Source of Merit

He temporarily suppressed his excitement. Hunting zombie wandering souls could be done at any time, so there was no need to rush.

With a wave of his hand, he collected all the vengeful souls into the Soul Banner, then Lu Yan began studying another extremely important matter.

"Where exactly did the Profound Yellow Merit Fire come from?"

If Lu Yan had been a programmer who slacked off at work, he would have been satisfied as long as a pile of messy code could run. No one would bother studying how the program actually worked.

But cultivation allowed no room for mistakes. If he could not take every step steadily, sooner or later something major would go wrong.

There were two major prerequisites for cultivating the Profound Yellow Merit Fire. One was possessing a divine ability for refinement, and the other was possessing a sufficient amount of merit.

Yet the key problem was that neither of these things seemed to have anything to do with Lu Yan.

Doubt filled Lu Yan's mind. He could not help taking out the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra and examining it in detail to see whether it contained any records concerning the Profound Yellow Merit Fire.

However, as a high-grade Demonic Path Cultivation Technique, the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra contained no records whatsoever concerning merit or the Profound Yellow Merit Fire. It did not even have any additional description of the spell known as Red Lotus Karma Fire.

"I used the formula for the Supreme-Grade Spell Red Lotus Karma Fire to cast the Profound Yellow Merit Fire.

This is clearly a Demonic Path technique that relies on karmic sin to kill enemies. How could it possibly be connected to a merit-based divine ability?

Could there be someone in the demonic sects secretly accumulating merit to cultivate divine abilities?"

Lu Yan could not help muttering a casual complaint.

But in the next moment, Lu Yan froze. He suddenly remembered that when he had cultivated the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra, he had discovered errors in it and consequently modified the cultivation technique by referring to Buddhist and Daoist classics found online.

"Could it be because I modified the cultivation technique? But this is still a Demonic Path cultivation technique. No matter how I modified it, it shouldn't have directly turned into a righteous path focused on merit, should it?"

He flipped through the errors marked in the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra. They were all seemingly insignificant details. After cultivating according to the modified technique, Lu Yan had not encountered any problems.

"Could it be... that the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra was originally wrong? And only after I modified it did it regain its original appearance?

"And is this Profound Yellow Merit Fire also connected to the origins of the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra?"

Unfortunately, he was not currently in the Xianxia Version, so there was no way to verify these guesses.

"Next time I go to the Xianxia Version, I should focus on investigating information related to the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra."

Temporarily setting aside this matter with no leads, Lu Yan turned his attention to another question.

"Refining the Profound Yellow Merit Fire requires an enormous amount of merit. When did I accumulate so much merit?"

In the Xianxia Version, merit was a precious thing.

In ancient times, Moral Sect Cultivators specialized in cultivating merit-based methods. Although they were not adept at fighting other cultivators, they possessed an extremely powerful restraining effect against evil demons and the Outer Dao.

Even Demonic Path Cultivators an entire major realm higher could only detour around disciples of the Moral Sect. Even underworld deities and Outer Dao evil gods could only retreat three paces.

Unfortunately, on the eve of the Demonic Path Calamity, the Moral Sect was besieged by all the other sects. Its higher-ups were killed or wounded almost to the last, and afterward, the demonic sects slaughtered the entire sect, completely severing its inheritance.

To a certain extent, it was precisely because the Moral Sect's inheritance had been severed that the Demonic Path of later generations could run rampant throughout the cultivation world with Soul Banners.

If the Moral Sect still existed, the righteous sects would not have been helpless against the rampant use of Soul Banners.

This topic had strayed too far. Even setting aside merit's restraint over the Demonic Path, a person possessing merit could improve their fortune and opportunities and extend their lifespan even without cultivating merit-based methods.

Lu Yan did not consider himself a good person in the traditional sense. His hands were even stained with quite a few lives.

If the zombies from the Apocalypse Version were included, nearly ten thousand people had died by his hand. Every day, more than a thousand zombies were killed by vengeful souls under Lu Yan's command, their souls stripped away and refined into the Soul Banner.

Even a great Demonic Path expert would probably give a thumbs-up at such a rate of slaughter and call him an Innate Demonic Seed.

He had not only avoided bearing karmic consequences, but had also accumulated such an ocean of merit that it could be refined into a divine ability. Lu Yan did not even know how to make sense of it.

"It's most likely related to the zombies."

After pondering for a long while, Lu Yan could only come up with this guess.

After musing for a moment, Lu Yan waved the Soul Banner and summoned a Warrior.

"Go catch a few ordinary zombies for me."

The Warrior obeyed and flew out of the Abandoned Building.

As a commotion and the howls of zombies came from the streets and buildings below, the Warrior returned to the room after a while, carrying two zombies.

Lu Yan ignored the rotting chunks of flesh continually falling from the zombies' bodies and sized up the zombies before him.

His mind sank into visualization. After refining the Profound Yellow Merit Fire, Lu Yan had already realized that the strange radiance within his mind was merit.

After confirming the amount of merit represented by the strange radiance at that moment, Lu Yan flicked a finger. A strand of magical power pierced through a zombie's skull. Its physical body was completely destroyed, and the remaining Human Soul Seven Spirits dissipated as well.

After killing one zombie, Lu Yan immediately entered a state of visualization. The merit in his mind neither increased nor decreased, showing not the slightest change.

This was enough to prove that killing zombies could not accumulate merit.

Lu Yan's brows furrowed slightly. He summoned a vengeful soul and pointed at the remaining zombie.

"Strip away its soul."

Upon hearing this, the vengeful soul plunged its claws into the zombie's body and hooked the fragile zombie wandering soul out of its rotting flesh.

As the soul left its body, the zombie's rotting flesh transformed into a heap of bleached bones scattered across the floor, leaving behind only a dazed wandering soul.

Entering visualization once more, Lu Yan was shocked to discover that the strange radiance representing merit had actually increased by an imperceptible amount.

Although the increase was minuscule, it had indeed grown.

At this point, Lu Yan was completely certain that killing zombies did not bring merit, while stripping zombie wandering souls from their bodies did.

"Where exactly lies the difference between the two?"

Lu Yan fell into deep thought.

After a long while, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

"It's the Apocalypse Version!"

Lu Yan instantly understood, divine light bursting from his eyes.

"The root cause in the Apocalypse Version is that humanity is missing the Heavenly Soul and Earthly Soul. After death, the Human Soul and Seven Spirits become trapped within the physical body, transforming into zombies that are neither living nor dead.

"Killing zombies does not bring merit because zombies are already dead people. The birth and death of individual living beings are insignificant to the world as a whole.

"But stripping the Human Soul and Seven Spirits from a zombie's body represents undoing the bondage imposed on them by the zombie's decayed flesh. To this world, that means eradicating the disaster of the Apocalypse—it is a tremendous achievement!

"Heaven's Will does not care whether the souls stripped away naturally dissipate or are used to make sacrifices and create Soul Banners.

"As long as someone helps the souls escape the restraints of their zombie bodies, merit will descend. This is the reason I was able to accumulate such a vast amount of merit!"