Chapter 57: The Only Outcome: Death!
Li Ling’s blood was incomparably cold. The more he traversed, the heavier the danger sense, and he knew that he was walking into doom even if he traversed the path with the least danger warning. It was as if no matter where he went, death would always follow him in the end.
Not reconciled, Li Ling naturally placed 200 Slaughter Points to raise the Blessed Augury from Advanced to the Expert realm.
Immediately, he felt a severe shift in his entire being far stronger than what the upgraded Essence Locking Technique, which he decided to name the Yin-Yang Reversal Art, had done before, but this one did not cause him to have to stop his movements because it occurred ’off-screen’, on a more spiritual plane.
After 30 minutes, Li Ling came out of a daze that had continued even as he traveled, and he felt the changes within. Firstly, his danger sense was not just a vague feeling anymore, it was almost like a direct marker that told him exactly where the problem was coming from.
In his mental sense, whether it was adapted from his history as an earthling or this was how it was for everyone who theoretically reached this stage in the Blessed Augury Technique, Li Ling could ’see’ red markers pointing in various directions, each distinguishable thanks to its size and the darkness of its color.
Some were tiny red markers with an almost whitish-red hue while the worst ones were quite large, bearing a crimson color that seemed to warn of great danger.
However, none of them had anything on the largest marker that was more than ten times the size of the second largest, with a color so dark it was almost black and dripping blackish blood. This marker pointed directly to the west, where Li Ling had come from, in the direction of the former number 5 Joyous Marketplace.
If that was all, Li Ling would still have hope. However, as part of this upgrade, not only were these markers able to share with him the direction and intensity of the dangers, but by mentally ’clicking’ on them, he could gain some basic information on the danger’s source.
As it were, he could tell that the small, nearly white markers were Qi Refinement blokes, the mid-sized light red ones were fellow Foundation Establishment foes, the larger deep red ones were Core Formation foes and the singular gigantic marker was...
Nascent Soul!
Li Ling almost wanted to stop right there and save himself the effort. Against Qi Refinement juniors, he could slaughter them with his pinky finger. Against his fellows in Foundation Establishment, it only required some maneuvering to take them down in a maximum of five blows. Even against Core Formation lords, he could call down a full-power Meteor and assure mutual destruction.
But against a Nascent Soul?
Even if he could somehow break through all forms of logic and kill them, what then would he do about their ’second form,’ their Nascent Soul itself? Because once their body died, they would still have a semi-corporeal soul form that could still cast certain daoist arts, not to mention it could invade his body and seize his flesh to forcefully reincarnate.
Li Ling felt hopeless, but his eyes became red with defiance.
He had lived like a dog coward for nearly a decade of his young life, while others were living it up all around him. Even that fellow Chen Wu was able to find a relatively banal wife to marry and was in happiness until the day of tragedy came, but Li Ling could not point to a single happy thing about his life since reincarnating!
Even in the Li Clan, his display of intelligence didn’t necessarily mean he could lie down, but rather made the authoritative figures put more pressure on him to read. He had to practice harder, he had to be smarter, faster and more equipped to solve problems, among other things.
They saw him as the hope to elevate their clan further, so every grain of spirit rice he ate, every piece of demon beast meat he was apportioned at the expense of others, he made up for in terms of overall ’preparations.’
But it was funny, wasn’t it?
The moment his talent was discovered to be abysmal, it was as if he was a great thief and liar, deceiving the entire clan—and his peers—of its resources for his own personal gain. It didn’t matter that every ’benefit’ he got, he ’paid’ for it in blood, sweat and tears, because they felt that this was what he was supposed to do.
The effort was expected, and even demanded, but the rewards were seen as a privilege?
Welcome to the nature of society.
After that day, everything changed, and his treatment got worse and worse to the point where his father and grandfather made an agreement to ’exile’ him far away so that his fellow clan members would not be able to cross the line.
No, at the time, they did not tell him that, they just told him the overt reason because everyone was watching him like a hawk. However, he had a brain and could deduce the ins and outs of the matter, especially since he wasn’t truly a clueless 12-year-old but rather a reincarnated man from Earth’s similarly brutal but less fatal society.
The early part of his roaming was brutal. He only had some basic rations, no outdoor survival skills as a city slicker from Earth, a basic level of wariness since he never did crime on Earth or went to ’dangerous’ areas, and the power of Qi Refinement level 1.
Luckily for him, there were the occasional kind persons who clued him in on how to behave and how to survive along his journey, but most of them never survived long because Firmament Heaven was a cruel place not favorable to the kind.
