Yefutidaolu

Chapter 402 Ghost King
In the Divine Dynasty, although there is great power in cultivation, in reality, the power of an individual has its limits, namely, the Earth Immortal.

Therefore, the divine dynasty needs a 'system'. The emperor needs to establish a court system to make the whole world work for him, so as to enhance his power. The emperor will become part of the dynasty, thus maintaining his rule.

But now, another path has emerged.

Break all laws with one force!

When power reaches a certain extreme, all rules and obstacles in the world will become meaningless!

As for those thoughts like "I may not be able to cultivate to this level" or "This path is too difficult and too long"...

"Bullshit!" Gao Jian stopped laughing, muttered a curse under his breath, but his eyes burned with an unprecedentedly intense light.

The goal is clearly laid out before us! The path is right beneath our feet! How far we go depends on our own ability and destiny, but if we don't even dare to think about it or try it, then we have truly lived in vain!
There's no need to overthink feasibility! Just do it! Try it! Climb it! That's enough!

Since that's the case, I won't hold back on my insightful opinion!
He's determined to overcome this challenge!

Upon realizing this, Gao Jian struggled, enduring the excruciating pain that felt like his whole body was falling apart, and forced himself to straighten up. He then sat down cross-legged opposite the meditating Ghost King, facing him from afar.

He took a deep breath, suppressed his surging blood and qi, and then without hesitation took out a large amount of high-energy food containing abundant essence from his mustard seed bag. There were red jade-like spirit rice dumplings, crystal clear ferocious beast jerky, pills and ointments that exuded a strange fragrance, and even several jars of sealed spirit wine.

Cultivating martial arts is about tempering the physical body! Essence and energy are the foundation of everything! Now that his essence and energy are nearly depleted, his primary task is to replenish them! To replenish them frantically!

He didn't care about appearances or taste, grabbing food and stuffing it into his mouth, wolfing it down like a starving ghost reincarnated. He circulated his internal energy, absorbing the energy contained within to nourish his parched meridians and internal organs.

The fastest way to replenish your vital energy is through food!
With the intake of a large amount of high-energy food, his pale face gradually regained a rosy hue, and the stagnant blood and qi in his body began to flow slowly again. Although he was far from fully recovered, he at least stabilized his near-death state.

After doing all this, Gao Jian wiped his mouth and turned his gaze back to the ghost king opposite him, who was as solid as an ancient rock. His eyes became extremely sharp and focused.

"Come on!" he muttered to himself, as if challenging himself, "I'm a genius too!"

"Today, I will try to break through your cultivation method of the Ghost King's power!"

He no longer tried to directly touch or sense the other party with his martial arts divine will—that would be tantamount to suicide.

He tried a different approach.

He began to observe.

Observe the Ghost King's perfectly still posture, observe every subtle angle of his lotus mudra, observe the perfect stillness around him, as if he were one with the entire Iron House and even the entire near-hell.

He began to recall.

Recalling the force that rebounded, that fleeting yet deeply imprinted "feeling" on his soul—it wasn't the rage of energy, but more like... the crushing force of rules? A manifestation of a higher level of "order"?

He began to deduce the results.

With his profound martial arts foundation, his knowledge of countless secret texts recorded in the Netherworld, the Imperial Academy's Scripture Pavilion, and even the Xuanhua Tongmen Great Dao Song, as well as his understanding of various power systems such as Buddha's Light and the Desire Realm, he attempted to analyze, imitate, and reverse engineer that fleeting glimpse of the "Sixth Grade" power!
His mind raced with unprecedented speed, his eyes gleaming with a mixture of intelligence and madness. His body remained weak, but his spirit was heightened, like a master craftsman attempting to unravel the secrets of a divine artifact's creation.

This was undoubtedly an incredibly bold, even arrogant, attempt—to steal the secrets of power from a near-invincible being.

The probability of failure is extremely high, and it may even lead to a backlash.

But they completely disregarded his insightful opinion.

And so, he sat before a sixth-rank ghost king who could easily crush him, frantically eating to replenish his essence, and began what was perhaps the most important moment on his path of cultivation... enlightenment and breaking through.

Silence fell once again inside the iron house.

The only sounds were the occasional soft sounds of Gao Jian chewing his food, and his gaze, almost tangible, fixed intently on the Demon King, filled with inquiry and longing.

