Pot Heaven: Earthly Fiend Divine Power

Shen Yuan stared blankly at the prompt on the system interface, his mind crashing.

One moment ago, he had still been stuck on the novice tutorial. The next, he had merely scribbled his name onto a scroll with charcoal, only to somehow become the sect master of the Falling Cloud Sect. The gap between the two left Shen Yuan struggling to believe it.

And the final system prompt—that he had joined the Falling Cloud Sect as its sect master and completed the novice tutorial quest—plunged Shen Yuan into a long silence.

"Well, the sect master of the Falling Cloud Sect is also a member of the Falling Cloud Sect, so completing the quest this way is perfectly logical. My ass! Those are completely different things, alright?!"

Forcing himself to ignore the execution logic of this artificial idiot system, Shen Yuan shifted his gaze away from the interface and onto the golden scroll gleaming before him.

He had previously managed to decipher the meaning of the Sect Master Register, but he had never expected a mere scroll to hold such immense value that it could directly determine the succession of a sect master.

By that reasoning, the final blank space in the register likely belonged to the mighty sect master of the Falling Cloud Sect who had attained Earth Immortal status and attempted to lead the entire sect in soaring to immortality.

Due to the effects brought about by the severing of heaven and earth, the Falling Cloud Sect had suffered calamity. Even the name of that Earth Immortal mighty figure who had presided over the ascension had been erased, leaving a blank spot in the Sect Master Register and conveniently benefiting Shen Yuan.

Moreover, under normal procedures, becoming sect master required more than leaving one's name in the Sect Master Register. One also had to notify the ancestral hall, the elders' palace, the true inheritance hall, and other upper echelons of the sect. Only with no objections could one inherit the position of sect master.

Ten thousand years ago, this would undoubtedly have been an extraordinarily difficult task. One would need the support of every major faction, as well as the strength to suppress everyone, before becoming sect master.

But ten thousand years later, it was a completely different story.

The Falling Cloud Sect had been destroyed for ten thousand years. There was simply no one who could crawl out of a grave to oppose Shen Yuan's succession.

And so, in a baffling fashion, Shen Yuan successfully bypassed the novice tutorial's roadblock and ascended in a single step to take control of the sect.

After sorting through the chain of events, Shen Yuan looked at the crooked name on the Sect Master Register, and the corner of his mouth could not help twitching.

"So, does this count as using a bug exploit to defeat a system bug?"

"As expected, you can't judge an artificial idiot system by common sense."

After making a few casual complaints, Shen Yuan turned his attention to the rewards brought by completing the quest.

He held no expectations whatsoever for this so-called identity as sect master. The Falling Cloud Sect had been destroyed for over ten thousand years, without even a scrap of inheritance left behind. His position as sect master was nothing but an empty shell.

Compared to a sect master's title that only remained in name, Shen Yuan cared far more about the quest rewards from this trip.

The Violet Cloud Qi Refining Method needed no further mention. It was the follow-up cultivation method Shen Yuan had been awaiting for a long time.

On the entire path of cultivation, the Cloudmist Breathing Method could only be considered a foundational technique. Even upon cultivating to the Essence Refining realm, it merely granted physical capabilities several times greater than those of an ordinary person, along with powerful vital essence. Against modern firearms, one would still be unable to contend head-on.

But if Shen Yuan cultivated the Violet Cloud Qi Refining Method and entered the Qi Transformation realm, he would be able to display the true methods of a cultivator and step into a domain beyond the reach of mortals.

Of course, compared to the other reward Shen Yuan had received, the mere Violet Cloud Qi Refining Method was nothing worth mentioning.

At that thought, Shen Yuan extended his right hand. A jade-green gourd that seemed almost illusory fell into his palm. Though it was smaller than his palm, it contained within it a vast stretch of heaven and earth.

Several large words appeared clearly on the system interface before Shen Yuan's eyes.

