Whenever Fanny thought of this, she became exceptionally excited. So whenever she had nothing urgent to do, she stayed in the room with Simon and cultivated diligently.
This left Lona rather unaccustomed to it. Originally, she and Fanny had been the least diligent cultivators aboard the Metal Lifeform. Who would have thought that Fanny would become such a dedicated cultivator too?
Lona had no choice but to work hard at cultivation alongside everyone else.
Fortunately, most of the bandits they encountered along the way were Midgods. Tara only needed to show himself to scare them off, allowing everyone to have a relatively peaceful cultivation environment.
The only accident that year was when the bandits had a Highgod leading them as well.
But just as they were about to make a move, the Highgod bandit's Divine Sense swept over the Metal Lifeform and discovered a Highgod Fiend inside. He immediately and wisely chose to give up.
It couldn't be helped. Bandits had to consider whether the gains were worth the risks.
It was fortunate that he had fled so cleverly. Otherwise, Simon would not have minded letting him experience the taste of the Ice-Wind Prison.
And just like that, a year passed.
Over that year, the Metal Lifeform crossed several hundred million kilometers, and everyone gradually grew accustomed to this monotonous journey.
During this peaceful year, many Fiends on their first mission even began to feel that Hell, rumored to be fraught with danger, was not all that frightening.
Even Simon felt the same way.
Actually, this was normal. There really were many bandits in Hell, but not many of them amounted to anything.
The reason Simon and Fanny had encountered so many bandits led by Highgods before was simply because they had been unlucky.
Under normal circumstances, they would not have been so unfortunate.
This was also why Kenchi had initially planned to hire only one Highgod Fiend. As long as their luck was not too terrible, the chances of safely reaching their destination were still quite high.
Of course, luck was a mysterious thing. No one wanted to gamble with their own lives unless they were poor...
During that year, Simon successfully perfected the Ice-Wind Prison to its current limit.
Once it was completed, Fanny could not wait to experience its power.
But after Fanny truly experienced it, she never mentioned the matter again.
It couldn't be helped. That powerful compression and restraint felt just like when Fanny, as a Lowgod, had faced a Highgod's Godhead Domain.
She had absolutely no way to break free. Once trapped within it, she could only be at another's mercy!
Even Fanny did not want to experience that feeling of utter helplessness a second time.
But when she thought about how Simon would use this move to protect her in the future, she felt endless sweetness again.
Sure enough, even gods had double standards. I don't like being restrained, but I like seeing others restrained...
Afterward, Simon spent another month developing his strongest physical attack yet—the Ice-Wind Slash.
The Ice-Wind Slash, which perfectly fused the profound mysteries of water and wind, could easily tear open spatial rifts over a meter long in Hell.
Its physical attack power was extremely impressive.
During this period, Simon's Wind Element Divine Clone and main body also relied on their understanding of the Spatial Properties to successfully fuse Wind Space with the Profound Mystery of Speed and Profound Mystery of Slow by more than half.
This fusion speed far exceeded Simon's expectations.
At this rate, the complete fusion of these three profound mysteries was not far away.
"Sure enough, after understanding the Spatial Properties, the difficulty of fusing wind-element profound mysteries has also decreased."
Perhaps decreased difficulty was not the right way to describe it.
Rather, Simon's understanding of the Law of Wind had deepened, and he had more perspectives from which to view things.
It gave him the feeling of seeing things from a higher vantage point.
It was like how Simon had found high school mathematics difficult in his previous life, but after reaching university and learning advanced mathematics, high school mathematics had seemed much simpler.
The analogy was not entirely appropriate, but it was vivid enough.
That was how Simon felt now. Profound mysteries that had once seemed obscure and difficult no longer appeared so hard. Places where he had once needed lengthy deductions to find inspiration for a breakthrough now seemed to reveal their direction almost instantly.
It saved him a great deal of time and greatly improved his cultivation efficiency.
Simon was immensely glad that he had understood the Spatial Properties so early.
If he had not understood the Spatial Properties, then without more than a century of bitter cultivation, he could forget about reaching his current level of fusion.
Even the final bottleneck in fusing water and wind elemental profound mysteries would not have been easy to break through. With bad luck, being stuck for tens of thousands of years would have been perfectly normal.
But now, this bottleneck, comparable in difficulty to fusing three profound mysteries from the same law, had been broken through by Simon as easily as drinking water.
Simon felt that ever since he had understood the Spatial Properties, his cultivation had become like cheating. His cultivation speed had already been fast, but now it had become even faster.
Those original bottlenecks now felt as though they were being resolved effortlessly.
Simon was naturally overjoyed by this.
After carefully thinking it over afterward, Simon felt that this was likely closely related to the fact that he was a transmigrator.
Because he was essentially an outsider, he was naturally not bound by the limitations of this world.
