“I knew this ‘path’ nonsense was too good to be true!” exclaimed a shocked, but strangely vindicated Fillan Strand.
Though his appearance had changed little, Fillan now exuded a completely different energy. The subtle changes that did occur were marked by a powerful pressure, most notably the red, crystal-like object embedded between his eyes, just above the bridge of his nose.
This so-called Karmic Eye, was the result of Fillan mastering the karma technique he requested for as a reward: Judge of Good and Evil.
The concept behind it was simple, yet difficult to master due to the prerequisites needed.
How it works is essentially by compressing a bunch of your qi/blood—blood in Fillan’s case—into a crystal between your eyes, or on your forehead. After which, you need to direct your high-level mastery of karma into it over a considerable period of time, until it finally becomes part of the crystal’s essence. With this done, you need to create two unique and specialized energy veins with the new karmic essence, which you must connect to your actual eyes. This allows your eyes to inherit the ability of the crystal, without having to create an actual new eye.
The crystal's ability is extremely basic: it allows you to see people’s karma—including your own—in the form of aura. A person’s aura will have a possible three main colors, and various different shades of those colors.
There’s gray, which is considered a neutral karmic value, and indicates an equal amount of good and negative karma. The lighter the gray, the more positive the neutrality is, the darker, the more negative.
Then there’s green auras, which is representative of overwhelmingly good karma. Again, the lighter the shade, the better.
And finally we have the red auras, which indicate insidious negative karma. The lighter the shade of red, the less negative karma, the darker, the more negative. It is important to note that red auras can turn so dark, they may appear black to even the most trained eye.
The size of an aura is also important to consider, as the shades only change after certain quantitative levels have been reached. A person with an extremely thin dark-green aura is not necessarily a “better person” than someone with a room-wide light-gray aura.
Why did all of this matter, and how was it related to Fillan’s outburst, you may ask. Well, it was because of what the technique showed him, of course.
The technique was the last of the rewards he decided to consume inside this room, due to the uncertain time required to complete it. So, when he finally managed to do so after a grueling period of pure boredom, he wanted to test it out for fun, only to be blinded instantly.
This had nothing to do with the technique malfunctioning or anything. No, rather it worked perfectly well. Maybe too well.
All that greeted Fillan upon activating his karmic vision was pure darkness. It was so unfathomably dark and sinister in appearance, it sent shivers down his spine.
He instinctively knew this was an aura, but first assumed it must be remnants left on the walls, or inside the room from the previous occupant, or something adjacent. Never would he expect the heavy blanket of pure-black aura that wanted to push itself outside the room because of its immeasurable volume, to be coming from him himself.
Despite Fillan acting as a degenerate to gain entrance to this place, he never did anything to warrant a karmic aura worse than light red—at most! Nothing he had ever done before, even if he was to assume karma carried over after he died—which didn’t make sense—could amount to this level of evil.
The easiest way of obtaining karma is by killing. If you kill a person with a gray or green karmic aura, you incur a red one yourself, inversely proportional to your victim's virtue. In the same way, if you kill someone with a negative karma, you gain positive karma for yourself.
Thus, the only way for someone to reach the level of red Fillan has, was by slaughtering millions of highly virtuous creatures without mercy or reason. But he never did…
That’s when he realized how elaborate of a trap the Sword path truly was. Those swords barely increased in strength every thousand kilometers or so, but they all “evolved” after every ninety-nine kilometers, gaining more intelligence/sentience as they did.
Only now did Fillan understand what that awe inducing sensation the swords radiated was: it was overwhelming virtue. They were far from being impressive weapons, but they had slain plenty of “evil” beings before, resulting in a degree of awakening. And Fillan had slain millions upon millions of them, with only greed and avarice as justification.
“So, that’s probably why the first tier allows for three people entering,” Fillan reflected. “If we assume the helpers are half as capable as the leader, then they combined would incur a near equal amount of insidious aura as he does. Which means, if he kills them, his karmic aura will revert to what it was before entering the path. Since he would want all of the rewards for themselves, he’s likely to do so even without knowing about this. It is an intricate system that prays on greed and selfishness…”
Fillan continued to ponder while deactivating his karmic vision.
It was clearly stated in the Judge of Good and Evil that karma affects luck, encounters, and heavenly punishment. The better a person is, the better the universe would treat them in their current and next lives. The opposite is also true for negative karma.
“Doesn’t that mean I’ll get accidentally slapped to death by some immortal being the second I set foot outside the pocket-dimension?” Fillan wondered. “I should heed that old man’s advice and not call my magic Divine anymore, since my luck would probably guarantee punishment.”
The only positive Fillan could find to this situation was the possibility of his death washing the karma away. That would be perfect actually. To obtain incredible benefits from the path, without suffering any consequences sounded heavenly. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if he couldn’t get rid of the karma through death. He’d probably have to slaughter entire worlds worth of sinister beings to make the slightest dent.
“Now, the question is whether I should restart now, or if I want to continue a little longer, and attempt to maximize my gains. I still have thousands of pills of extraordinary quality that could probably push me to ascension, after all. Hmmm… I’ll continue if only to push my magic to a higher standard, and to use the Immortal Prompter to its limits.”
