Conferred God: Started from Swallowing the Heaven-Repairing Stone

Chapter 301 The Opportunity for the Rise of the West

When the princes saw the incense and the power of vows, they felt that this thing was very mysterious. No wonder it was called acquired merit. Ao Bing had high hopes for it, believing that it had the potential to replace the essence of flesh and blood and become a new sacrifice.

However, because the Golden Immortal of the Orthodox School has a broader vision and deeper knowledge, after seeing the mystery of the power of incense and vows, he thinks more deeply and thinks more.

They immediately saw the bright prospects of the power of incense and vows, and that its power to replace spiritual energy could not be exaggerated.

After all, although spiritual energy can be found everywhere, cultivators cannot live without it.

The emergence of incense and vows is undoubtedly telling all practitioners that spiritual energy is no longer the only option on the path of practice, and vows can completely replace it.

Even in the Dharma-Ending Age, when all spiritual energy disappears, the power of incense and vows can still maintain the prosperity of practice.

Ever since the great changes in ancient times, when the world has become increasingly weak, many cultivators have been thinking, if the prehistoric world completely enters the Dharma Ending Age, where should they, the cultivators, go?
You can't just wait to die, right?

For this reason, many powerful people are looking for ways to crack it.

But after thinking it over, the only solution they could think of was still the same old one, which was to find a way to repair the damaged ancient world in order to prevent or delay the arrival of the Dharma Ending Age.

It cannot be said that this method is bad, but after countless years, the situation in the prehistoric world has only started to improve in the past few years, and the rest of the time, it has been getting worse and worse. It can be seen that this method is somewhat unreliable.

But at this moment, with the emergence of incense and vows, the Golden Immortal of the Orthodox Teaching suddenly discovered that a solution to break through the Dharma Ending Age had appeared.

As long as there is incense and vows, there will be no spiritual energy. Relying on the incense and vows, the monks can still practice.

Moreover, most importantly, the power of incense and vows comes from sentient beings, not from heaven and earth. This means that no matter how bad the cultivation environment becomes, as long as sentient beings are still there, there will be an endless supply of incense and vows.

Unlike spiritual energy, which is completely affected by the practice environment, once the practice environment deteriorates, spiritual energy becomes a non-renewable resource, and the more you use, the less you have.

"Damn it!"

"Why was this mysterious thing thought up by the human dragon and not me?"

Realizing the importance of incense and vows and the impact they produce, the Golden Immortal of the Chan sect was filled with envy and hatred towards Ao Bing.

In the prehistoric world, the key to cultivation is not talent, but luck. If you want to become the strongest, you must have enough luck. Other than that, nothing else matters, no matter how good your talent is.

Among the three thousand mortals in Zixiao Palace, who has poor talent? But only a few of them can finally achieve enlightenment? Do they lack talent? No, they lack luck.

It can be said that luck is everything. If you want to become stronger, you must find a way to gain more luck.

The power of incense and vows can replace the function of spiritual energy, which means that once it appears, it can gather endless luck for its creator.

There is no doubt that the good fortune generated by the power of incense and vows can fully support the rise of a great master with supernatural powers.

Thinking of this, how could the Golden Immortal of the Chan Sect not be jealous? How could he not hate?

They could not forget that Taiyi Zhenren died at the hands of Ao Bing. To them, Ao Bing was their biggest enemy, someone they wanted to kill desperately.

But now, seeing Ao Bing take out such a mysterious thing as the power of incense and vows, which almost pierced the road to the realm of great supernatural powers in the future, it was even more painful than killing them.

The greatest pain in life is to see the gap between yourself and your enemy grow bigger and bigger, but you are powerless to do anything about it.

This is what the Golden Immortal of the Chan Sect feels at this moment, he is almost dying of pain.

The Golden Immortal of the Chan Sect felt very uncomfortable, but another group of people, the Western Sect disciples from the West, felt completely different from them at this moment, and their hearts were filled with great surprise.

Where is the most beneficial for the emergence of incense and vows? Without a doubt, the West.

Even though the environment had been getting worse, the East was not short of spiritual energy. The reason why the strong men in the East were worried about the end of the Dharma era was simply to be prepared for danger in times of peace.

But it is different in the West. Ever since the great war between Taoism and Demons, when the Western ancestral bloodline was destroyed, no matter how the world changes, the West will always be in what the East calls the Dharma Ending Age.

Therefore, it is true that the East is not short of spiritual energy, but the West is. In this case, the importance of incense and vows to the West is self-evident, and it can completely solve the problem of the West's lack of spiritual energy.

