World version update

Chapter 26 The Source of Merit
Suppress your excitement for the moment. You can hunt down zombies and wandering spirits at any time. There is no need to rush.

With a wave of his hand, he collected all the resentful souls into the soul flag, and then Lu Yan began to study another very important matter.

"Where on earth did the Xuanhuang Merit Fire come from?"

If Lu Yan was a lazy programmer, it would be enough for him to put together a bunch of messy codes and make them run. No one would study how the program runs.

But spiritual practice does not allow for mistakes. If you fail to take each step steadily, big problems will arise sooner or later.

There are two major prerequisites for cultivating the Xuanhuang Merit Fire. One is to have the supernatural power to refine it, and the other is to have enough merit.

But the key issue at the moment is that neither of these two things seems to have anything to do with Lu Yan.

Doubts filled Lu Yan's mind, and he couldn't help but take out the "Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra" to check in detail whether there was any record of the Xuanhuang Merit Fire.

However, as a top-grade magic technique, the "Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra" does not contain any records about merit and the Xuanhuang Merit Fire, nor does it contain any unnecessary descriptions about the Red Lotus Karma Fire spell.

“I used the magic formula of the top-grade spell Red Lotus Karma Fire to cast the Mysterious Yellow Merit Fire.

This is clearly a demonic method that uses the power of cause and effect to kill the enemy. How can it be related to merit and supernatural powers?
Could it be that there are still people in the Demon Sect who are secretly accumulating merits and cultivating magical powers?"

Lu Yan couldn't help but make a casual complaint.

But the next moment, Lu Yan was stunned, and suddenly remembered that when he was practicing the "Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra", he had modified this method by referring to Buddhist and Taoist classics on the Internet because there were errors in the "Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra".

"Is it because I modified the technique? But this is a magic technique after all. No matter how it is modified, it can't be directly used to practice the righteous way, right?"

He was flipping through the errors marked in the "Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra" in his hand. The errors were all seemingly insignificant. Lu Yan practiced according to the modified method and did not encounter any problems.

"Could it be that this Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra was originally wrong? Is it only after I modified it that it has its original appearance?

And this Xuan Huang Merit Fire is also related to the origin of the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra? "

Unfortunately, we are not in the fairy-tale version right now, so Lu Yan’s speculations cannot be confirmed.

"Next time I go to the Xianxia version, I should focus on investigating the relevant information of the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra."

Putting aside this clueless matter for the time being, Lu Yan focused his attention on another problem.

"Refining the Xuanhuang Merit Fire requires a huge amount of merit. When did I accumulate so much merit?"

In the fairy-tale version, merit is a good thing.

In ancient times, there were monks of the Daode Sect who specialized in the practice of merit. Although they were not good at fighting among monks, they had a strong inhibitory effect on evil spirits.

Even the demon cultivators who are at a higher realm can only avoid the disciples of the Daode Sect when they see them. Even the ghosts and gods from the underworld and the evil gods from other sects can only retreat.

Unfortunately, on the eve of the great catastrophe of the Demonic Path, the Daode Sect was besieged by various sects and all of its high-ranking members were killed or injured. Then, the entire clan was massacred by the Demonic Sect, and the inheritance was completely cut off.

To a certain extent, it was precisely because the inheritance of the Daode Sect was cut off that the evil sect was able to run rampant in the world of immortal cultivation with the help of soul flags in later generations.

If the Daode Sect still existed, the righteous sects would not be helpless against the rampant Soul Banners.

This topic has gone too far. Even if we put aside the effect of merit in restraining the evil path, people with merit can improve their fortune and prolong their life even if they do not practice the method of merit.

Lu Yan doesn't think he is a good person in the traditional sense, and he has even been responsible for many deaths.

If the zombies in the apocalyptic version are included, the number of lives lost at his hands would be close to tens of thousands. Every day, thousands of zombies would be killed by the resentful spirits controlled by Lu Yan, and their souls would be stripped off to refine the soul flags.

Even if a great demon saw this killing speed, he would probably just give a thumbs up and call him a natural demon. Not only did he not have to bear the karma, but he also accumulated such a huge amount of merit that could be used to refine magical powers. This made Lu Yan not know how to understand it.

"It's probably related to zombies."

Lu Yan thought for a while and could only make this guess.

After hesitating for a moment, Lu Yan waved the soul flag and summoned the strong man.

"Go and capture a few ordinary zombies for me."

Upon hearing this, the powerful warrior flew out of the abandoned building.

As a commotion and the roar of zombies came from the street building downstairs, after a while, the powerful man returned to the room carrying two zombies.

Lu Yan ignored the rotten flesh that kept falling from the zombies and looked up and down at the zombies in front of him.

His mind was immersed in visualization. As he refined the Xuanhuang Merit Fire, Lu Yan had realized that the strange light in his mind was merit.

After confirming the amount of merit represented by the strange light at the moment, Lu Yan snapped his fingers and a stream of magic power pierced through the zombie's head. The body was completely destroyed and the only remaining seven spirits of the human soul dissipated.

After killing a zombie, Lu Yan immediately entered a state of visualization. The merits in his mind neither increased nor decreased, without the slightest change.

This is enough to show that killing zombies does not accumulate merit.

This made Lu Yan frown slightly. He summoned a vengeful spirit and pointed at the remaining zombie.

"Strip his soul."

Upon hearing this, the vengeful spirit dug its claws into the zombie's body and hooked the fragile zombie spirit out of the rotten flesh.

As the soul leaves the body, the zombie's rotten flesh turns into white bones scattered all over the ground, leaving only a confused wandering soul.

Entering into meditation again, Lu Yan was shocked to find that the strange light representing merit had increased slightly.

Although the amount of growth is extremely small, it is indeed an increase.

At this point, Lu Yan was completely certain that killing zombies would not bring merit, but separating the zombie souls from their bodies would bring merit.

“What is the difference between them?”

Lu Yan fell into deep thought.

After a while, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

“It’s the end of the world!”

Lu Yan suddenly realized, and his eyes lit up.

“In the apocalyptic version, the root cause is that humans lack the two souls of heaven and earth. After their death, their human soul and seven spirits are trapped in their flesh, turning them into zombies that neither live nor die.

Killing zombies will not bring merit, because zombies are dead people, and the birth and death of individual creatures are insignificant to the world as a whole.

But separating the human soul and seven spirits from the zombie's body means freeing the zombie's decaying body from the human soul and seven spirits. For this world, this is eliminating the calamity of the end of the world and is a great achievement!
The Heavenly Dao does not care whether the soul dissipates naturally after being stripped away, or is used for sacrifice to make soul flags.

As long as I can help the souls break free from the shackles of the zombie bodies, I will receive merits. This is why I can accumulate a lot of merits!"

(End of this chapter)