Infinite Slaughter System: I Kill, Therefore I Ascend!

This was something that he had considered for a while, especially right after capturing Bai Ruyi. For that one who was unfortunately bound to him by oath, he planned to show her the errors of her ways by seeding her himself, so much so that she would count the days when she wasn't pregnant rather than the opposite.

But as stated earlier, Li Ling had a taste, and Luo Roumei did not attract him much. Not to mention, his current natural cultivation talent was trash, he had no special bloodline and no inheritance to pass down that would benefit a kid with a wood spirit root.

It was even the same for Bai Ruyi, otherwise why would he set a date for the Perfection of his Core Formation before getting to work? While he was not a lecherous fellow, he also was not a piece of wood. He felt the full range of human desires and emotions, and unlike righteous path idiots who suppressed or abstained, he was free to indulge if he wanted.

It took willpower to look at the voluptuous woman who was like a fictional succubus leaping out of a screen and turn away in order to achieve better prospects for one's self and goals.

But Luo Roumei? Pfff, apart from being an exotic race, there was nothing really meaningful about bedding her. As such, after Li Ling found Kong Beiwu back then, he even used gentle methods to trick the disciples there because he was scared something would happen to his future 'stallion'.

And now that things were mostly settled, it was time to put both his 'Pals' into the 'Breeding Farm' to create 'Pal Eggs'.

Li Ling chuckled internally at that, missing Earth a little bit.

Kong Beiwu and Luo Roumei's heads shot up from their bowing positions to stare at Li Ling with shock, then slowly turned to face each other. After looking for a few seconds, Kong Beiwu coughed and blushed, looking away while Luo Roumei pursed her lips, but her cheeks were also a little flushed.

Neither rejected nor pleaded against the order, because for them, Li Ling's directives were of the highest importance in their chain of instincts, even above the will to survive.

It did not matter that Kong Beiwu had literally achieved all he had today by abstaining from sex since he knew it would torment his partner and was too soft-hearted to go through with it.

It also did not matter that Luo Roumei had secretly been harboring immense hatred towards Li Ling for killing her fellow disciples, planning to even let him have his way to lower his guard until she could detonate her sect token.

Li Ling saw this and felt it in their thoughts, once again musing that the Dao Soldier Technique was truly terrifying. He had to be careful how he used it, because the more he enslaved people, the more he could end up attracting someone who could enslave him.

Let's not even talk about denizens of this entire world, just the current Infinite Slaughter System or its owner could enslave him too. After all, if the Infinite Slaughter System could derive such a technique, then obviously it could implement it.

That was why he was not too big on the idea of survival or living in over-caution to rise to the top, because he could easily be working hard for someone else to reap the rewards. Who knows?

So Li Ling was all about enjoying the process as much as possible, hence his rather… unhinged… nature.

"You can use the room. I will be in the Production Chamber practicing my Hundred Arts of Refinement for the next week. Only come and find me when the final dispatch for the Black Heaven Sect siege is sent out." Li Ling forked a finger behind him to the courtyard house, then ignored the duo, walking towards the wing for cultivation and production.

Kong Beiwu and Luo Roumei glanced at each other again and hesitated.

"Well… the master has given his order, so let's not waste time. I just have to warn you that due to my body cultivation technique, my… err… my discharge is very intense." Kong Beiwu decided to man up and take the lead in this awkward situation.

Luo Roumei glanced him up calmly, not as bothered as he expected. "You're not bad. At least you have a righteous heart and you aren't too ugly. I can accept you being my sexual partner in this life."

After saying this, she walked into the house with a calm gait, with Kong Beiwu, who was partially stunned, snapping to his senses and slowly following her, touching his face.

"I'm… ugly? B-But mom said…" He muttered to himself, entering the room with Luo Roumei, where he would be for the next few days working on Li Ling's 'project' with Luo Roumei.

As for Li Ling, he kept his spirit sense on the duo up until they finally sorted through the initial awkwardness and got into the procedure, with Kong Beiwu successfully dumping his first ever load into her. As this was the moment of truth, Li Ling was extremely observant, noticing that Luo Roumei had a look of slight discomfort on her sweaty face.

However, Li Ling quickly realized that this was not because of the 'boiling hot' discharge, but because as a second realm qi cultivator, Luo Roumei could sense him watching them while Kong Beiwu was ignorant as a mere first realm body cultivator.

No matter how stoic and emotionally mature Luo Roumei was, having two men see her naked in one day, with one even watching like a voyeur, left her feeling restless and bothered, which actually created a situation where she seemed shy in a feminine way, exciting the ignorant Kong Beiwu.

"Don't worry Roumei, from now on, I will take responsibility for you and make sure to be the best partner and father possible!" Kong Beiwu swore solemnly, making Luo Roumei even more embarrassed because there was someone else watching, while Li Ling himself only chuckled in amusement.

