Taoist Master Xuanhuang

“Great master, you have finally arrived.”

"Congratulations on the birth of our great master!"

In a secluded place, a group of elegantly dressed and beautiful women knelt devoutly before a naked man.

This place is a small but magnificent secret realm. However, the ripples reveal that although the secret realm is not very large, it is very stable. The crimson Dao essence seems to carry endless blood energy.

What's even more striking is the pervasive atmosphere of debauchery, as if the air is devoid of oxygen, filled only with the scent of desire that makes one want to indulge in wantonness with just a breath.

"You guys did a great job."

A handsome, naked man looked with satisfaction at the group of women kneeling before him.

These women all had a faint flame mark between their eyebrows. Upon closer inspection, one could see that the flame seemed to be alive, constantly twisting and turning. However, it did not appear eerie. Instead, it gave the women an aura of both holiness and debauchery, making them quite unique.

This man's completely naked body.

Like a powerful source of attraction, it exuded a fatal allure to these women.

Despite their prostrations and kneeling, the lewdness in their intoxicated eyes made them involuntarily swallow their saliva.

The man was a realm saint, but his level was not strong, only at the king level. However, he was not an ordinary king, but someone close to the fifth-order venerable.

The man's name was even more infamous; he was a man who was torn apart by five horses, named Lao Ai.

Sacredness can be righteous or evil, god or ghost, saint or thief; it is the condensation of metaphysical energy, such as the aspirations, beliefs, desires, and fantasies of living beings.

Just as there are righteous paths like the Second Temple of Cultural Relics, there are also evil paths and deities formed by negative energies such as fear and desire.

Lao Ai was one of them.

He himself never expected that he could be reborn, especially after he learned why the divine came to be.

Whether it's a good reputation or a bad reputation, reputation becomes the core issue at this moment.

Even if I am infamous for eternity, even if I am despised by others, I have still returned to the divine.

He was also very lucky; the realm he was in was a swamp full of secret realms.

The so-called Secret Swamp is a place where countless secret realms overlap, forming a place composed of countless superimposed spaces.

Such places are defined by cultivators as secret swamps.

A single secret realm is not scary, but once countless secret realms are combined together, it becomes a very troublesome place.

Entering this place is like entering a spatial maze. Powerful cultivators can break through a single secret realm with their own strength, but it is difficult to break through the secret realm swamp where countless secret realms are superimposed.

Once a cultivator is trapped in the secret swamp, only two paths await them: one is death, which has a 99.99% probability.

The other path was extremely rare; the cultivator was very lucky and broke through a secret realm without any spatial tremors. It happened to be a secret realm on the edge, and he managed to escape the secret realm swamp by sheer luck.

Another reason why they are called swamps is that most of these secret realms are ruins.

What is a ruined secret realm? To understand it, we need to start with how the secret realm came into being.

Secret realms are worlds that shattered due to the collision of countless worlds during the process of the fusion of all worlds, or are formed from fragments of space.

Therefore, secret realms come in all shapes and sizes. Some secret realms are the essence of a world, while others are poisonous and desolate places.

For example, a secret realm may be filled with poisonous gas, death, yin energy, and other dark energies.

Such a secret realm is dilapidated, decaying, and weak, tainted with the aura of misfortune and disaster. It is a moving source of pollution. Once you accidentally step into such a secret realm, you will be infected by its deathly aura and misfortune.

The shattering of the world and the merging of all realms is tantamount to the death of a world. One can imagine how much deathly aura and misfortune a dead world would exude.

The death of a single living being is unsettling, let alone the death of an entire world.

Such secret realms will not last long; they will wither and merge into the main world in a very short time, and once merged into the main world, they will become eerie.

The bizarre is born from the condensation of dark power from fragments of rules.

The Broken Realm is, strictly speaking, the greatest source of the eerie, and that's how the eerie is born.

When a person dies, they become a ghost; when a person dies in the underworld, they become a monster.

Deception is a rule.

This is how the strange phenomena on Earth came about.

Why are all so-called eerie things considered evil? This is due to their inherent nature.

Think about it, a secret realm that is a convergence of the death energy and disaster energy of a world, with such a background as its core, the eerie energy formed is actually luminous?

This is only the first round of screening; there's a second round to come.

The second path is the distorted Heavenly Dao. Even if a peaceful and righteous secret realm is shattered and finally merges into the main world, because the Heavenly Dao is distorted, even a fragment of a positive rule will be infected.

