Immediately, 1000 Slaughter Points disappeared from his pool of 4717, and a wave of comprehension descended upon him that immediately submerged the rest of his focus. It was an extremely fortunate thing that refinement of non-spiritual artifacts and items, like this Grade 1 Spirit Soil, did not require intense focus or Li Ling would have destroyed what he had just made.

As it were, the flow of magic power to the Spirit Soil remained stable, so he could fully immerse himself in breaking down the knowledge and comprehension that came with the technique he had spent a lot of effort to obtain.

And the moment he did, Li Ling was terrified by what he was learning.

The Tai Xu Mysterious Method was a void element daoist art with the typical five stages of mastery like the rest of the Tian Ming Continent, because this system had remained unchanged for generations, despite the best efforts of the sages at the Tian Shu Institute.

Each stage yielded a new ability that fulfilled one aspect of what Li Ling specifically needed from void-related powers, almost as if it had been tailor-made for him—or, more realistically, tailor-made by the original creator to solve these pressing desires that almost everyone had when thinking of space-related powers.

The only problem was that the entry requirement into the technique was too steep, which was why countless geniuses across the continent were locked out of such methods, even one with protagonist-like characteristics like Bai Yegui.

For each level, you required a certain tier of void element physique!

Already, physiques in Tian Ming Continent's cultivation world were rare, though after so many ages of development, most clans and sects had found ways to not only identify them but even generate them through either breeding or through special daoist arts and treasures.

Regardless, void-element physiques were up there in terms of difficulty to obtain, and the only known way to acquire one was to break through to Void Refinement and complete the realm. That entire major realm was directly about using one's massive cultivation power to forcefully turn oneself into a void body and comprehend the void to achieve consummation.

The Tai Xu Mysterious Method was not a Void Refinement-tier technique; it was like most of Li Ling's Unique Immortal Arts, which could be practiced at any cultivation stage and did not require realm to exert basic function, only that realm decided the strength of the various abilities of the daoist art.

For the Entry-stage, one needed a Void-Touched Physique. This was the lowest-level void element physique known to Tian Ming Continent, ranked at 12th on the leaderboard of top physiques in the cultivation world by the Astral Divine Observatory—the number six sect on the entire continent and the ones who even designed all these rankings as well as the categories.

The abilities of the Void-Touched Physique were said to make one more attuned to the void element, basically guaranteeing at least a 50% chance to break through from Dao Integration to Void Refinement, regardless of natural comprehension, talent, or resources used to assist.

One should know, of the slightly over one hundred officially recognized regions of the Tian Ming Continent, over eighty were stuck at the middle rank, which meant their strongest power was an ancestor in the Spirit Path, from Nascent Soul to Dao Integration.

This included sects like the Boundless Joy, Qing Shan, and the Five Elements Sect near this war outpost—all of whom had Dao Integration old ancestors who could not break through to Void Refinement no matter what they did due to a lack of comprehension and affinity with space.

If they could have someone with this physique, they would likely burn their entire heritage to raise them to Dao Integration and have them break through to Void Refinement, because even having one person in the Essence Path meant that their ranking would shoot up to the top twenty, and their access to information, speaking rights, and resource allocation would undergo drastic changes.

And the part that made Li Ling shudder was that this requirement was absolute—so how did he just achieve the Entry stage?

Clearly, it was how the Infinite Slaughter System always handled it, by changing his physical state to match the perfect practice of whatever stage in the technique he was upgrading to.

In other words, Li Ling now had a Void-Touched Physique from nowhere!

This was not surprising, as in order to achieve Perfection in the Blessed Augury technique, the Infinite Slaughter System had constructed a fully functional Purple Mansion that he used up until now despite not yet having a Nascent Soul nor the knowledge of the means to construct a Purple Mansion in the first place!

On top of that, his Purple Mansion was fully complete.

Ideally, the entire Spirit Path was about cultivating the spirit and soul, which was a gradual process over the three major realms within. Like one of those famous neighborhood churches, the Purple Mansion was supposed to be built up slowly even while it was being occupied and in use by the cultivator in question.

Yet due to the requirements of the Blessed Augury technique—which required the Heaven and Earth Bridge formed at the breakthrough from Soul Formation to Dao Integration—his Purple Mansion was shot up to perfection and allowed him access to the realm of Blessed Augury, where the Book of Heaven's Secrets rested.

So now, he had this physique that basically guaranteed that even without the Infinite Slaughter System, he would be able to enter Void Refinement in the future if everything aligned properly.

But all of this talk about the requirement alone was not doing justice to the ability gained from the Entry stage. The ascension to the entry level of this daoist art came with the foundational void ability that most people sought for combat purposes—the Void Step!

The Void Step allowed Li Ling to move between the folds of sub-space, essentially semi-elementalizing his body to match with the element and then appear within the range of his spirit sense, which would fuse into the sub-space to facilitate positioning.

So one could say that an unintended benefit was that Li Ling's spirit sense could now penetrate sub-space, or camouflage itself through the void to cross distances, barriers, or blockades that did not specifically have any void-related defenses.

Given his large spirit sense range for his realm, this was a great benefit. It also made him more serious about cultivating a suitable method to enhance his spirit sense, hoping that the Nine Heights Pagoda would live up to expectations.

Li Ling almost tested out the technique right here and now, but this was the war outpost of the sect. Already, eyes were beginning to fall on him after his battle with Bai Yegui, and to suddenly show mastery over spatial techniques only seen at Void Refinement would chill many.

Yes, while it was largely more effective to be high-profile in a demonic sect than a righteous sect, there was a limit to how much. Breakthroughs through realms super fast were fine—that was entirely the point of demonic cultivation—but using forbidden arts and inhumane resources to boost cultivation speed and battle power at the cost of sanity and karma?

That was exactly why the Six Path Demon Sect was very strict about the cultivation method purchasing in the Whispering Blood Wing and its equivalents in the other halls. If they didn't implement control, there would be a lot of powerhouses sprouting up really fast with untempered minds and a need for resources that would break the status quo.

As such, he could only settle down and utilize the newly acquired method to send his spirit sense into the void, marveling at the quietness and solitude of sub-space. It was like a dark purple realm full of wind, which was actually the terrifying void storm that could shred any material substance to less than atoms, but due to the Void-Touched Physique and the Tai Xu Mysterious Method, it was like a very annoying breeze to Li Ling.

At his low realm, he could not stay in sub-space for long, whether it was through his body or his spirit sense. The length of his body's stay was decided by his body cultivation, and the length of his spirit sense's stay was decided by the strength of his qi cultivation.

There was no concrete number given, so Li Ling would have to gauge it for himself. So he used this chance to spread his one-kilometer spirit sense out through the void to the neighbor's courtyard, peeping on them through sub-space.

The limit was that he could only see and hear in sub-space at his current level, unable to touch, taste, or feel anything, regardless of body or spirit sense.

Looking into the neighbor's courtyard, Li Ling was immediately full of interest. After all, the neighbor was currently utilizing a brutal method of Blood Refinement, having a boiling pot full of bright red blood bubbling beneath a rack where she used her powerful second-realm strength to squeeze the living people tied up beside her with fear in their eyes, squeezing them like sponges to eject all their blood while still alive.

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