Chapter 598 - 272: What Is the Demonic Dao? (Part 1)

The Blood River Demon Venerable’s breath hitched.

Involuntarily, he knelt with a thud, respectfully bowing to the person before him, following the disciple’s etiquette.

"Junior Cultivator Xu Shiqing, humbly requests Your Majesty for guidance."

Lu Wenwu said with interest, "So, do you wish to become a demon or a demon cultivator?"

The Blood River Demon Venerable was slightly stunned.

Isn’t this the same thing?

Lu Wenwu saw his confusion and said, "Demon cultivation, demon cultivation—when you get down to it, it’s still a cultivator who has followed the Immortal Dao, just behaving closer to a demon."

"Even if you manage to cross the tribulation and ascend, achieving what’s termed as an Immortal Demon, do you think that’s being a demon? Wrong, it’s still immortal."

"I ask you, why do you seek immortality? Why pursue demon cultivation?"

"For immortality, for freedom," the Blood River Demon Venerable answered without hesitation.

A very standard answer; in the Cultivation Realm, if you ask this question, 999 out of a thousand would answer like this.

Lu Wenwu asked again, "Then do you think you’ll be free after becoming an immortal? The Immortal Realm also has the Celestial Court, the Celestial Court also has rules, and immortals also have cultivation realms. Do you think you can ascend, then punch the Jade Emperor and stomp on the Lord of Mount Tai, leaping out from the Three Realms and not being within the Five Elements?"

The Blood River Demon Venerable looked confused.

He recognized every word Lu Wenwu said.

But together, why didn’t he understand?

For the first time in thousands of years, this prodigy in the demonic path felt his comprehension might be quite lacking.

Lu Wenwu slightly shook his head, "Immortal—it’s freedom within allowed regulations, still bound by human nature. Haven’t you seen the so-called Heartless Dao sword immortals still acting chivalrously? If truly heartless, why do such pointless acts?"

"A demon is one who casts away all shackles that belong to ’human’ itself, abandoning all morality and ethics of intelligent beings, and after relinquishing all the rules in the universe, truly attains great freedom, great liberation."

"It has nothing to do with anything else, just two words—rules."

"The orderly, that is immortal."

"The disorderly, that is demon."

"Absolute neutrality, that is the Heavenly Dao."

The Blood River Demon Venerable was anxiously scratching his head and ears.

He felt he vaguely grasped something but it was like scratching an itch outside his boot, unable to seize that faintly flashing insight.

The reason was that Lu Wenwu’s words were a bit too high-level.

For a demon cultivator who hadn’t accepted modern philosophical education, it’s somewhat difficult to understand.

The Blood River Demon Venerable was earnestly trying to understand Lu Wenwu’s translation of Blue Star terminologies using Cultivation Realm language, but always seemed a bit off the mark.

"An uncarvable block of wood..." Lu Wenwu sighed, "These concepts may be too abstract for you, so let’s start from something more concrete."

"Given your current situation, the possibility of becoming a true demon is very slim. But you’ve already started to unveil the path of demon cultivation within the Immortal Dao’s boundaries, moving in the right direction."

"See, you’ve realized the importance of the number of ordinary people, and started to consciously nurture and control their numbers to strengthen the resources for the collective demon cultivators."

"But have you ever thought you haven’t taken this to the extreme?"

"The extreme?"

The Blood River Demon Venerable couldn’t help but scratch his messy blood-red hair.

"The extreme."

Lu Wenwu nodded.

"Your current utilization of humans is too low, the methods to cultivate backup materials are too outdated, even worse than those ordinary folks raising pigs."

"Of course, this isn’t just your problem; it’s a problem for all demon cultivators. At the root, you’re still a branch of the Immortal Dao, still using ’human’ thinking to tackle problems, not truly a demon cultivator."

"Take the Ten Thousand Souls Banner for example, what you do is breed enough ordinary people, raise them until they’re fat and then kill them, kill a town’s worth, collect their souls and resentment to forge ten thousand resentful souls and store them in the banner."

"Actually, this is entirely wrong, it’s completely wasteful. This outdated method arises from a lack of understanding of souls, or one might say, a habitual, historical oversight."

"What’s the core of the Ten Thousand Souls Banner? The soul. What does a fat body have to do with an enfeebled soul? A soul is fully formed at the moment the embryo is developed, without cultivation, the soul’s capacity for power and breadth of information doesn’t change."

"Hence, whether you use the soul of a baby or an adult or the elderly, or even a demon beast, in terms of power, it makes no difference for the Ten Thousand Souls Banner."

"With this understanding, the correct approach should be directly extracting the infant soul for refinement, raising them to fifteen or sixteen years is a waste of resources. Additionally, such a soul, still a blank slate, could be cultivated into a Ghost Infant through the Gathering Yin Land. "

"A Ten Thousand Souls Ghost Shadow Banner refined this way, once activated, with winds howling, resentment soaring, wouldn’t it be far stronger than what you labor over for decades to craft a normal Ten Thousand Souls Banner?"

"In terms of materials cultivation, you’re just moving from unmanaged free-range to managed free-range at best, not solving the fundamental problem. From a productivity perspective, having a cultivator farm equals the workload of thousands of ordinary people!"

"Hence, the correct method should be to manage them in batches like livestock; females serving entirely as birthing machines, males as seeding machines, sent to help in the fields each year after successful seeding."