In those three years till he arrived at Number 9 Qing Shan marketplace with dull eyes and a bent back filled with fear, he had been through it all.
He had fallen in love, been betrayed by that love, sought revenge, was pursued by authorities afterward, entered black markets, was pursued and robbed but managed to escape, was captured and enslaved into a spirit stone mine but managed to escape during a riot, was caught up in a beast tide within a small cultivator city that was razed to the ground, barely escaping alive...
Each of these events shaped his understanding of Firmament Heaven and contributed to his cowardliness back then. Now that he had broken out of his cocoon and was soaring like a butterfly in the air, a bird wanted to swoop down and swallow him in one bite?
Li Ling was indignant!
Hehe, when he was killing others, he always smiled crazily and laughed with joy, but now that it was his turn to be killed, he was unwilling? Did he think those innocent bystanders in the mid-section of the number 9 marketplace wanted to be burned to death? Or those who were going about their lives in the other section during his escape?
Did Qiu Yaoli, who even tried to help him, deserve death? What about all the disciples and pursuers? What about the various shoppers of the entire number 5 Joyous Market? Some were even just like him, headed north to elevate their fates and become powerhouses, but their paths were all severed by Li Ling personally.
Karma was a thing spoken about on Earth, but while it was debatable on Earth, it was real and present in Firmament Heaven!
Even Li Ling knew this because he was walking the path of Samsara, specifically the Asura Path!
He more than anyone knew of the effects of karma, because the demonic dao of the Six Paths Demon Sect was to accumulate and refine this negative karma into a power they could use, but like any demonic method, it was a double-edged sword.
Now the backlash of his wanton slaughter had come, and the bill was steep!
Li Ling understood that his options were limited. No daoist art he had, even if he limit broke them to the Core Formation state—assuming he even could—and had the chance to launch it—assuming he even had the power to—would be able to scratch a Nascent Soul personage in the least.
Even if Li Ling had a Core Formation technique and raised it to the Perfection stage of Core Formation, it would be futile. The gaps between realms as one went higher became steeper and steeper, especially in the well-known watershed between Core Formation and Nascent Soul.
Cultivation couldn’t save him, daoist arts couldn’t save him and not even those jianghu martial arts techniques could save him either.
He only had two things that could turn things around, the Infinite Slaughter System and the Blessed Augury Technique. As such, Li Ling went crazy and placed 300 Slaughter Points into the technique once more, sending it to the Mastery level.
Immediately, there was another severe change in his spiritual landscape that was even greater than before, as if one could see a separate space begin to form, one that had the outline of purple.
Li Ling was in an even longer daze this time, being out for about one and a half hours as he mindlessly traversed in his chosen destination. When the changes were complete and he came to, Li Ling was invariably brought to this new space that had formed in his spiritual world, which was separate from his Sea of Consciousness.
With entry into the second realm of cultivation, or the right power system or technique, anyone could open their Sea of Consciousness. However, to access one’s spiritual world was only possible in the Nascent Soul and above realm, where it became one of the cruxes for advancement.
Li Ling accessing it early and even having a divine construction within due to the heavenly mechanism of the Blessed Augury technique was an advantage so great that it would even make those ancestors and patriarchs at Nascent Soul and above have eyes red with envy.
However, Li Ling did not know this and even most of his thoughts about the power of Nascent Soul and what came later were due to his speculation and knowledge from Earth’s oriental fiction.
Right now, he was mostly engaged in the specific changes brought about by the upgrade in the technique, which seemed to have created some unknown outline in his spiritual world and the effect was that his previous danger sense had shifted from a mere indicator to an actual form of premonition, like having true clairvoyance.
He could see flashes of visions of the future... of his own future more than anyone else’s. Because of this, Li Ling could see that if he continued to rush forward like this, in no more than five hours at most, he would be killed without even being able to explain himself.
No matter how he tried to change the outcome in his mind, nothing changed from his ensuing flashes of visions. If he continued heading to the northeast like this, he would be smashed into paste underground all of a sudden, not even seeing his attacker.
If he came out of the ground and ran on the surface, he would be beheaded in one go, his body and soul destroyed on the spot. If he rose to the sky and continued fleeing, he would simply find his Mountain Splitting Sword seized, causing him to plummet to his death.
This rang true no matter which direction he switched to, only shortening the amount of time he could live. Even if he went crazy and tried to rush directly at the source of the danger, whether to fight a final battle or beg for mercy, he would simply only be able to see the silhouette of a palanquin before being crushed to death on the spot.
No matter where or what he did, death was the only outcome for Li Ling!