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Gazali.

A name long buried by dust and time, like the world in which he was first born, now only echoes coldly. Today, all those in the world who know his name call him—the Mighty Ghost King.

This title did not come out of thin air; behind it lies a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood, an era of annihilation, and a lonely and cruel path to transcendence.

He was once a mortal emperor, whose talent surpassed all others throughout history. By the age of twenty, he had already dominated the world with his fists and traversed the eight wastelands. His iron fists were invincible in the world, and beneath his throne lay the bones of those who surrendered and the blood of those who submitted.

He established an unprecedentedly vast empire and enjoyed absolute power in the world.

Then, like all emperors who stand at the pinnacle, he began to fear the inevitable end and began to pursue that elusive—immortality.

Countless emperors fell on this path, turning into dust in history. But he, Jiazhali, succeeded.

With unparalleled power and resolute will, he transcended the mortal world, broke free from its constraints, and stepped into the infinite void, truly possessing infinite life.

The price was... the world he was born into was drained of all its essence and spiritual energy, turning from a vibrant star into a cold, desolate, lifeless, barren stone.

He once sat alone on that huge, cold rock, silently gazing at it.

Watching the lava on its surface slowly cool and solidify into ugly scars;
Watching stardust condense and turn into rain, billions of years of rain have gathered into a lifeless ocean;

Watching the ocean, under the miracle of some cosmic law, the most primitive and subtle flashes of life are born;
Watching those glittering lights slowly evolve, from simple to complex, and finally struggle to climb onto land, they enact a series of cyclical dramas of prosperity, struggle, extinction, and rebirth.
Even the best among them eventually developed the technology and power to step into the void, rushing towards the sea of ​​stars with hope, only to exhaust all their potential in the vast and indifferent void and be completely destroyed without a sound because they could not break through the barrier of "immortality".

All of this, from the death of the world to the budding of civilization and its eventual demise, is an epic long enough for any mortal civilization to repeat itself ten thousand times...

For him, it was just a slightly longer meditation session.

After all, they haven't even gotten through the first calamity yet.

He endured 325 tribulations.

He is an immortal being, an ancient being who truly exists in this universe and has witnessed part of its vicissitudes.

He had long understood that without immortality, one would remain an ant, without even the right to truly witness the vastness of this universe.

however……

When he truly witnessed the vastness of the universe, traveled through many worlds, and became accustomed to the birth and death of stars, he sadly discovered that immortality, in the face of this boundless universe, was still such a tiny and laughable thing.

There are things far greater, more essential, and more worthy of pursuit than personal immortality.

So he made his choice. He left the familiar universe and, following ancient legends and intuitions, arrived in—Hell.

He believed that the answer lay within.

But the cruelty of hell far exceeded his wildest imagination.

He did not directly become the King of Ghosts, but because of his past sins, he fell directly into the Avici Hell!

Here, there was no space, no time, no suffering; eternal darkness devoured all senses, stripped him of all perception. Countless extreme pains, like an endless tide, relentlessly assaulted his already indestructible soul and will, yet could not utterly destroy him, but could only be endured eternally. He accepted it.

And so, in that absolute emptiness, absolute darkness, absolute suffering of eternity, he stayed... for a very, very long time.

So long that he almost forgot the name "Gazhali," forgot that he had once been an emperor, an immortal, and was left with only the purest "existence" and "endurance."

The ordeal is finally over.

The rules of hell recognized his "endurance," and he cleansed himself of the enormous sins he had accumulated.

He was appointed by the will of the Ten Kings of Hell and became the King of Ghosts, ruling over a region of the nearby hell.

His physical body was also reshaped by the laws of hell, transforming from a once valiant emperor into a green-faced, fanged, four-eyed, fleshy-winged demon.

He didn't care. It was all worth it.

Because he was able to formally join the Hell Path! This is one of the "lineages".

He was no longer a wandering, unorthodox practitioner in the void, but a legitimate being with a lineage of Daoist tradition.

After becoming the Ghost King, he continued his cultivation by utilizing the resources and rules of the Hell Path. After spending many eons, he ascended from an ordinary immortal to a higher level of existence—the Sixth Rank.

At this moment, if he were in the void, he could crush a star in an instant, and a sweep of his divine sense could cover a vast star field of several light-years.

