Infinite Slaughter System: I Kill, Therefore I Ascend!

Feng Lin nodded. "It does seem like so. Someone has already been sent to investigate his background, so we can be more certain of his thought process afterward.""Still, to be able to accelerate through the second realm so fast in qi cultivation… and it's a righteous technique too…" Cheng Shan muttered with uncertainty.

This was what made the two Deputy Hall Masters feel slightly overwhelmed. As members of a demonic sect, extremely fast cultivation speed was a given, and they had also met countless talents who could even rise through Qi Refinement in a week and Foundation Establishment in a month.

But to charge through in the span of a single hour? Not even a full day? That was beyond demonic. Even heavenly treasures and earthly delights could not bestow such growth speed upon a person. That was why they did not suspect that Li Ling had some transcendent treasure, because no treasure could accomplish this.

"Maybe it's a special physique?" Feng Lin ventured thoughtfully.

Cheng Shan glanced at her askance. "Hall Master Feng, have you ever heard of any physique that could accomplish what we just saw?"

Feng Lin was left speechless by this, because even the Heavenly Mandate Physique, said to be the topmost Immortal Spirit Body in the world, could not possibly achieve this.

Tang Huo, who had been silent all this while, simply shook his head. "Don't investigate his methods anymore. Everyone pretend as if he doesn't exist, or rather, treat him as just another ordinary disciple of the sect."

These words caused the two Deputy Hall Masters to pause and then share an uncertain look. Tang Huo naturally noticed this and raised an eyebrow.

"If you have anything to say, just say it!"

Feng Lin glanced at Cheng Shan, who could only bite the bullet and take the lead. With a careful tone, he couldn't help but ask:"Hall Master, is it wise to penalize him so strongly? His actions, while reprehensible, are actually on par for a demonic sect disciple and should be encouraged."

Tang Huo finally understood why his two deputies had been acting strangely today and then chuckled. "It seems strange, doesn't it? I am technically trapped here as the Hall Master despite my talent as a favor to the middle layer, so my best bet to break free and ascend higher would be to nurture him as my successor, right?"

Cheng Shan and Feng Lin remained silent, but one could tell from their expressions that they indeed thought so. Tang Huo sighed deeply, seeming to have a huge weight on his back.

"I would love to, but we all don't have much time left."

Hearing this, the faces of the two Deputy Hall Masters changed greatly.

Feng Lin hurriedly asked, "Hall Master, is it about that matter…?"

Tang Huo nodded grimly. "Indeed. You spoke about it earlier in passing, but it really is a thing that is happening. The Trinity of Righteousness have finally had their golden era arrive with her birth."

"The Dao Child of Heaven…" Cheng Shan muttered with a worried look, sighing deeply as well.

Feng Lin seemed unconvinced though. "So what if the Heavenly Mandate Sect has finally obtained their so-called perfect Dao Child with the Heavenly Mandate Physique? We also have top True Inheritors who can take her down, right?"

Tang Huo sighed gloomily. "The Middle Layer and the Upper Layer thought so too, so they agreed to the request from the Heavenly Mandate Sect for a duel between our Saint Son and their Dao Child, who was one realm lower at the time."

"I'm guessing we lost then?" Feng Lin asked with a slight frown.

Tang Huo glanced at her strangely, a hint of dark amusement on his face. "Lost? We did not just lose, she turned our Saint Son into a pile of charred ashes after invoking an artificial Heavenly Tribulation upon him. It wasn't even a fight, it was a complete slaughter, and she did not even use much effort to do this."

Cheng Shan and Feng Lin stood up in shock, never having thought of this happening. They couldn't even say any words of disbelief or shock, just standing there with stupefied expressions and constricted pupils, as if they had heard something horrifying.

The Saint Son of their sect was… dead?

This was not titanic news, this was completely heaven-shaking news, a disaster of the highest proportion.

And she was one entire major realm lower? Since the Saint Son had a cultivation base nearly equivalent to the Grand Elders, did that mean that this Dao Child could rampage among their upper echelon, slaughtering them like chickens and ducks?

Then what about the current True Inheritors? Wouldn't sending them to compete or challenge her be akin to giving a free sacrifice for her kill streak?

"Then… what do we do?" Feng Lin finally asked weakly in defeat, sitting back down in a daze.

"We do what the Upper Sect enforced me to do. We are to begin a heavy recruitment phase and select elite disciples to take on the mantle in order to challenge the Dao Child of Heavenly Mandate," Tang Huo stated rather calmly, seeming unbothered.

Cheng Shan was startled and then glanced at the shut-down array, realizing something. "But if that is the case, then isn't this Li Ling a transcendent talent who can put pressure on the Dao Child of Heavenly Mandate?"

Feng Lin was also snapped out of her despairing daze and thought the same. "That's right! Hall Master, in light of this, shouldn't we place him under protection and feed him resources so that he can grow quickly to be a pillar for our sect?"

Despite their seeming excitement, Tang Huo showed no overt change. "No, unfortunately that wouldn't be possible."

Before the overly excited duo could pounce on him to demand the reason, Tang Huo freely shared it with them.

