Outsourcing was a kind of wisdom.
Originally, Feng Jiu had considered acting personally to kill a Sacred Body with an impure bloodline... After all, the client had offered far too much.
But his wonderful system had become active again, finally supplying the beginner's textbook it had owed him for thirty years. It concerned two mighty divine practitioners he had heard of before: one presided over creation, the other over reincarnation.
Houtu! Nuwa!
From that moment on, how could Feng Jiu have any interest in fighting and killing?
All he wanted was to throw himself wholeheartedly into cultivation.
Heaven was vast, earth was vast, but cultivation mattered most!
Only the principle he had followed for years-taking people's money to rid them of their troubles-made him put in a token effort and outsource the assignment. That assassin organization, Hell, looked pretty good to him!
Of course, he had considered his own Heavenly Court... But if he passed the assignment to someone else there, how would he reconcile the accounts later?
He still needed temporary workers!
Outsourcing is good. Outsourcing is useful!
The thought flashed through Feng Jiu's mind. Besides, the Desolate Ancient Era hasn't even ended yet...
The Desolate Ancient Era was the Sacred Bodies' most glorious age.
In these two hundred thousand years alone, nine great accomplishment Sacred Bodies had emerged in succession. Even though most had already passed away, one great accomplishment Sacred Body remained sealed within the Desolate Ancient Forbidden Land!
Heaven only knew what condition that Sacred Body was in.
Could he have some connection to the Sacred Body with the impure bloodline?
Although, in the original timeline, that Sacred Body had been in terrible shape, his body covered in golden hair and his mind muddled. Only after a female emperor took up residence in the Desolate Ancient Forbidden Land and suppressed his curse had his ominous affliction eased.
But it was still too early now. Feng Jiu couldn't be sure.
Accepting an order rashly could make it blow up in his face!
After all, the Sacred Body Lineage was the lineage most prone to creating miracles.
They could pilot their bodies like mechs, and different Sacred Bodies could even merge with one another. Thus, a great accomplishment Sacred Body might look half-dead, but if he pulled off a super fusion, even the Forbidden Zone Supremes would get a headache!
Especially...
There's another wild card...
The family descended from a Sacred Body... the Yang Family!
A family founded by one of the nine great Sacred Bodies. They haven't yet moved to the human race's Starry Sky Ancient Road and settled at the Fiftieth Pass... On the surface, this family doesn't look like much. Like the other Sacred Body families, they've suffered one mishap after another, until only a handful of cats, big and small, remain.
But wasn't the great accomplishment Sacred Body who founded this family thinking a little too far ahead?
To deal with possible Dark Turmoil in future generations, he refined his own blood essence and divided it into several portions, each corresponding to a different stage of a Sacred Body's cultivation. Most importantly, there's a bottle of Scarlet Blood containing that Sacred Body's source essence, his Dao, and his methods-the embodiment of a lifetime's cultivation!
It had to be said that the Sacred Body Lineage had a taste for performance art. More than one of them had refined their own blood essence.
The Yang Family's Sacred Body, and even Wushi later on, liked to bleed themselves, intending to use that blood at some critical moment in the future.
Now, Wushi had yet to appear, but a great accomplishment Sacred Body's contingency already existed. If it resonated with the Sacred Body in the Desolate Ancient Forbidden Land, even the Forbidden Zone Supremes would lose their composure.
If they threw shame to the winds as well and performed a super fusion with the Sacred Body remains on Saint Cliff and the Sacred Body corpse of Wushi's Father...
Four of the nine great Sacred Bodies would achieve an epic "meeting"!
One living great accomplishment Sacred Body would take the lead, with two corpses resonating alongside him. Although one had been drained of blood, a fresh portion of perfected sacred blood would merge with them as well...
Just imagining it was entertaining. Feng Jiu's urge to court death stirred, and he wanted to see such a scene.
One day, once his divine arts reached great accomplishment...
As for now?
He would set it aside.
Some mines weren't worth stepping on. He could either go around them or find someone else to walk through the minefield.