Fillan didn’t really want to go back to the path again in the future. Since it was near impossible to force his way in, he would have to continue acting for years every time he resets, which he refused to do. Sure the rewards were plentiful, but he refused to accept talents—other than his energy core and veins—he didn’t earn himself. That meant, since he already received a bunch of great techniques, law comprehensions, and managed to fuse with a bottomless whale’s heart and improve his mana well, he didn't really have anything of value to get from this place other than information.
Sure the pills, weapons, formations, and talismans he received were incredible, but if he needed to rely on those in the lower realm, then that only proved that his talents were lackluster. Something he could rectify by just dying. External help was temporary, talent was forever.
This is all without even taking the negative karma into consideration, which sealed the deal in Fillan’s mind.
“But the Immortal Prompter is so good, though,” Fillan lamented.
Once every twenty-four hours, Fillan would receive a varying amount of news related to the upper realm through the Immortal Prompter—which was actually just a book. It could be about the appearance of a valuable treasure, the conflicts and deaths of powerful individuals, or something as mundane as the weather in certain places. It allowed valuable insight into a place he would need to go in the future, something that was vital to his well-being.
If he ascended at the wrong time, he could randomly get killed by a massive battle or something. He could appear near a treasure and be mistaken as a competitor, and killed that way. He could appear inside someone’s carriage or on top of their steeds and…essentially Fillan didn’t want to die pitifully after finally ascending.
Despite magic being incredibly powerful, and prevalent in the Immortal Realm as well, it didn’t allow for the opportunity to ascend. That was something only a natural gateway, or cultivation/body tempering could do. Which means, Fillan would have to cultivate to the peak of the mortal realm every time to ascend. And that would take a considerable amount of time regardless of talent and resources. No way he was willing to become some cultivation addict only to be smacked to death over and over again. No siree.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“I’ll stay alive for as long as possible to get a slightly comprehensive picture of the Immortal Realm, and then make future plans based on that,” he decided.
Slowly standing up from his lotus position, Fillan brushed off the imaginary dust on his clothes, before steadying his gaze.
‘I should have been in here for nearly an entire year, but since I used my time comprehension to accelerate the process, only about one and a half months should have passed outside.’
With confidence, Fillan shouted into the empty room—without furniture, windows, and doors: ”I’m ready to leave now!”
Within a fraction of a second, the scenery around Fillan changed to that of a shabby hut, with a lone arch standing in the middle of it; it was the portal out of the pocket-dimension.
Taking this to mean he didn’t need Ming Gu’s presence or approval to leave, Fillan didn’t even consider entering the other paths, and walked straight into the white liquid-like portal.
…
“Halt!”
Upon exiting the pocket-dimension, a series of voices shouted at him simultaneously. More importantly, however, was the fact the archway collapsed behind him. Like a fickle card-house, it crumbled without any elegance, reducing the Gu family’s—and the entirety of Graaryll’s—greatest treasure to worthless stones.
Assuming this had something to do with their clearing of a path, Fillan directed his attention to the dozens of old men and women standing in front of him.
Their advanced ages did nothing to stop the suffocating pressures radiating from pressing down on him. Though, it didn’t really have any effect, other than to give Fillan a good gauge of their prowess.
“What do you want, geezers?” he asked calmly, and without a modicum of respect or compliance.
“How dare you, brat!” bellowed an angry fossil from the right of the group. Without caring about decorum, face, or the room’s tension, the old man launched a fist at Fillan’s face.
It didn’t look very powerful, but the fist held a certain simpleness that made most of the other elders wary. Without elegance, just when the fist was about to connect with Fillan’s right cheek, the old man simply collapsed to the ground.
“I think someone forgot to drink their milk growing up!” Fillan chided at the seemingly boneless corps at his feet. “Did you guys see how he collapsed; it was like watching a puppet.”
“Fillan!” came a roar from behind the heap of wriggly skin and bones. A very familiar one.
“Oy, Ming,” he responded. “How are you? You seem to have gotten a lot of benefits from “clearing” the path.”
“Stay back, little Ming,” an old woman uttered. “He was some weird, invisible power that targets minds or souls.”
“You’re almost right,” Fillan corrected. “What’s more destructive than having your mind or soul destroyed? To have both of them completely erased, of course. You don’t have to be too worried about that though, his mind was fickle like the wind. It would take much more effort to do the same to you.”
Fillan was not the slightest bit afraid of these elders. Whether they feared him or not, whether they knew what or how he would attack them, none of it mattered to him. They were simply too weak.
Only a single one of them was at the Soul Refinement realm, and he must have been awoken from his casket based on his appearance. None of them could harm a hair on his head, even if they sacrificed their lives for it. That applied to Ming Gu, as well.
Just standing behind a few old skin suits naturally couldn’t hide him from Fillan’s normal eyes, much less the observation spell he was using.
Ming Gu had clearly been working hard, and using every reward he received from the path to push himself beyond his limits. He only advanced to the peak of Golden Specter, but radiated the pressure of a mid-tier Soul Fusion expert.
