloomy, others anxious, and the rest, fearful.  In the over 700 years which Lucifer had been sealed, many new generations had been raised in the sect.  Those who were in the sect when 80% of the powerhouses were killed remembered the pressure they faced from enemy sects, or even fighting Lucifer and were gloomy at the prospect of a similar occurrence they remembered very well, after all, they had experienced it.  Their cultivation allowed them to live since then. The anxious ones were the ones who had not experienced the aftermath but were strong. The fearful ones made up the majority and were the somewhat weaker elders who had not been alive 700 years ago, but had heard stories.


    All the elders were very clear that even their grand elders and sectmaster which were required to have solid core cultivation had been fatally wounded in the battle.


    Solid core cultivation is the realm after liquidated core, which is after the gaseous core, which comes after the body tempering realm.  Normal elders, which made up the vast majority of elders at the sect, would only have reached liquidated core! Before a normal solid core cultivator, they would be akin to twigs.  And Lucifer was not a normal solid core cultivator, he was considered a genius!


    Generally, after a breakthrough to a new realm of cultivation(a different level is breakthrough within a realm.  Ex.golden marrow to invigorated blood would be a level, but body tempering to gaseous core would be a realm), a cultivator could immediately fight ten equally talented cultivators who were peak of the realm, but had not broken through to a new realm.  So 10 pure body cultivators could fight 1 gaseous core cultivator, provided they had just broken through. Additionally, the fighting prowess of a cultivator doubles when they break through a level. Gaseous, liquidated, and solid core realms all had nine levels, so a ninth level cultivator would be able to fight 256 first level cultivators of the same realm.


    The title of genius would generally require having 10 times the battle strength of the average cultivator at the same cultivation level.  A genius ninth level solid core cultivator would be able to fight 2560 first level solid core cultivators, or 25600 ninth level liquidated core cultivators.  Before this ridiculous strength, the normal elders would stand no chance.


    Keep in mind that battle strength equal to ten others of the same cultivation level does not mean that they are literally ten times stronger, ten times faster, etc.  It means they can fight the ten others at the same time. At some point, additional cultivators get in the way of their teammates, and will no longer all be able to attack a single enemy at the same time, provided that the enemy is not massive in size.  So in reality, 25600 ninth level liquidated core cultivators would not be a match for the genius ninth level solid core cultivator.


    However, this also means that if all the cultivators are able to combine and form an array, which would allow them to pool spiritual energy, this array would have many times the spiritual energy of the enemy cultivator, and would therefore be much stronger than the enemy.


    While the array would not have strength benefits from their physical bodies, at high cultivation realms, bodily strength would pale in comparison to the power provided by spiritual energy.  Essentially, if the body could punch with 100 pounds of force without using spiritual energy, using spiritual energy would allow a force of 1,000 pounds. So by forming an array, they sacrifice the strength provided by the physical body, but it would not be a large decrease(it would be 900 pounds of force).  But by forming an array, they can combine the 900 pounds of force from the punch of multiple cultivators. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    When the elders arrived at the clearing, they could not see inside the transparent barrier.  The barrier had turned golden, and shockingly, the cubes of transparent rock were swiftly turning grey.


    ¡°The spiritual stones won¡¯t last long! Somehow Lucifer is sucking out all the spiritual energy!¡±


    The cubes, known as spiritual stones, are essentially stored spiritual energy.  The spiritual energy can be used to power formations, for alchemy, and also for cultivation.  When they turn completely grey, they have lost all spiritual energy.


    One Bao Gang had seen the barrier, he knew he had to escape.  Even though he did not know he had arrived at the Angel¡¯s Justice planet, he knew that it had not been good intent that prompted the Immortal Mountain Sect to send him here.


    Thus, he immediately moved all the God¡¯s blood which he consisted of, to the barrier, and began siphoning away the spiritual energy.


    Once he had done so, the spiritual stones began turning grey at a much quicker rate.


    The elders arranged them self into a circle around the barrier, took out crosses, and following the lead of an old, white-haired man began to draw black runes in the air.


    Black chains began to appear out of thin air as many of the elders began to look slightly pale, and a little more haggard.


    By this point, the spiritual stones had almost turned completely gray.


    ¡°HURRY!¡±


    The old, grey haired man estimated how long it would take for ¡°Lucifer¡± to escape the barrier and didn¡¯t like it.  It would take less than 30 seconds. The black runes which he drew shimmered in the air. He had obviously drawn up many times more runes than the normal elders.


    Hearing him, all elders sped up their pace of drawing runes in the air, and the chains became more and more corporeal.


    ¡°Sectmaster, we won¡¯t make it!¡±


    Another old man, but this one was bald and bearded, had realized what the sectmaster, the old, white haired man, had also come to realize, that their sealing array would not be finished before the barrier disappeared.


    ¡°Damnit!  How did Lucifer¡¯s absorption ability get so strong!  When we fought him before, it was nowhere near this level.  And what¡¯s up with his new body! It looks like a liquid!¡±


    Then the barrier could hold back Bao Gang no more.  A flood of golden sparkles shout out in all directions.


    Bao Gang knew that he had to absorb the cultivation of the people trying to seal him.  Like Lucifer, he could not be easily killed, but he had no idea of whether or not the sealing spell would work on him.


    The bald and bearded man stopped drawing symbols and raised him arms in the air.  A second barrier appeared in the air, stopping the flood of golden.


    But it was short lived, the bearded man could not absorb enough spiritual energy from the air to keep up with his usage, and began using his cultivation base to fuel the barrier spell.


    To cultivate, spiritual energy is absorbed and becomes increasingly more pure and powerful as it is filtered and compressed.  It is turned into a core in the dantian, essentially spiritual energy which the body can use if needed. As the spiritual energy becomes more dense and pure, it increases their affinity to spiritual energy and they can absorb it faster.  In the dantian, the core is separate from absorbed spiritual energy. The core is cultivation, and the absorbed spiritual energy must be transformed through a cultivation method to turn it into cultivation. In a normal fight, only absorbed spiritual energy will be used(spiritual energy from the air which has not been processed by a cultivation method).  This way, cultivation is not lost in a fight, but in a life or death battle, how could the elder care about this? He also used his cultivation to fuel the spell.


    This allowed the seal to be finished just in the nick of time


    As the elder slumped to the ground, devoid of cultivation, the black chains combined to form an impenetrable net, covering the ground and sky and began closing in on Bao Gang.

 Ch 25: How to deal with an undying body

    The black chains closed in on Bao Gang.  At this point, he looked like a gigantic wave of golden sparkles.  He had previously been held back by barriers, but those had all their spiritual energy removed, so without anything to power them, they disappeared.


    But now the chains were closing in.


