Although the haunts did not possess much battle prowess, the tiger demon’s ability dominated their minds, so they demonstrated absolute loyalty. Not only did this mean Li Qingshan could kill people, he could even enslave the people he killed and prevent them from moving off into the afterlife or returning to sa?sāra. Moreover, haunts would always tell him everything that they knew. It was perfect for investigating secrets.
Since Sha Bie came from the Ink sea, he should understand the situation of the Ink sea. Since he killed Sha Bie, Li Qingshan definitely would have fallen out with the Dragon King of Ink Sea, so it was perfect for him to learn a bit about the Ink sea’s situation through his mouth, so he could respond accordingly.
Li Qingshan was indeed fearful of the Dragon King of Ink Sea, but that did not mean anyone could threaten Li Qingshan with the Dragon King of Ink Sea’s name. Having grown accustomed to treating the Golden Cicada Spirit King and the Great Banyan Tree King as equals, he truly did not want to remain in a lowly position and go see some sir dragon king. He had already fallen out with some sh*tty Beast King, so offending another one made no difference.
As he gazed at the haunt that Sha Bie had turned into submit to him, Li Qingshan felt some pity. If only he possessed this ability sooner. Challenging the world with a group of his enemies could have been extremely delightful.
Suddenly, he looked back and sensed clusters of daemon qi traveling away from Calm Wave lake. These guests who wanted to carve up his flesh had scattered and fled. Cold light flashed through his eyes. Since he had already done this, he might as well go all out!
Due to the circumstances back then, sparing their lives had already brought Li Qingshan great discontent, yet they actually still dared to discuss how to deal with him here. They could all go and die!
He casually tossed Sha Bie’s haunt into the Asura Field, and Li Qingshan turned into a scarlet light, rushing into the air. He arrived high in the sky and waved his right hand. “The Profound Light Illuminates All!”
Pieces of the Spirit Turtle’s Profound Shell flew together and displayed scenes in the directions that the cluster of daemon qi had fled off into. Very soon, they locked onto all of the escaping figures.
Li Qingshan chose the closest one. With a flap of his wings, he kicked up some flames and shot off as a scarlet streak of light.
……
A series of lamps were lit in a majestic hall within the Ink sea. It resembled a buddha hall, except there was no image of the buddha. One of the lamps was suddenly extinguished.
These were no regular oil lamps, but life lamps. The one that had been extinguished belonged to Sha Bie who Li Qingshan killed.
“What? Old Sha is dead!”
Mo Yu rushed over. A sliver of surprise had appeared on his face that was always so expressionless. Just who is bold enough to kill a member of the Ink sea? Old Sha is not someone that anyone can simply kill either.
Suddenly, he thought of a possibility and became even paler. He turned into a black swirl and vanished from the hall.
In the depths of the Ink sea, a huge dragon, pitch-black like ink, coiled up. It was as stern and dignified as a mountain, yet as gentle and elegant as clouds. The black dragon that Si Qing had transformed into through the Black Emperor Dragon Classic was like a tiny snake compared to it. It did not seem like a living creature at all.
The Dragon King of Ink Sea opened his eyes. A while later, he closed them again.
……
Boom!
A colossal bullfrog, the size of a small mountain, landed on the banks of Calm Wave lake heavily and crushed countless buildings and structures, leading to countless cries from humans. However, the bullfrog was in no shape to care about the ants around it. He kicked off powerfully with his two hind legs and produced two deep pits in the earth, leaping forward as hard as he could.
He left the banks instantly. His seemingly-cumbersome body would travel several kilometers with each leap. Before long, he was already fifty kilometers away from the palace in the lake.
Right now, he was overwhelmed with regret. He should have never participated in this banquet. He had personally witnessed Northmoon’s viciousness before. That was not something he could contend with.
And, from the hurried glimpse he had caught earlier, he discovered something even more startling. From the aura that Northmoon gave off, he had clearly already faced the second heavenly tribulation and reached Daemon Commander.
If Northmoon were just a Daemon Commander, that was nothing. He himself was a Daemon Commander too. However, Northmoon was a terrifying existence that had defeated a great group of Daemon Commanders when he was still a Daemon General. Now that he had become a Daemon Commander, just how powerful would he be? If that strike earlier had landed on him instead, he would have been reduced to minced meat already. The worst part of it all was he had even blanked out for a moment, making him flee slower than the others.
At this moment, a tremendous cluster of daemon qi rapidly drew closer. The bullfrog panicked and bounded away even faster, but in the blink of an eye, the daemon qi had arrived over his head.
“The first one!”
Li Qingshan flapped his wings and swooped down like a hawk catching a rabbit, lunging towards the bullfrog. When he neared the ground, he had already reverted to his original form, becoming a colossal existence standing around a hundred and twenty meters tall. Compared to him, the huge bullfrog seemed tiny.
The bullfrog tried desperately to leap away, but his body suddenly weighed ten times more. Immediately, he fell out of the air. Before he could even respond, a hoof pushed him into the ground. The great strength and the intense gravity immobilised him. He was like a tiny frog under the claws of a vicious tiger.
“Spare me, fellow!”
“I already spared you once, but you didn’t change your ways, so I think you’re better off dead!” Li Qingshan said.
With his tiger claws, he ripped apart the bullfrog with ease and killed him on the spot, digging out his daemon core and suppressing it with the spirit turtle. At the same time, he tossed the body into the Asura Field, prepared to make fried bullfrog out of him. As a Daemon Commander who had cultivated for all these years, he should taste quite nice. He felt a tinge of regret when he thought about the softshell turtle. If he had known about this earlier, he would not have shaken him into so many pieces. He could have stewed him into soup, which would probably be extremely nourishing.