These two processes are what give rise to the bizarre, hence the name "bizarre."

In summary, the eerie is the embodiment of the dark side.

The positive aspects will seamlessly integrate into the main world, without giving rise to anything strange, and will become the foundation of the new world's existence.

Only those misfortunes, disasters, and sinister aspects that the world cannot overcome in a short time will stir up trouble and become a strange or eerie realm.

The eerie has a geographical aspect.

The eerie creatures born in human settlements absorb human fear and resentment, thus forming terrifying eerie creatures in the human heart.

If a strange creature is born in a place without humans, it will develop its own unique local characteristics based on the environment of that place.

The principle of adapting to local conditions is also applicable here.

That's why the eerie things in human spiritual places terrify humans so much.

Closer to home.

It can be said that the secret swamps are entities that have not yet been broken and have not yet been born into strange beings.

The reason it didn't break is because of the workings of nature.

The cause of this creation comes from the primordial chaos.

Because of the birth of Xuanhuang, which spanned the entire Xia Kingdom starting from Nanshi, the strange phenomena within the Xia Kingdom gradually disappeared.

Because Xuanhuang changed the environment in which the strange creature was born, the cultivators' fortune, as they grew stronger, spread throughout the entire Xia Kingdom.

The rise of cultivators' fortunes inevitably suppressed the strange fortunes within the Xia Kingdom, as mentioned before.

However, the world is still constantly merging, and Earth is constantly growing.

The absence of bizarre environments that give rise to these worlds does not mean that the deathly aura and misfortune of these worlds have disappeared.

How to do?
The Secret Swamp is a product of this.

Suppressed by the cultivators' luck, they were gradually gathered together, forming countless overlapping secret realms in the secret realm swamp.

If it weren't for the existence of Xuanhuang, these secret realms and swamps would have become bizarre and eerie places.

This is the creation of the secret swamp.

Strictly speaking, their emergence is the reason for the rise of cultivators.

Lao Ai's realm unfortunately fell into such a place, surrounded by a secret swamp.

But he was also lucky, because of the secret swamp, no one discovered his domain.

Furthermore, due to the environment of his birthplace, his domain underwent a unique transformation. It could devour secret realms and transform them into the origin of his domain to grow stronger.

The main reason is adapting to local conditions. Born in such an environment, the realm needs to evolve in accordance with local conditions in order to survive.

A realm born amidst famous mountains and rivers, giving birth to an origin suited to those mountains and rivers.

A realm living in a secret swamp naturally evolved forms of evolution suitable for this environment.

The Lao Ai Realm is such a realm that evolves under the guidance of its environment.

Lao Ai was not a figure who would be remembered for all time; even if he had some fame, it was for a bad reputation, the kind that would be infamous for eternity.

Moreover, compared to prominent figures in history, he is not well-known.

Even if one becomes a realm saint, it will be the lowest level, barely reaching the level of a fourth-order true king.

Originally, Lao Ai's realm was such a tiny realm, with him as the only deity within it, the most insignificant existence in the entire realm.

In addition, he is not a god or a saint; he is a celebrity, and the kind of celebrity who will be infamous for all eternity.

They are neither blessed with divine or human glory, and belong to the most pitiful category of those who are neither.

Who knew that by sheer coincidence, due to the rise of Xuanhuang, the soil for the strange creatures to survive was gone, and it was forced to be suppressed into a secret swamp, which happened to be right on the edge of Lao Ai's domain.

As the environment changes, the boundaries undergo different evolutionary changes.

After all, compared to a realm, even the smallest of Lao Ai's realms is incomparable to ordinary secret realms.

The powerful devour the weak; that's how it is.

However, this place is a place that is isolated from the world.

It could never have developed into so many women having been imprinted with the soul mark of slavery by him, but it happened anyway.

It all comes down to the cultivators.

The secret swamp, though dangerous, is also very valuable.

Misfortune, death, and disaster may seem dangerous, but the cultivation world today is vastly different from what it used to be, and there are cultivators who can turn waste into treasure.

There is a method that can transform death, misfortune, and disaster into its own unique characteristics.

It not only exists, but it is also at the level of invincible magic.

The three great laws of Xuanhuang can refine 129,600 kinds of extraordinary energy, including the energy of misfortune, the energy of disaster, the energy of death, resentment, and obsession.