Take Purple Mountain in this day and age: Feng Jiu wouldn't spare it so much as a glance.
Even if there was Immortal Medicine inside, the Undying Heavenly Empress was in there too, along with a super simp who had achieved alternative Dao attainment-a laborer at the very pinnacle!
Although I think that, in a battle between people of the same realm, even if the young Sacred Body were killed, that great accomplishment Sacred Body wouldn't say anything if he learned of it... On the road to emperorship, life and death depend on one's own abilities. Those standing at the summit still have that much breadth of mind.
But finding someone to fight in my place and test the mines leaves me with far broader seas and skies!
With that thought, Feng Jiu looked at the assassin at Hell's contact point, his gaze growing gentler.
He spoke in a raspy voice, concealing his natural tone.
"Everyone believes that, among the Eastern Wasteland's three great assassin organizations, Heavenly Court reigns supreme, while Hell and Human World are nothing but prancing clowns."
At those words, the Hell assassin's gaze turned icy, shooting out a cold gleam.
As though he hadn't noticed, Feng Jiu continued on his own. "Especially in recent years, Heavenly Court has produced an extraordinary Killer Seed, who has fought alone across the north and south, hunting prodigies. Who knows how many prodigies and outstanding talents he has slaughtered? All of them were core successors with seven or eight prohibitions."
"Although all this happened below Severing the Dao, and might not carry all that much weight, it's still frightening enough."
Eight prohibitions at a low cultivation realm were certainly extraordinary, but they were hardly an unattainable height.
Some old relics and living fossils could grind away with time in the realm of mighty cultivators and eventually grind out seven or even eight prohibitions.
And many King Body prodigies enjoyed an invisible bonus.
After all, what was a King Body?
It corresponded to a king who had severed the Dao!
Once such a physique reached great accomplishment, it would be at the Severing the Dao level. Its innate essence was relatively exalted, so increasing its prohibition count below the king realm wasn't too difficult.
This counted as reaping the dividends of one's physique. It was much the same for an Emperor's Son: follow his father's path, and becoming a Quasi-Emperor wasn't too difficult!
But once the dividends ran out and the tide receded, everyone would see who had been swimming naked!
After reaching the Saint realm, a King Body became ordinary. It no longer provided a bonus to the "prohibitions" that allowed combat across cultivation realms. That was when a person's genuine abilities were put to the test!
One option was a truly peerless physique, such as a Sacred Body, an innate Dao embryo, or that of an Emperor's Son-something that wouldn't become obsolete even at the Quasi-Emperor level.
Another was a secret art supreme beneath heaven, a forbidden chapter belonging to an Ancient Great Emperor, cultivated to an extraordinary level. Something like Nine Secrets: Jie, one of the terrifying Nine Secrets, which could grant a tenfold boost in combat power.
Or there was utterly breathtaking talent: seeing through the foundations of cultivation and comprehending the Secret Realm Method's supreme profundity, "Using oneself as the seed." The human body was a small world, the universe a vast human body. Seek one's own Dao, comprehend one's own body, and create a forbidden domain of one's own.
Only by possessing at least one of those three, or even combining them, could someone speak loudly at the levels above Saint, discuss "prohibitions," and consider fighting across several minor realms.
By then, the current spectacle of outstanding talents beneath heaven being as numerous as
crucian carp crossing a river would be difficult to see again. The vast majority of so-called prodigies below Saint wouldn't even qualify to take the stage.
At the end of the day, all beneath Saint were ants.
Without becoming a Saint, one didn't even qualify to roam the starry sky, much less possess any "human rights" on the universe's grand stage!
The Saint realm was merely the starting point of the struggle for emperorship. Only a person's performance then, and the number of prohibitions they possessed, truly carried weight.
"But I've always felt that Hell isn't actually much worse than Heavenly Court. It merely lacks an opportunity to show what it can do..."
Feng Jiu changed tack, and the Hell assassin's expression improved considerably. He felt that those words had spoken straight to his heart.
The Hell assassin was very pleased, and Feng Jiu was happy too.
-Look, he even had to thank him!
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