“This law comprehension thing is way too powerful,” Fillan thought to himself in wonder. “And this is all without establishing a Law Palace; how much more egregious will it become when I do?”
Even though he had used his comprehension of time to distort it in a ratio of 10:1 before, the fact he, a Qi Gathering cultivator, could teleport across an entire kingdom with a mere thought, shocked him to the core.
Sure, if given enough time, attempts, and resources, he could probably devise a spell to do the same thing. But that’s using his most potent power system, and the cheat that is his time-loop; it simply wasn’t the same.
“Anyway, I just decided on coming to this place, without really having a plan,” he reflected. “Do I join the sect through the normal channels, impersonate one of their sect members, or just seize the sect master position?”
“Joining through the normal channels won’t work, since I’ll become bottom feeding trash, unable to control my own movements and actions. Impersonating a member can work, but it would have to be a core person in the sect, which would require me to read all of his memories to take his place. Yeah…I don’t think I want to taint my mind with such degeneracy. There is a difference between having negative karma and being evil, which I would have to become to fit in the role. That leaves only the sect master avenue.”
Obviously, Fillan didn’t have to join the sect at all. He could go and do whatever he wanted. The problem was his negative karma.
Based on some elementary calculations assisted by a few simple spells, if he didn’t find a way to hide his karma, then he’d either be crippled or killed within a month. It could happen before, but definitely not after.
This caused him to consider different ways of doing just that; hiding his karma.
The world of Graaryll was in a state of balance between the orthodox/righteous factions and the unorthodox/evil factions. But how does that make sense? Surely since the righteous faction should have virtuous karma, and the evil factions negative, then the evil factions' luck and fortune would result in their swift annihilation. Yet that was not the case.
Fillan concluded that there must be a reason for this. The most obvious and likely he could think of was that Graaryll needed this balance to be maintained, and thus gave different privileges to the evil factions, like protecting them—to a certain extent—from the effects of their karma.
This was further reaffirmed by Fillan’s knowledge of evil vagabond cultivators. These people always ended up either dead, or joining an evil faction. There were no exceptions.
Thus, since Fillan didn’t really care about anything but staying alive and cultivating for the remainder of this life—which was already ladened with “evil” actions—he decided to join an evil faction.
However, Garth had a surprisingly lacking number of them. Considering that Garth—by law—viewed strength as the only important thing, there should have been far more unscrupulous groups doing whatever they could to amass power. But from what Fillan could tell, the total number didn’t surpass five.
Of those five, three were incredibly weak, completely unfit for his stay. The other powerful sect was exclusive to females, so unless he wanted to go on an unprecedented undercover mission, that left only this Devouring Demon Sect.
“The sect is completely centered around cultivation; should I use magic to kill the sect leader, or my law comprehension?” Fillan wondered.
There were benefits and downsides to both options. Magic, of course, was the easiest. Especially after he enhanced his mana well to Ultra-Hadal, which allowed for more than two advanced spells to be cast at once. Dealing with a garbage tier-one Earthly Pillar realm sect master would be a piece of cake.
However, the members might not appreciate or accept a mage taking control of their sect. Although they couldn’t physically do anything to him, they might cause trouble by announcing him to the world. If his enemies—Ming Gu included—discovered he became the sect master of an evil faction, they’d approach forces from outside of Garth to erase him from existence.
His annihilation of a “righteous faction”, the Triple Alliance, made him a whole bunch of enemies. The sole reason why they didn’t hunt him actively, was because he didn’t join any forces, kept to himself, and only completed harmless research. They couldn’t find him, and didn’t have sufficient justification to mobilize enough forces to get rid of him. That would change as an evil sect master.
On the other hand, none of the problems of magic would happen if he used law comprehension. He’d just appear as a Law Palace cultivator to the untrained eye, resulting in a smooth transfer of position and power in the sect. Yet, he’d also struggle more to kill the sect master.
Sure, laws were incredibly powerful and useful, but he had never used them in a fight before, not to mention his physical frailty. If the sect master lands a single blow on him, without magic, he’d die instantly. Meaning, he would have to kill the sect master the second he appears. Something that wouldn’t be easy without preparation. Or underhanded means…
“Assassination it is!”
