That being the case, studying what the Thousand-Faced Devil Lord had left behind became unavoidable.
Li Ling and his disciple Chi Yingting joined forces, each examining and cross-checking the many things they had seized.
Only then did they learn that the Thousand-Faced Devil Lord had visited many places and done many things since beginning his wanderings at sea.
Reduced to a rogue cultivator, with no sect to supply his resources, he had been forced to seek out secluded mysteries everywhere, just like those of humble origins, hoping to obtain treasures from the natural world that might offer him a stroke of fortune.
But rogue cultivators acquired wealth far too slowly. Ordinary people simply could not accumulate enough resources to advance their cultivation within a mere hundred years. Only by attaching themselves to a faction that controlled an Immortal Mountain Paradise, or to a mighty expert, could they set foot on the broad, smooth road to a rapid rise.
Otherwise, they could only kill and seize treasures wherever they went, plundering others' resources and treasures-even their bodies and souls-for their own use!
For this reason, the Thousand-Faced Devil Lord had willingly fallen into depravity, setting out on the path of transforming into a fiend.
It was also while killing and seizing treasures that inspiration had struck him. He had used Incense Path methods to refine the incense essence within human bodies and souls, thereby developing a formula for human-refined incense.
This was, in fact, a soul-devouring method unique to the Incense Path. The Thousand-Faced Devil Lord called it shape-seizing, and from it he had created a divine ability named Shape-Seizing Life-Creation.
Li Ling did not know the precise steps for cultivating this method, but the notes the Thousand-Faced Devil Lord had left behind gave him a general understanding. With his own