The First Immortal of Destiny

Chapter 1099: Chapter 1090: The Heavenly Demon Ancestor’s Dao (Part 2)

He eyed the Alchemy Sect disciples still working in the herb garden, licked his lips with a hungry thirst, but in the end suppressed the urge to devour blood food. After exchanging a few words with the disciple beside him, he went straight back to his cave mansion not far away, then activated all Formations and Prohibitions, preparing to go into seclusion for cultivation.

At the instant Wang Mingzhi closed his cave mansion and activated the Formation, spirit light flickered faintly over Shen Mo’s body, and he brought Lady Scarlet and Lu Ming with him, appearing within Wang Mingzhi’s cave mansion.

The three simply stood quietly at his side, yet with Wang Mingzhi’s cultivation, he had no way to detect anything amiss!

Very soon, Wang Mingzhi began circulating his cultivation method, breathing in and refining nature’s spiritual energy just like an ordinary cultivator. Other than a wisp of Demonic Qi leaking out from him at the very beginning, as his cultivation method went from obscure to proficient, no more Demonic Qi surged forth.

Only waves of profound aura circulated and rippled about, and his efficiency in refining Spiritual Qi was shockingly high, proving that the cultivation method he practiced was far from something ordinary methods could compare to!

Shen Mo’s trio simply watched him cultivate like this for several days.

On the fifth day, the cultivation bottleneck that had stalled Wang Mingzhi for years broke as if all shackles had fallen away. His cultivation rose directly to the peak of the Spirit Sea Realm. At the instant of breaking through, a few wisps of Demonic Qi that he could not conceal spread and surged within the cave mansion, yet were very quickly completely retracted by him!

After the initial shock, the expressions on Lady Scarlet’s and Lu Ming’s faces grew ever more grave.

Shen Mo tapped with a finger, as if piercing through a layer of floating scum and bubbles, and the three’s figures revealed themselves before Wang Mingzhi.

”Supreme Elder, Sect Master Shen...”

Wang Mingzhi was stunned for a brief moment, then instantly reacted. Demonic light and Demonic Qi roared from his body as he swept a Flying Sword toward the three, while he himself cast escaping light, intending to flee out of the cave mansion.

Shen Mo extended two fingers, pinched the Flying Sword, tossed it aside, then said calmly, ”Junior Sister Duanmu, Wang Mingzhi is a cultivator of your Li Mountain Elixir Sect. Now that he has been Demon-corrupted and fallen into a mutated Heavenly Demon, I’ll leave him to you to deal with.”

”Alright.”

Lady Scarlet answered, and the exquisitely wrought gold-inlaid bracelet at her wrist emitted a ray of lustrous light, instantly wrapping the spell-casting, fleeing Wang Mingzhi into a five-colored amber, rendering his Mana and sense unable to circulate at all.

Even with his cultivation in the Selfless Sutra, Wang Mingzhi was still merely a Class III peak Heavenly Demon. Before Lady Scarlet, this Great Cultivator of the Divine Bridge Realm, he had not the slightest power to resist, and was suppressed in the mere blink of an eye!

”Senior Brother Qingyun, what exactly is going on?”

After suppressing Wang Mingzhi, Lady Scarlet finally could not hold back and spoke to ask. Lu Ming at the side was likewise full of confusion.

Shen Mo organized his thoughts, condensed all that he had obtained and learned into a thread of Divine Sense, engraved it onto a jade slip, then handed it over for the two to peruse!

...

Ever since the Empyrean Fairy’s Resurrection and the Immortal Path’s change, the method by which Heavenly Demons are born has undergone a fundamental transformation!

Even in the Universal Realm, Heavenly Demons are an extremely special race. They are not native creatures spontaneously derived from the universe itself. In the ancient era, among all realms including the Immortal Realm, there existed no race similar to Heavenly Demons.

The view commonly accepted by True Immortal figures is that the earliest Heavenly Demons very likely originated from a leftover evil of the old era whose cultivation level was incomparably high. No one knows his true name, and thus he is called the Heavenly Demon Ancestor!

The Heavenly Demon Ancestor is likewise a terrifying existence who has survived the tribulation of an Era, having lived on continuously since before the Immortal Realm came into being. By means unfathomable, he exploited a loophole in the Immortal Path and, using his own origin power, created the Celestial Demon Clan.

Before the change in the Immortal Path, primal Heavenly Demons were born in the void—more precisely, they self-derived from the heaven and earth of a certain Demon Zone.

Realms such as the Heavenly Demon Realm, or the demonic nest Pure Yang Zi brought to the western part of Dongjie Continent—within similar Demon Zones, everything is polluted by the primality of Heavenly Demon. Mountains and rocks, trees, Spiritual Qi, ore veins, seawater—all things of the world can gestate low-class primal Heavenly Demons. As long as the primality of Heavenly Demon contained within a Demon Zone or demonic nest has not been completely wiped out, there will be an unending generation of demon spawn!

Newly born primal Heavenly Demons, whether by cultivation or by devouring blood food to strengthen themselves, can only raise their Realm to the Class II peak. Only by Demon-corrupting other creatures into mutated Heavenly Demons can they break through this boundary... This should be the shackle imposed upon the Celestial Demon Clan by the will of the universe.