    Gasping for breath, the bald, bearded man was on all fours, having just used his centuries of cultivation to fuel a barrier in order to give the elders time to finish their sealing spell.  His beard began to rapidly turn white, and his body started withering away.


    Having lost his cultivation, old age would now kill him within minutes.


    ¡°Hah! Lucifer, I might be dying, but you will be sealed away again!  Do you recognize this spell? The same one that allowed us to rid you of your mortal body and trap your soul for over 500 years!¡±


    The man keeled over, lying on the ground, but he had now stopped breathing heavily.  In fact, he had stopped breathing at all.


    By this time, the chains had reach Bao Gang.  They not only covered the sky, but also the ground.


    With his spiritual sense he could sense that the chains extended underground.


    The chains did not move the ground though, they seemed to not have any effect on the dirt.


    They seemed corporeal to his spiritual sense, but illusory in that they did not actually affect physical objects.


    Bao Gang tested this by moving one of the golden sparkles into the path of the chains, and another into a gap between the chains which seemed to cover heaven and earth.


    Neither experienced any adverse effects.  In fact, the golden sparkles began draining the spiritual energy which made up the chains.  Even the sparkle which had not touched the chains did this, as there seemed to be a barrier, with the same properties as the chains, in between the chains.  This would serve to make this sealing spell undodgeable, even if one were small enough to fit through the gaps between chains.


    From the words of the bald, bearded man, and his observations of its interaction with matter, this sealing spell did not have any effect on the physical, but specially targeted the soul sea.


    For most cultivators, this would be the most dangerous spell.  A normal cultivator would be unable to block such a sealing spell because it could not be affected by physical objects; it would pass right through them.


    Then, the chains would lock the soul sea of those within the spell, preventing them from putting up resistance.


    For Lucifer especially, because from his memories, Bao Gang saw that Lucifer could heal injuries quickly, using the spiritual energy absorbed from others.  Without such a spell, the elders of the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect wouldn¡¯t be able to deal with Lucifer because of his high endurance.


    If a single elder got caught by Lucifer, Lucifer would recover.  But the elder of the Angel¡¯s Justice sect would not be able to do the same, and after being injured, would not be able to heal like Lucifer.


    The memories which Bao Gang absorbed from Lucifer had not shown up till the part where he had been subdued by the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect, but presumably after the spell was cast, the chains locked his soul sea, disconnecting it from his physical body, which left him helpless.  The elder¡¯s had then separated his soul sea and body and trapped his soul sea in the Infernal prison.


    The Angel¡¯s Justice sect would have been unable to truly kill Lucifer because his soul sea had been separated from his physical body.  Killing his physical body would no longer have any effect on his soul sea, so they would be unable to destroy his soul sea without using soul attacks.  The problem is that the chains of sealing would not allow a soul sea to pass through it. A soul attack would require contact between soul seas, so the elders of the Angel¡¯s Justice sect would be unable to attack Lucifer¡¯s soul sea without dissipating the chains of sealing.  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    But if the chains of sealing were to be dissipated and the soul attack failed, the elders would no longer be able to trap Lucifer¡¯s soul sea, and he might be able to escape and possess another body.  Not to mention, if they attacked Lucifer¡¯s soul sea, he would undoubtedly be able to do the same to them, which would risk the lives of even more elders. Keep in mind that they had already lost 80% of them.


    The elders simply had no choice other than sealing away Lucifer¡¯s soul sea permanently.


    But Bao Gang was not Lucifer.  He had fully activated God¡¯s blood.  His soul sea had been split into innumerable soul sea imprints which had then been embedded into each sparkle of God¡¯s blood.


    Not even flame laws could destroy the God¡¯s blood and the soul sea imprints embedded inside it.  How could a sealing spell powered off of spiritual energy, which is weaker than spiritual energy, be able to destroy the soul sea imprints?


    What ended up happening was that the God¡¯s blood had a similar nature to the chains and was thus able to interact with it.  It is somewhat illusory due to it being made up partly of a soul sea imprint, but also a physical object.


    The God¡¯s blood contained the soul sea, and when the chains tried to trap the soul sea imprints, the God¡¯s blood was able to interact with it, and thus absorbed the spiritual energy which made up the chains.


    Having discovered that the black chains had no danger to him, Bao Gang once again sent out the golden sparkles to cover the sealing spell and began absorbing it.


    Soon, the chains disappeared, having been fully drained of spiritual energy.


    Bao Gang reformed his body into a figurine with a height of about 3 inches.  This was not the same shape as his old body(the one he had before the God¡¯s blood body).  When he had realized he had a new body made out of God¡¯s blood, it had come with a certain body shape.  It did not look similar to his old body, but was one that seemed to be built into the God¡¯s blood. Bao Gang could more easily form this body shape, and additionally felt as though he was more powerful in this shape.   This form at least doubled his movement speed compared to when he took on the form of innumerable golden sparkles.


    The elders of the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect stared on speechlessly.  Now they knew the terror of ¡°Lucifer¡±. The spell which they had cast together had no effect on ¡°Lucifer!¡±


    Bao Gang of course had realized by now that he was on planet Angel¡¯s Justice.  The fact that the planetary spiritual energy and scenery matched Lucifer¡¯s memories of the planet left no doubt that he was now fighting the Angel¡¯s Justice sect.


    But Bao Gang would not say that he was not Lucifer.


    Not only did he have a similar absorption ability, but he also caused a crisis at the Immortal Mountain sect(the details of the crisis were not yet known by the Angel¡¯s Justice sect).  Other than Lucifer, who would do this?


    And even if Bao Gang were to tell the elders, they would not believe him.


    Bao Gang quickly flew away from the elders, zipping between two of the ones who he perceived to be weaker, and into the forest.  Inside the forest, Bao Gang would be much safer because of his small size as well as his undetectability.


    When he had spread out the God¡¯s blood all around the Immortal Mountain sect, it had not been detected.


    Even when some of the xiantian(gaseous core) realm cultivators of the Immortal Mountain sect had realized something was wrong, they could not detect what it was, even with their spiritual sense.  They had only discovered him after there was a commotion. Clearly, his God¡¯s blood could not be easily detected by spiritual sense.


    The white-haired man, the sectmaster, quickly recovered from his shock and took out an ebony box, opening up the top and quickly flying after Bao Gang.


    While Bao Gang was fast, he was nowhere near the speed of the sectmaster.


    Within seconds, the sectmaster was right behind Bao Gang and attempted to cover him with the ebony box, trapping Bao Gang.


    Bao Gang split up into millions of golden sparkles, flying in every direction, but at least 10% of his body had been caught in the box.


    Inside the box, there was only darkness.  The golden sparkles bashed against the top of the box, but it did not budge.  10% of his body had been trapped inside the box!