"Hmm?" Luo Roumei's face suddenly changed as her brows furrowed, then she pushed Kong Beiwu off her and sat upright in a meditative posture.

Initially thinking he had offended her with his words, the confused young man was about to apologize when he saw that Luo Roumei began absorbing ambient spiritual energy crazily, forming a mini vortex in the room that was sucked in by her pores.

This phenomenon surprised Kong Beiwu, but Li Ling became thoughtful, understanding what was happening.

"Kong Beiwu, leave her here and don't disturb her till she is done." Li Ling voice-transmitted with his spirit sense, making Kong Beiwu jump a little in surprise.

"Supreme Master? What's happening to her?" the young man asked with concern.

"Your body contains a poison that is set to torment you in a few years at most, in which if you survive, your top grade fire spirit root will upgrade to the earth grade. However, due to various factors, you only really had a 30% chance of succeeding and surviving, but now, things should be fine." Li Ling explained casually, also understanding after invasively scanning Luo Roumei's body and accessing her memories again to 'update' the book he already had.

"Wait, the poison is in her?" Kong Beiwu paled as he touched his lower abdomen with shock.

"Indeed. You don't need to worry, the trial for you was resisting the urge to have intercourse like your peers for so long while in that toxic environment that the poison appeared in the first place. In truth, you did not need to keep it anymore, as what was the key to your upgrade was also the means of testing and even killing you. Now that you've dispelled most of it, your chances of upgrade are even higher." Li Ling added with a smile, feeling that his choice to pair them was quite good.

Seeing that the vortex around Luo Roumei was growing stronger, even causing items in the room to shift, Kong Beiwu hesitated and got up, wearing his robes and leaving the room to stand in the hallway. He then looked left and right before asking with a troubled voice, "So did it benefit her? Or is she now facing a tribulation?"

Li Ling, now sure that Luo Roumei was stable, answered casually. "It's largely a benefit. You already know about the special nature of the Five Elements and how they mutually restrain and assist one another. Fire is generated by wood, destroys metal, generates earth, and is destroyed by water."

Kong Beiwu nodded; this was basic knowledge that even mortals knew. Each element had its relationship with another clearly defined and documented, which formed the core of the Five Elements balance of the universe and provided for many other things.

"Because of this, your poison should indeed have set Luo Roumei's entire cultivation aflame. Your sect does not assign women with water spirit roots for fun—they are more easily able to neutralize the nature of the fire technique you practice, but pairing with a woman with a wood root would be the opposite." Li Ling explained.

In fact, he even wanted to say that in his opinion, it could be better represented through numbers. If we were to take Fire, for example, it had a 2.0x effect on Wood, a 1.5x effect on Metal, a 1.0x effect on Earth, and a 0.5x effect on Water.

"Then, how is she fine?" Kong Beiwu asked with confusion and suspicion, because it sounded like Luo Roumei should be rolling in agony in a slow death.

"Because of the fact that your cultivation is weak. You are merely at the peak of the first realm, and so is your poison and flame essence. What is deadly for you is a joke to her, and she doesn't even practice body cultivation either." Li Ling revealed with a mean chuckle.

Kong Beiwu was left speechless.

He glanced at the door where the spiritual energy was rushing in with a strange look. "So what was poison to me is basically a tonic to her?"

"Indeed. Wood is generated by water, so a water form of your poison would rather boost her upwards. Funny enough, your fire poison, which should drag her down, is being used by her to fortify her weakness to fire and cleanse impurities, a rare boon that most wood element practitioners would die for." Li Ling stated, internally marveling at how the cultivation world had so many opportunities hidden.

One did not always need to walk into secret realms left by ancestors or dive into dangerous areas filled with powerful demon beasts and primordial heavenly resources to be lucky. Sometimes, just meeting the right person and knowing their special attributes was enough.

Li Ling ignored Kong Beiwu, who decided to guard outside Luo Roumei's door as he had nothing else to do. Rather, Li Ling decided to focus on his own matters, which was to start with his practice on brushing up his skills in the arts.

Li Ling decided to start with the most popular and the most diverse of them all—the famous Alchemy!

Alchemy on the Tian Ming Continent was not like the type that Li Ling had read about when he was on Earth, a discipline limited to only a few people based on the nature of their spiritual roots or refined energy.

That was because this was akin to true Alchemy, the art of transmutation and transformation, turning one set of materials into another using a special process and esoteric energy, akin to magic.

Not the fake alchemy that Li Ling expected, which was just the eastern version of potion-making, only that the glass bottles and vials of magic liquid were switched with pills and pellets.

Because of this, while the process seemed similar, as the typical end result of alchemy here was still the very same pills and pellets, the method of making them was actually quite diverse.

