In Tokyo, the dungeon master

Late at night, in a room that no detector could find.

Through continuous research after his time travel, Gu Meng's mastery of the ancestral books also increased significantly.

The nature of conventional magic and the great authority held by the Book of Ancestors are completely different. Their complexity and danger are also on two completely different levels. Fortunately, this is not the first time Gu Meng has possessed a similar cheat, otherwise he would never have been able to achieve such rapid progress.

As it stands, he can now use the three most basic powers and some derivative uses of this book normally. This includes the use of briefly generating those strange monsters, which is more useful than ordinary magical creature creation. It is stronger and consumes very little energy, although it is subject to some rules.

However, for Gu Meng, magic power is a valuable resource in the early stages, so he won't be picky about the free ones.

Additionally, there is another benefit to gathering the power of "fear" by spreading the Great Evil God Zorc through the Book of Ancestors rather than by creating monsters yourself.

Simply put, by using the Book of Ancestors, an extremely dark artifact that governs a portion of the law of cause and effect, one can kill without incurring any karmic consequences.

Moreover, since the rules set in the previous instance have been made real, the prototypes of these ghost stories that appeared in the Demon Nest have retained some characteristics. The people they killed did not really die. When the major event ended and the Shirakawa family was not wiped out, they could be easily resurrected. At most, they would lose their memories for a short period of time, like Suzumiya Ami.

After all, Gu Meng wasn't some kind of devil, and given a choice, he didn't necessarily have to carry out the Tokyo Massacre...

Sometimes he felt he was too soft-hearted, too human, really, too much like a human. He wished he could become an evil god!

Or maybe we should filter the dungeons this time and not revive the villains who provide the most evil thoughts to the Great Evil God.

Those whose evil essence was drained by the evil god this time cannot be resurrected. Make a note of this and put it in the dungeon rules.

Furthermore, the average life expectancy of Japanese people is quite high. If any WWII veterans or members of Unit 731 are still alive, let them die. In 1945, the Little Boy and the Fat Man were born, and Japan was finished. Now, the youngest of these people are almost 100 years old. They died far too late. Even if they die, it's too good for them.

Gu Meng also needed to collect some dead souls as materials. The high-ranking members of the Guiyi Sect probably weren't enough. The Ten Thousand Souls Banner would require at least ten thousand people... And if he wanted to upgrade to treasures like the Billion Souls Banner, would the Japanese have enough?

There is no reincarnation in this world. Before Gu Meng arrived, people died and their souls didn't even remain. How long would it take to collect them all if we started now...? I guess I can only wait until I travel to ancient Japan to collect the souls of soldiers...

However, this time he has the Book of Ancestors, so it doesn't necessarily have to be this complicated. If used properly, he might be able to directly generate most of the materials he needs later, including soul bodies. Many of the materials in this Hundred Ghost Tales have already been put to his own use...

Although it's not as convenient as writing directly with the Ancestor's Pen and requires various prerequisites, the Ancestor's Book seems to have a higher potential.

However, the forbidden properties of the Dark Power are extremely dangerous. If Gu Meng had obtained the book during his first transmigration, he might have immediately failed. He only realized how useful the book was during his second transmigration.

The power of extreme darkness is just Gu Meng's own name. It is not magic, nor is it divine power representing some kind of law or authority. It often does not follow conventional laws. Rather, it is a product transformed by special rules of forbidden contracts. It is a concrete manifestation of chaotic power and an ominous power refined from chaos and disorder.

If we define normal, established power (including magic and divine power) as acquired power, then this kind of power is more like innate power.

It's not necessarily true that the power of darkness is stronger. In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was one with God. If Ultraman could be resurrected, he could create light at will. His omnipotent divine power of order was enough to create heaven and earth, transforming chaos into the myriad forms of existence. He could easily defeat his own prime with a single hand.

Without using Him as an example, if Gu Meng himself used a full amount of tenth-order Black Demon God power to fight against his own tenth-order self who could only use extreme dark power, the outcome would be fifty-fifty. Gu Meng's black magic had reached its peak, staining everything in the world with blackness. The upper limit of extreme dark power was even higher, but it was also more difficult to control.

