Grasping Evil

The magical treasures in the outside world would disintegrate with time. However, the last stone room received the blessing of a unique grand formation, protecting the magical treasures within. Therefore, the magical treasures in the stone room were still intact.

Ning Fan pushed the door open and the divine intent within the room gradually dissipated.

The divine intent contained a great feeling of helplessness and unwillingness. It was probably left there after the death of the Founding Ancestor of Wei1 Country. It was only able to remain there for years because of the miraculous retaining effect of the grand formation. After the door of the room was opened, the divine intent leaked out and started to vanish.

So this is the sorrow of a Peak Spirit Severing expert at his end…

Ning Fan stood for a long time, studying the divine intent. He only stopped and began to collect the magical treasures after the divine intent was completely gone.

The pond of Burning Blood was kept inside his Cauldron Ring. Next, he picked up the storage pouch.

A seal was placed on the pouch which had ten thousands of True Words used to seal and suppress it.

For the seal, Ning Fan could just remove it by using his Eastern Ocean Bell. However, he was worried about the reason why a seal was placed on the storage pouch.

A powerful cultivator would leave a wisp of his spirit sense in the storage pouch to prevent it from being stolen by low-level cultivators.

However, that mark would cease to exist altogether with the cultivator after they die.

The seal before him was suppressed and maintained by the power of ten thousands of True Words in order to prevent it from vanishing after the caster’s death. However, it was a strange thing all things considered. This room was the Founding Ancestor’s inheritance which was purposely kept for his descendants. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have deliberately blessed the stone room with a grand formation, protected the spirituality of the pool of Burning Blood as well as the storage pouch from turning into ashes.

Since the purpose of his actions was leaving his legacy to his descendants, the seal must have not been targeted at cultivators who collect his storage pouch but the object within instead.

When Ning Fan was still deep in thought, something quivered within the pouch. Ning Fan had a slight scare. There’s really something within it!

“What are you?!” Ning Fan asked in an angry manner.

“Oh? Truly unexpected, a mere Harmonious Spirit Realm cultivator discovered my existence! I’m a Rogue Devil! Hehe. Hurry up and let me out. I have been trapped within here for far too long!

“Rogue Devil?!”

Ning Fan was surprised inwardly once more.

A Rogue Devil was a 9th Heavenly Layer Void Fragmentation Realm devil. It was extremely powerful, similar to a Rogue Immortal. Rogue Immortals were cultivators who failed to pass the “True Immortal Tribulation”. On the other hand, Rogue Devils were devils who failed to pass the “Heaven Devil Tribulation”.

A Rogue Devil might not be able to become a Heaven Devil anymore. However, if it continued to cultivate, an ordinary 9th Heavenly Layer Void Fragmentation Realm cultivator wouldn’t be able to withstand its strength. Once it cultivates to the peak of the realm, it would be given a second chance to become a Heaven Devil.

Ning Fan didn’t imagine that a Rogue Devil would be sealed within the storage pouch!

But if there’s really a Rogue Devil within the pouch, it should have died a long time ago. The number of years that had passed since the Founding Ancestor of Wei country was still alive was enough to exhaust its lifespan for several times over.

Maybe this Rogue Devil didn’t take its complete form when it was initially sealed in the pouch.

It probably gained sentience tens of thousands of years ago.

And it might have just completed its cultivation thousands of years ago.

Therefore, it still remained alive.

The body of the Rogue Devil is unknown. The most possible answer was that the item that was sealed in the pouch by Wei’s Founding Ancestor a long time ago. Through the years that has gone by, it began to gain sentience.

Spiritual Vessel Magical Treasures which were abandoned for a long time would turn into devils.

Five Revolution Pills could become devils by chance.

Even a corpse body could possibly become a corpse devil too.

Let’s not discuss about the type of devil it is for the moment.

If it’s really a Rogue Devil, why didn’t it escape from the sealed storage pouch? It’s something that needs to be thought of.

Apart from that, is it really the case that this Rogue Devil gained intelligence by itself or was it cultivated specially by the Founding Ancestor of Wei Country?

Suddenly, Ning Fan’s gaze turned cold and he felt that the All-Heaven Relic in his dantian2 link with the Rogue Devil.

After discovering the fragrance of pills from its body, Ning Fan’s eyes turned bright.

All his questions were answered!

For the first time, he admired the Founding Ancestor’s talent and brilliance!

The Founding Ancestor purposely raised the devil!

From the aroma of pills, this devil is a Pill Devil!

He must have prepared a Five Revolution Pill and planted the Symbol of Devil Raising on the pill.

It was the same case to the little Pill Devil, Bright Sparrow. She had the symbol in her body but it was cut by Ning Fan.

The era of Wei’s Founding Ancestor was preceded the mysterious True Immortal who raised Bright Sparrow. It was estimated to be during the time when Rain World was still starting to be established.

