Chapter 311: Bountiful Returns
Outside the Ba Manor City, Ning Chigong and Liu Yao set the unconscious Jun Li down beside a small river.
Qiao Zhi had been following behind them, and he said, "Alright, you two can go now."
Even at this point, Ning Chigong and Liu Yao were still in a state of shock.
They had witnessed the silver cat fiend jump into a battle between two Dao Comprehension-state cultivators. After everything they had just seen, he had become even more unfathomable in their eyes.
If he really is a Dao Comprehension-state cultivator, as I suspect, doesn't that mean I'll never be able to escape his control? Liu Yao thought with a look of despair on his face.
Every martial artist knew that Dao Comprehension-state cultivators stood at the very pinnacle of the world and were as rare as they were powerful. However, the vast majority of martial artists eventually lost the ambition to pursue the Dao Comprehension state. The longer they cultivated, the more they came to realize just how impossibly far away that pinnacle was.
It was similar to how very few young individuals on Earth aimed to win a Nobel Prizes. There would simply come a time when most realized that it was an unattainable goal.
After practicing martial arts for a several years, most martial artists in this world would develop a clear understanding of their aptitude and potential.
For them, reaching the fourth-state and securing the wujuren title was already a lofty goal. If they managed to reach the fifth-state and secure the wujinshi title, they would be left wondering what good deeds they had performed in their previous lives to deserve such blessings.
As for the Dao Comprehension state, it was only a realistic goal for a tiny fraction of the world's greatest prodigies.
Even though Liu Yao was an accomplished fifth-state martial artist, he had never viewed the Dao Comprehension state as a realistic goal. In his eyes, Dao Comprehension-state cultivators were unfathomable beings whom he couldn't even hope to oppose.
"Could... could you turn us back into humans?" Ning Chigong asked tentatively. "We can't exactly return to the city like this."
"You're right, I completely forgot," Qiao Zhi exclaimed as he slapped a paw against his forehead.
After Qiao Zhi administered a series of palm strikes, Liu Yao and Ning Chigong reverted to their human forms. They put their clothes back on and made their way toward the city.
"I have to return to the Daoist temple," Ning Chigong sighed. "I'm the deputy hundred-man commander, so it would look suspicious if I didn't show up after such a major incident at the temple."
Liu Yao nodded and the two of them parted ways.
Over the next few days, several pieces of news began spreading throughout the Ba Manor.
A demonic tainting incident had taken place inside the Daoist temple, and twelve people had undergone demonification before being sent to the afterlife by the temple's Daoist priests.
𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦
The five scourges of the Tribulation Religion had been slain inside the Daoist temple. Bai Shihe had fought Pope Li Yaofeng of the Tribulation Religion, and the battle had ended with the latter fleeing after sustaining severe injuries.
Of course, the most intriguing news of all concerned the cat fiend who called himself Omniscient. He had intervened in the battle between Bai Shihe and Li Yaofeng and played an important role in the latter's defeat.
Almost overnight, Omniscient became a household name throughout the entire Shu Province, and everyone began speculating about his identity.
Shu Province's Demon Vanquishing Department had already dispatched many people to investigate the cat fiend's origins. Their findings were compiled into a report and secretly sent to the capital.
***
As for Omniscient himself, he had already returned to Hidden Fiend Village on the back of a Chongming Bird.
On the way back, he opened his small notebook and began relearning all the knowledge he had released through his Ring of Ignorance. However, he stopped before reaching knowledge related to the Corpse Codex and the ascensionist notes at the very end of the notebook.
Those pieces of knowledge were too dangerous, so Chu Qiguang had always refrained from committing them to memory, choosing instead to keep them sealed within his notebook.
The Chongming Bird was as fast as ever, and it didn't take long before the outline of Hidden Fiend Village appeared in the distance.
Chu Qiguang had obtained the Vajra Laws from Jun Li. As a gesture of gratitude for the Dao Comprehension Seed's contribution, Chu Qiguang had activated his fiendish bloodline and personally escorted him to Hidden Fiend Village.
After parting ways with Jun Li, Chu Qiguang began inspecting the Vajra Laws, and a passage of text surfaced before his Dao pursuer eyes.
"Vajra Laws, one of the most difficult physical cultivation arts in existence, said to have been left behind by the Buddha for his followers. Due to its excessive difficulty, fewer and fewer people have chosen to pursue it over time, and it's gradually fading into obscurity. It's said that the Buddha was the first awakened human, and in the pursuit of truth, he could fool even the gods."
While Chu Qiguang was naturally very eager to begin cultivating the Vajra Laws, he had no intention of doing so in Hidden Fiend Village. Having grown accustomed to making progress through boons, conventional cultivation no longer appealed to Chu Qiguang, and his plan was to return to the Ba Manor and browse the scriptures in the Daoist temple's scripture library to help him master the Vajra Laws.
However, now that he was back at the village, this was the perfect time to run some experiments with his newly tamed demons.
He didn't want to do this in the Ba Manor as he ran the risk of being exposed, but he had no such qualms in Hidden Fiend Village.
Thus, Chu Qiguang made his way toward the blood pool with the rocky snake, the ghost flame, the blood panther, and a puddle of black sludge, which was the demon that he had secured from Gao Yi.
The rock snake can control rocks and the ghost flame can control fire, but I haven't cultivated the Animitta Tribulation, so I can't really make use of the other demons' bloodform and sludgeform abilities. From that perspective, the rock snake and the ghost flame are the most useful to me for now.
With the four demons arranged in a row before him, Chu Qiguang asked, "Can you understand what I'm saying?"
The four demons nodded in response, and the ones that didn't have heads bobbed up and down as a gesture of affirmation.
Right now, I can control these demons through verbal instructions, but it would be a real pain to have to constantly issue verbal instructions to them in battle, and my opponents will also overhear those instructions. Perhaps...