Meng Bao and Liang Chen gazed at each other, quietly measuring the other. And then, Meng Bao made the first move, stomping the ground heavily and causing lightning to erupt from within the earth. It carried a faint floral and earthen scent, and when Liang Chen looked down the hole they had made he could see a few roots crackling with sparks, it seemed like he had hidden the lightning in some poisonous roots. Or had he perhaps extracted it from them to begin with? Or had he turned the poison in the roots into lightning using his unique law?
Liang Chen wasn't quite certain, his calm gaze following the lightning as it rushed into him. Time had already slowed down around him, to the point where he would have been able to sidestep the lightning with ease. But he didn't. He wanted it to hit him, he wanted to experience it, wanted to take the peculiar utilization and turn it into something of his own.
He had the records of the Sebettu race, detailing what they had learned about the various laws over the years. But the Sebettu were a race at war, their race had been at war since nearly the dawn of their birth, partly to get more land and partly due to the devouring nature of their ancestor. As such, the laws they used were generally geared towards combat and destruction.
A fiercer poison, an acidic poison that would reduce enemies to nothing and pierce through any defence. That was the law of poison they pursued, not something as peculiar and sinister as Meng Bao's utilization. There was also the fact that the number of people who cultivated both poison and lightning was limited, and even fewer of that select group fused them together.
But that was just how the world was, everything was limited in one way or another, no one item held all the answers and all the information. So you had to go out and search, explore and experiment on your own, only like that would you be able to get all the answers you sought.
The lightning entered his body and diffused, seemingly as harmless as a spring shower. But Liang Chen paid close attention to how the lightning sank into his nervous system, mingling with the signals his body constantly sent. So far, it was very similar to one of his own techniques, the one where he used lightning to force his nerves to send the signals faster, forcibly and violently increasing the speed at which he could move and think.
But then he raised his arm to point the spear at Meng Bao, and the weak lightning activated when it saw that the appropriate electric signals were sent out. But now that he studied it at a slower pace, and far more closely than previously, he realized that his original theory about the technique was wrong.
The lightning didn't release any poison when it traced the electric signals, what it did was that it actually turned his own nervous signals into poison. The lightning flared up and took over those faint electric signals, each one of them morphing into a faint poison that started to act upon his blood, coagulating it to halt his movement. It wasn't too bad, as long as the coagulated blood stayed in his arm. Should it dislodge and flow along his veins then it may reach his heart or brain, and that would carry a true fatal threat to most living beings.
Frankly, Liang Chen understood the theory behind the poison and how it worked. It was rather self-evident after all, he just had to look at it once to understand it. But understanding the theory behind it and being able to replicate it were entirely different things, especially due to the main peculiarity of it.
To turn the surrounding elements and laws into your own was the power of a domain, which was sometimes the greatest ability of a cultivator. But domains were centred around yourself, you had to be their core for them to work. So how did Meng Bao manage to set up a miniature domain inside his opponent's body to turn their own nervous system against them?
He didn't know, but he wanted to learn. What if he could mimic the effect with his own laws? His extremely acidic poison, his ferocious lightning, or even the void, whose domain was forbidden by the Sphere of Existence itself? If something like that opened inside his opponent, what sort of fate would await them?
Liang Chen was looking forward to learning, it would be a great trump card if he managed to master it. He pulled his consciousness out from his own body and focused it on both his own energy as well as the energy around him, he was barely even acknowledging Meng Bao's existence. And in that state, he took the first step forward.
"The First Step shatters the body."
Dragon Lord's three steps, the greatest technique that the Heaven Devouring Dragon had left behind for his Sebettu descendants. Each step doubled the power of the last attack and stacked it onto the next, it was a skill that had helped Liang Chen in just about all of his battles.
His spear thrummed as the power inside it rose, tiny arcs of lightning starting to fill the maw-like opening in the spearhead. The enemies Liang Chen fought recently were all true monsters so he rarely used this first step nowadays. But for what he wanted to experiment with next, he would need to take it step by step. As such, he raised his leg and took the second step forward.
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"The Second Step Splits the waterfall."
The power of the First Step was instantly doubled as Liang Chen's foot touched down, the arcs of lightning crackling within the maw of his spear growing to cover the entire spearhead. The thrumming of his weapon grew louder, the tiny fang-like spikes inside the maw of his spearhead starting to quiver softly thanks to the accumulated energy.
But the air around the weapon itself was still calm, the only disturbances were caused by the errant strikes of lightning that left the weapon. It was far from enough, it didn't even touch the heels of 'closer'. So he raised his leg and took the third step.