    Now Bao Gang knew exactly how vulnerable he was, even with an undying body.  He could be trapped and sealed just as Lucifer had been!

 Ch 26: I tried to shorten the explanations

    Inside the box, 10% of Bao Gang¡¯s body had been captured.


    He could still sense the pieces, but his connection to them became much weaker.  If he could previously control them like a limb, it would now be akin to controlling a marionette.  It was actually similar to his control over the God¡¯s blood back on planet Flaming Rock; in a way, they could be considered separate entities, but they still had some form of communication.


    If Bao Gang were to tell the God¡¯s blood on planet flaming rock to do something, it would do it, but otherwise, the two separated masses of God¡¯s blood would act separately, both being autonomous.  Therefore, Bao Gang¡¯s body could be split up and each piece would be able to act independently of the others, but at the same time, the speed, power, and intelligence of each piece would be worse than the original.  In other words, by splitting his body and having them separated by a long distance(or by certain objects like the obsidian box), each piece could be considered a clone, but with only part of the abilities of the whole body.


    Obviously, Bao Gang tried to escape the box, but regardless of how hard the God¡¯s blood banged against the box, the box stayed shut, in fact, the box seemed to have no response.  From looking at the sectmaster, Bao Gang could tell that his efforts had been futile. Somehow, the box could isolate him from parts of his body.


    WIthout hesitation, Bao Gang split up his body, dispersing the golden sparkles in every direction.  Some headed directly away from the elders, but others flew towards them, burrowing into the skin of the elders.  This did not cause pain because the golden sparkles were so small, but as the elders began losing the qi which they had wholeheartedly worked to store.


    All of the elders fell onto the ground, rapidly aging.


    Bao Gang recognized that if he were to keep the form of a human he would be able to fly faster, but if he were to do so it would be very easy for the Ange¡¯s Justice Sect Master to capture him.


    Alternatively, if he split up his body into the golden sparkles, he would be able to escape in all directions and it would be near impossible for his entire body to be captured.  Stealing the cultivation of the elders who tried to seal him was only a bonus.


    To Bao Gang, this was the logical move, but to the sectmaster, this was astonishing.  While the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect Master had been surprised when he found the barrier array had contained an amorphous body, it was not to the extent of astonishment.  What did astonish him was that Bao Gang could split up his body again.


    If not common, it was at least not uncommon for cultivators to possess a skill which would allow them to absorb spiritual energy from an array.  Clearly, the best way to do so would be to absorb spiritual energy from all parts of an array, so splitting up the body to cover the maximum surface area of the array would be a logical strategy.  Due to this, skills had been created to allow a body to split up into tiny pieces to capitalise on this strategy. The only problems are that it would be highly risky as the cultivator risks losing part of their body in the split.


    Additionally, this type of transformation is highly damaging to cultivation because it would allow qi to escape.  (qi and cultivation are analogous)Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The body houses qi which keeps it from dissipating, but by splitting the body, it can no longer do so.


    Splitting up into small pieces exacerbates this qi loss, the small pieces require more soul strength to control, and the multi-directional escape essentially means that ¡°Lucifer¡± was giving up part of his body!


    Bao Gang knew none of this, so he just continued fleeing, and after spreading out the golden sparkles over a large distance, he simply let them drop and burrow into the ground.


    All in all, Bao Gang had lost almost 20% of his body by now, but when he had absorbed spiritual energy from the barrier and the Angel¡¯s Justice cultivators, he had also created more God¡¯s blood.  20% of his body was captured(around 40 drops), but he had created another 30 drops of God¡¯s blood. Still a loss, but after accounting for the God¡¯s blood which had been produced, his body was only around 7% smaller than when he arrived at planet Angel¡¯s Justice.


    He could also feel that his soul strength had decreased, as well as his speed, strength, spiritual energy attunement, and thinking/comprehension speed.  Clearly, after being separated from part of his body, he had become much weaker.


    While Bao Gang was just lying low, the Angel¡¯s Justice elders were searching furiously for traces of ¡°Lucifer¡±


    ¡°Sectmaster, we should seal the planet to prevent Lucifer from escaping.¡±


    ¡°Alright.¡±


    But the sectmaster had a nagging feeling that Lucifer was not the golden figure which he had chased after.  While the absorption ability was a fairly uncommon ability, it was not like there were none. In fact, the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect had a few of their own, but they had their own drawbacks which made them inferior to Lucifer¡¯s ability and also the golden figure which he had chased after earlier.


    Not only did Lucifer have different skills than the golden figure, but the golden figure had some skills which Lucifer rightfully should not have, such as the ability to split his body into tiny pieces and control each of them individually.  What he didn¡¯t know was that Bao Gang¡¯s God¡¯s blood could be considered an amalgamation of autonomous pieces, meaning that even if his soul strength were not insane, he would still be able to control each piece of God¡¯s blood individually.


    In space, Lucifer had arrived to a transparent barrier covering the entire planet.  A station with 8 guards were surrounding a circular pathway through the barrier.


    He went up to the guards and asked,


    ¡°Excuse me, can I enter this planet?¡±


    ¡°Certainly.  But, we have a barrier up to prevent a dangerous individual from escaping the planet, so you will be unable to leave until that person is found.¡±


    ¡°May I ask who it is that you are looking for?¡±


    ¡°Lucifer.  The same Lucifer who threatened the very existence of our sect hundreds of years ago.¡±


    At this, the guard looked around a little nervously, knowing that if Lucifer were to attempt to escape, they would be the first in the line of fire.


    Lucifer became perplexed.  How could he have infiltrated the planet and who would dare pose as him?


    The guard continued,


    ¡°Lucifer was locked up on planet Flaming Rock, but was sent here through a teleportation formation.¡±


    At this, Lucifer almost couldn¡¯t help himself from cracking a smile.  Some fool had actually attacked the Immortal Mountain Sect? He had not done so because he knew the consequences would be dire.  He had already sensed the presence of cultivators who cultivated the Angel¡¯s Justice technique, and had decided to delay his revenge until he became strong enough, purposefully avoiding the Immortal Mountain Sect.


    Then Lucifer entered the planet.

 Ch 27

    As Lucifer was entering the planet, the elders of the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect were helpless on the ground.  Their cultivation base had been drained, the sect leader was away chasing Bao Gang. And towering over them was a measly xiantian cultivator, grinning wickedly.  If they were at their peak, they could crush the xiantian cultivator with a single finger, but now that they had lost their cultivation, they were helpless.


    One of the elders said, ¡°Shinso!  Warn the sect that Lucifer is much more terrifying than we expected.  He has learned new abilities which make him dangerous to the entire sect!  As soon as his cultivation increases, he will be terrifying.¡± The elder began slurring his words and his head drooped to the ground just as his heart stopped beating.


