Chapter 91: Gaining a Divine Ability

The sun slanted to the west, painting the scene in twilight hues.

On this side of the wasteland where corpses were buried, the corpse-buriers' work for the day had reached the finishing stage.

Du En was now essentially in a state of full-time cultivation, having not personally buried a corpse for nearly a year.

Regarding this, Ning Caize and the others had no complaints; on the contrary, they felt this was for the best, as it made them feel they still possessed the precious value of being able to act as proxies for Du En!

Seeing Du En return from "spirit-seeking" once again, they offered their respects from afar, then mustered their remaining strength to finish the day's work with the best possible posture.

Seeing this display, one who didn't know better might have thought a steward had come to inspect them!

Du En watched calmly.

Because he possessed a legacy, he knew a great deal, and through legitimate channels at that.

This point was actually not surprising, as even the steward, He Bo, possessed methods to remotely monitor the progress of the corpse burials.

【Divine Ability: Burial of Death, Glory of Life (Newly Initiated 0/10)】

And, himself standing before the Dead Sea.

This matter matched the situation Ren Li had described when he left.

Night fell, people came and went, and everything was normal.

The others here were quite carefree, assuming Du En had been told some good news by Ren Li before he left; they didn't dare to pry and felt no worry, so they simply merged together and returned after finishing their work.

"Sure enough, there is strict surveillance."

If it were Ren Li currently having the epiphany, he certainly wouldn't have encountered such a thing.

This was the key point!

Verifying this was quite simple; one only needed to see if, upon returning, some powerhouse appeared to apprehend them, the corpse-buriers.

Various wild carrion-eating beasts had originally been decimated by the previous Great Cold Wave, but due to the effect of the spiritual Qi permeating this place, their population recovery rate was as fast as the once-again lush Southern Frontier mountain forests, and they had now basically returned to sixty or seventy percent of their normal levels.

Ren Li had once drilled into a dead end, not knowing how to look up, and ultimately almost returned empty-handed, but the current Du En felt no anxiety; he simply lowered his eyes silently and entered the state of epiphany quite naturally and swiftly.

Du En did not panic; he simply employed one move.

Now, the sea remained as deathly silent as ever.

He wanted to break away from this state of epiphany, only to discover that he had been invisibly tethered and could not break free at all.

The so-called "striking while the iron is hot" was naturally to take advantage of the lingering momentum of the breakthrough and transition, to see if he could also resolve the matter of comprehending the wasteland in one go.

With his physical strength, he had the capital to feign death and stir up trouble, and with this Divine Ability, even though he was only newly initiated, he could instantly restore his magic power to full!

"... Cough, I'll stop the corpse burials for now and see how things go in a few days; if this problem doesn't appear again, then I'll continue..."

Du En eavesdropped from his side, then seeing it begin to fade rapidly, he remained motionless, waiting until nightfall arrived before brushing the edge of the epiphany state to withdraw.

Therefore, even the corpses after death had value; whether in life or after death, the value of those at the bottom was squeezed dry, not a single drop left behind.

Breath-Concealing Technique.

At this moment, however, Du En was even more vivid, even glowing.

In the end, he was not caught, and he caught up to Ning Caize and the others.

"Those speaking should be the high-level figures of the Border City, the few Golden Core stage individuals who are the City Lords; their monitoring of the wasteland is more meticulous and can reach into the depths."

Because of this, the accumulation of its proficiency was different from other methods; it did not rely on practice to accumulate, but required burying ten corpses of the corresponding stage and digesting the "death" contained within them to accumulate a single point.

"Although it uses different forms, in the end, it is actually doing the same thing: seeking life through death, setting off life with death, using this deathly silent sea of death to set off the living me by the seaside."

After finishing their remaining work, they packed up their things onto the only remaining small cart and went off to busy themselves with their own owl-cooking affairs.

Du En's calm gaze looked toward the main road they had already merged into.

Du En silently pierced through the membrane that Ren Li had failed to cross back then.

At the beginning, it only purely restored a certain state, returning it to its peak, but gradually, one could continue to stack and strengthen upon that peak state, increasingly highlighting the existence and presence of "life."

The first person to speak possessed the qualifications to make their own suggestions upward.

Du En adapted to the possible developments at hand; better safe than sorry, an escape outline was quickly brewed.

The Initial Glimpse stage requires a total of two hundred Foundation Establishment stage corpses to be killed and buried.

In the hesitant twilight, there were faint sounds of conversation.

The corroboration was their conversation.

The Newly Initiated stage requires a total of one hundred Qi Refining stage corpses to be killed and buried.

"If there is truly an emergency, I will first self-detonate my cultivation to feign death as a corpse, and when I am about to be buried, I will use this newly comprehended Divine Ability to 'resurrect,' then flee directly into the Southern Frontier mountain forests, and finally attempt to cross the border..."

A new item had quietly appeared within it.

