Cultivation is just so scientific! Chapter 1552: 822: Inner Demon (Part 2)

His roar echoed fiercely, desperate to unleash his rage, yet no outlet existed for his boiling wrath, leaving it trapped inside.

“I’m a Great Power, I’m a Great Power!” His gaze slowly reddened, as he repeated the phrase under his breath.

The persistence of the thundercloud had turned into his unbreakable fixation; beyond that fixation, his Dao heart had shattered completely.

Why do Half-step Great Powers choose isolation? Beyond the fusion process with the Grotto Heaven that bars them from the outer world, it stems from the fact that a Half-step Great Power, in the early stages of merging with their Grotto Heaven, faces the weakest moment for their mental state.

Isolating oneself inside one’s Grotto Heaven, cut off from all external influences, stands as the optimal method to shield the temperament from disruption, a lesson forged by generations of cultivators across endless ages.

Confronted by the brink of death, Yang Xing’s Dao heart shattered at last, hurling him into utter demonic turmoil.

The peril of inner demon assaults escalates dramatically in higher realms.

Under the inner demon’s sway, his thoughts twisted, staining his once-pristine white Nascent Soul pitch black, while the inner demon seized control of his awareness in that instant.

The darkened Nascent Soul burst from his form, diving straight into the thundercloud.

Even amid the inner demon’s eruption, the lone fixation still guided its moves; the inner demon persisted in upholding the thundercloud’s endurance.

Yet, swayed by the inner demon, the thundercloud’s upkeep now drew from the inner demon’s might, forsaking Spiritual Energy entirely.

Li Shiming remained unaware of the chaos unfolding inside the Grotto Heaven; he noticed only that the pulled Spiritual Energy had dwindled to a mere trickle.

“This isn’t right—the Spiritual Energy’s depletion is happening way too quickly!” He scowled and muttered.

Before, a Half-step Great Power had been channeling its own Spiritual Power Pattern to bolster the thundercloud, and the reserves of such a Pattern in a Half-step Great Power rivaled an endless ocean; sustaining the thundercloud’s form could endure for months on end.

Li Shiming had planned to draw out the Spiritual Energy at a leisurely pace over time; after all, once stability returned here, he could station a Late-stage Golden Corpse as guard and depart for his own pursuits.

Yet he hadn’t foreseen the extraction accelerating to such a blistering speed. How much time had passed, and the Grotto Heaven’s Spiritual Energy was on the verge of vanishing?

Truth be told, he had underestimated the vast scale of Yang Xing’s Half-step Great Power Grotto Heaven and overlooked the dire straits Yang Xing endured.

Through his meddling, Yang Xing succumbed to the inner demon, and since the Grotto Heaven held no objects to destroy, the spawned inner demon found no release, allowing it to supplant Yang Xing and sustain the thundercloud through an alternate means.

Another couple of hours ticked by, and Li Shiming, sensing the extracted Spiritual Energy, verified that the Grotto Heaven’s reserves were practically depleted.

Curiosity burned about the Half-step Great Power’s condition; inspecting such a state proved straightforward—merely dispatch a wisp of Divine Sense into the Grotto Heaven to observe the turmoil.

For an ordinary Great Cultivator, such an act carried immense peril.

Divine Sense forms a fragment of a Great Cultivator’s soul, and any assault on it inflicts profound spiritual damage.

Still, Li Shiming possessed one hundred ninety-one brains, freeing him from relying on the primary one, plus he held Spirit Pills capable of mending Great Cultivators’ spiritual wounds; should one brain’s soul suffer harm, it simply needed rest and temporary sidelining.

His intrigue mounting uncontrollably, he yielded at last, deploying Divine Sense from a single brain to explore the Grotto Heaven.

“Ah!” The moment Divine Sense pierced the Grotto Heaven, it slammed into a swirling black mist, where the mist swiftly eroded it.

Swift withdrawal of the Divine Sense spared major losses.

Even so, the searing spiritual agony from that brain forced an involuntary yelp from him.

“What’s going on here?” Li Shiming replayed the Divine Sense’s fleeting glimpse, his expression clouded in confusion.

Should this Half-step Great Power hail from the Demon Sect, the Grotto Heaven’s spectacle might make sense.

However, this figure belonged to the Yuqing Sect; how could their Grotto Heaven resemble a foul Demon Lair?