    ¡°Hurry and get help from the sect! We might be able to restore our cultivation!¡± Another said.


    A glint appeared in Shinso¡¯s eye, ¡°You all lost your cultivation? And will be able to restore it if you get help from the sect?¡±


    By this time all of the elders except the relatively young ones had died.


    ¡°Quit asking useless questions!  We need help!¡± This implied confirmation was all that Shinso needed.


    Shinso disappeared, soon reaching the sect.


    ¡°Disciples of Angel¡¯s Justice sect! Our elders have been killed by Lucifer!  Quickly alert the guardians!¡±


    Back at the clearing, even the relatively younger elders were on the ground, but now they were all lying in a pool of blood, beheaded by Shinso.


    Shinso pulled out a jade slip, and through his spiritual sense, thought ¡°HAH! Those old fogeys of the Angel¡¯s Justice sect are gone now.  Lucifer weakened them and I killed them. Only the guardians are left¡±


    Surprisingly, through the jade slip, Shinso heard a reply, ¡°We will prepare for war.¡±


    Shinso was the highest ranked core disciple, at the peak of xiantian realm.  He joined the sect at the age of 10 and within 30 years went from an unknown disciple to the strongest disciple in the sect.  In fact, if he were to break through to the liquid core realm, he would become an elder. Not only that, he was considered a genius among his peers, having the battle prowess to defeat those three levels of cultivation higher.  He could even fight with some of the elders in the lower levels of liquid core realm. The higher ups of the sect put large amounts of resources and teaching towards him in the hopes that he might one day become a hall master or even the sect leader.  He was believed by many to be at the peak of life, above millions, under just a few. But, he was also a spy for the Demon¡¯s Descent sect, a sect which had repeatedly clashed with the Angel¡¯s Justice sect. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    Unluckily for Bao Gang, all the blame for the killing of elders fell on his head, and provoked hatred from every Angel¡¯s Justice Sect disciple, making it that much harder to hide.


    He was already furiously fleeing from the sectmaster, having lost much of his body.


    ¡°I need to take over the body of a disciple if I want to be able to do anything on this planet without worrying about being hunted,¡± he thought.


    At that moment, he saw a child lying in a pool of blood and flesh.  A horde of giant rats covering him, gnawing at his body, with disgusting scratching noises and the sick squealing of excited rats.  The rats were much larger than rats on Earth, about twice the height, and clearly more vicious. Their chomping could even break bones!  This change was clearly the result of the animals ability to cultivate.


    Bao Gang quickly gathered the God¡¯s blood in the nearby area, knowing that the sectmaster was off miles away chasing after a different portion of his body, and using this blood, struck at the rats.  It was more of a habit than anything else, not to mention the revulsion he had towards the rats.


    As the blood hit the rats, it attached to their fur and flesh and began absorbing the spiritual energy which they had gathered.  They were also sent flying by the force of the attack. Many rats only stopped when they hit rocks or tree trunks, and as they had lost their spiritual energy, many were rapidly beginning to show the signs of aging.


    The rats became dried, withered husks, and as Bao Gang began to recall the God¡¯s blood, he once again found he could not control it.


    The blood rapidly gathered together, forming a body, but he could not move.  SPiritual energy and law fragments began gathering into a whirlpool, and coalescing into a liquid--A deathly black drop of viscous liquid which began floating towards him.  It forcibly entered his body, and spread out to every single golden sparkle, turning them a shade darker.


    It left him noticeably less golden, but he had the feeling of being multiple times stronger.


    After the black liquid was absorbed into his body, he found he could move again, and so he flew towards the corpse of the child.


    Drawing spiritual energy from the air, he infused it into the boy¡¯s body, the same way he had done when he was cultivating in the body tempering realm.  This caused the different parts of the boy¡¯s body to be rapidly destroyed and reconstructed, but after each cycle, the injuries on the boy became lesser and lesser.  Of course, this could not bring the boy back to life, but it could heal his body.


    Then Bao Gang drew his God¡¯s blood into the veins and arteries of the boy, leaving just a drop which entered the boy¡¯s head through the glabella(space between brows).


    With the boy¡¯s soul gone, he would be able to use the body as cover.  From the empty soul space within the boy¡¯s head, he would be able to use the boy¡¯s senses, and he could imitate signs of life and control the body through the God¡¯s blood which had entered the boy¡¯s bloodstream.


    ¡°I need to infiltrate the sect in order to regain my God¡¯s blood, plus I will be able to learn new techniques,¡± he thought.


    He had learned some techniques in the Immortal Mountain Sect, but he had largely forgotten them when he had destroyed much of his soul sea, because he had only recently learned them.


    And so, the ¡°Lucifer¡± who everyone was chasing, and the true Lucifer were heading towards the Angel¡¯s Justice sect--and so was the Demon¡¯s Descent sect.  None with good intentions.

 Ch 28

    Back on Planet Flaming Rock, the liquid core cultivator who had been sent by the Angel¡¯s Justice sect to investigate the lack of spiritual energy had already visited the center of the earth.  It pained him to use his cultivation to protect his body from the lava, but with no spiritual energy left on the planet, what else could he do. To prevent himself from getting burnt?


    Cursing, from the loss of cultivation, he snarled, ¡°Lucifer.  This better not be a false alarm! I wasted tens of months worth of cultivation because I had to come find you.¡±


    Furious from these antics, he sped up, trying to get to the core of the earth in the minimum amount of time.


    ¡°Damnit Lucifer.  Damn that sectmaster too!  Why didn¡¯t we just kill Lucifer when we had the chance, instead of imprisoning him!¡±


    After hours of swimming through lava, he finally made it to the core of the earth only to find a blackened cage and an empty space where Lucifer¡¯s soul was supposed to be.


    He recoiled, a strong sense of unease and danger pervaded him.  As a slightly younger cultivator, he was not alive to witness the effects of Lucifer¡¯s killing spree.  But he was about to experience the terror of an unkillable cultivator.


    Back on Planet Angel¡¯s Justice, Bao Gang had just gotten used to the body of the young boy.  His body was fragile to the point it seemed almost like glass. Multiple times, Bao Gang had used his God¡¯s blood almost like muscles, in order to control the body of the boy, but accidentally used to much force and ended up tearing his veins and arteries.  It was not as simple as you might think, because different parts of the boy¡¯s body were made up of different tissues, therefore each part of the body could handle a different amount of force. But by absorbing spiritual energy and treating the injuries quickly, he ensured that there were no permanent bodily scars.  Since this planet had much stronger laws, there was more spiritual energy and he did not have to worry about attracting attention due to his absorption of spiritual energy.


