As long as he was in Purgatory's Cradle, all that would remain in Liang Chen's wake would be death and ruin. He was terribly exhausted after his battle with Tian Shenju and Li Zhao Xu, but that one fact wouldn't change just because of something so small. Even if he somehow ended up so wounded that he couldn't move, he still had two companions who were more than capable of taking over the eradication for him, especially with the sect's strongest member dead.
The once sprawling city had already been devastated as a result of the previous battle but now it almost looked like it had been abandoned for several years. Vines rose up from the ground and coiled around the buildings, the stone cracking in several spots thanks to the force the plants exerted.
Bones were scattered about in a haphazard manner, small vines or thorns clinging onto some of the bones. There was no escape from Liang Chen, nor would there be any escape from Sheng Lian or Yumao. You could run, but the vines would reach you, you could hide but the darkness would find you. And in the end, you would perish, only the lucky ones able to even leave behind bones that could be buried. Death had descended on the city and rendered it silent, but that barely mattered to Liang Chen as he walked away from the city.
"So, I take it that it's not a coincidence that you're heading in the same direction as me?"
Liang Chen's gaze was resting on Li Zhao Xu as he walked, a small part of his mind delving into his interspatial ring to take stock of the new wealth they had just acquired. He didn't mind Shen Fei tagging along with him, despite their slight differences in ideology, Liang Chen was after all the reason he had entered this cradle to being with. But now Zhao Xu was also casually tagging along, chatting a bit with Shen Fei.
"So you're saying he's got som...huh? I mean, no? Isn't it obvious that it's the opposite of a coincidence?"
She cut herself off mid-sentence, her gaze shifting from Shen Fei to Liang Chen as she tilted her head somewhat curiously, almost as if she was confused by such an obvious question. Shen Fei tapped her on the shoulder when it became clear that she wasn't going to keep talking, prodding her to give a somewhat clearer explanation. The two were a tad similar so it wasn't really hard for Shen Fei to communicate with this girl who had beaten him brutally in the past.
"Well, look at it like this. If I keep going as I have, I will be facing the Ocean's Wrath and the other sects and stop there, I'll leave this place and return to Father, probably without having learned a single thing. But if I latch onto your group then I can go as far as to Lao Ye himself, I may not fight him, but I'll get to see you and him go toe to toe, maybe I'll glean something from that. And in the case that even that fails then I'll have this weakling as a backup plan. He seems to enjoy battles more than you so it's not out of the question that I can learn something from him. The odds aren't great, but having a 2% chance of success is always better than having just a 1% chance."
She used her thumb to point at Shen Fei as she explained herself, not giving him any face as she called him a weakling right to his face. He cringed slightly, but it was a definitive fact that he had been brutally crushed, he hadn't even forced her to use the other side of her law of heat. He was the defeated party and had thus lost the right to speak, he should just be quiet and perform his role as the clown.
Liang Chen honestly wasn't quite convinced by her reasons, was it really that important to learn about the joys of battle? But at the same time, he wasn't honestly against her tagging along, she was a rare clean soul in this dirty and twisted land after all. But his sceptical thoughts still surfaced on his face, he wasn't exactly trying to hide them, so Zhao Xu kept talking.
"Normally I'd throw in a bit about how most people would be overjoyed at having such a beautiful and classy woman tagging along, but you seem so asexual that it may have the opposite effect so I won't even waste my breath on it. Father has drilled the art of arrays into me so I won't be humble, I'm better than most others, you'd be hardpressed to find someone at my level of strength that's better than me at it! I've also got information, more than most. For example, aren't you curious about how I managed to freeze the time in such a large area, and for people as strong as you and Tian Shenju, despite my relatively low cultivation?"
Zhao Xu wasn't an idiot, she understood the concept of equivalent exchange, sometimes you just had to give if you wanted to receive. She didn't know Liang Chen all that well, but she had seen a few things during her battle with him so she was able to pinpoint a few things that he needed, whether he knew about it or not.
"I wasn't going to shoo you away either way, but now you've got my attention."
Liang Chen pulled his mind out of his interspatial ring and focused fully on Li Zhao Xu as he spoke. He was heading out to hopefully increase his strength before he took on Lao Ye, if he could learn something from Zhao Xu then it would definitely be beneficial to him.
"The reasoning is two-fold, incidental influence and self-fueling activity. The second one is the easiest to explain, the attack I used to freeze time almost fuels itself. I do it by drawing out all the heat in an area and lowering the temperature to a point where even time starts to halt. But all that heat, that energy, has to go somewhere, right? And that's the self-fueling part, it all goes right to me and gets converted into pure energy that I can use to fuel the chill. I need to use an internal array Father drew to properly convert the heat to beneficial energy, but you seem to use a peculiar body cultivation technique so you should be able to figure out a different way to produce a similar effect."
