Liang Chen stood at the entrance of the cavern, his gaze sweeping across the jungle below him. The land was clearly a great deal more barren compared to when he first came here, the weeks he had spent going around while absorbing and testing his poisons had clearly taken their toll on the land. Even the poisonous scent that lingered in the air had vanished thanks to his plundering, the jungle was practically bordering on becoming a normal stretch of land.
"Feels like it's been a while since I last did cultivation like this without speeding up time... Messes a little with my thoughts and expectations."
Liang Chen rubbed his chin as he spoke, he was so used to barely any time passing in the outside world when he cultivated that it felt rather strange to have the outside time pass at the same rate as his own. Yumao and Lan Yun had been forced into his interspatial ring while he was testing out his new poisons and other ideas he had so there was no one there to comment on his remark, the dull silence serving as the only response.
He gave the forest one last look before he turned around and left, he had taken all the poisons and legacies for himself, his poisons rising to a new level. But now he was done here, it was time to shift his focus and move on. As for what his focus would shift on to next, it would be how he would proceed with his Dragon King's Six Steps.
The silence followed him as he moved through the cave, the dull echoes of his own footsteps serving as his only companion. He had spent several weeks inside the cavern but not a single other person had entered it during that time, nor had he sensed anyone move around close to the mountain in which the cavern resided.
There clearly wasn't anyone daring enough to even get close to the territory of the Thousand Flowers Valley while Liang Chen remained there. But as he left the cave and strode through the halls of the Valley's headquarters, the gates still wide-open, he realized that things were a bit different from what he had expected.
The city built around the Thousand Flowers Valley was as quiet as the headquarters, there wasn't a single living being moving through the streets. The almost countless corpses of those he had killed when he first arrived still littered the streets, rotting while remaining untouched. Not even Demonic beasts had dared to enter the city after Liang Chen entered it, despite the buffet of corpses that was presented.
It was a slightly eerie sight, one that was only made worse by what Liang Chen discovered as his lightning scoured the city for any living beings. There was nothing there. He alone stood in the city as a living being, he was the sole inhabitant, surrounded by the lifeless bodies his arrival had created.
"Abandoned huh... Guess they were afraid that I'd target them next, the news also seems to have spread..."
That was the only conclusion Liang Chen could reach based on what he saw, the few people that had been left alive after his arrival must have fled in fear. And they spread the news of the carnage, they told Purgatory of the chaos that descended upon the city.
A natural disaster that could bring an entire city to its knees, this wasn't exactly the outskirts of Purgatory's Cradle, but there was no one here strong enough to handle such a disaster. So they had just avoided it in its entirety, the city had been deemed a forbidden area, a land of death that not even beasts dared to enter.
But frankly, such a situation suited Liang Chen quite nicely. He would like to spend a bit of time going over the options he had when it came to taking his technique a step further, doing so would be much harder if more and more vile people kept entering the city. So he raised his right leg and started to walk, slowly making his way through the city, his gaze sweeping about without any true aim.
"I could use the surrounding elements to restore any damage once my body suffers too much from the energy, but I'd have to rely on the Rain-Caller's Dance at that point, situations where I don't have access to it would become tricky..."
He muttered to himself as he moved about, nonchalantly taking in the architecture of the city as his mind moved. Based on his calculations, and a few tests he had made during the last few weeks, his current body would be a bit overdrawn if he tried to execute the Fifth Step. As for the Sixth Step, he would, even in the best-case scenario, end up grievously injured by the sheer scope of the energy it involved.
The most logical conclusion was of course to just increase his body cultivation, but doing so was much easier said than done. He had reached the Primordial Immortal Realm with his body, he was already at a realm where only the luckiest of chances would allow him to quickly increase his cultivation. And he had no such chances at hand right now so he had to seek out other options to bridge the gap, to strengthen the cards he had in his hand.
"There's also the option of focusing most of the energy within my weapon and make it a slow accumulation process instead, less flexible but less strain. But in that case I'm screwed if I don't have my weapon at hand, or if it turns out that my weapon can't handle it..."
He came up with ideas and discarded them just as fast. He didn't want the option to rely on something else, an external factor that he couldn't fully control. It was something that was related to his trump card, his strongest skill, if he couldn't bring it out whenever he wanted then it wouldn't be suited to bear that title.