    This is where Bao Gang realized the advantage he had with his old body.  Just as he had gotten used to the body, and could move it naturally, he realized that the boy¡¯s body could not absorb nearly as much spiritual energy as his old one.


    The forest that he was currently walking through looked remarkably similar to the forests on Earth, just with different trees, plants, and of course, many things were bigger due to their ability to cultivate, which improved their bodies.


    He saw another horde of giant rats, and he was tempted to drain their spiritual energy, knowing that it would allow him to produce more God¡¯s blood, and that they would probably be killing more humans if they were let go, but he didn¡¯t want to leave a trail.


    The sectmaster had seen how he drained cultivation, and he didn¡¯t want the sectmaster to know where he was going.  To tell you the truth, he also felt a aversion to killing. It was an instinctive, primal nausea, something he could not control.  It only appeared after taking on the form of God¡¯s blood, but he felt cold-blooded killing to be as repulsive as the killing of innocent children.  If he didn¡¯t have a very strong reason to kill, such as saving a life, he would avoid killing. Not to mention how those pitch black, globs of blood seemed to appear every time he purposefully harmed something.


    While these pitch black globs of blood made him stronger, he could also feel them changing him.  Before absorbing the first drop back at the Immortal Mountain sect, he would never even consider killing anything, but afterwards, it wasn¡¯t such an outlandish idea.


    He didn¡¯t consider absorbing cultivation to be bad, because it would not be him killing someone, but time and old age.  Plus, the very notion of cultivating causes greed and death, so by preventing it, he could be considered upholding peace.


    After walking for about an hour, he still had no idea where he was.  He had found some towns with his God¡¯s blood which had, by this point spread out for tens of thousands of miles, but he could not fly because it would likely destroy the body which he was using for cover.


    But with no other option, he just kept walking.  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    On Planet Flaming Rock, the liquid core cultivator was trying to return to the Immortal Mountain sect.  Paying no heed to his qi, which was quickly being lost, he had rushed back to the Immortal Mountain Sect.  He knew he had to warn the elders of the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect. Since Lucifer escaped, the first place he would take revenge on would be the Angel¡¯s Justice sect, and every second that passed gave Lucifer time to cultivate back to his peak.


    On the way, he had encountered golden drops of blood flying around the planet.  When he noticed this anomaly at first, he had flown over to inspect one, only to find it was hurtling towards him.


    Seeing that it was clearly hostile, he cast a fire spell, which caused a massive conflagration in the sky.  If this were any normal blood, it would have been evaporated. But this wasn¡¯t normal blood. It was still flying at breakneck speed towards him.  Seeing its unordinary nature, he decided not to provoke it and to just warn the sect.


    But surprisingly, the blood kept chasing after him!  While the blood was not nearly as fast as him, it was relentless.  While he was forced to burn his cultivation in order to fly faster, the blood seemed to have no such restraint.  It chased after him, never slowing down. What made him even more angry was that he once passed a monstrous skunk in the forest.  Then the golden blood stopped chasing him, flew to the beast, and after attaching itself to the beast, ignoring the poisonous fumes which were shot out by the skunk in self defense, once again began chasing after him, but even faster at this point.


    Clearly, if he did not escape fast enough, he would eventually be caught.  But even though he was faster than the blood, it was not by so much that the could quickly escape.


    In its wake, was a withered skunk.  Its black fur had now become gray, and it looked little more than skin and bone.


    He felt a tingle along his spine and felt grateful that he had not tangled with the golden blood.


    But just then, he saw another golden drop of blood, but this one was ahead of him.  With one drop chasing from behind and another at the front, he turned to the right, hoping to circle around the drop without provoking it.  This one was a bit smaller, but he tried to avoid it nonetheless.


    POOF.


    While he was fleeing, he heard a soft sound, like a bubble popping, and on the left, he could see that the golden blood had burst apart, becoming thousands of golden sparkles in the air, forming a much bigger cloud which prevented him from circling around.


    With his cultivation being burned, and him flying in the wrong direction, he no longer had any choice.  He continued fleeing for 10 minutes, but the golden blood never stopped chasing him, except to drain the cultivation of monstrous beasts.  He was hoping that he would be able to escape without wasting too much of his cultivation, but this looked to be a hopeless dream. The blood almost seemed to be targeting him.


    Gritting his teeth, he began burning his cultivation even faster.  He rapidly doubled in speed, easily leaving behind the golden blood.


    He was now panting.  Not just from exertion, but the sorrow of losing years and years of painstaking cultivation.  In just 20 minutes of flying, his cultivation had decreased by an entire level. It had already decreased by 2 levels getting to the core of the earth and running from the golden blood, but now it was being burned at a vastly faster rate.  Keep in mind that it had taken him over a decade to accumulate the spiritual energy needed to advance a single level in the liquid core realm.


    Each time he saw a golden drop of blood, they started chasing him and he had to avoid them.  His eyes were bloodshot and he felt faint from exhaustion. From the start of the trip, he had now lost 5 levels of cultivation, bringing him from the seventh level of liquid core to the second.


    But he had finally reached the Immortal Mountain sect!  He inwardly celebrated, relaxing his guard and slowing down his speed, making sure to waste as little of his cultivation as possible.


    If this had been right after finding out the Lucifer was missing, he would never relax before leaving this planet, but the stress from losing cultivation, the fear of being caught by the golden blood, and the sheer mental strength needed to constantly watch the environment were dulled.


    He didn¡¯t notice tiny golden specks amongst the dirt he was walking on.  But he did notice a tiny golden figurine about 50 feet away, floating in the air, riding a 2 foot long lizard.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± he asked.


    The figuring, Bao Gang, did not reply.


    With a motion of his hand, the golden specks amongst the dirt rushed at the liquid core cultivator, attaching themselves to his body, slipping through the tiny holes in his clothes, and his worst fear became a reality--his cultivation was forcibly sucked from him.


    He lost the strength to move his legs because his muscles began aging.


    He fell to the floor, full of terror.  He knew that nothing he could do would stop the blood from draining him of his cultivation.


    And now he understood why all the elders back at the sect were so fearful of Lucifer.  An undying body with the ability to fight for as long as he could drain cultivation, impossible to kill by normal means.


    And thus, he despaired.

 Ch 29: Striking similarities

    After draining the cultivation of the liquid core cultivator on Planet Flaming Rock, Bao Gang smiled again, an ethereal, holy smile which seemed to transcend mortality.


    He had saved the planet from cruelty and greed!  With no spiritual energy on it, no cultivators would ever want to stay on it, because it would be at the expense of their own cultivation.  And the animals and humans on the planet no longer needed to worry about gathering resources for cultivating, which they would have done at the expense of their own safety and morality before.


    Now, he would have to do the same for other planets, to save them from such vices.