The problem of lack of spiritual energy in the West has been solved, so how far will Daxing be? Thinking of this scene, it is difficult for the disciples of the Western Sect not to be excited.

The West is barren, meaning that the spiritual energy is insufficient and cannot support too many monks. But being unable to support monks does not mean that it cannot support mortals.

The West has no shortage of fertile land, but it lacks spiritual fields for growing spiritual medicine. If these fertile lands were planted with food, the number of mortals that could be fed would be countless.

The more mortals there are, the more incense and vows can be generated.

The more the Western disciples thought about it, the more excited they became. The more they thought about it, the more they felt that this plan was feasible. They really wanted to return to the West right now to promote the incense and the way of the gods and collect incense and vows.

As for the mission of preaching in the East, they no longer care. Since the power of incense and prayer can make the West flourish, why take the risk of preaching in the East? Are they looking for excitement because they think their life is too long?
At this time, the Western Sect disciples were all focused on the incense and vows, and had completely forgotten about the conflict with Ao Bing yesterday.

What's wrong with cursing a few times? What's wrong with changing a dragon to a snake? The Western dragon is originally a snake, and the Dragon Lord is not wrong.

In addition, let alone changing the dragon into a snake, as long as Ao Bing is willing to pass on the incense and vows to the West, even if it means changing the dragon into an insect or even destroying it all, that is no problem as long as Ao Bing is satisfied.

Even if Ao Bing was willing to come to the West, the two saints of the West could appoint him as the deputy leader, responsible for the specific affairs of the Western Church.

The deputy leader here is not a deputy leader like Ran Deng who has only the title but no real power, but a deputy leader who truly holds power, whose authority is second only to that of a saint.

After all, if Ran Deng joined the Chan Sect, it would not bring any benefits to Yuanshi Tianzun, but would ruin his reputation. But if Ao Bing joined the Western Sect, the Western Sect would immediately gain great benefits.

There is absolutely no comparison between the two.

Ao Bing obviously noticed the abnormality of the disciples of the Chan Sect and the Western Sect. But at the moment, he had no time to deal with them, and his main focus was on the princes below.

If we want to change the sacrifices, abolish human sacrifices, and achieve great merit, the key lies in these princes. As long as they are willing to nod, then the matter will be mostly settled.

On the contrary, if they object, things will be troublesome.

"The power of incense and vows is indeed as mysterious as the rumors say. It can be directly absorbed and refined to strengthen the spirit."

The princes in the hall gradually came back to their senses and praised the power of incense from the bottom of their hearts. Although the power of incense can only strengthen the spirit, it is actually very useful. After all, the way of cultivation is divided into four stages: refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, refining spirit into emptiness, and returning to emptiness and merging with the Tao.

From this, we can see that refining the spirit is extremely important. One step further can return to the void, and one step back can transform into qi. It is one step faster than directly refining spiritual energy.

In other words, by refining the power of incense and vows, one can directly skip the step of refining qi, and can start from refining the spirit.

Don't underestimate this step. The path of cultivation is always one step faster, then every step is faster; one step slower, then every step is slower. If you take a step faster at the beginning, then you will only get faster and faster in the future.

That is why it is said that the power of incense and vows is extremely important and its potential far exceeds that of spiritual energy.

As for the body-refining monks, don't think that they don't need incense and vows when they embark on the path of body-refining. On the contrary, body-refining monks need incense and vows even more.

A cultivator can refine Qi and transform it into spirit, and naturally he can also refine spirit and return Qi. Moreover, the innate Qi obtained by refining spirit and returning Qi is more refined than the Qi obtained by refining external spiritual energy, and has a better effect on refining the body.

Of course, these are the benefits that living people need to consider. Although the princes are living people, because the destiny of humanity is too overbearing, they are all unable to practice, and can only hope for immortality after death.

In this case, the princes can be regarded as dead people. Therefore, for them, it is not important whether the incense and vows can benefit the living, but what is important is whether it can benefit the dead.

The benefits of incense and vows to the dead are obvious. After death, people will become ghosts, and ghosts are a group of spiritual power with the same nature as incense and vows.

The quickest way for ghosts to become stronger is to devour living people or to devour their own kind. However, doing so has great side effects. One is to fall into madness, and the other is to be hated by the heavens and thus be punished by the heavens.

The method of living sacrifice is essentially a combination of these two shortcuts, devouring the vitality of the living as well as their soul.

Therefore, this way cannot last long and will be abolished by the right way sooner or later. The right way that will replace them is the way of incense and fire.