“No, it’s an inner demon!” He swiftly dismissed his initial assumption, pinpointing the nagging sensation from before.

This marked far from his initial brush with an inner demon; the long-dormant Venerable Huijing had fallen under his sway precisely from an inner demon ordeal.

He instantly grasped the Half-step Great Power’s plight; evidently, his draining of Spiritual Energy had driven the Half-step Great Power into demonic frenzy.

A grin spread across his face, savoring the sweet taste of long-sought vengeance.

Such a spectacular loss of control from a Half-step Great Power truly stunned.

Thoughts of the inner demon crossed Li Shiming’s mind; among cultivators, he ranked as the one least plagued or terrified by inner demons.

For he commanded a Heavenly Ghost, an extraordinary Spiritual Pet, and the Heavenly Ghost served as the ultimate bane to inner demons—a fact proven time and again.

He called forth the Heavenly Ghost lodged within Great Cultivator Luo Pei’s form, though he paused before issuing its command.

Dispatching the Heavenly Ghost into the Grotto Heaven to purge the inner demon posed scant risk if it truly was one.

But should it prove a cunning snare laid by the Half-step Great Power, the Heavenly Ghost faced grave peril.

Li Shiming reflected on the black mist that had assailed his Divine Sense upon entry, coupled with the soul-eating chill, solidifying his assessment.

He unleashed the Heavenly Ghost into the Grotto Heaven, keeping a brain embedded in its form to guard against surprises and guide its maneuvers.

Upon the Heavenly Ghost’s entry into the Grotto Heaven, it collided with a thick veil of black mist.

Via the Heavenly Ghost’s senses, this mist arose from an inner demon, woven purely from toxic sentiments.

The Heavenly Ghost plunged into the black mist, which appeared utterly blind to its presence.

This reaction came as no surprise, given the Heavenly Ghost’s outer shell derived from Heavenly Demon hide, positioning it among the rarest and most exalted of soul-bound entities.

Through the bond of his contract with the Heavenly Ghost, Li Shiming tapped into its awareness.

He uncovered the Heavenly Ghost’s natural affinity for inner demons, locking onto its position the instant it breached the Grotto Heaven, piercing through the obscuring black mist.

Just as the Heavenly Ghost prepared to lunge forward, Li Shiming commanded it to halt.

The Heavenly Ghost had fixated solely on the inner demon, ignoring the surroundings.

Yet Li Shiming sharply detected the Thunder Rules looming ahead, and via the shared view from the Heavenly Ghost, understood this represented the only Thunder Rules across the whole Grotto Heaven; all other rules had faded away.

Propping up an entire Grotto Heaven on a single rule suggested the nascent phase of its creation.

He remained oblivious that numerous rules had once thrived there; alas, his aggressive Spiritual Energy pull had starved them into oblivion.

In that instant, another notion struck Li Shiming, drawn from ancient texts claiming a Half-step Great Power’s Grotto Heaven crumbles upon their demise.

He detected no vital signs from the Half-step Great Power anymore, with only the inner demon lingering. So why did the Grotto Heaven endure?

Furthermore, should the Thunder Rules vanish too, would the Grotto Heaven persist?

This bizarre tableau within the Grotto Heaven undoubtedly etched a novel chapter in the annals of the Cultivation World.

The Half-step Great Power Yang Xing bore ill fortune beyond measure, burdened by his sect’s orders amid his vital seclusion.

Facing Li Shiming’s blockade of the Grotto Heaven’s outer links and a Formation siphoning its inner Spiritual Energy, Yang Xing ultimately tumbled into demonic chaos.

Once the inner demon birthed from the instability took hold, Yang Xing’s final fixation centered on preserving the thundercloud, thereby anchoring the Thunder Rules.

With the inner demon’s emergence, bereft of any destructive focus, it bowed to the fixation’s pull, upholding the thundercloud through its unique method.

As a spectral entity, the inner demon fueled the thundercloud with spiritual force, and whether through the fixation’s influence or some mysterious cause, the Thunder Rules gained firm footing under the inner demon’s watch.

In this span, Yang Xing, as a Half-step Great Power, had truly perished, overtaken by the inner demon.

The Grotto Heaven, destined to dissolve with Yang Xing’s end, astonishingly lingered thanks to the inner demon’s shared origin support, defying collapse alongside him.