The twilight rendering above the Dead Sea quietly stopped, the ripples on the sea surface vanished, and the tide receded silently; in the blink of an eye, it returned to its original state of deathly silence.

"... The decision made by our sect, is that something you or I, the three of us, can interfere with..."

In any case, people outside the city were not considered human to begin with.

Then, his footsteps moved in succession, racing against the permeating deathly silence.

Using death to set off life, using the intent of death to nourish vitality, seeking life through death... Was the Border City, or rather the Immortal Sect, actually doing this kind of thing?

Just like the Firm Spirit Art, Du En had also accumulated day by day regarding the matters here, never having a single idle day; thus, by now, he had long since reached the point Ren Li had encountered, only a hair's breadth away from piercing that membrane.

This was the problem with being a rogue cultivator.

"Let's put aside thoughts of this for now; what needs to be cared about at the moment is whether they have actually discovered my eavesdropping."

Under the state of epiphany, his living glow instantly dimmed, and his body also became invisible and disappeared.

Withdrawing his gaze from them, Du En focused his attention entirely on the wasteland before him.

Finally, only the twilight color on that sea seemed somewhat hesitant, not disappearing immediately.

"... Sigh, that is why I previously opposed shifting the aftermath to our side; now that it is leaking everywhere and hard to stop, even that wasteland outside the city is not very stable..."

Unlike Du En, who was both a rogue cultivator and a thief, the Immortal Sect naturally had secret setups to prevent anyone from secretly peeking at the mysteries, just waiting for the mouse to take the bait!

Ren Li's old path was to borrow a fake death to seek vitality, attempting to discern and grasp the secret of seeking life within death from this process.

Du En acted very naturally.

It spread rapidly toward Du En's side, intending to drag him, who was abruptly alive, into it, to perish together within the deathly silence!

Perhaps because of the breakthrough and change in cultivation, this self of his had now become slightly different, his whole body emitting a soft, faint fluorescent glow.

Calm and composed, with a flicker of a thought, the interface appeared in his eyes.

"Looking at it now, the influence of the transferred aftermath of the previous war seems to still have many remnants, which is why they would use 'leaking everywhere' to describe it."

A dim yellow color rendered the sky above the Dead Sea; this originally deathly silent ocean seemed to have captured a trace of vitality, thereby rippling and beginning a silent tide.

"I understand."

Du En, however, was using feigned death to get close to the mysteries of the wasteland, intending to obtain something relevant and similar through the form of observing himself from the other shore.

When he raised his eyelids again, what he saw was the Dead Sea simulated by that wasteland.

No matter which path it was, it was actually inseparable from this wasteland.

This recovery restores everything to full; it can even restore the cultivation base lost from self-detonation, truly restoring one to their peak state!

Although there is a one-hundred-day cooldown period after each use, its power can already be seen from this glimpse!

"Personally killing life at the corresponding stage, creating a connection in terms of life-count, then burying them into the death-ground manifested by the divine ability, and by digesting and accumulating their death-intent, death-will, and death-tribulation to nourish vitality, life, and living people—this is precisely using death to reflect life, strongly highlighting and strengthening me, the master of this divine ability..."

In other words.

The consummate Breath-Concealing Technique, having reached perfection beyond that of a master, turned the operation of breath-concealing into something comparable to a secret art; at this moment, after using it, he stood on the spot as if he had turned into a stubborn stone or a handful of yellow earth, with not a single sign of life to be seen or felt.

The upper echelons of the Border City would not bother playing mind games with small pawns like them; even if they suspected there was someone behind the scenes, they would just catch them and perform soul-searching—they had plenty of ways to dig for information.

But at least they had that qualification, and in the entire Border City, the only one who could have it was likely that City Lord.

He was like he always was, not going to investigate the Dead Sea, but instead watching and observing himself.

Although in the end it was not heeded, the aftermath of the war had still been transferred over previously.

He came into contact with the mystery located behind it, and because of this observation of himself from the other shore, where life and death were too prominently opposed, it naturally triggered a mutation.

However, he was still in a state of enlightenment and did not rashly withdraw, boldly and calmly watching the changes before him.

Following this logic... in the end, if one wants to grind it to completion, one even needs to kill and bury five thousand corpses at the Void Refinement stage!

Void Refinement stage True Persons, and five thousand of them at that; are there really that many Void Refinement stage cultivators in this world for him to kill and bury?

Even trying to make up the numbers with demonic beasts or the like would be hard to fill!

"... This is much harder to grind than a mid-grade spell."

He had thought that the mid-grade spell, which had started to inflate with a tenfold increase in numbers, was already a hero among proficiencies, but he hadn't expected there to be a true expert!

However, the effort and reward are equivalent; if one can truly grind it to completion, the power of this divine ability will absolutely be heaven-shaking and earth-shattering, unimaginable!

Du En held expectations for this and returned calmly and normally to the Grave Digger's small courtyard.

(End of chapter)