He knew that this world had been created by Hongmeng, and he also knew that comprehending the Laws of Space was forbidden here.
But although the Laws of Space could not be comprehended, they could still be understood and observed.
The natives of the Coiling Dragon Universe did not possess this awareness. They would never have the concept of "Laws of Space" throughout their lives. Even if they accidentally brushed against it, they would unconsciously forget it.
It was sad, but realistic.
Only Utrecht counted as an exception, and that was because he was a Paragon of the Laws of Destruction.
Because the Laws of Destruction, like the Law of Wind, were naturally inseparable from space, he had the qualifications to accidentally touch upon the Spatial Properties.
And through that, he successfully deciphered the secret of the Four Divine Beasts' Combined Innate Divine Ability.
This was something that could absolutely never have happened to Orloff.
Because Orloff was a Paragon of the Laws of Fate. Although, due to his race, he could calmly conduct research for hundreds of millions of years without growing bored,
he was utterly disconnected from the Laws of Space. He could never decipher the secret of the Four Divine Beasts' Combined Innate Divine Ability in his lifetime, nor could he understand the Spatial Properties.
Although Orloff had suspected in the original story that there were other universes beyond the Coiling Dragon Universe, he had only ever suspected it until his death.
Simon, on the other hand, was one hundred percent certain that there was a greater Main Universe beyond the Coiling Dragon Universe, and that these universes all existed within Hongmeng Space.
This was the difference brought by perspective. It could also be called Simon's greatest cheat.
The native identities of Orloff and Utrecht had fixed the limits of their potential.
Even Utrecht's ability to understand the Spatial Properties was already astonishing enough.
But that was all. Even if Utrecht racked his brains, he would never imagine that there were worlds beyond the world.
Nor would he imagine that there existed such miraculous higher laws as the Laws of Space.
This was also Simon's greatest advantage.
Now, he had seized this advantage and successfully understood the Spatial Properties through the Law of Wind.
Although he still could not comprehend them, merely being able to observe and understand them was already enough. This was crucial to Simon's progress in the Law of Wind.
Showing Their Might for the First Time
Now that the Ice-Wind Prison had been successfully perfected, Simon decided to let his main body rest for the time being.
Balancing work and rest could sometimes improve cultivation efficiency even more.
This was also why God-Level beings in Hell liked making friends.
In their long, lonely lives, finding a kindred spirit or lover was an exceptionally rare thing.
Simon brought Fanny to the main hall and found everyone there.
The two of them sat down and drank with the others while chatting about all sorts of topics.
"Hell is really vast. We spend more than half our time traveling, don't we? It would be great if someone could develop a faster means of transportation someday."
Hamut said boredly.
Over the past year, whenever he was not cultivating, he would sit before the window formed by the Metal Lifeform and stare outside.
During this time, his greatest impression had been that it was far—so damn far...
"Hell has existed for such a long time. If there were a more convenient means of transportation, it would definitely have been widespread long ago. The fact that it still hasn't been popularized proves that Metal Lifeforms are already the best option available."
Elno analyzed.
Because of his former special profession, he had come into contact with quite a few influential figures in Hell and had broad knowledge.
He knew very well that even experts such as Seven-Star Fiends usually traveled by Metal Lifeform unless they had something extremely urgent to deal with.
"Ah, but traveling like this is really so slow..."
Hamut had a playful and restless personality. Making him stay quietly in one fixed place for too long made him unable to sit still.
Fortunately, he now had friends with whom he could chat and exchange cultivation insights.
Simon did not feel much about it. As far as he was concerned, as long as it was quiet and he was not disturbed, that was enough.
The journey ahead gradually began to go less smoothly.
According to Kenchi, they had now officially entered Brook Prefecture.
After traveling several tens of millions more kilometers, they would reach the Dat Tribe.
Brook Prefecture was also a medium-sized prefecture. There were ten cities within its territory, and everything else was wilderness.
"Metal Lifeform ahead, stop!"
As the caravan passed through a mountain range, a large group of bandits suddenly appeared ahead and intercepted Simon's group.
"You thought you could just swagger through the Yanfeng Mountain Range like this?"
A middle-aged burly man dressed in a dark green warrior's outfit shouted at the Leopard-shaped Metal Lifeform.
Simon had been fusing Wind Space and the Profundity of Speed. Being interrupted so abruptly put him in a very bad mood.
He followed everyone outside the Metal Lifeform and discovered that there were quite a few bandits before them: three Highgods and nearly a thousand Midgods. They were a fairly decent bandit group.
At this point, Kenchi said helplessly,
"Lord Leader, it isn't that I didn't stop when I passed through here last time. I simply hadn't encountered you then. If I had known, how could I possibly have failed to stop and pay my respects to you lords?"
Before you continue