…
The Devouring Demon Sect’s base was relatively small, only consisting of five mountain peaks. The biggest of which was centered between the other four.
Deep within the central peak was an isolated room, filled to the brim with spiritual crystals. An old man was sitting in a lotus position, devouring the qi from the crystals in hope of advancing his cultivation.
The old man didn’t look very impressive, but he was still one of the most powerful, and most feared, people in Garth. Not necessarily due to his cultivation level, but rather the cultivation technique he practices: the Abyssal Devouring Technique.
This technique, in simple terms, allows the user to devour the qi within almost all objects and mediums, including humans. If you’re defeated by him in battle, you will undoubtedly turn into his nourishment.
This in itself is not too abnormal amongst evil faction techniques, but him being able to devour the qi within an opponent's attacks definitely is. He can easily cross stages and realms to fight beyond his caliber.
The whole reason he could reach this level was not due to talent or comprehension, but the ample amount of resources he possesses. Whether they be humans, beasts, crystals, all have been supplied en masse by his father.
As a matter of fact, if not for the ridiculous nature of his technique, he probably would never have reached the Golden Core realm, that’s how poor his talent was. That’s also why he finally encountered a bottleneck in his cultivation at the Earthly Pillar realm.
He’d been in seclusion for over twenty years, trying desperately to break through, only to fail over and over again.
From what Fillan could gather during his brief reconnaissance, the other higher ups of the sect didn’t expect him to come out of seclusion before another twenty years passed. Which would make replacing him very easy…
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‘Whoever has the sect master’s seal, becomes the sect master. That bastard better have it on him.’
Fillan was currently studying the formation that covered the sect master’s room, planning to enter and kill the guy without alerting anyone to the matter.
He could easily destroy the formation, but then he’d have to reconstruct it before anyone discovers it, something he isn’t confident in doing. Plus, the sect master would notice him forcing his way in, making the assassination plan redundant. At that point, he could just publicly attack him.
‘Luckily, it’s a simple enough formation. Oh, and it has sound suppression. Guess I don’t have to worry about people hearing me.’
It didn’t take more than half an hour to decipher the formation, and discover a way he could enter without the key or authorization.
‘I’ll prepare the spells before I enter to end this as quickly as possible.’
Paralyze was a must, since he couldn’t allow the sect master to attack him or deactivate the formation to alert others.
The body of the sect master could be useful later, so he should avoid damaging it excessively, meaning no fire or lightning spells.
‘Psychic Storm, Soul Needle, and Tether Decay should do the trick.’
All three of those spells attack the psyche in different manners.
Psychic Storm targets the mind of the person by “blowing” its consciousness around. It effectively scrambles a person's memories and functions. It has a bunch of limitations on its usage, despite being a simple spell.
Soul Needle is a simple spell that targets a person's soul by piercing through their mana well. The damage is limited, but is enough to weaken the connection between soul and body.
Which is where Cognitive Decay comes in. It is an advanced spell that attacks the tether between body and soul. It’s called “decay” but it’s more like stretching the tether to its limits, and thus lowering a person's control over their body, or potentially killing them outright.
Cognitive Decay is not very strong against fully functioning people, which is why the Soul Needle is needed beforehand. If the combo attack is successful, the target will most likely die, and if not, it will still be weakened.
All of this combined with Paralyze is bound to reduce all of the sect master’s defenses and protection to nothing.
‘Mental and soul attacks take too much out of me, so I only have one shot at this. If I fail, I’ll have to run the fuck away.’
It is important to note that a person's magical aptitude not only decides how many spells they can engrave on their souls, but also how many they can cast comfortably. The higher the aptitude, the more they can cast. At least at lower levels where the mage is required to transmute their mana with a spell's information. Even though the process is instantaneous for Fillan with his circuits, they all run through the “aptitude seeds”—the aptitude’s physical manifestation—to do this. Since he only has a solid psychic aptitude, he can only cast a limited amount of attacks without hurting himself. Spells like float are more lenient since they run over long periods of time, whereas attacks are quick and explosive.
With a weird leaning posture, and a quick jab of his hand, a small opening appeared in the surprisingly low-leveled formation. Not one for wasting time, Fillan hurried inside, ready to cast his four spells at a moment's notice.