Although the power of incense and vows is not as strong as the way of living sacrifice, it is a spiritual power and can be regarded as the same as ghosts. Ghosts absorbing the power of incense and vows is also a shortcut to become stronger, and there is no harm!

There is no doubt that the power of incense and prayers is useful to the princes. However, many things cannot be implemented just because they are useful to them.

There are many kinds of uses, some are big uses and some are small uses. Although incense and vows are good, they are still slightly inferior to the way of living sacrifice.

Therefore, some forces may not be willing to give up the better method of living sacrifice and instead choose the slightly inferior method of incense and vows.

As for the risks of such a choice, they certainly know it. But people are lucky, and before the risk actually comes, they will not regret it, but will feel that they have not earned enough.

"The power of incense and prayers is very good, and it can fully meet the needs of our ancestors in the underworld. Therefore, I support Lord Long and use the power of incense and prayers to replace living sacrifices."

While all the princes were silent, Ji Chang, the leader of the western princes, was the first to break the silence and clearly expressed his support for Ao Bing.

There is no doubt that Duke Xibo was a radical among the princes. He had long been tired of worshiping ghosts and gods from all directions. Among all the vassal states of the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou State, where Duke Xibo was located, was the least affected by ghosts and gods.

More importantly, King Xibo had publicly expressed his attitude more than once, proposing to directly abolish the sacrifices to the four gods and ghosts. His attitude was much more radical than Ao Bing's.

"We agree too!"

"Since the way of living sacrifice has become an evil way, we are descendants of the Holy Queen and have been taught by the sages. How can we associate with evil ways and harm our people?"

After Duke Xibo, most of the other princes, led by the other three Dukes, also expressed their support for Ao Bing.

Just as these princes said, if one looks closely, their bloodlines can be traced back to the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, or even more ancient sages.

In this situation, it was really difficult for them to resist when Ao Bing brought the righteous way to suppress them. They couldn't really go against the general trend and join the evil ways, letting the glory of the Holy Emperor be tarnished on them?

They are not those princes who rely on ghosts and gods from all directions or underground ancestors to rise. Their roots are not underground, but in the human world. Naturally, they know what to do and what not to do.

Changing the offerings to the four gods would certainly anger them, but the first to bear the brunt was the Shang Dynasty, not them. I believe that the Shang Dynasty dared to do this because it was a way to deal with the four gods, and they didn't need to worry about it.

As for changing the offerings of the ancestors, they might be dissatisfied. But it doesn't matter, I believe the ancestors underground will understand. Otherwise, they can't really be labeled as evil.

This would certainly satisfy the ancestors underground, but it would anger the ancestors in the sky.

The real foundation of the princes is not the ancestors who have limited abilities and went to the Netherworld due to exhaustion of lifespan, but the ancestors who made great achievements during their lifetime and were able to ascend to the Fire Cloud Cave and accompany the Holy Emperor after their death.

Therefore, when the princes do things, they must first satisfy the ancestors in heaven, and then the ancestors under the earth. When the demands of the two conflict, the ancestors in heaven will naturally take precedence.

There is no other reason, because the ancestor in heaven is stronger.

"We cannot bear the wrath of the ghosts and gods, so we ask Lord Long to forgive us. We cannot agree to replace the sacrifice."

There were voices of approval, and naturally there were voices of opposition. The princes who founded their states because of ghosts and gods could not disobey the orders of ghosts and gods. Therefore, even if they wanted to agree to change the sacrifice, they could not.

"We, the descendants, cannot bear the wrath of the underground ancestors. I'm sorry."

Those princes who founded their countries because of the underground ancestors also said this with shame.

Relying on others to build a country inevitably means losing some autonomy and not being able to make decisions on many major issues. This is the helplessness of these vassal states. They are called vassal states, but in fact they still have to look at others' faces.

"Knowing that it is an evil path, yet still doing it, how is that different from the evil god?"

"Besides, there is a difference between life and death. Since you are already dead, you should just be reincarnated honestly. Why do you keep interfering in the affairs of the human world? And where does this put the Queen Mother Hou Tu?"

Ao Bing's face darkened and he asked sternly.

He said this with confidence, because he was right. Living sacrifice is an evil way, this is what Emperor Yu said. There is a difference between life and death, and the dead cannot interfere in human affairs. This is also part of the rules of heaven and earth.

The ghosts and gods of the four directions violated this point, so it was not an exaggeration for Ao Bing to characterize them as evil gods, and the others could not refute it.

"The affairs of the vassal states should be decided by the vassal states. Lord Long has stretched his hand too far."

The stubborn princes said this, obviously dissatisfied with Ao Bing forcing them to change the sacrifice.

(End of this chapter)