Before he died, he was concerned about the safety of Wei Country. As such, he decided to raise a Pill Devil for his descendants. And the symbol he left in the Pill Devil of the storage pouch differed from the symbol that was left by the True Immortal.

That True Immortal was raising the pill inside the graves. The symbol that he placed on Bright Sparrow was the Symbol of Master Recognition. In other words, he decided to cultivate Bright Sparrow like a pill. When the pill was complete, he would eliminate the devil spirit within Bright Sparrow, turning her into her original form in order to obtain a pill of Nine Revolution or even higher.

As for Wei’s Founding Ancestor, he planted the Symbol of Devil Raising.

Unfortunately, there was one disadvantage in using the symbol. When the symbol is placed, the effect of the pill would be nullified.

On the bright side, the symbol could turn the pill into a devil with intelligence by chance after tens of thousands of years. As the cultivation realm of the devil increases, the power of the symbol would increase as well. As a result, the pill devil could become a Rogue Devil or even a Heaven Devil. However, it could never break the symbol on its own. It was bound to be the servant of its master, becoming a fighter for them.

Fortunately, Wei’s Founding Ancestor had successfully raised a Rogue Devil.

The only pitiful part was that he no longer had the chance to have it serve him since tens of thousands of years ago.

It would be a different story for True Immortals to raise devils.

However, raising a devil was only a wild ambition for the seven realms of cultivators who have yet to become True Immortals.

In ancient times, there were quite a number of cultivators who tried raising devils. In the end, those who were able to control devils were at least of the True Immortal Rank.

Up to this point, there are about three difficulties in raising devils.

First, the success rate of raising a devil is abysmal. The success rate was comparable to the rate of obtaining a Dao Fruit from killing cultivators. It was all about luck.

Some people succeeded at their first try in raising devils. Some people spent hundreds of Five Revolution Pills but still failed to raise a single.

The factors affecting the pills from becoming devils were the quality of the pills, the environment and the formation needed in raising the devils.

However, it wasn’t exactly appropriate to say that the higher the quality of the pill, the higher the success rate of raising a devil. It was the complete opposite. If the quality of the pill was too good and the efficacy of the pill was hard to dissipate, the pill would not gain spirituality and wouldn’t become a devil. Also, if the quality of the pill was too bad, the pill would not be good enough to have spirituality. Thus, Five Revolution Pills were the best to raise devils.

As for the environment, the Desolate Hill of the Founding Ancestor was much easier place to grow devils compared to the Dark Sparrow’s Grave3. Since the Dark Sparrow’s Grave contained the remains of the Ancient Dark Sparrow, that place carried a special effect. It was the reason why the True Immortal chose to grow his devil there.

As for the formation of raising devils, Wei’s Founding Ancestor arranged a Mortal Void Realm Grand Formation while the formation in Dark Sparrow’s Grave was at Immortal Void Realm. It was much better than the formation in the Desolate Hill of Founding Ancestor.

Since the rate of the pills to successfully evolve into Pill Devil was pretty small, a large amount of Five Revolution Pills were used. Using large quantities of pills would directly increase the chances of having one successful evolution of a Pill Devil.

It wasn’t a problem for a True Immortal to have a large number of Five Revolution Pills. But it wasn’t easy for cultivators of the seven realms to take out that amount of quality pills.

Secondly, the time for raising a devil was extremely time-consuming!

For example, in order to raise a Pill Devil, which was the result of a pill gaining spirituality and turned into a devil, would need at least a period of time ranging from tens of thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years. Any True Immortal would have the lifespan to wait but none of the ordinary cultivators, including Void Fragmentation Realm cultivators, had that excessive amount of time. Even Void Fragmentation Realm cultivators only had the lifespan of tens of thousands of years. Before the Pill Devil took form, its master would have already turned into ashes.

If the cultivator successfully became a True Immortal during the period of raising Pill Devils, the newly born Pill Devil would need years of cultivation in order to reach the Void Fragmentation Realm. It was only then that the Pill Devil could come in handy. It would be useless for a True Immortal to have Pill Devils below the Void Fragmentation Realm.

Last but not least, it was the Symbol of Devil Raising.

Some ancient cultivators who weren’t able to become True Immortals grew devils for their offsprings.

With the help of the symbol, the devils that could be controlled by its master must not have a higher cultivation realm than their master.  (For example, the devil must not be at Spirit Severing Realm if the master is only at the Gold Core Realm.)

If a Void Fragmentation Realm cultivator raised a Rogue Devil, his descendants could only control the devil by reaching Void Refinement Realm themselves. By controlling the devil, the descendants would be able to protect the family, avoiding the family from declining.

A notable problem was that the power of the symbol would diminish as time passes by. The control over the devil would gradually grow weaker.

As time kept on flowing, the devil’s strength would develop and get even stronger.

