Chapter 59: Blessed Augury Perfection
Li Ling was trapped in an endless cycle of despair and defiance, thinking up new ways to escape while those thoughts would be automatically ’processed’ through his clairvoyance, showing gruesome outcomes each and every time. Because of this, his heart sank further and further, and unbeknownst to him, the black aura that he was oh so familiar with was beginning to emerge around him even as he sped underground.
It was just like those hidden powerhouses in the number 5 market. When they looked up and saw the second meteor, they had simply remained standing in a daze, not even mustering the will to resist because they already knew the outcome for them.
Li Ling was also seeing no hope ahead for him, but his instinctual desire to resist kept him from exploding on the spot through qi deviation.
However, something interesting happened at this moment.
Li Ling happened to fall into a cavern that was expansive during his tunneling, almost falling on his face due to his distracted state but for the fact that the height of his fall was quite high, so he recovered in time. Immediately, he took out his Mountain Splitting Sword and positioned it under himself, using it to break his fall as he inspected his surroundings.
The place was quite lush, with glowing cyan-colored stalactites and stalagmites that were dripping some sort of liquid into a large pool of milky white liquid that had a vague mist over its surface.
Looking at it, Li Ling’s face changed greatly as he identified it as one of the cultivation world’s most precious auxiliary treasures, Spiritual Milk!
This substance was formed from the condensation of spiritual energy through the ground from various activities by living creatures over the course of years, being filtered through the earth veins and ley lines of the planet to form a liquid that had a myriad of usages, all positive to living creatures.
For one, it could be ingested directly to assist with cultivation. It could fortify one’s foundation, purify one’s spiritual qi, magic power or whatever energy source, it could heal injuries and prolong lifespan, it could be added to many alchemical recipes to enhance the quality and success rate of pill formation, it could be fed to infants in order to ensure top-level growth, and it could even edify curses or evil effects.
Its list of utilities went on and on, but its supply was too scarce. It was not something that could be farmed or produced, only discovered and then extracted, akin to the cultivation world’s version of oil.
Naturally, as the cultivation world’s version of oil, the battles and conflicts over locations where this existed were fierce. This was the central province of the Boundless Joy Sect, but if news of this pool was to be leaked, it would cause the Qing Shan Sect to mobilize immediately for an all-out war, not to mention the other regions that bordered this one.
The Boundless Joy Sect would quickly find themselves besieged on all sides by enemies.
Of course, while this sounded beneficial, it was also meaningless. Firstly, Li Ling had to be able to send a message to all other factions and also prove his words, because no one would mobilize on a mere rumor. Secondly, he had to be able to survive long enough for the other sects to strike, causing his pursuer to give up the chase and go back.
However, coming here had one good effect, and that was the fact that it snapped Li Ling out of his despair cycle due to the endless premonitions. With a frown, he ’switched’ the clairvoyance off, because it was continually bombarding him with passive visions of his death in response to the crisis, which was becoming not only repetitive, but also a hindrance.
Breathing out deeply, he cleared his mind and placed 400 Slaughter Points into the Blessed Augury, bringing it to Perfection and hoping to use its active effect to divine a way out rather than merely rely on its passive clairvoyance.
Li Ling felt a huge shift in his spiritual world and tilted his head, diving into the pool of Spiritual Milk and sitting cross-legged above it. Immediately, he opened his mouth and sucked in, causing a vortex of air to form that dragged the Spiritual Milk upwards and into his mouth.
The reason he did that was that he noticed that the divine construct in his spiritual world was beginning to perfect itself, rapidly forming like a fast-forwarded video of a 3D render. As was part and parcel of the Infinite Slaughter System, it provided all the energy necessary for this construction, but the rate of doing so was too slow for Li Ling’s liking, so he expedited it by callously sacrificing the Spiritual Milk here.
As such, what should have taken at least three hours was shortened to only 30 minutes, and the changes were massive. Now, within his spiritual world, which was like a small white space in a black void with starry lights in the background, there stood a large building that was painted completely purple.
Li Ling’s spiritual form stood before this building, which turned out to be a rather simple manor, and his ’expression’ was one of utter shock. Whether it was a natural development of unlocking this divine construct or not, information about it flooded his mind, letting him know what it was and what purpose it served.
This divine construct was actually the fabled Purple Mansion.
It shared similar yet different features to the Purple Mansion Li Ling knew of on Earth, which was the fact that the Purple Mansion in Firmament Heaven could only be unlocked during the breakthrough to the Nascent Soul realm, in which one’s Yuan Infant would be seated on the pedestal in the center of the mansion, treating it as its shelter and home.