He has already stood at the pinnacle of countless worlds.

But he cannot act recklessly.

He is the King of Ghosts, bearing the responsibility of the Hell Realm. Countless vicious and sinful souls are continuously drawn to his Hell according to the laws of cause and effect in the universe. Among them are some terrifying beings whose strength is comparable to his, or even stronger.

His job is "punishment".

This is the core rule of the Hell Realm: all sentient beings, regardless of whether their actions inflict good or evil upon others in their previous lives, will receive a precise retribution in Hell. Violence will be repaid with violence; kindness will be repaid with kindness. Like action and reaction, it is absolutely fair, absolutely precise, and without the slightest error.

Everything has its consequences. The hell realm is the concrete manifestation of this law of retribution.

Gāzāli found this reasonable, even beautiful. This power to wield the ultimate "fairness" of the universe brought him more...pleasure than when he was an emperor.

but……

one day.

Without warning.

The near-hell he was in was completely cut off from all other hells, from the core of the hell realm, and from the supreme Ten Kings of Hell...

It was like a bead whose string had been cut, falling into endless nothingness.

More than 20,000 years ago.

He still sits in this iron house, carrying out his duty to punish sinful souls, for this is the rule of the hell realm, which has long been ingrained in his instincts.

But he could sense that the sinful souls being sent were getting "weaker" and "fewer," and... they all seemed to come from a fixed, small area.

He didn't know what happened.

Did the Ten Kings of Hell abandon this remote borderland?

Has a huge change occurred in the hell realm itself?

Or... has the entire massive system been struck by some unimaginable external force?
he does not know.

He could only wait.

Just as he once sat on that desolate mother planet rock waiting, just as he waited in the darkness of the deepest hell.

Waiting for a variable, or... waiting for final annihilation.

This waiting is so...painful.

It wasn't physical torture; that kind of thing was already like a gentle breeze to him.

This is a deeper kind of fear, stemming from cognition and the unknown, like invisible poisonous ants, relentlessly gnawing at his once indestructible Dao heart.

More than 20,000 years ago.

The loneliness and isolation he endured for over 20,000 years were far more unbearable than all 325 tribulations he had experienced in the past combined.

In the eyes of the lower-level demons, his power as the Demon King was terrifying and unfathomable. They revered him and obeyed him, because they could not comprehend what lay beyond the "sixth rank".

But he knew it all too well!

He knew all too well what a Fifth Rank being was! They were giants capable of leaving behind immortal legends in countless worlds!

As for the higher ranks of the fourth grade, or even the legendary third grade... he didn't even dare to think about it.

however……

Even the Ten Kings of Hell, who were above the fourth rank and whom he served, and who were infinitely powerful, all disappeared.

It's not seclusion, it's not hiding, it's a complete, utter, and silent disappearance!

No matter what secret methods he used to sense things or what rituals he used to communicate, all he got was a lifeless void.

It was as if the entire superstructure of the hell realm was wiped away in an instant by an invisible giant hand, leaving no trace or information.

The more one understands the omnipotence and terror of those great beings, the more terrified and desperate one feels about this complete and incomprehensible severance!
The little devils below didn't feel anything special. They were too low-level to understand what the "Ten Kings of Hell" meant. They just felt that their work had been a bit easier lately and their income had decreased, which was just a bit "strange".

But as a Ghost King who wields the rules of a region of hell and can have subtle connections with that vast system, he clearly felt the immense terror of being abandoned, isolated, and banished to the endless void!
There is no way to not despair.

When those beings who are almost "omniscient and omnipotent" in your perception, and who have constructed all the rules upon which you depend, have collectively fallen into eternal silence and nothingness, how should you, a mere "sixth rank" person, conduct yourself? And where can you draw hope from?

This despair, silent and insidious, was more terrifying than the countless tortures of the deepest hell. It began to erode his Dao heart and shake the very foundation of his existence. He felt that although his power was still immense, it seemed to have lost its source, becoming stagnant, dull, and even... beginning to show a barely perceptible sign of dissipation.

If things continue like this, he might not even have to wait for an external attack before he collapses and his faith crumbles, leading to his complete annihilation.

So, in the last thousand years, he made a decision.

He went into seclusion.

(End of this chapter)