There were a number of cultivation clans which had devils as guardians who got eliminated by the devils themselves, as the the head of the clans lost control over the them when the power of the symbol weakened and the devils struggled to escape from their control.

In short, there were risks of raising devils to a certain extent.

You’ll never know when the devils would break loose from the symbol’s control. And there’s no clear indicator of when the devils should be eliminated before they bring upon disaster.

Only True Immortals wouldn’t face the three problems when raising devils. In fact, only True Immortals would raise devils.

The cultivation period of a cultivated devil could never match a True Immortal. Therefore, the devil’s strength was impossible to rival that of a True Immortal. There’s no way for a devil would fight back against a True Immortal. A True Immortal can only be hurt when thousands of devils were raised to form a war troop in order to fight against him.

The above were the information that Ning Fan comprehended from Ancient Chaos’ memories.

Ning Fan knew about the surprising talent of Wei’s Founding Ancestor’s through the way he arranged the Symbol of Devil Raising.

He was an outstanding cultivator. He should be regarded as a cultivator who was even more marvellous than True Immortals who raised devils!

The way he altered the Symbol of Devil Raising totally got rid of the weakening of the symbol’s power.

It was because this symbol was connected to his relics4!

As long as his relics were not destroyed, the symbol would never be broken by the Rogue Devil itself. Aside from that, the seal of ten thousands of True Words that was casted using the power of relics could never be eradicated by the devil.

If it tried to resist, he would surely suffer a counterattack from the symbol and die!

1. Wei Country is one of the ancient states in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wei_(state)
2. Dantian is the “qi focus flow centers” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dantian
3. Dark Sparrow’s Grave was the grave that Ning Fan entered in chapter 112.
4. Relic is a part of a deceased holy person’s body or belongings kept as an object of reverence.

Perhaps the Founding Ancestor of Wei Country foresaw that he would become a True Immortal one day and he started to raise a devil.

Another possibility was that he knew that he was going to be gone from this world and raised the devil to calm his concerns.

Whatever the reason was, he was still smarter than most True Immortals as he figured out the way of raising devils by linking his relics with the symbol. He certainly left a Rogue Devil to serve his descendants.

If he was still alive, he would have broken through the bottleneck of the Peak Spirit Severing Realm, becoming a Void Refinement Realm cultivator. Or he might have already achieved Void Fragmentation Realm who passed through the “True Immortal Tribulation” and become a True Immortal in the present. He had remarkable intelligence but he was fated to die at the bottleneck of the Peak Spirit Severing Realm. Fate was something that no one could defy.

As such, he died in the stone secret chamber, unwillingly.

He was dissatisfied. With his talent, he could undoubtedly become an Immortal of influence. It was all the fault of the merciless Heavenly Dao.

Ning Fan sighed faintly. It was the reality of the cultivation world.

Being brilliant and intelligent does not guarantee one to become an Immortal. Luck plays an important role as well.

The same goes for life in the ordinary world. Having talent does not mean that one can be successful and famous. Sometimes, they would not even know about the talents buried deep within them in their entire lives.

Fate did not allow the Founding Ancestor to break through to the Void Refinement Realm but granted him success in raising a devil.

At least he had left a Rogue Devil for Wei Country.

However, he might not have predicted that his own devil would turn into a Rogue Devil. Even for cultivators who possessed the All-Heaven Relic must at least achieve Void Refinement Realm in order to be able to control it.

The most unpredictable situation was that a foreign cultivator was the one who broke the formation and got the Pill Devil.

At first, the All-Heaven Relic was discovered by a monk by luck and it fell into Hou Lian’s hands. After fighting against the demons who came to claim it for themselves, it landed into Ning Fan’s hands in the end.

Then, Ning Fan successfully breached the fourth layer formation of the Desolate Hill of the Founding Ancestor with the help of his Eastern Ocean Bell.

At last, Ning Fan did not only obtain the relic but also the pouch that contained the Pill Devil.

Wei’s Founding Ancestor did not keep any magical treasures but a Rogue Devil that was able to destabilize the status quo in all nine worlds!

This Rogue Devil was worthy enough to be ranked within the top thirty in the list of experts of the nine worlds. It should be able to handle Emperor Moksha easily!

“To control this devil using my All-Heaven Relic, I must raise the level of my magic power to Void Refinement Realm within a hundred years. In other words, as long as my magic power achieve Early Void Refinement Realm, nothing can restrain me in the nine worlds. Then, I can kill Emperor Moksha to avenge my master!”

Ning Fan’s eyes sparkled!

It’s hard to achieve Void Fragmentation Realm within a hundred years!

Now, however, I just need to achieve Void Refinement Realm with a hundred years!

Besides, I am cultivating the divine, demon and devil paths at the same time. Perhaps, I might be able to possess a strength equivalent to Void Refinement Realm when I’m still at Peak Spirit Severing Realm. Then, I would be able to control this devil to fight against Emperor Moksha!