Gu Meng was able to easily control the hundred ghost tales derived from the extreme darkness because he seized the position of Ghost King of the Demon Nest after Wu Can's death, which can be considered as a backdoor he left for himself. Even so, he also had to go through the Tree of Good and Evil, which made him powerful and had amazing spirituality; otherwise, he would have lost control long ago.

He has too many distractions right now and doesn't want to waste energy controlling the Darkness on trivial matters like spreading terror, which would only put more pressure on himself.

They decided to use some ancient artifacts acquired from the Guiyi Sect, along with materials that the Guiyi Sect had forcibly refined using ancient evil methods over the decades, but which lacked magic power and thus were merely preparatory work, to forge a dark magic artifact.

A sacrificial flag.

The main elements are Christian saints' shrouds, sacred trees used in South American blood religions, pharaoh ashes, and various other spiritual liquids as pigments.

That's Gu Meng, the grandmaster of dark magic. He uses whatever he has and doesn't care about materials.

Since there aren't that many undead spirits now, we'll simply base it on the legends of a hundred ghosts and monsters. It can't be called the "Banner of Ten Thousand Souls," so let's just call it the "Banner of a Hundred Ghosts."

The effect is so-so, similar to the mask of the Dark Legion in the anime. The avatar of the Evil God's messenger holds this banner and can control a group of ghosts. The effect is similar to Gu Meng directly controlling them with the power of extreme darkness, but it can definitely reduce the consumption.

Despite facing ancestral forbidden artifacts and the power of extreme darkness, Gu Meng still displayed a familiarity and control that surpassed that of gods, as if he were born with the same origin as extreme darkness and knew how to control these ominous forces of chaos.

However, the difficulty lies directly in the fact that he is still a human being.

It is both human and extremely dark chaos.

As we all know, there are limits to human capabilities.

Since he is human, he must bear pressure when wielding such power. At most, he can only produce virtues continuously when he is under pressure, but the pressure itself still needs to be judged, and this process is very energy-consuming.

Moreover, he needs to be constantly on edge; the slightest relaxation could lead to utter ruin. Gu Meng has never been free from the pressure.

The good thing is that conventional extraordinary power and forbidden chaotic power are never clearly distinct; they are not always two separate concepts with clear boundaries.

When an ancestral artifact is in hand, the power of extreme darkness can be transformed into various powers, and vice versa. The same principle applies to the Hundred Ghost Banner that Gu Meng crafted. On the surface, it is an ordinary black magic item, but in reality, when Gu Meng uses it, it can also be used as a conduit for the power of extreme darkness, and can be called an extreme darkness artifact.

However, only Gu Meng himself and his clone can operate in this way. This is the unreasonable transformation of the ancestral artifact, not simply the cultivation of demonic arts. If a dark mage of the same level as Gu Meng were to appear, it would be impossible for him to do this. Even if he had cultivated to his current level, he would not be able to understand how demonic power could be transformed into the power of chaos so easily.

This is an unimaginable and indescribable existence.

Gu Meng always believed that he was able to cultivate immortality because he possessed a heaven-defying ancestral artifact. For him, the boundaries of the myriad phenomena were not so obvious.

He truly believed from the bottom of his heart that he was the Holy Lord of the Sun. Everyone else thought his magic was dark, so they should look for their own problems. Maybe they're getting old and their eyesight is failing. Only a dark-hearted person would think that the power of light is dark. Gu Meng thought his magic was quite bright.

If Gu Meng could cultivate immortality, his title would definitely be "Old Immortal So-and-so" instead of "Old Demon Gu".

Perhaps he won't just explode the Tree of Life in both directions; he might actually unleash a fusion of magic and cultivator's spiritual power, a Buddha's Wrath Lotus that creates the primordial world—that would be even more explosive...

Of course, this is just a thought. Gu Mengdu has climbed to the highest point of the Tree of Life system and is almost touching the tenth-order True God Dao Fruit. At this time, he will definitely want to climb here first. Even if he really gets his hands on the knowledge of immortality, he will only use it as a reference. Life is like a game of chess, once a move is made, there is no going back.

Time passed, and another night went by...

"I succeeded."