    He sent a drop of God¡¯s blood into the air, all the way until it passed the atmosphere and reached outer space.  Other than being slightly harder to control, the God¡¯s blood was almost unaffected. In fact, it could even move faster due to the lack of air resistance.  In fact, there was even spiritual energy in space, although thin to the point of being almost useless for cultivation.


    Turning to look at Xiao Gou Shi, he asked,


    ¡°Would you be able to survive for a long time in outer space?¡±


    The lizard raised its chin into the air, as both a nod and a show of arrogance.  How could a superior being like him be unable to survive in outer space.


    ¡°Then lets find and save some more planets!¡±


    Bao Gang began to fly upwards at his top speed, but within 10 seconds, he felt an impact from below, which pushed him much faster.  It was Xiao Gou Shi. Apparently the lizard did not want to travel at the speed of Bao Gang, so he once again showed his superior speed and wings and actually carried Bao Gang!


    Once they reached space, Xiao Gou Shi shot out even faster, as if living on a planet was like a shackle to his true ability.


    In space, the thin spiritual energy was absorbed by Xiao Gou Shi, being used as fuel to make the pair even faster while they headed towards an unknown planet.


    While traveling, Bao Gang marveled at the sight of a sun and moon orbiting around planet flaming rock.  Yes, the sun and moon orbited around the planet, in contrast to the Earth, which orbited around a sun. The sun and moon were roughly equal in size, but were much bigger than the moon around Earth.  In fact, planet Flaming Rock was much bigger than Earth as well.


    Bao Gang could sense the rough location of planet Angel¡¯s Justice because of the God¡¯s blood on the planet, and noticed that XIao Gou Shi was heading straight towards it.  He sent his spiritual sense towards the lizard, telling him to head in the opposite direction of planet Angel¡¯s Justice. Not because he was scared of the cultivators there per se, but because he wanted to divide and conquer so to speak.


    On Planet Angel¡¯s Justice, Bao Gang, in the form of a child, had been running through the forest for over 2 hours when he saw a group of ragged, dirty children, who were wearing matching uniforms and carrying rocks above their heads.  Most of the children looked to be around 5 years old. In front and behind the children were a pair of adults. One of which had a hook nose and was yelling instructions to the children. Similar to a drill sergeant, except much more forceful.  He was so loud that he drowned out all other sound near Bao Gang, even though he was over 50 meters away.


    ¡°300 pushups drop to the ground NOW!¡±


    The children all dropped to the ground and placed the rocks, which looked to be around 40 kilograms, on their back and began doing pushups at a rapid pace.


    ¡°1, 2, ,3 ,4¡­¡± Hook nose began counting off the pushups.


    ¡°You call THOSE pushups! If your nose doesn¡¯t stick in the dirt on the way down, they don¡¯t count!¡±


    One child, much smaller than all the others couldn¡¯t keep up with the count.


    ¡°STOOOOOOP!!!¡±


    Hook nose, who was counting, screamed to stop doing pushups and began stalked over to the smaller child angrily.  All the children were out of breath, but looked over at the smallest child in pity.


    Shoving the child into the soft dirt of the forest floor, and holding him there with his arms, the adult brought his mouth to the child¡¯s ear and whispered, ¡°Mason, you have two options.  You will stop being a drag on the rest of the team, or we can send you home.¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Well, it seemed like the man¡¯s version of a whisper, but it was clear and audible from Bao Gang¡¯s location 50 meters away.


    Hook Nose towered over Mason waiting for a response.


    Mason¡¯s entire face was stained with moist dirt, but lifted his head, and amongst his sniffles said loudly, ¡°Instructor Tai, I won¡¯t hold back the group.¡±  Mason was rapidly blinking his eyes to stop tears from flowing down his face due to having his face smashed into the ground.


    Instructor Tai slowly walked back to the head of the group and started counting off slower to make it easier for Mason to do the pushups.  Obviously, neither party wanted Mason to leave the group.


    Because the other three adults were doing nothing but watching children do pushups, they looked around aimlessly, and one of them noticed Bao Gang staring at the group from a distance.


    This adult lightly jogged over to Bao Gang, crossing the 50 meters in a few seconds.


    ¡°These are the candidates for the Justice state¡¯s military.  Did your parents send you to join us? Or are lost kid? If you tell us which village you live in, we can bring you there.¡±


    ¡°10, 11, 12¡­¡±


    Bao Gang didn¡¯t have a great way to avoid suspicion.  He didn¡¯t know the names of any villages on planet Angel¡¯s Justice.  But the best way to avoid this issue would be joining the Justice state¡¯s military.


    ¡°My parents sent me to join the military.¡±


    ¡°Then what¡¯s your name kid?¡±


    ¡°Bao Gang.¡±


    ¡°Alright, let me just check your cultivation and age to make sure it is acceptable.¡±


    The adult stretched out his arm and grabbed Bao Gang¡¯s wrist.  He sent his spiritual sense inside Bao Gang¡¯s arm.


    ¡°Not bad kid, already at the peak of body tempering and it looks like you barely reached 5 years old!  But don¡¯t get cocky, there are 2 other children who are at the same cultivation as you. You can ask Instructor Tai for a rock then join the group in exercises.  Instructor Tai is the one leading the pushups.¡±


    Bao Gang did as he was told, but inwardly, he was shocked.  Although he never had problems completing body tempering, according to books from the Immortal Mountain sect library, the pain and monotony of cultivating should have kept young children from completing body tempering, but surprisingly, there were two out of about 20 kids who had the same cultivation realm as him!


    Bao Gang received his rock, which looked to be over 30% larger than the average rock the other kids had.  He noticed that there were two other kids with similar sized rocks to him. Presumably so that those of higher cultivation would not have an advantage in the exercises.


    ¡°32, 33, 34, 35--Bao GANG! Who do you think you are??  Just because you have already reached peak body tempering you think that you are special?  Not referring to instructors as sir nor rushing to start exercises! I was going to let you off on the first 25, but now I think you will finish them after everyone else has reached 300!¡±


    Then, Instructor Tai raised his chin slightly and gave a gloating glance as if to visibly say,¡±Know your place!¡±  Surprisingly, Instructor Tai managed to tilt his nose up to look pretentious while still keeping the downward hook which seemed even a bit threatening.


    The other kids didn¡¯t look surprised, and the instructors were not even paying attention.


    ¡°Yes, sir.¡±


    Although this irritated Bao Gang a little, he kept his poise and just did as he was told.  From what he had seen, as long as he did not stand out from the rest of the group, Instructor Tai would not pick on him.