In the end, he converted the bullfrog’s soul into a haunt. In short, he did not waste any part of him. Afterwards, he took off as a scarlet light again, chasing down the next Daemon Commander.
With his speed that surpassed regular Daemon Commanders and the Profound Light Illuminates All to lock onto them, Li Qingshan hunted down the Daemon Commanders he wanted to eat one by one, converting them all into haunts. He obtained another eight daemon cores, where five of them were water daemon cores.
Sha Bie was worried that Northmoon might launch an attack with his Water God Seal, which was why he intentionally befriended these water Daemon Commanders. He never thought everything would develop completely against his expectations, which all ended up benefitting Li Qingshan instead.
However, Li Qingshan primarily practised the Phoenix’s Scripture of Nirvā?a right now, so he had no use for these daemon cores at the moment. He tossed them all into his hundred treasures pouch for the day he needed them.
After doing all that, Li Qingshan returned to Calm Wave lake and took out the Water God Seal he had taken from Sha Bie. With its original master dead, he easily suppressed and erased the remaining aura on the Water God Seal, uniting all the water in the Ruyi commandery once more. Afterwards, he even fused the two Water God Seals together, forming an even stronger Water God Seal that could contain even more regions of water.
With a thought, the surging water spiritual qi gathered towards the Water God Seal in his hand. Then, he accepted it into the Ocean pearl in his body.
After reaching Golden Core, the rate at which he could gather spiritual qi had become even faster, but it was nowhere near enough for the Ocean pearl. It had been empty the entire time. Now, he used the Water God Seal to fill the Ocean pearl up very quickly, approaching full capacity strand by strand.
Li Qingshan was amazed. The spiritual qi Golden Core cultivators required truly was tremendous. The spiritual qi he had absorbed during that time was enough to make ten cultivators go from first layer Qi Practitioners to late Foundation Establishment.
A while later, the Ocean pearl suddenly flashed, finally full.
Although he had basically filled up the Ocean pearl, it was like force-feeding it with spiritual qi, where actually converting the spiritual qi into his own strength would still take large amounts of time for refinement. However, it did save him a vast amount of time, a decade at the very least. He no longer had to worry about gathering resources to practise the Arts of the Boundless Ocean.
Li Qingshan did not stop gathering spiritual qi with that. He continued to absorb it endlessly, completely replenishing the daemon qi he had used up during the battle and even reaching a state fuller than before.
The glow on the Water God Seal had already dimmed by a lot. The water spiritual qi in the lakes and rivers were not inexhaustible. Instead, they had been gradually accumulated over a long period of time. It had only become such a tremendous resource over thousands of years of accumulation, ever since the founding emperor of Great Xia made a clean sweep of the local gods.
If there was a hundred percent in total, then Li Qingshan had already used up fifty to sixty percent of it in the past. During the year or so Sha Bie was here, he had never stopped absorbing spiritual qi, so he had used up ten to twenty percent. As such, only rough twenty to thirty percent remained. However, who knew how many pills a mere twenty to thirty percent was equal to and who knew how much time on cultivation could be saved with that.
Now that he had directly fallen out with the Dragon King of Ink Sea, it would be very difficult for him to hold onto his position as a water god, so he obviously had to hurry up and take away everything he could to prepare for the days to come.
However, the remaining twenty to thirty percent of spiritual qi left Li Qingshan rather troubled. He thought, Isn’t there another place where I can store this spiritual qi? He directed his finger at the Asura Field, and the surging spiritual qi was all drawn in there.
The climate in the Asura Field changed drastically. Dark clouds piled up in the air, enveloping several hundred kilometers in the surroundings. The clouds grew thicker and thicker, and torrential rain poured down, but it was not regular rain. It was filled with spiritual qi, like the spiritual rain the Spiritual Rain technique summoned.
The rain fell into the lake, and the water level rapidly rose up, spilling out very soon. The water turned into rivers that surged across the land recklessly.
The asura were currently in a stalemate with the haunts. As the water surged over, they all leapt to higher places.
The water flowed through the lush rainforest, and the trees grew at a visible rate. Some of the older trees even began to develop a sliver of intelligence. This was a sign of becoming a daemon.
The Great Banyan Tree King spread his branches and smiled. “I really haven’t been serving as his teacher for all this time for nothing!” The night roamers emerged from their treehouses. Seeing the miraculous rain pouring down, they all spread their arms and drank the rain.
Although it was only twenty to thirty percent of the total spiritual qi, it was the accumulation of all the rivers and lakes in the Ruyi commandery across several millennia. It was enough to alter the Asura Field into a blessed land of cultivation. He could cultivate in there in the future.
Li Qingshan drew the last sliver of water spiritual qi into the Asura Field, and the Water God Seal completely dimmed. The rays of the setting sun were already stretching across the sky. He exhaled and was about to leave when the spirit turtle suddenly gave off an omen of warning. He looked back.
In the eastern sky, a black swirl appeared out of thin air and turned into a pitch-black figure. It was Mo Yu with his black cloak and his face as pale as a corpse’s.
“Northmoon, it really was you!”
After quite a journey, Mo Yu finally arrived above Calm Wave lake. He stared straight at Li Qingshan with his eyes filled with deathly stillness like he was looking at a corpse.
“So what if it’s your grandfather?”
Li Qingshan smiled. He had gone on a slaughter today, and he would be settling a grievance too.
