The rumors were not empty talk. The Thousand Mechanisms Demon Sect had always excelled in all manner of secretive, uncanny arts, and many of its cultivation methods used gu insects as a gateway to the Dao.
The Thousand Mechanisms Demon Sect could even implant spirit gu in mortals who lacked spiritual apertures and could not cultivate, allowing them to embark on cultivation. Such mortals, however, could reach only the third tier at most—the Human Race's Divine Dao Realm.
Southern Shu Territory was also home to another great, top-ranking sect, the Joyous Union Sect. Its disciples primarily cultivated profound yin-yang arts, particularly excelling in dual cultivation and harvesting others' essence to replenish themselves.
Compared with it, the Thousand Mechanisms Demon Sect actually enjoyed a somewhat better reputation.
The Demon Sects of this world were not as cruel and bloodthirsty as people imagined. Their origins lay in the fusion and evolution of various cultivation paths from the recent ancient era. They were called "demonic" simply because their cultivators had all abandoned orthodox Ancient Immortal Dao methods and blazed their own trails.
And the Righteous Dao, as people saw it, did not necessarily act honorably in everything.
It, too, harbored schools similar to the Joyous Union Sect. The Lesser Snow Mountain lineage, for example, likewise practiced dual cultivation and essence harvesting, using even more extreme methods. They could draw upon an entire dynasty's fortune for their own use, and even cling like maggots to the bone, feeding upon generations of a lineage's ancestral incense offerings.
They were crowned with the name "Righteous Dao" only because their cultivation methods best suited the Breath-Feeding Dao Tradition that prevailed in the world, and were therefore upheld as the proper path.
Beyond these, there was also the so-called Outer Dao.
Such sects clung to long-declining ancient immortal