    After finishing the pushups, the group once again began jogging, and Bao Gang could see there was a straight path which the group was following.  Occasionally, there were places where another path would intersect the one they were following. At most of these intersections there would be a 3-5 kids who would join the group, and there were also some kids who joined the group similar to how Bao Gang had--they were just waiting along the side of this trail for the group.


    Instructor Tai always knew when there was a child waiting nearby, and whenever there was, he didn¡¯t give a break to allow the children to catch their breaths, he made sure they were always doing exercise.  This could be pushups, situps, frog jumps, etc.


    Bao Gang tried talking to some of the other kids while jogging, but Instructor Tai would immediately yell at him for ¡°disturbing¡± the other kids.  Within 10 minutes, Bao Gang learned the rules of this group: do as Instructor Tai says, and nothing but.


    This continued all the way until the sun was about to set, when the group made it to camp with thousands of canvas tents set up.


    Instructor Tai dismissed the group, which was taken over by a group of 10 soldiers in shiny metal armor.  These soldiers were mainly dressed in silver armor, except for one who was wearing gold. The one wearing gold seemed to be in charge and the soldiers in silver armor did little more than following the orders on the one in gold.


    The soldier in gold armor showed our group, which had become about 100 children, where we would be staying.  We were given 30 tents and were therefore expected to sleep about 4 to a tent.


    Before he left, the soldier in gold gave each of us a roll of fabric and a little bag which jingled when shook.  He said that if we could master the game inside, then we would instantly gain immense status.


    On the fabric was printed a grid of alternating black and white squares.  There were 8 squares to a row, and 8 to a column, totaling to 64 squares. Inside the bag was 32 metal pieces and a book which explained the rules of the game.


    When Bao Gang saw the fabric, he had a sneaking suspicion, and seeing the metal pieces in the bag confirmed it.  It was chess--the game which new recruits would be tested on was chess.


    Bao Gang was stunned.  This planet, as well as planet flaming rock, was strikingly similar to Earth.  Both Planet Angel¡¯s Justice and Earth had chess. Organisms on both planets were very similar, and even the language as well!


    How could a planet, which had no communication with another, have the same language, animals, and games?

 Ch 30

    As he had suspected, the game was chess.  Inside the bag, alongside the metal pieces, was a folded sheet of paper which described the rules of the game, as well as some common tactics.  It did not go into depth with strategies or particular ways to start, expecting the player to be able to come up with their own.


    The introduction of this game as a competition did not surprise many people.  Clearly, it was either a well known metric for testing.


    The armored guards left after handing out the chess sets, only giving one last instruction: If a drum was played, then the recruits should quickly gather in the direction of the sound.


    Then, the children were left to divvy up the tents and practice chess.


    Immediately, the children scattered to find a tent.  Usually, the people who showed up at the same place ended up claiming the same tents because they would already be familiar with each other, having lived in geographically similar areas before becoming army recruits.


    Bao Gang on the other hand, would do everything he could to avoid people who had known the body which he was currently inhabiting, simply to avoid potential suspicions, as he did not have the memories of the child.


    While this would not be a problem with the group he had came with, he would not show his face to people in the future if he could help it.  When he had been picked up by the instructors, he was far away from where he had found the corpse, and thus did not worry about meeting people the body¡¯s owner had known on the way to the camp, but it was entirely possible that someone from the same village had also come to the camp.


    Thus, Bao Gang did not try to find a tentmate who was compatible, he simply chose a tent at random and entered it.  Compatible could mean how talkative another person was, as well as having a similar training regime. A talkative tentmate would just make life either a bit less lonely, but choosing one would run the risk of becoming an annoyance.


    Inside the tent were 2 bunk beds and a barrel.  As he had not seen any of the kids bringing supplies, Bao Gang assumed that they would be provided by the army.  But clearly, the army did not consider many things to be necessary for recruits.


    Bao Gang looked in the barrel and found that it was full to the brim with water.


    Just as he had inspected the water barrel, the canvas flaps of the tent were shifted and Bao Gang turned to look at the entrance.


    Mason, the smaller boy, had entered his tent, as well as 2 other children--probably from the same village as Mason.


    ¡°Excuse me, but we would like to take 3 bunks of this tent.  Is there anyone else who is staying in this tent,¡± Mason spoke in a soft voice.


    A seemingly redundant question, as tents had just been chosen.  Why would anyone immediately leave their tent?


    The two boys with Mason realized this, and took one of bunk beds, leaving Mason to sleep on the same bunk bed as Bao Gang.


    ¡°No one else is staying in this tent, so go ahead,¡± Bao Gang answered.


    All three of the other boys looked very tired.  Mason¡¯s face, which had originally been stained with mud, had become streaked from sweat, and the other two had flecks of mud on their faces from the exercise.


    Even though they looked like they could use a shower and some sleep, they immediately pulled out books on chess, as well as their chess boards and pieces.  The two boys on the other bunk played each other, but Mason just began reading through his book. While playing with his board. All three were practicing the game in order to understand the underlying principles of the game, as well as how to recognize when they can be used in the game.  Whenever one of the other two boys made a move, the other would furiously look through the book for a counter to the move. While the book would not have the exact scenario as the chessboard, it might have a similar strategy as the board, such as positioning a piece such that the enemy cannot move a certain one of their own without going into check or losing a more valuable piece.


    From what he could see, the other two boys were not at a very high level of play, barely better than the average player on Earth, however, neither of these boys had reached the peak of body tempering.  One had was at the peak of tempered marrow, and the other had just entered invigorated blood, so neither had experienced any mental advantages due to cultivation.


    If Bao Gang was playing against them, he would destroy them, because he could mentally calculate potential future moves, just like a computer could.  Even so, Bao Gang introduced himself and offered to play with Mason in order to get information about the planet.


    While they were playing chess on the floor of the tent, Bao Gang began to ask questions about the planet, purposefully leaving them open ended and with neutral tone.


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised by the number of peak body tempering realm cultivators.¡±


    By asking in this manner, Bao Gang doesn¡¯t come off as being suspiciously uninformed, therefore giving the impression that he did not know potentially basic information about the planet.


    ¡°Bao Gang, not everyone can come from a rich family like you.¡±


    Apparently, people on this planet had a method of raising cultivation quickly, but it required money.


    ¡°But for the poorer kids, there are more resources and also opportunity to gain status and money in the army than there are in small cities or towns.  Speaking of which, why did you join the military if you come from a rich family? Most of the other rich kids would rather directly join the Angel''s Justice sect instead of the military.  All of the other peak body tempering children who joined the army are here because they come from military families and want to follow their parent¡¯s path, but clearly you aren¡¯t because you didn¡¯t even know to call the instructors ¡®sir.¡¯¡±


    Bao Gang was a little stumped from this question


    ¡°I come from a poor family, but I got a little lucky.¡±


    Although he did not know how the people on this planet cultivated so quickly, he would just try to write it off as luck.  He then began to look intently at the chessboard for a few minutes before finally making another move. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Mason understood that Bao Gang was a little defensive about his answer and did not ask any more questions.