Pot Heaven (sixteenth of the Earthly Fiend Divine Powers): Vast is the cosmos in drunkenness; long are the days and months within the gourd. This divine power can use a spiritual object as its foundation to open up a space. It is a method of containing Mount Sumeru within a mustard seed. Cultivated to its peak, it can use this method to evolve a blessed grotto-heaven and attain the fruition of an Earth Immortal. (Subsequent advancement paths cannot be queried due to insufficient realm.)

Although he had already anticipated it when he saw the words Earthly Fiend Divine Power, Shen Yuan could not help revealing a look of delight upon truly seeing the Pot Heaven method.

The Thirty-Six Heavenly Constellations and Seventy-Two Earthly Fiends—these one hundred and eight divine powers were not mundane arts, but immortal divine powers originating from the Immortal Realm. Countless spells in the world bore the traces of Heavenly Constellation and Earthly Fiend divine powers; they could be said to be the source of all techniques.

More importantly, divine powers differed from spells in that they did not require spiritual power to activate. So long as one mastered a divine power, even an ordinary person could wield it, though its effects would be far inferior to those displayed by mighty cultivators.

Slowly closing his right hand around the emerald gourd, Shen Yuan felt countless streams of information surge into his mind in an instant. The method of the divine power had already fused into his memories, as though it had become a part of his body.

He casually picked up a hard plastic water bottle from the ground. Shen Yuan gently tapped the empty bottle with the index finger of his right hand.

His divine sense flowed into the bottle along with the Pot Heaven divine power. The originally cramped space seemed to be forcibly torn open by an invisible giant hand, after which layers upon layers of space began extending without end.

The bottle's exterior did not change at all, yet the space within instantly expanded severalfold, and its internal volume continued to grow.

Suddenly, the bottle in Shen Yuan's hand let out a crisp series of creaks. Cracks spread across the outer wall of the plastic bottle, and Shen Yuan quickly flung it into the distance.

The next moment, cracks of shattered space crawled across the bottle. The collision between inner and outer space effortlessly tore apart the mundane object, before swathes of violent spatial rifts completely swallowed the bottle.

Shen Yuan looked at the spot where the bottle had vanished, his brows knitting slightly as he muttered to himself, "I knew mundane objects couldn't create stable space, but this is far too unstable. Even Qi Transformation cultivators would only meet death if they rashly touched those spatial rifts. The power of space is simply not something low-level cultivators can resist."

Shen Yuan's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Wait. I can use mundane objects to create unstable spaces, then detonate them as spatial grenades. The damage radius may be limited, but if it hits a low-realm cultivator, they'll either die or be severely injured."

At that thought, a satisfied smile appeared on Shen Yuan's face.

If any mighty cultivator saw Shen Yuan using unstable spaces as grenades, they might curse him out as a prodigal on the spot.

One had to know that for ordinary cultivators to obtain a storage treasure, they needed to use precious void stones to open up space. Even many high-level cultivators were not qualified to come into contact with storage treasures.

As for a supreme spatial divine power like Pot Heaven, one capable of helping others advance and attain Earth Immortal status, it was almost always held in the hands of rare mighty figures. Absolutely no one would be bored enough to use it to open unstable spaces as grenades for fun.

Using another empty bottle, Shen Yuan created another unstable spatial grenade and casually threw it at a nearby mountain wall.

The range of the tiny spatial rift was not large, yet it possessed astonishing destructive power that ignored defenses. It directly tore through the solid mountain wall before shattered cracks spread in every direction from the spatial grenade like a spiderweb.

Afterward, Shen Yuan conducted several more experiments, studying the relationship between the size of the space he opened and the timing of the explosion. Alongside his pleasant surprises, Shen Yuan also began to feel mentally exhausted.

Although the Pot Heaven divine power had no restrictions of realm or spiritual power, opening space consumed enormous amounts of divine sense each time. Shen Yuan had only just entered the Essence Refining realm and could not use it many times at all.

After hurriedly eating some of the compressed food he had brought, Shen Yuan returned to his tent. Beneath the mountain moonlight, he circulated the Cloudmist Breathing Method and entered his rest.

As the night deepened, the entire Cloudmist Mountains gradually fell into silence. Yet beyond the Cloudmist Mountains, even greater upheaval was only just beginning.