"This is the order from the Upper Sect. The purpose of the upcoming intense recruitment is to increase our foot soldiers and dig out elites from them, so there will be no more coddling."

"All disciples who have Blood Child level talent are to be actively suppressed and put into difficult situations to temper their characters, making them fight like gu worms, only letting the absolute best feed upwards," Tang Huo concluded.

Feng Lin and Cheng Shan shared an uncertain look and went silent. After all, they understood the thoughts and intentions of the Upper Sect, but they thought this method was too unrefined and desperate, with a high chance of backfiring.

However, how could the Upper Sect not know this? Yet, the pressure they were under meant that they had to change their current system of making the upward climb extremely easy and comfortable for those with talent to the opposite, in order to find a diamond in the rough.

This previous talent-favoring system gave birth to the previous Saint Son and True Inheritors and, while they weren't trash, they were clearly not enough to match the single Dao Child of the other side. They did not need to train up a group of normal super talents anymore, they only needed one abnormal exemplary talent to balance things again.

Once that was achieved, they could switch back to the old system if necessary.

So Tang Huo could only bite the bullet and "illogically" suppress Li Ling, even garnering the fellow's enmity and hatred, but what else could he do when the Upper Sect dropped the order?

He could only hope that this method indeed had some use, otherwise it would be a wrap for the Six Paths Demon Sect in the world of Firmament Heaven.

...............…

Li Ling left the Asura Blood Hall, having used the Asura Blood Token to browse through the active war fronts of the Killing Blood Hall. The ones at the level of the Asura Blood Hall were quite plentiful, split into three categories.

The first were Wars of Conquest. These were wars that were done in areas that were uninhabited, aiming to use the strength of disciples to carve out new territory for their sect to either settle or sell to various rogue cultivators to develop into new areas.

It should be obvious that there was no way the Tianming Continent was completely populated by civilization. In fact, of the slightly more than a hundred recognized regions, they did not even account for more than 70% of the total landmass. The rest were wild and unexplored areas inhabited by either powerful demon beasts or treacherous locales that could not be easily traversed.

Because of this, cultivators of all sects and factions would try various methods to open up these new areas, and the most popular were Wars of Conquest.

The second category of battles were the Wars of Contest. This was exactly akin to the situation between the Boundless Joy Sect and the Qing Shan Sect, where Asura Blood Hall disciples would be dispatched to various lower-ranked demonic sects to act as reinforcements.

Really, they were just there to farm kills and contribution points while garnering goodwill and respect from lower demonic sects for the support from their upper echelon. The Asura Blood Hall disciples won thanks to the killing, and the Six Paths Demon Sect won thanks to increased reputation and control.

Finally, there were the truly bloody battle fronts, the Wars of Annihilation. These were the battles where the Six Paths Demon Sect had decided that the target, usually a sect, faction, location, or even a kingdom, had to be utterly destroyed from top to bottom with not even a fetus remaining.

There was not much to say about these ones. You signed up, headed out, and then performed atrocities that would make even Satan squirm in his seat and look away.

Li Ling browsed his options and chose to take part in a War of Annihilation, because those were the bloodiest and no holds barred. Wars of Conquest meant mostly facing demon beasts and the like, which was useless for him with the system.

Meanwhile, Wars of Contest were about flexing your arms, so the killing was regulated, with quotas and limits on the fighting.

Only Wars of Annihilation were about bathing in blood, but they also had the greatest fatality rate. Only one in ten disciples came back from those with heavy spoils, but the merit reward rate was boosted by five times for these types of wars, making it a great choice for those who wanted to get rich among the danger.

For Li Ling, it was heaven-sent. He was punished with a 90% deduction to all earned merits during his lifetime, so only places like these with huge bonuses could somewhat offset his losses.

Of the current Wars of Annihilation, there were about eight active. Five were in their late stage, with more than 70% of the enemy vanquished, and one was even at 95%, just searching for stragglers and in a slow period as it neared the end.

Of the remaining three, one war was in the middle stage and at the peak of the fight as they sieged the enemy base, another war was in the early middle stage where they had just reached the enemy headquarters and were about to start the siege, while the final one had just been launched about a week ago, and they were charging in from the outskirts through all the defenses and initial battles.

Li Ling needed the most kills and the most lives, so he signed up for the early war which had just left the probing stage and actual battles between the lowest echelon had begun. This was precisely where he would make his name and establish his prestige in the Asura Blood Hall and on the entire Tianming Continent.

As such, he traveled to the place he had just come from, the Teleportation Square of the Holy City, which was still quite busy. However, his identity was vastly different from before, from a vagrant with no root to a distinguished Path Walker of the Asura Blood Hall.

The ones managing the arrays here were Path Walkers of the True Human Hall, which cultivated special qi cultivation techniques that emphasized management, administration, and the propagation of normalcy.

That's right, the True Human Hall was the Six Paths Demon Sect's source of alchemists, talisman makers, and various professionals who did not easily engage in combat. As such, the disciples here, upon seeing and sensing Li Ling's Asura Blood Token, became friendly and assisted him in setting his destination.