Two Hundred Years of Improvement

"My lord…" Ga Shu began speaking, but he could not find the words. When he stared at the current Yaan, his heart began palpitating wildly. It was only after using his dao of life comprehension to calm himself, that he was able to look at Yaan seriously.

"Congratulations on your breakthrough my lord, but if I might be so bold as to ask…are you ok?"

"I'm fine, Ga Shu." Yaan spoke in a plain, monotonous voice. It was the only voice he could use to hide the bloodlust from his tone.

Yaan looked around at the well kept gardens. Everything was as it had been, aside from two aspects.

For one, Ga Shu was now old.

Secondly…Freya was not here, and there was a grave in her place.

Seeing Yaan looking at the grave, Ga Shu sighed deeply.

"She died 150 years ago. My lord, I must thank you for giving us those years together. As I said before…I will serve you forever and always, no matter what path you choose to take. I will forever remember this favour."

Yaan looked at Ga Shu, and for a moment, an indiscernible colour flashed across his eyes. Ga Shu shivered for a moment, feeling as if all of his secrets had been seen through.

Naturally, Yaan had used reveal truth to assess Ga Shu's condition.

"Ga Shu, your lifespan is nearly at its end. If you wait any longer, surviving the calamity will be too difficult. If you truly want to be useful to me, then you should undergo Nirvana soon."

Ga Shu's eyes widened, but he quickly clasped his hands and nodded.

Even now, he could not see through this lord of his. He actually spoke of having an immortal servant as if it was only a useful convenience!

But that only made Ga Shu's respect towards Yaan grow deeper.

"Of course, my lord. I will make my preparations and go through Nirvana immediately."

"Mm." Yaan nodded. "Contact the Bloody Totem Tribe Leader and have her collect all of the useful medicines that can help with the immortal ascension from our province. I also want information on any other tribes in the kingdom which might have such things in their possession."

"Of course, my lord, I will do this right away."

Ga Shu bowed and quickly left. Yaan stared after him for a while. It was only after Ga Shu had departed far away that Yaan exhaled and his breathing became heavy.

Yaan frowned and grit his teeth.

"I succeeded…I developed a slaughter variant spirit soul, but as a result, I feel the desire to kill every living being that I see…"

Yaan returned to the temple and meditated for some time, trying to quell the murderous intent in his soul. It was somewhat effective, but the desire was still there.

Regardless, he needed to assess his condition.

Firstly, his body, Vital Qi, and Vital Qi core, were all unchanged. This was normal. The spirit soul merely resided in the Vital Qi core, it did not affect the core itself. However, that was only right now…Yaan possessed a variant soul, a unique existence that he had not even heard of until developing one for himself. Who was to say what would happen in the future?

Moving on to his soul itself.

His soul was opaque and dark grey, the colour of pure slaughter. There was no light, no dark, only killing. No good, no evil, only bloodlust. No love, no hate, only slaughter.

His soul was now a tangible entity. If he wished to do so, he could even use his soul to cast soul spells! But…he doubted that normal soul spells would work with such a distorted variant soul.

Likewise, the Vital Qi spells that the Spirit Plane Lord had taught him no longer appealed to Yaan.

He had already stepped onto his own path.

His sword arts surpassed spells.

His dao spell surpassed other methods.

His slaughter soul contained such deep power that it made all conventional methods look like child's play.

And his sea of consciousness…

Yaan's sea of consciousness had grown stronger.

No, that was a huge understatement.

Before he entered secluded cultivation, his sea of consciousness was at the Hundred Sage Grade, he could at most from 240 psyche power avatars.

Now, after battling against the slaughterous power for a hundred years, after devouring the slaughter into his wisdom, after enduring a hundred years of the slaughter cutting away through his sentience, tempering and strengthening it in the process, after accumulating a hundred years of memories during that internal battle…

His sea of consciousness had reached the Thousand Sage Grade. Not only that, but after some practice, Yaan found that he could manifest 6,500 psyche avatars!

The final realm of Foundation Step psyche cultivation was the Myriad Sage Grade sea of consciousness. At this stage, the cultivator could form 10,000 psyche power avatars!

At the Foundation Step, it was impossible to surpass this level. The Myriad Sage Grade was more of an upper limit than an entire realm, but it was a near-impossible to reach limit for all beings.

It was also the limit that Yaan needed to reach if he wanted to enter Nirvana through the Four Paths Cultivation technique.

He finally felt as if the end was in sight!

He just needed to ascend his spirit soul into an Imperial Spirit, and his sea of consciousness to the Myriad Sage Grade!

Yaan mused over this issue in the temple.

"The Fiend Transformation technique allows those with no talent in Qi refining to step onto the path of Qi refining by devouring slaughter aura and refining it into Yuan Qi. So then…why can I not do the same with my soul?"

He had the Fiend Foundation as a reference point.

He possessed a slaughter soul, the pinnacle of all slaughter.

His understanding of slaughter had reached an unprecedented height…but he was not quite there.

Yaan didn't possess immortal stage dao comprehension in the dao of slaughter. The dao of slaughter was a derivative dao, derived from the dao of death. Yaan's comprehension of slaughter was broad, but he had not yet comprehended a complete fragment.

"I need to test this method." Yaan mused. "I might be able to cultivate my soul simply by killing and absorbing the slaughter aura into my soul, but this might not work. If this is not effective, I will need to develop a new technique or spell. Regardless…I need to kill."

Yaan had a plan to move forwards, but before doing so, there were two other matters that he needed to attend to.

Firstly, he removed a certain pill from his spatial ring.

This was a Rank 7 pill. It was an immortal pill given to Yaan by the Fragment of Qi, but that white-haired immortal gave no explanation as to what it might be.

Yaan wouldn't start his next period of killing until Ga Shu had undergone his Nirvana. Until then, he had some time to spare.

"Reveal truth…" Yaan muttered, staring at the pill intently.

The pill emitted a dark, ominous aura of death. A black mist obscured it, but after using reveal truth, Yaan saw red inscriptions across its surface. As he continued to use reveal truth, hidden inscriptions, hidden machinations of the world, began to unfold before his eyes. He could see truths behind the pill that even the pill's creator would not be able to see!

After a minute of using reveal truth, Yaan shut his eyes tiredly. Sustaining this spell for too long was extremely draining, but at least he had found what he wanted to find.

Once he recovered, Yaan couldn't help but crack a smile.

"Fragment of Qi…I understand now, you truly were trying to assist me."

Immortal pills were all unique, and they were all exceedingly rare. For an immortal to possess even a single immortal pill was already very impressive.

This pill was shrouded in darkness, not because it was an inherently evil or dark elemental pill, but because the truth of the pill was hidden from the user until they consumed it.

Most immortal pills could only be consumed by immortals safely, but this pill could be safely used by any being that had comprehended an earthly dao to the immortal stage. However, it was only safe to use if they had comprehended one and only one dao to the immortal stage.

"I am not far away from comprehending slaughter to the immortal stage…" Yaan muttered. "Also, I seem to have some connection to the life and death dao…and to the dao of karma."

Yaan sighed and shook his head.

"It would be best if I used this right now. It will thrust me into an illusion, but in the real world, I will only be influenced for a single instant, there is no real danger."

With that, Yaan swallowed the gloomy looking pill whole.

He did not notice that as he swallowed this pill, a young girl with emerald eyes and a black crystal embedded in her forehead, floated silently in his sea of consciousness, watching on calmly.