World version update

Chapter 290 Sequence Seven: The Judge of Crimes
Unlike Lu Yan's underworld path, which was still in its infancy and started from scratch, this newly created Yellow Springs path was essentially a modification of the path of the dead.

As one of the oldest extraordinary pathways in the mysterious world, the Dead Path naturally possesses a considerable number of extraordinary individuals scattered throughout the world.

Even though Lu Yan had almost wiped out the high-level forces of the Council of the Dead in the Tomb of the Dead, there are still roughly thousands of low- to mid-level transcendent beings left behind around the world.

At this moment, as the power of creation descended, the rules of the world were forcibly altered. These extraordinary individuals who originally walked the path of the dead, with their unique and extraordinary power origins, were unknowingly connected to the new path of the underworld.

In an instant, all the extraordinary beings on the Yellow Springs Path seemed to vaguely see a vast world outside this realm that had established a connection with them.

The Yellow Springs, the source of the so-called Yellow Springs Path, also flows alongside every extraordinary person on the Yellow Springs Path.

This step is of paramount importance.

It instantly made the Yellow Springs Path one of the largest extraordinary paths in the mysterious world, boasting a large number of superhumans, from the moment it was born.

Its influence and potential far surpass those of niche approaches that require spreading faith from scratch.

Lu Yan sat upright on his divine throne, clearly sensing that as the Yellow Springs Path stabilized completely, replacing the Death Path in the world's rules, a vast and pure stream of rule feedback, like hundreds of rivers flowing into the sea, continuously converged from all directions of the real world, surging towards the Netherworld's small world, and ultimately merging into himself.

This feedback not only rapidly improved his cultivation level as a Golden Core cultivator, but also instantly elevated his understanding and control over the rules related to death, the end, and the Yellow Springs by more than one level.

At the same time, he also sensed that the Yellow Springs Path, which he had forcibly grafted onto the path using the power of creation, was constantly undergoing self-improvement and adjustment under the guidance and correction of the magnificent order of the Divine Court and the Underworld.

The potion recipes, advancement rituals, and even the names and core abilities of each sequence that originally belonged to the path of the dead have begun to undergo profound changes from their origins to their appearances, making them more in line with the essence of the underworld and the Yellow Springs.

Sequence Nine: The Corpse Collector becomes the Soul Guide. Their core ability is no longer merely to dispose of corpses, but to guide the souls of the deceased, preventing them from getting lost, and to initially lead them to the underworld.

Sequence Eight: Gravedigger Becomes Spirit Ferryman. No longer simply digging graves and cultivating corpses, but able to briefly open a passage connecting reality and the underworld using themselves as coordinates, like a spirit ferryman briefly walking between the realms of life and death.

Sequence Seven: The Living Dead is renamed Funeral Director. The core ability has undergone a qualitative change. It is no longer about manipulating corpses, but about gaining the ability to tamper with the appearance of death itself. It can fake the cause of death and even interfere with the superficial destiny trajectory related to death to a certain extent, tidying up the final appearance and worldly ties of the deceased.

Sequence Six: The ghost is renamed the Book of Life and Death Clerk. They begin to grasp the essence of the underworld's death rules, able to view, record, and even modify the Book of Life and Death information of non-ranked beings within their limited authority, thus taking initial control of fate.

Sequence Five: The Spirit Shaman is renamed the Judge of the Underworld.
Lu Yan was completely immersed in creating and revising the Yellow Springs Path, a wondrous experience akin to that of a creator.

Every subtle change in the rules of the world, every deepening and improvement of the Yellow Springs Path imprint, would trigger a clear and perceptible force of rule feedback, nourishing his Great Dao Golden Core and propelling his cultivation to rise at an incredible speed.

Even before that, when he successfully created the Eight Soul-Binding Envoys of the Underworld Path Sequence, the rule-based gifts brought about by creating that path had already allowed him to break through smoothly and enter the mid-stage of the Golden Core realm.

At this moment, thanks to the rule change of altering the path of the dead to the path of the underworld, the power that comes back is like a vast river.

This is a gift from the Great Dao Golden Elixir; as long as one's understanding of heaven and earth is aligned, there will be almost no bottlenecks in cultivation.

Lu Yan advanced triumphantly all the way until he finally settled steadily at the Great Perfection of the Golden Core stage.