Zhao Xu had gotten a front-row seat to Liang Chen's body cultivation technique, a leg that had been torn off was regrown through just a bit of lightning, it was bizarre even to her. And it hadn't even been his own lightning that helped him regrow it, it had been the lightning of his companion, Sheng Lian. As such, she could guess that he was probably able to use just about any type of lightning to achieve the same effect, using that to his advantage would be a great way to reduce the cost of his attacks.
"As for the first reason, it's a bit trickier. You see, I didn't actually freeze time for you and Tian Shenju, you were never even my targets so I managed to save a massive amount of energy there. You've noticed the same when you use your law of time, right? Using it on just an area is much cheaper than trying to catch someone else with it, yeah?"
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She didn't have the law of time, but just about all laws adhered to this particular principle. And it was only to be expected after all, living beings contained a lot more energy than just some empty space and stretches of land, trying to affect all that would always require more energy. Liang Chen had obviously experienced this several times already so he simply nodded his head Zhao Xu continuing her explanation after making sure that they were on the same page.
"But you know, when it comes to certain laws, this principle can be used as a loophole. Take my usage for example. I never touched the heat in your body or tried to lower your temperature, but the air around you still got so cold that time ground to a halt. Now I didn't technically try to use my law on you, but the air affected by my law still touched you, didn't it? And if the air is so cold that time freezes, what do you think will happen to a human body when that same air touches them? Simple, the chill will creep into them on its own, that's just how heat works. You were never targeted but still had to suffer the effects due to how the law works, Incidental Influence. Another example would be what you did to break the bones in my hand. You froze the time of that little bit of cloth and it managed to break my hand. It never targeted me, but I was still influenced by it. You get it? Sometimes you gotta target nothing to target someone."
Zhao Xu's index fingers were rubbing her temples as she spoke, it seemed like these weren't entirely her own words but rather what someone else had taught her. In her case it was probably the Divine Emperor, the act of freezing time through heat may have been something he taught her to begin with. But whether or not it was her own words didn't honestly matter in this scenario, it was the logic behind them that mattered.
"Hmm... I see... it seems like I may have been a bit too 'focused'. That's good information, thank you for sharing it."
Liang Chen lowered his head in a grateful nod as he spoke, there was logic in the words that he couldn't refute. It wasn't like he had never used similar principles. The example she gave was one, and in his battle against Kuan Niu he had turned his poison into dust that he blew down his throat after he realized that he couldn't infect him normally. But having used it off-handedly was different from using it properly, if he used it properly then he would definitely be able to have his laws show greater effect in some battles.
"You're surprisingly...simple, huh? Not sure if that makes you more or less dangerous."
Li Zhao Xu looked slightly taken aback as Liang Chen lowered his head, the stronger a person was the higher their pride was and the less willing they were to lower their heads. Of course, that wasn't the only reason she called him simple, the way he acted previously had also shown the same.
But indeed, did that make him more or less dangerous? You could say that it made him less dangerous because you could avoid having him move by just not doing what he disagreed with. But at the same time it meant that he would move the moment you did what he disagreed with, he was like a wild dog that could bite down on your hand if you did a single wrong move. No intrigue, no schemes, just a straightforward bite that tore out your throat.
"Fucking tell me about it. I once watched him march into what I thought was certain death just because he didn't want the desires of some strangers to burn up before they could be fulfilled. It's a simplicity to the point of arrogance, you'll see it if you stick with him. That's especially the case if you observe him when he's in the outside world, you know, where he isn't trying to murder just about everything that moves."
Shen Fei couldn't help but chime in as Li Zhao Xu came to her conclusion. He still vividly remembered how Liang Chen sought out the Stone-Soul King and fought him to the death just so he wouldn't attack a city and kill a measly 12 million people. The thing that made that memory so vivid was the simplicity behind why he did it, how childishly simple and naive the reason was. It was a way of thinking that should have died out long ago when faced with the truth of the cultivation world.
"Hmm, guess that actually puts him on the more dangerous side of the coin, it'll be good to keep in mind. But on a different note, do you actually have a place in mind or are you just walking until you reach one of the next wrath sects?"
Zhao Xu fondled her chin somewhat thoughtfully as she mentally noted it down. The fact that he could move for strangers meant that you didn't just have to be careful about how you acted in front of him, he might track you down just because he learned of something you did to others. But she didn't do more than note it down mentally, her father was the Divine Emperor, the scale of life and death that she was used to was something completely removed from what others knew.
"Ocean's Wrath, that's my next target. The current me likely can't handle Lao Ye so I need to get stronger. I've been forced to halt it for a while, but it's about time that I give my body cultivation another push forward."
Liang Chen didn't have concrete information on the Ocean's Wrath sect, at least not yet. But the information he needed was in the name, Ocean. They were the ones most likely to use water, the ones most likely to have water-based cultivation resources. Once he got his hands on them he would be able to advance his body cultivation again, especially if he also added in all the corpses that were piling up in his interspatial ring.
He'd have to wait until he actually succeeded, but if things went according to plan then he would be able to take out the remaining wrath sects afterwards and then finally head to Lao Ye, to take out the eighth of the nine wraths.