"What about a miniature void to bear the strain? A tiny gate to the void within my own body that can suck up the rampant energy and direct it to the point I want to unleash it from? Hmmm... no, that's too risky, every gate is both an entrance and an exit."
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The void was not something that Liang Chen could put his full trust in, there was no telling what might come out from any gate that connected to the void. And the fact that he would open it inside his own body was also a point of concern, the moment something went wrong it might be too late for regrets.
He continued to mull it over as he moved, stepping past and picking up the corpses he stepped past, they would be useful for his Chaos King technique. His feet eventually stopped in front of an old building located at the very edge of the city, the wood that served as its walls and floor were already so rotten and aged that it looked like they would fall apart at the slightest touch.
But even so, the building stood tall. But it didn't do so by its own merit, several diagonal pillars had been erected around the building, connecting with the walls and supporting them so that the weight of the house was partly dispersed onto the ground through the pillars. Like this, the weakened wood wouldn't have to bear all the weight on its own and could remain standing despite the fact that it should have fallen years ago.
And as Liang Chen looked at this house, he felt the closest he had ever been to enlightenment. A flash of genius and understanding as he realized the best path he could take right now, how he could unleash the attacks even though his body couldn't properly handle the energy on its own.
"If I can't bear it myself, then I'll just unload it somewhere else..."
His eyes flashed sharply as he started walking again, his mind racing as he clung to every second of this flash. In truth, there was an additional bit of information he had that helped him acquire this flash of understanding, it was the information about wind that Lan Yun had given him before he reached this city.
The heart of wind, the core of the law, did not lay within the grand terror its storms or sharp blades could produce. No, the terror was in the omnipresent wind, the gentle breeze that snuck through every hole to enter places no one else can. It was so tiny that you could hardly notice it, but you could pack extreme power into it, could produce extreme power if you used it appropriately.
The paved stone beneath Liang Chen's feet suddenly blew apart as one of his steps landed. A small crater that was almost a metre wide had appeared beneath him, his brows furrowing slightly.
"Still a pain to control, returning it is hard without losing power."
He was trying to do something similar to what he had tried when Lan Yun first told him about the heart of wind, he was trying to pack the wind full of power and then bring it back. The theory he had was quite simple actually, he'd disperse the power of the Fifth Step into the wind around him and rely on his law of wind to maintain it. Once he wanted to unleash the attack he would bring back all the energy at once, depositing it directly into the one point from which he wanted to unleash the attack, using the wind as 'pillars' to share in the burden.
He kept walking, every second or third step resulting in the ground erupting as the dispersed energy exploded. There was simply too much energy for the wind to bear, it couldn't be squeezed into such a small area without reacting negatively. But Liang Chen wasn't discouraged, his eyes eventually flashing sharply after he failed for the 17th time.
"Fine, if it's too much for the pillars to bear then we'll just have to add more of them, spread the force out even further."
He acted the moment he spoke, his energy diffusing into the surrounding wind again. Packing too much energy into small motes of air was no good, it would just collapse and detonate. So he sent it out further, spread it out as far as his senses would reach. All the wind would serve as his pillars, and when the air wasn't enough then he would also rely on the earth itself, sending the wind into the tiniest cracks in the dirt to serve as additional pillars.
He went all out with this attempt, and the result was immediate. The earth trembled and groaned for a short second before erupting, the buildings vibrated so fiercely thanks to the energy he scattered about that they collapsed and fell apart. The city and earth beneath it vanished, a thick cloud of dust replacing them as it rose high into the sky, not even a finger-sized piece of debris left of the city.
And then, a bolt of dim violet lightning split the dust cloud. The lightning was several tens of metres thick and tore through the land like a rampaging dragon. Several thousands of smaller arcs split off from this thick bolt, spreading out as they tore deep ditches into the earth.
The main bolt of lightning tore a gash that was several hundreds of metres deep into the land, the smaller arcs spreading out like spiderwebs as they extended past the sides of the new valley that had been forced into the land. Several hundred metres deep, almost ten kilometres long, and reaching almost 100 metres at its widest point, a grim-looking valley had been carved into the land, the heat of the lightning scorching and melting the sides of it.
And standing at one end of the valley was Liang Chen, or perhaps floating was a better word, a crater as deep as the new valley was all that remained of the city. He felt that a decent portion of the dispersed energy had been lost, which was what resulted in the destruction of the city, but the fifth step had most definitely succeeded, and it had broken the land in doing so.