There are monks who specialize in studying this, and some even develop and utilize it.

Death energy is dangerous, misfortune energy is dangerous. Even if you don't refine and absorb it, you can still process it to make misfortune talismans, death artifacts, soul-summoning banners, seeds of misfortune, and other external objects.

There is nothing that a monk does not study.

It can be said that deathly energy, misfortune, and resentment are also valuable resources.

Since it is a resource, there will be cultivators who want to obtain it.

The Secret Swamp is such a treasure trove, and many cultivators will risk their lives to explore it for points or even merit.

The group of women who were implanted with the spirit slave mark by Lao Ai were the female cultivators who went on the expedition (he spared none of the men), as well as the female cultivators who were sent out by Lao Ai to lure or kidnap after being controlled.

After decades of effort, three thousand spirit slaves have been developed.

If it weren't for the precautions, the number would have been even higher, and of course, many have already died or been forced to die.

Those who die are fine, but those who are forced to die are part of a program set up by Lao Ai. Once they are at risk of being exposed, the spirit slaves who are active outside will self-destruct and die, leaving no hidden dangers.

Over the years, the number of spirit slaves who have died has exceeded three thousand.

Moreover, these spirit slaves have another very obvious characteristic: upon closer inspection, more than half of them have large bellies, meaning they are pregnant.

All of this is thanks to Lao Ai.

But there are no children, or rather, no offspring.

This brings us to Lao Ai's Spirit Transformation Technique.

Having enslaved so many women, he naturally obtained information from the outside world and became aware of the existence of Xuanhuang.

Nature became aware of the changes in the outside world.

Therefore, he was not satisfied with merely having a sacred identity, which, although desirable, made him too subject to others' control.

Moreover, the sacred cannot compare to the truly cultivated.

Dissatisfaction led him to make changes, perhaps starting with Lü Dongbin leaving a sword stele on Qingyun Mountain, or perhaps with the corpse retriever, Peng Yue, and Zuo Qiuming.

In short, he understood the information brought by the female slave about the beginning of the highest-level sacred human cultivation.

If Zuo Qiuming could retrieve corpses, why couldn't I?
However, the female slaves he controlled were not experts, nor were they legends capable of establishing themselves in Nanshi.

Even those low-level cultivators who struggle to gain a foothold in big cities.

Therefore, they cannot obtain some precious secret techniques and cultivation methods.

They acquired quite a few unorthodox or even morally ambiguous martial arts techniques.

Based on his own talent, and combined with the true cultivation techniques brought back by the female slave, he incorporated many techniques, such as the Spirit Fusion Technique, the Refining Technique, and the Blessing Technique.

With his diverse and ingenious stitching techniques, he created the Spirit Transformation Technique.

Sometimes one has to admire the divine eye, even Lao Ai was no exception.

He and the top saints all saw the same thing: they all envied the true cultivation world flow system, which is the dantian method.

Both Confucius and Jiang Ziya ultimately aimed to refine the realm and transform it into their own dantian.

Lao Ai also realized this.

However, there is another drawback: cultivation is not possible within the realm; one can only create clones like Zuo Qiuming and others.

Because he controlled many maids, he underwent countless inhumane experiments, and after nearly a thousand maids died, he finally created the Divine Interference Technique.

That was his previous identity.

He dared not walk in the main world, so he chose a secret realm.

This is the place we are in right now, a space that, though not large, is incredibly magnificent.

The creation of his clone was just the beginning. To become a cultivator with a dantian, he needed a dantian. Based on the various cultivation techniques brought by the female slave, he created the Spirit Transformation Technique.

In short, refine this secret realm into your own dantian.

He couldn't create the righteous and just teachings, but he was very good at creating the evil and heretical ones.

This method is extremely evil. It causes female slaves to become pregnant with their own children, and after the children are born, they are not raised to adulthood, but are instead refined into a secret realm.

Because of the connection of blood ties, and because the infants being refined are all newborns whose innate energy has not yet dissipated, they have a great karmic relationship with him, which is equivalent to refining his own child into a special secret realm.

This special secret realm is one's own dantian. As long as one continues to cultivate it and more children integrate into it, the karmic connection between oneself and this secret realm will be deepened.

Then it won't be long before it refines the secret realm into its own dantian.

His ambitions are considerable; he doesn't just aspire to a first or second-tier dantian, but rather a fourth-tier dantian world.

It is the world of the dantian. (End of this chapter)