By Demon-corrupting other creatures, one can increase the number of mutated Heavenly Demons at an extremely terrifying speed;

Then, by devouring blood food to strengthen themselves, these mutated Heavenly Demons can gain growth speed beyond imagination, sweeping through everything in a short span!

More terrifying still, after primal Heavenly Demons and mutated Heavenly Demons are slain, the primality of Heavenly Demon will still diffuse out, possessing exceptionally strong corrupting properties. It will corrupt everything nearby just like the Demon Dyed Divine Power corrupts a creature’s Soul Body, until the originally normal heaven and earth are turned into a Demon Zone. If not promptly cleansed, it will once more gestate innumerable primal Heavenly Demons.

It is like a festering sore, like a gu poison, like the source of corruption—endlessly self-generating and impossible to halt!

However, this mode of birth, after the world-changing event of ”Empyrean Fairy of Nine Heavens’ Resurrection, God Path merging into Immortal Path,” seems to have undergone a tremendous transformation as well...

According to Shen Mo’s investigation, Heavenly Demons now seem able to be born directly from a cultivator’s Inner Demon, and the category of cultivators includes Human Cultivators as well as other Immortal Beings besides Heavenly Demons!

Originally, Inner Demons were merely an abstract concept used to describe flaws in a cultivator’s Path Heart. Inner Demons are formless and without substance, and the circumstances a cultivator encounters when giving rise to Inner Demons take many different forms. Even if one fails to pass through, at worst it ends in death and Dao annihilation; it would not for no reason conjure forth a Heavenly Demon to Demon-corrupt him.

But now, once one fails to pass the Internal Demon Tribulation, the Inner Demon will be made manifest.

From the cultivator’s primal Essence and Qi, a thread of primality of Heavenly Demon is created, which then Demon-corrupts the cultivator into a mutated Heavenly Demon!

Moreover, Heavenly Demons born by this method—these new type of heavenly demon—carry, deep within their souls, an immortal level cultivation method sharing the same origin as the Selfless Sutra. With just a bit of cultivation, they can suppress their bloodthirsty Instinct, becoming all the more uncanny and unpredictable, impossible to guard against.

Within Shen Mo’s Green Cloud Cave, no new type of heavenly demon has yet been born. He suspects this is related to nature’s spiritual energy.

Whether in the Immortal Realm, in ordinary worlds, or within Dungeon realms, there is basically always a portion of Turbid Qi and Demonic Qi present. Demonic Qi containing the primality of Heavenly Demon is but one such type. The world’s cultivators more or less will come into contact with such Demonic Qi; perhaps this is the source by which a cultivator’s Inner Demon becomes manifest as a Heavenly Demon;

Whereas in Shen Mo’s Fairyland, even though within the Demon Zone there exist many mutated Heavenly Demons that corrupt the nature’s spiritual energy of the Demon Zone, yet as a cave paradise personally opened up by him, it is equivalent to a world independent of the universe, influenced by his own Great Path and will, able to exclude vast amounts of Turbid Qi and Demonic Qi.

Overall, the Demonic Qi contained within the nature’s spiritual energy of the Fairyland is vanishingly minute. Thus, even if creatures within the Fairyland give rise to Inner Demons, they will not, from their primal Essence and Qi, create new type of heavenly demon to Demon-corrupt them!

The transformation in the birth method of Heavenly Demons... is merely the outward manifestation. The deeper cause lies in changes at the level of the Great Path.

Shen Mo has reason to suspect that all of this originates from the workings of the Heavenly Demon Ancestor.

As far as he knows.

Whether Immortal Path powerhouses or leftover evils of the old era, once they step into the Realm of Daluo Jinxian, they will generally become existences akin to the incarnation of the Dao, and will not easily manifest in the world.

In his own Era, this Heavenly Demon Ancestor was likely a supreme and most holy one who had attained Empyrean, but as the old era perished and the Great Path collapsed, he too fell out of the Empyrean Realm, and thus, like other leftover evil of the old era, turned to cultivate the Immortal Path.

All signs indicate that the Heavenly Demon Ancestor has not yet stepped back into the Empyrean Realm...

And Heavenly Demons born from cultivators’ Inner Demons, bearing the Selfless Sutra, will ultimately cultivate to Class VII and Merge Body with Dao, continually ”repairing,” ”corrupting,” and ”altering” the Immortal Path.

This very likely is the path by which the Heavenly Demon Ancestor will attain Empyrean.

The earliest Heavenly Demons, by Demon-corrupting all creatures under heaven, caused the universe to become suffused with Demonic Qi, as if laying the groundwork for the present—this was the first half of his Dao path.

Now, he seems to have voluntarily abandoned that former method of Demon-corrupting all realms and all creatures, and instead intends to fuse the brand-new Path of the Heavenly Demon into the Immortal Path... so that the Celestial Demon Clan, from being creatures abhorred by the universe’s will, will become part of the tribulation of the Immortal Path.

Once his work is complete, the Heavenly Demon Ancestor will be able to grasp the Internal Demon Tribulation of all cultivators in the universe, and he will likewise, in a matter of course, step into the Realm of Daluo Jinxian!