This was the first time Evil Ksitigarbha had felt true fear. In the past, he had treated the fearful thoughts of others as a delightful experience, but only when it arose within himself did he understand how profound it was.
Over the endless years of the past, there had been more than one world whose spiritual energy he had devoured clean before it fell into ruin. Upper-realm fiends like them loved nothing more than seeking lower realms where the path to heaven had opened, plunging in headfirst, eating and wiping everything clean, then leaving. Such lower realms were worlds left behind by supreme beings after their fall. Devouring them would grant the fiends immense ascension.
The path to heaven rarely opened. It was only possible when cultivators attempted to undergo tribulation and ascend. Otherwise, someone in the lower realm had to summon a heavenly fiend, allowing him to descend through the opportunity. Of course, that was even rarer than ascension. After all, incantations for summoning heavenly fiends could not spread between lower realms.
The summoning spell on the far western continent had likely fallen into the lower realm along with the Divine Ruins, only to be obtained by chance later. When Evil Ksitigarbha descended here, he had thought it was a tremendous stroke of fortune.
He had never expected this mortal world to give him so many troubles.
The moment he landed, he sensed that something was wrong. By rights, the limits of cultivation in a lower realm should have been at the seventh realm. Once he descended, he ought to have crushed everything completely. Yet eighth-realm powerhouses were everywhere here, and divine artifacts still existed in the world. He could no longer run rampant as he had before. If there had only been eighth-realm cultivators, that would have been