At this moment, the Great Dao Golden Core within his body was perfectly complete and flawless, like a divine object bestowed by heaven and earth.

If placed in a smaller world of lower status, Lu Yan could even use the Great Dao Golden Core to merge with the Dao.

Immersed in this wondrous state of evolving rules and soaring cultivation, Lu Yan almost forgot the passage of time.

He was completely absorbed in sorting out the remaining rules of the deceased's path, combining them with the concepts of the underworld, and constantly revising and perfecting them.

However, any creation or modification will inevitably incur certain costs.

The Path of the Dead, as an ancient path, has accumulated profound knowledge, but it is not without limit.

With the continued influence of the power of creation and the continuous downward extension and improvement of the Yellow Springs pathway sequence, the original rules and foundations of the Dead Path are being rapidly consumed in this drastic change and reshaping.

Finally, when Lu Yan corrected and stabilized the Yellow Springs Path to the level of Yellow Springs Judge (Sequence Five), he clearly felt that the supporting force from the residual rules of the Dead Path had gradually weakened, making subsequent corrections extremely difficult.

This means that the improvement of the Yellow Springs pathway can only stop here for the time being.

Above that is Sequence Four, a power level that has reached the realm of a human saint, roughly equivalent to a Nascent Soul True Monarch in the Xianxia (fantasy martial arts) system.

To create this sequence out of thin air would require a far greater foundation in rules and an understanding of the nature of the world than before.

More importantly, modifying and opening up sequences four and above means further opening up the core permissions of the Underworld and the Yellow Springs, allowing extraordinary individuals who embark on this path to truly come into contact with some of the essence of the Underworld, and perhaps even glimpse the tip of the iceberg of the divine order.

In this regard, Lu Yan himself is not actually worried about the so-called power being taken away.

On the contrary, he was very pleased to see more powerful beings able to advance through the Yellow Springs and eventually integrate into the Underworld system.

Because of the perfection and power of the Divine Court and the Underworld, it is necessary to absorb a sufficient number of powerful spirits and even the concept of rules to fill its structure.

Every powerful transcendent being on the path to the underworld has the potential to become a deity or an important part of the underworld in the future, jointly promoting the growth and improvement of the divine court and the underworld.

At this stage, the main reason that limits his ability to further improve the Yellow Springs pathway sequence is actually the underworld itself.

This small world he created, although it has expanded several times to a size of about 400 kilometers in radius, is already considered vast and boundless for ordinary mortals and even low-level superhumans.

However, for those who truly stand at the pinnacle of power, the four human saints of the Sequence, and even higher-level beings, this scope is far from sufficient.

Their powerful perception might allow them to see through the true nature and strength of this small world at a glance, and discern its still unstable foundation.

Before the Netherworld can truly grow and mature to a level comparable to a small world, possessing a sufficiently profound foundation and a solid barrier of rules, Lu Yan must remain sufficiently cautious.

He would try his best to avoid opening the underworld to the outside world too early, so as not to let other powerful beings or forces find out its secrets and cause unnecessary trouble or even covetousness.

Therefore, despite the urge to perfect the Yellow Springs Path to a higher sequence in one fell swoop, Lu Yan forcibly suppressed it and decided to temporarily limit the Yellow Springs Path to Sequence Five, Yellow Springs Judge. Although the perfection of the Yellow Springs sequence stopped here and could not be achieved in one fell swoop, Lu Yan's gains from this seclusion were still extremely rich.

First and foremost, there was a tremendous breakthrough in his cultivation level.

The Golden Core stage is at its peak, just a hair's breadth away from the Nascent Soul stage.

Lu Yan actually did not encounter any bottlenecks in breaking through to the Nascent Soul realm.

Unlike breaking through to the Golden Core stage, the Nascent Soul stage does not require the cultivation of entirely new supernatural powers within the body. Rather, it represents a leap in life level and a deepening of understanding of the Great Dao.

With his profound foundation in the Great Dao Golden Core, as well as the insights he accumulated from pioneering new paths and modifying rules, breaking through the core and forming the Nascent Soul stage would be a natural progression, provided the timing was right.

The only thing preventing him from breaking through immediately was the Great Dao of this mysterious world, which was shrouded in thick fog.

With the Great Dao unclear and the laws undefined, Lu Yan could not accurately predict whether his attempt to break through to the Nascent Soul stage in this realm with his Great Dao Golden Core, which contained the aura of the divine courts of the heavens, would trigger some unpredictable interference.