On top of that, the Purple Mansion would develop through the three middle realms of spirit cultivation until it finally formed the Heaven and Earth Bridge in the Dao Integration Realm, linking the cultivator with the natural world.
However, the current Li Ling had no Yuan Infant, but the Purple Mansion was necessary for him because one couldn’t reach the perfection of Blessed Augury without it. What Li Ling was experiencing was a completely bizarre oddity in the cultivation world that should be impossible, but was forcibly made true due to the Infinite Slaughter System.
No wonder it took so long for the system to effect the change each time compared to the instant upgrades from before.
No wonder the Blessed Augury technique’s upgrades cost so much.
It was also the possession of this Purple Mansion that facilitated his clairvoyance, because this was a natural feature of having the divine construct in his spiritual world, not exclusive to the Blessed Augury technique. From the beginning, the Blessed Augury technique had always been a divination technique that required active use, not a passive danger sense or clairvoyance.
Li Ling cursed. No wonder he was so overwhelmed and never found a way out, he was going about it wrongly from the start. The danger sense from the Purple Mansion’s activation was a reactive thing that showed you the problem, not the solution.
Immediately, Li Ling closed his eyes and activated the Blessed Augury technique for the actual first time. Immediately, he made a hand sign that was of the daoist orthodoxy, being the powerful Heaven–Earth–Man Seal, that linked the three essences of the world.
The specific posture was of his thumb and forefinger joined in a teacher’s ring, and immediately, a shift in the very heaven and earth seemed to form that was centered around Li Ling. Immediately, everything in the world seemed to slow down to a pause while reality faded away, giving way to a realm that only had a long golden staircase that led upward to a set of resplendent jade gates that resided on heavenly clouds.
Standing at the foot of the stairs, Li Ling looked up and almost felt himself blinded by the sight of the gate at the peak, forced to look down. He could hear ethereal and angelic singing at the edge of his hearing which became stronger when he looked towards the gate, giving him a clear feeling of what he was looking at.
With a frown, he focused on the platform where he stood which was only large enough for him to take five steps in each direction before falling into an all-encompassing void of nothingness. The only thing of note other than the stairs connected to the platform was a single pedestal that held a glowing book of white and gold that pulsed softly.
Li Ling walked up to the pedestal and glanced at the book, noting that its title was Heaven’s Secrets. When he reached his hand out to open it, he immediately felt a wave of power climb up his arm into his head, which formed a sort of transmission of information.
The information was simple. If he wanted to know anything, he simply had to say it out and a price would be demanded. If he could pay, then the book would open to reveal the secret or truth he wished to know, and if not, he would be kicked out of this space.
Eyes narrowed, Li Ling wasted no time asking what was important.
"How do I escape the Nascent Soul enemy pursuing me and survive?" he inquired solemnly.
The whitish-gold book glowed sharply and then the hand placed on it received another jolt, with a transmission reaching his mind. Right away, Li Ling’s face changed as the price was extremely steep, requiring either 100 years of life, the souls of 10,000 mortals sacrificed using a special method, the four levels of his Foundation Establishment cultivation or the souls of his entire clan manually sacrificed using a special ritual.
Li Ling was truly met with how terrifying divination was. You were likely to get the information you wanted, but the bill you would pay would make you wonder if it was truly worth it, so non-seers who wondered why those who could divine weren’t akin to regressors in terms of stealing fortune from all over were just ignorant.
His eyes flashed, but he was not in a rush to pay. Rather, he searched for other sources because the book was willing to receive anything as long as it held intrinsic value and was owned by him, or linked to him by strong karmic ties. The easiest ones to pay were those directly linked to him like lifespan, cultivation, parts of his body and such.
External things like others’ lives had steep requirements, needing special days, special materials and rituals, along with special circumstances that were hard to find and might take years to set up. Even the cheapest of external things, using those related to him by blood and karmic ties, still required a manual sacrifice and couldn’t be done automatically with the press of a button.
But Li Ling knew that he was not out of options. If it was previously, he would have gritted his teeth and given up cultivation because he could easily recover it with the Infinite Slaughter System later on, but now that the second version of the system allowed him to externalize Slaughter Points for special purposes, Li Ling had an idea.
Li Ling willed the system to make use of Slaughter Points to feed into this greedy Book of Heaven’s Secrets, and he received a notification from the system right away.
｢System Prompt: You have sacrificed 25 Slaughter Points to the Blessed Augury Technique.｣
Before Li Ling could process this, the whitish-gold book shone greatly and repelled his hand, opening by itself and flipping its pages rapidly to reveal a random sheet within in which details were written on one side and a sort of video playback was provided on the other.
When Li Ling hurriedly read through, his tense shoulders began to relax more and more until he burst out in carefree laughter, feeling completely reborn.