    Obviously, as Mason was at an even lower cultivation than the other two boys, he had not yet increased his cultivation to the point where it would help him think, therefore Bao Gang made some intentional mistakes to prolong the game.


    He also asked questions about Mason¡¯s life in order to get a better perspective of the planet.  Mason constantly referred to ¡°crimson tempering berries¡± as a cultivation resource, going so far as to say that body tempering realm actually had no indication of the talent of the cultivator.  He also offhandedly said that he took the berries before going to bed. This was in reference to him saying that he had broken through to the next level of cultivation by the next morning.


    BONG BONG BONG BONG¡­


    A bell began tolling from somewhere to the east.  Remembering the instructions of the armored soldiers, Bao Gang and the three others in the tent rushed out to a scene of chaos.  The camp had previously seemed rather empty. Although there were some people walking around, it seemed that most had either been in their tent or yet to arrive at the camp.  But now, the entire camp was packed full of children running and stumbling in the direction of the bell tolling. There was shrieking from children who became injured, and the ground shook like a stampede.  All four of the boys were immediately squeezed apart by the crowd and had to go with the flow of people otherwise risking being injured by rushing people.


    From the looks of it, there were now well into the tens of thousands of children at the camp.


    Bao Gang began running towards the side of the mob in order to free himself of the crowd, but the other three boys had no such opportunity--they were constantly, inexorably pushed along with the crowd.


    After reaching the fringes of the mob, the density of people was much lower and he could finally have full control over his actions without the worry of accidentally running into others.  Bao Gang, remembering that the soldiers had told him to rush to the tolling bell quickly, began sprinting towards the bell as fast as his body could handle it.


    He rapidly passed the people in the mob, and many who were running along the sides of the mob as well.  These people had similarly high cultivation, but were still outpaced by Bao Gang.


    Although the body which Bao Gang was using was not that talented, as it had not been able to handle many reconstructions, he had an advantage over them.  Bao Gang did not actually need to use bodily strength to move his body, because it was moved through the God¡¯s blood contained within, not by the muscles.  Therefore, the limiting factor for Bao Gang was not muscle strength like it was for the others.


    By following the sound of the bell tolls, Bao Gang passed at least 98% of the children.  The bell tolls kept growing louder and louder as he got closer, and soon he burst out of foliage into a massive plain.  A 50 foot tall bronze bell was levitating while being hit by a 50 foot tall giant man in crystalline armor.


    Gold and silver armored men were lined up in front of the bell, and some children were lined up in front of them in an orderly fashion.


    Bao Gang copied their actions and lined up as well.


    After about 30 seconds, the bell stopped tolling.  By this point, it looked like only those at the peak of body tempering had arrived.  The mob was still far behind.


    The giant man shrunk down to 20 feet and lined up among the soldiers, right in the middle of the line.  His crystalline armor made him look special amongst the soldiers.


    As he waited for the rest of the children to arrive, his expression went from neutral to slightly angered, and his jaw was clenched tightly.


    Little by little, the plains filled up, and eventually, no more children were coming.


    The man with crystalline armor began speaking in a voice which echoed out to everyone¡¯s ears,


    ¡°Welcome to the Justice Army!  You are the most talented children from your families, but this will soon change.  Your new family is the Justice army, and with the exception of a few, all of you will no longer be the most talented.


    I am sure you all know why you came to join the army.  Not only to get more cultivation resources and training, or from a family obligation, but because you will be offered a chance to join the Angel¡¯s Justice Sect.  But from here on out, this will not be your goal, because you are no longer individual cultivators, familial cultivators, nor aspiring sect disciples, you are part of the Justice army.


    We will give you everything you need to succeed, and all of you will give us back your loyalty, at least until you have left the Justice Army.  Anyone who does not live up to this expectation will be punished.


    As far as resources go, it will be based on the merit or talent of the individual.  One way this is shown is through the army position. Craftmasters will get more resources than soldiers, leaders will get more resources than craftmasters, and even talented soldiers will get more resources than the regular ones.  I hope that you will be talented in some way, for your own sake.


    To become a craftmaster, you can be tested on your ability to utilize runes, create pills, or forge equipment.  To become a leader, you will have to beat an inspector at chess. To become a talented soldier you will have to show that you are better at fighting than those of the same level, usually at tournaments.


    Now that the information is out of the way, on to a punishment.


    Only about 800 of you made it to the bell on time, so you are exempt from the punishment.  The rest of you will be doing pushups. To start, everyone except the 800 will drop down and do 100 pushups.¡±


    The giant waved his hand and 800 golden rings floated above the heads of 800 cultivators, Bao Gang included.


    Everyone else began to feel a massive pressure pushing them down into the ground.


    The giant began counting, ¡°1, 2, 3, 4¡­¡±


    The amount of pressure felt by a cultivator depended on cultivation, and was set so that everyone would have an equal difficulty.


    All the soldiers left the line and began walking among recruits, placing a boot on the head of someone going too slow, kicking one who did not go down far enough, yelling randomly.


    And the recruits just had to take it and keep going.


    ¡°99, 100¡±


    The giant man looked even more angry, ¡°200 more pushups!!!¡±


    The soldiers running amongst the lines of recruits never bothered those with golden rings above their head, but glanced at them every now and then.


    The treatment got even more brutal.  The soldiers began pushing down to make the pushups harder, began to kick without regard for whether the form was correct or not, and gave many more glances at those with the golden rings above their head.


    ¡°199, 200.  300 more pushups!¡±


    The treatment got even worse.


    Then Bao Gang understood.  He got down onto all fours, then began doing pushups.  Finally, the man with the crystalline armor looked down at him, and visibly became much less angry.  The other 799 children who were awkwardly standing around, looked at The expression change and where the man was looking, and saw a child with the golden ring above his head doing pushups.  They too understood what the man wanted.


    They also began doing pushups, and immediately, the soldiers ceased their abuse and all that was left was the sound of heavy breathing and exertion.  Of course, by now no one would even attempt to cheat on their pushups.


    ¡°299, 300.


    Well done, and I welcome you to the Justice Army.  Here, when a family member is in trouble, we all go to help.  A similar message is carried by the pushups. If a fellow soldier won¡¯t even stoop to empathizing with you off the battlefield, how could they do the same on it?  If they won¡¯t even do pushups to gain your trust, how could they block a sword coming at you? From today on, every pushup that one of you does, all of you will do.  For every achievement, the glory which one has will be shared with all of you. Get a good night¡¯s rest and be prepared for tomorrow.¡±