The objective of achieving Peak Spirit Severing Realm within a hundred years was much realistic compared to achieving Void Fragmentation Realm. Ning Fan had confidence in succeeding!

The opportunity to take revenge for his master was even more important than ruling the nine worlds.

And this chance was granted to him by the talented Founding Ancestor of Wei Country.

His Symbol of Devil Raising was unprecedented. There are countless cultivators in the cultivation world, but how many among them could actually figure this out?

Similarly, the minor demonic techniques were only at the Spirit Realm. However, there were only five hundred ancient demons who could comprehend the essence of the techniques by simplifying them and creating new techniques out of them.

The Rogue Devil within the pouch let out a cold sneer and threatened Ning Fan, believing its cultivation base was the most powerful.

“Hehe. Little cultivator, I advise you to let me go immediately. Otherwise, you’ll be the first one I kill when I break free from the seal after the symbol weakens in the future!”

“Oh, really? Then, I have bad news for you. The power of your symbol will not erode since the relic controlling it is… in my hands! You better obediently stay inside the pouch until I reach Peak Spirit Severing Realm. Then, you’ll become my devil!”

Ning Fan drew the power of the All-Heaven Relic and instantly, the Rogue Devil felt excruciating pain and groaned unceasingly.

Although his magic power was not good enough to have full control over the symbol and eliminate the devil, he was still able to make it have a hard time.

The next moment, the surprised Rogue Devil began to panic and lose its composure.

“Impossible! It’s impossible! How are you able to control my symbol?! Argh, I want to kill you!”

The Rogue Devil assumed that its symbol was gradually weakening while it was cultivating and waiting in the past thousands of years. it never thought that its symbol would remain intact forever, unless the relic is destroyed!

Currently, fear spread within its thoughts…

It was afraid of losing its freedom after Ning Fan finally possess enough power to control it.

A Rogue Devil was said to be unmatched as there wasn’t any Void Fragmentation Realm cultivators that could challenge it. It was so detestable for such a dominant creature to become a little brat’s pet! 

No matter how it tried to yell or swear, Ning Fan would never release it.

There’s no good and evil in raising a devil.

This devil was actually similar to Bright Sparrow since both of them were Pill Devils. However, Ning Fan did not view them with the same perspective. This devil was only a fighter but the latter was a likeable little girl.

He hated the True Immortal who raised Bright Sparrow. In opposite, he was grateful to Wei’s Founding Ancestor who raised this Rogue Devil.

After throwing the storage pouch containing the devil into the most secretive place which was covered with red mist in his Cauldron Ring, he stared at the cattail hassock^[1] that the Founding Ancestor passed away in while meditating. There was a robe and ashes of a corpse on the ground. Strong emotions welled up inside of him.

It was him who gave Ning Fan a Rogue Devil. It was also him who gave Ning Fan the chance to finish off Emperor Moksha.

He took the robe, ashes and cattail hassock and buried them altogether beneath the stone room.

He didn’t engrave the name of the Founding Ancestor on the tombstone. Instead, a different thought came to him. With the Characterless Heavenly Scripture in mind, he carved four letters on it.

“A Man of Honor (送君一死) ”

It was far too simple to inscribe his name on the tombstone as he was a rare talent. Also, carving his name that has already been forgotten by others would only make them look down on it.

That was the underlying reason behind “A Man of Honor (送君一死) ”. Ning Fan didn’t notice that his current state of mind was no different from the expert who wrote the four letters in the Characterless Heavenly Scripture.

That year, Immortal Sovereign dressed in a purple robe and buried his best friend whose name wasn’t known by anyone else.

He felt it meaningless to carve his friend’s name on the tombstone.

As such, he wrote the four letters, “A Man of Honor (送君一死) ”.

Those words were so overbearing that even Buddha would feel pressure from them. Those were the words that were written by Immortal Sovereign for his best friend.

He didn’t need to let others know the true name of his friend. He only wanted to let others to remember that his buried friend was once a talented person! It was fate  that played tricks on him and rejected him, concealing his name from the world.

Today, those four words reappeared on another tombstone after countless years.

Although the Founding Ancestor’s name wasn’t carved on the tombstone, it was carved within Ning Fan’s heart. This karma would etch into Ning Fan’s memory forever. He promised to fulfill the Founding Ancestor’s last wish – to guard the safety of Wei Country as long as he is alive as an act of repaying him.

Massive battle intent filled Ning Fan’s mind!

It was the first time he had a glimpse of hope on winning against Emperor Moksha!

The only thing he needed to do was to achieve Peak Spirit Severing Realm!

Note :

*送君一死 > previously translated as “Death for the Monarch”. It is now changed to “A Man of Honor” to suit the context more.