‘I should use a silencing talisman on the door, just in case it makes too much noise.’
Since the path’s reward system seemed to love giving away supplements like formations, pills, weapons, and talismans, Fillan’s spatial ring was filled with a wide variety of them.
Whether it was formation dispelling, attack, defense, or arbitrary talismans, he had an excess of them. Thus, he didn’t mind using some on something as trivial as opening a door.
With a soft smack, the white rune-painted talisman was plastered onto the mountain wall-like door.
Slowly opening the door, Fillan spotted the heap of spirit crystals strewn across the room, all surrounding a haggard, evil-looking old man.
Without hesitation, Fillan’s transmuted mana was unbound from his suppression, releasing their effects instantly.
The qi in the air and inside the old man began to vibrate at an odd frequency that seemed to incapacitate his body. His eyes that shot open turned cloudy, while a weird shadow seemed to emerge from his back.
‘Success…ful enough.’
With a wave of his hand, a chilling wind surged towards the shadow, dissipating it into the air.
‘Luckily I asked for wind law comprehension, else I’d have to blast him with a more devastating attack. His body still has a lot of ways of helping me out, it’d be a shame to destroy it after all my effort.’
With a sigh of relief, Fillan hurriedly closed the door behind him, and walked towards the soulless husk.
With unnerving ease, Fillan retrieved the jade ring on the old man’s right index finger, before placing the corpse in his spatial ring.
The musty cultivation mat in front of Fillan suddenly combusted, before a new, fresher one took its place. With enthusiasm and eagerness, he sat down cross legged and ready to start his cultivation journey.
He didn’t cultivate even a second when he was in his ‘“private reward” room. Not only because it wasn’t as pressing as assimilating the techniques and laws, since they would follow him in death, but also because he was afraid he’d be too immersed in cultivation, and thus never leave.
If he didn’t leave, he probably wouldn’t pay attention to the Immortal Prompter, which would make the rest of this life near worthless. But now…
The only thing that stood in his way was the karma.
‘Since the sect master was so weak, his spatial ring should be the compressed-type. But on the other hand, his father is rich as fuck, and he could have given him a tether-type. Hmmm…’
There exists two types of spatial rings, namely compressed-types and tether-types.
The first involves using certain materials and formations to compress a space into the ring. The spatial ring’s storage is thus inside the ring itself, and upon its destruction, the things inside will all be released in the surrounding area.
The second involves creating or finding a space in the void, and connecting a spatial tether to the spatial ring, allowing for the owner’s access. If this type of ring is destroyed, the storage space will become inaccessible, leaving its contents lost to the void.
If the sect master had the first type of spatial ring, there’s naturally no problem for Fillan, but if it’s the second…
‘Wait; I see the tether.’
Fillan moved his hand towards the tether, and tried to touch it, only for a dark area filled with different objects to appear in his mind.
‘Too. Fucking. Strong. Space comprehension shouldn’t be allowed. I can literally rob anyone with these expensive rings as I please.’
In a corner of the area, he saw a swirl-like token laying haphazardly. Without hesitation, he willed the token to appear in his hand, and it did.
The second this happened, Fillan’s Juge of Good and Evil activated on its own, showing his overwhelming abyss-like karma, seeping into the already sinister mountain. What happened beyond his immediate vision was unknown, but Fillan could tell his karma was diffusing, albeit temporarily.
‘Well, it’s better than nothing, I guess. The sect members will probably have to face some hard times in the future though.’
Fillan’s karma didn’t disappear, but only temporarily merged into the karma of the sect. Although he didn’t know how it would affect the sect, since his karma was so overwhelming, he felt assured that as long as he didn’t leave the confines of the sect, he would be safe to a certain extent. If he did leave, then even with the sect master position, there would be nothing the sect’s “karmic veil” could do to help him.
‘I feel everything is working out strangely well, despite my karma. Maybe it takes a while for the world to launch measures against karmic values?’
Regardless of the reason, Fillan didn’t really care too much. Especially since it would allow him to cultivate with more ease.
‘Time to become invincible in the lower realm!’
…
“That fucking bitch scammed me!”
Not long after he began—tried to begin—his cultivation journey, Fillan discovered a harrowing fact: the cultivation technique he was given didn’t match with his energy veins and core he obtained!