"The Third Step shatters mortality."
The final part of the Dragon Lord's Three Steps, the power of the Second Step instantly doubled. The air around his spearhead finally started to twist slightly, the power gathered within the softly vibrating spear agitating both the air and the energy in it.
Liang Chen allowed his consciousness to get enveloped by the energy, sensing how it acted upon the world as he compared it to the goalpost he had set. He knew that reaching that goalpost in a short while was nothing but a pipe-dream, but what he wanted to do now was to see if he had something that could take him towards that goalpost, a starting technique he could develop on without having to come up with something new entirely.
And as he delved into the power of the Third Step, he came to the conclusion that he did indeed have something he could build upon. But his calculations told him that the path was still extremely long, luckily he had already taken one step down that path on his own earlier.
"The Ninth should be equal to that three-sword domain. As for those sword-wings...a Tenth would be needed."
Liang Chen pulled back his consciousness as he muttered, comparing his own power to the skills he had seen the Heaven Splitting King use. Nine steps to force the world to its knees, ten steps to break the world, that was the conclusion he had come to after thoroughly examining the explosive increase in strength of the Dragon Lord's Three Steps.
He would have to add an entire seven new steps to the technique that was first created by an Origin Beast, but luckily he had already started doing just that. The Fourth Step already existed, the step that pierced the sparrow. He had yet to try the fifth step, he wasn't quite sure if his body would be able to handle it so he would need to experiment a bit with it first.
"But before that..."
His attention rose slightly, landing on Meng Bao. He was still attacking, but none of his attacks had been able to do anything to Liang Chen. They were technically at the same cultivation level, but Liang Chen cultivated three different systems and had what could only be called an extreme bloodline. They were not on the same level when it came to power, it hadn't been a fight that Meng Bao could win to begin with. Meng Bao also realized that as he looked at Liang Chen, his pupils trembling softly as he forced himself to utter his last words.
"Our poisons and legacy, I leave it to you."
Liang Chen pushed his spear forward, the accumulated energy erupting from the spearhead. Meng Bao only saw a blinding flash of dull violet light, he couldn't even hear the roar of the thunder, only a high-pitched shriek as his eardrums disintegrated. His body quickly followed suit, falling apart due to the rampaging lightning that tore through him.
He didn't even get the chance to feel pain or see his own state, that was the only mercy Liang Chen would show his targets. When the last glimmer of light faded, Meng Bao's body was gone and the cavern had gained an additional cave, one that went upwards all the way until it pierced through the peak of the mountain. And with that, the Thousand Flower Valley had been exterminated, it was a fall so plain and quick that it was hard to believe.
Liang Chen could have kept him alive for interrogation, forced him to spit out how he came up with his technique to open a miniature domain in his opponent. But he couldn't bring himself to do that, not with what he had learned about Meng Bao's deeds, he couldn't bring himself to let such a man live on. He'd rather experiment on his own and find the answer that way.
"We can move forward now, but stay on Yumao's back for a bit longer, at least until we've gotten to check out the garden."
Liang Chen turned back to look at Yumao and Lan Yun as he spoke, he couldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be sentient plants, or just explosions of poison within the herb garden. Lan Yun nodded her head obediently, a slight glimmer in her eyes as she looked at Liang Chen. Yumao and Liang Chen exchanged a quick glance before moving forward, passing through the cave ahead of them to enter the garden hidden beyond it.
The cave led into an even larger cavern, one that seemed to fill almost the entire inside of the mountain. Large crystals that released light had been embedded into the walls of the cavern at regular intervals, properly illuminating the entire garden with soft light. But rather than calling it a garden, calling it a jungle was probably more correct.
Trees and small marshes covered the entire cavern, there was even a single large river that split the entire forest in half. It looked like a normal jungle, but the dense scent of mixed poisons filled the air, most normal people and weaker cultivators would probably die just from standing there.
This was how the Thousand Flowers Valley grew their poisonous plants, how they nurtured them. They didn't bother setting up fields and the like, they just gave them a natural environment to best stimulate their growth. The number of poisonous plants here was beyond counting, Liang Chen wouldn't be surprised if not even Meng Bao knew just how many plants were growing here. That was the downside of growing them like this, keeping track of them all and their growth, and possible mutations, became that much harder.
But Liang Chen wasn't bothered by their number or their changes, his eyes sweeping the fertile land with a faint gleam. This was one of the rewards that Purgatory's Cradle had chosen for him, and it was here that he would truly learn about poison.