To be on the safe side, he had no choice but to temporarily put aside his idea of ​​breaking through and wait for a more suitable opportunity, or until he had a deeper understanding of the world before making any plans.

Secondly, through the valuable experience of creating and perfecting the Yellow Springs Path, Lu Yan gained a deeper and clearer understanding of how to construct and improve extraordinary paths.

This has great reference value for him to continue to improve the underworld system.

He was confident that as long as Anna, as a pioneer of the Underworld Path, could keep up with the progress of her cultivation, it would only be a matter of time before they perfected the Underworld Path to Sequence Five.

As for the power boost brought by the Yellow Springs itself after merging with the River Styx, and the increase in authority and strength brought by completely controlling the Yellow Springs Path, an ancient and large-scale extraordinary path, these tangible benefits seemed relatively minor in Lu Yan's eyes at this moment.

This world is far too complex. Unless Lu Yan can ascend to the level of a true god in one step, strength is often not the deciding factor.

As he slowly awoke from his seclusion, Lu Yan's divine sense first swept across the Netherworld.

Outside Fengdu City, on the desolate plains that were originally only inhabited by the remnants of zombies and out-of-control wandering spirits, some more incomplete and ancient and eerie souls began to appear.

These souls originated from the River Styx, which was swallowed up by the Yellow Springs.

As the two rivers, each representing a different rule of death, fiercely merged, countless ancient remnants of souls and fragments of obsession, which had settled deep in the riverbed of the River Styx, were washed ashore on this newly born riverbank of the underworld by the power of the Yellow Springs.

They were resurrected in this desolate world belonging to the order of the underworld, in a state between reality and illusion, unexpectedly adding a touch of indescribable eerie vitality to this lifeless world.

Within the towering walls of Fengdu, the wandering souls who had begun their journey through the underworld also showed remarkable progress.

Thanks to the initial establishment of the order of the underworld and the establishment of the Yellow Springs Path, some of the wandering souls were dispatched by Lu Yan to the real world to assist Anna. The aura of these wandering souls has become much more solid, and they have already reached the peak of the ninth sequence of the underworld path.

All that's missing is a trigger, and I'll be able to truly step into Sequence Eight.

Seeing these changes, Lu Yan felt somewhat satisfied, but also a little surprised.

He subconsciously sensed the flow of time in the outside world and realized that his seclusion had unknowingly lasted for a full month.

With a slight thought, Lu Yan's figure vanished silently from the Fengdu Divine Throne.

The next step crosses the boundary between the underworld and reality, returning to the real world.

The moment he returned to reality, an extremely subtle change in cause and effect, like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, suddenly stirred his senses.

This causal fluctuation did not point to him, but rather originated from a being closely connected to him.

Lu Yan raised an eyebrow, his gaze seemingly piercing through layers of walls and distorted spacetime, instantly locking onto the source of the fluctuation.

It was in a simple little church that the workers had built spontaneously on the edge of the industrial area.

The church was small and even somewhat dilapidated, temporarily pieced together from materials from an abandoned factory.

At the innermost part of the church, on a simple altar, is a statue carved from plaster.

The statue's craftsmanship was not particularly exquisite, and the face was somewhat blurry, but it was still vaguely recognizable that it resembled Anna.

At this moment, Anna's pure soul was quietly attached to this simple plaster statue.

The faint yet pure power of faith is converging from all directions, flowing into her soul like a gentle stream, causing an indescribable sublimation of her soul's essence, radiating an almost sacred aura.

Lu Yan immediately activated his "Merchantment of Creation" technique, beginning to deduce the sudden change in cause and effect and Anna's condition.

Countless streams of information flashed before his eyes, and the cause and effect became clear in an instant.

For the past month or so, Anna has faithfully fulfilled her duty to punish the wicked and guide the good workers.

In some mysterious way, her actions perfectly aligned with a certain ritual required for advancement through the path to the underworld.

In addition, the statues were erected spontaneously by the people, which gathered a great deal of pure faith to nourish and catalyze them.

All these factors combined meant that, without Anna's knowledge, her soul essence had accumulated enough foundation to reach the critical point of imminent advancement.

The seventh path to the underworld: the Judge of Crimes!

(End of this chapter)