Once again, thanks to the noble researchers from eras past, Alchemy—which was indeed previously limited to those with Fire Spirit Roots or, as a subsidiary, those with Wood Spirit Roots—was now accessible to all through a method discovered over 10,000 years ago called the Five Elements Alchemy Procedure.

The discoverer was the then head of the continent-wide Alchemy Association, who was also blessed with direct Immortal Ascension since he released the results to the public, allowing all alchemists everywhere to use this 'open source' baseline to create various new methods based on their own abilities, restructuring the entire process of Alchemy on the Tian Ming Continent from the ground up.

Sage Xu Changsheng was also one who went straight up, and was arguably the most recent one to go through such a 'free' method. The Alchemy Association merged its branches all over the continent into a super force called the Divine Cauldron Sect, gathering all alchemists who had begun to worship the ascended sage to them, becoming the number eight power on the continent after the Tian Shu Institute.

And what Li Ling had now was a rather common alchemy technique—the Earth Nurturing Method. He had seen countless others when in the stall area, and even in the sect's Whispering Blood Wing that were of the other elements, some also of the earth, but he took this one because it had benefits he liked.

Now before focusing on this earth element technique specifically, one must talk about the entirety of the Five Elements Alchemy Procedure and how it differed from typical xianxia alchemy that earthlings like Li Ling had been spoon-fed.

In such alchemy, they often had some things that were fundamental—the need for a flame, a cauldron, and the herbs to be alchemized into the pill. Each of these three factors could be broken down into smaller rule sets, like the need to control the fire's heat for optimization, the need to have pill cauldrons with various attributes for different prescriptions, and the need to have herbs enter at specific times to maximize the fusion rate, and so on.

And indeed, ancient alchemists utilized this process for the most part until Sage Xu Changsheng dug deep and analyzed the need for these methods. In the end, he generalized them and came up with a three-part concept called the Three Pillars of All Alchemy.

The First Pillar was the Refining Power. This was the method the alchemist used to break down the herbs and materials in the cauldron, providing the necessary power to even facilitate the transmutation and mixing of the reagents.

The Second Pillar was the Refining Void. This was the method in which the alchemist sealed the reagents in a controllable medium that was a vacuum devoid of other factors that could interfere or interrupt the alchemy process, causing the procedure to fail or come out impure.

The Third Pillar was the Refining Source. This was the method in which the alchemist achieved transmutation of substances and elements, turning one set of materials into another, usually a single finished product. Put simply, this referred to the materials and reagents used in the alchemic process.

These Three Pillars were the core of Alchemy and were immutable. If you missed one of them, you were no longer performing Alchemy, but doing something else—and if you perhaps succeeded, then you were probably utilizing a form of creation through a higher power.

But for Alchemy as Firmament Heaven and the Tian Ming Continent knew it, you had to fill in the slots for these three to get started.

After identifying this, Sage Xu Changsheng's problem was simple—how to substitute the content of the Three Pillars? The pillars themselves were permanently necessary, but how they were utilized was not necessarily a fixed matter and was open for manipulation.

And to discuss that, we could use Li Ling's own Earth Nurturing Method as an example.

In the old alchemy, the First Pillar was usually a normal flame from common wood or spirit wood, managed indirectly by the alchemist as if they were cooking. At the middle tiers, alchemists used their own spiritual energy turned into a flame, while some found heavenly flames with special properties that were superior, then bonded with them.

The Second Pillar was typically a loosely sealed pill cauldron in which one would have to 'guess' the effects based on timing as well as trial and error for those without a spirit sense, while one would have to use their spirit sense at the second realm and above to directly monitor and sometimes influence the process.

The Third Pillar, the herbs, were largely the same then as they were now. It was actually the most complicated aspect of alchemy, as entire recipes were based on the combinations here, so replacing this pillar was something Sage Xu Changsheng and his successors at the Divine Cauldron Sect had not yet been able to achieve.

But the most progress had been made in the First Pillar, which was essentially the core of the Five Elements Alchemy. By replacing the need for fire, the other elements could use their specialized properties to interact with the Third Pillar to create finished products.

As such, pills which were basically universal were now split firmly into two categories. There were Common Pills, which could be produced by any Five Elements Alchemy Procedure with little to no augmentation to the recipe, and there were Unique Pills, which could only be made using one or more of the five elements as a base.

An example was the Water Core Pill, a newly made Core Formation pill created for those with water spirit roots and water cultivation methods to more easily break through to the Core Formation realm from Foundation Establishment.

Such a pill could only be made using Water Alchemy, because the reagents used would clash with the flames of the old-school alchemy and become waste pills. This was why the historical Golden Core Pill was a universal product that worked for all types of cultivation methods and spirit roots but had a lower success rate compared to element-focused pills produced today.