Fillan assumed he must have received an immortal cultivation technique, along with other attack techniques. Most likely, his pea sized brain would have chosen to splurge on immortal tiered weapons as well. Although this might seem dangerous and like the right decision for him to make, there was a reason Fillan didn’t do the same.
Immortal techniques are created to work in the Immortal Realm, and nowhere else. Sure, you could use them and they’d still be incredibly powerful, but they would require an even steeper cost.
Ming’s immortal techniques might make him capable of fighting someone a few minor stages higher than himself, but they would require dozens—if not hundreds—of times the resources and time a peak Lower Realm technique would. The trade was simply not worth it.
Not to mention that a single Immortal technique was most definitely much more reward percentage heavy than Lower Realms ones. Shortsightedness, foolishness, and youthful greed clouded Ming’s decision making, resulting in the current situation.
If Ming Gu decided on only mortal items and techniques, with the support of his repaired soul-body balance, Fillan estimated he could have gone far into the Earthly Pillars realm in the month they didn’t see each other. At which point Fillan might truly be put in a tight spot, since his own power didn’t really increase by much.
“I don’t feel the chaotic energy coming from your soul problem anymore, so I don’t understand why you’re having an outburst, Brother Ming.”
Pushing the old woman trying to shield him away, Ming Gu forced his way to the front of the bingo club. In his eyes was only sadness and anger. Anger directed at the heavens for making him do this, and sadness directed towards his best friend.
“You are right, Fillan, the root of my instability has been corrected, and it has truly opened my eyes to how wretched of a person I am,” Ming admitted. “I can never hope to atone for the things I have done, but I still have an excuse. You, however, do not. Your world views are spurred only by your delusion and sick sense of justice. You knew better than I did, yet you acted in accordance, and even encouraged, my behavior.”
Not giving Fillan the chance to interrupt him, he continued his gratingly long speech.
“I know the rewards I received were not even half of what you got, and what I obtained is already countless tiers above heaven defying. That means you’ll shortly become an unstoppable murdering machine, capable of erasing kingdoms, or even continents, over mere slights. I, as the future patriarch of the Gu Clan, and inheritor of the Royal Path’s will, can not allow this to happen. I’m sorry, Fillan… I truly am.”
With a snap of his fingers, runes appeared all around the cave-like room. They shifted and morphed in a myriad of ways, before settling into their respective places, after which a golden barrier appeared around Fillan.
“This is the Demon Subduing formation, an Immortal grade sealing formation designed to restrain even the most wicked of demons,” he revealed, shocking the elders behind him, and to a certain extent, even Fillan. “I believe that with enough time to repent, and with the brotherhood we share, you’ll eventually manage to recognize the error in your ways, and become a righteous individual!”
With that, he turned around, hiding the tears forming in the corner of his eyes. He must remain steadfast and strong in front of his misguided brother.
The elders, not fully comprehending what was actually happening, scurried after Ming Gu as quickly as their sickly bodies allowed them to, leaving Fillan completely alone within his golden dome.
“Who could guess Ming Gu would become even more unpredictable after fixing his mental issues?” Fillan thought in amusement.
The Demon Sundering formation, or whatever it was called, was indeed very impressive. It kept any and all natural energy from reaching him, barring cultivation and mana gathering.
Fillan recognized a few of the runes floating in the air, and discovered that qi could be let in at the discretion of the owner: Ming Gu. It was probably to keep the subjects alive for long periods of time, making sure they didn’t die from qi starvation.
“Did he not even consider the fact I might have received formation dispelling talismans from my rewards?” Fillan wondered. “I should have around twenty of them, and I can’t bring them back with me after dying, so I might as well splurge one here.”
To be completely honest, Fillan was certain one good hit by Plasmatic Annihilator would mess the formation up enough for him to escape even without the talismans. Hell, he could probably dispel the formation if given enough time to study the glaringly obvious formation pattern and runes.
“I don’t think it came with a user manual; there’s no way he’d leave the formation’s information out in the open like this if it did,” he thought. “Hopefully it will be a good learning experience for him!”
On that note, a golden paper appeared in Fillan’s right hand. It didn’t really look impressive, but he knew it was a classic “wolf in sheep's clothing” situation.
With a light slap, Fillan plastered the golden paper onto his equally golden dome, and infused the little qi he possessed as a 1st level Qi Gathering cultivator into it. At once, without spectacle, the dome vanished and the surrounding runes dimmed, and eventually dissipated as well.
“Now how should I get out,” he wondered.
Fillan was far from desperate. Rather it was the surplus of options that resulted in his conundrum.
“I think I should try to use my space law in tandem with Owner’s Eye to find a good and safe location.”
After activating his circuitry, dozens of runic circles jumped into existence all around him, all projecting imagery of vastly different areas—all within his home kingdom, Garth, of course.
Not really finding anything that fit his fancy, Fillan made the runes move in a clockwise motion, resulting in them showcasing new imagery. It took repeating this action five more times before he settled on a location.
“The Devouring Demon Sect it is!”
Using the clear view he possessed of the desired terrain, and by using his spatial comprehension to the utmost, Fillan teleported out of the musty room, and into the great wide outdoors.