Chapter 57: Merit

　　What was going on?

　　As his immortal sense was disturbed by the precious light from the north, Li Changshou and other paper doll clones approached the village and hid in the treetop of a large tree. Only then could they see the situation inside the village.

　　Hundreds of villagers were gathered around the village gate, where a stage had been set up with several figures dressed in Daoist robes jumping on it. Someone was preaching there.

　　He saw that the source of the precious light was actually a clay statue behind those ‘preachers’.

　　Li Changshou smiled in his heart, and the paper dolls transformed into middle-aged men before they jumped off the treetop and left right away.

　　He thought that some kind of treasure was born and thought of going over and picking it up.

　　Nowadays, where could there be so many treasures for him to pick up?

　　If such preaching happened outside the South Continent, it was 80% a propaganda activity conducted by some great sects to recruit disciples.

　　However, if something happened within the South Continent, it would either be money swindling or collecting incense offerings and merit.

　　This was commonly seen.

　　The cultivation level displayed by those preachers were all at the Third or Fourth Stages of the Soul Formation Realm.

　　The old Daoist, who was guarding that three-foot-tall clay statue, displayed a cultivation level at the peak of the Void Return Realm and was close to the Dao Requital Realm.

　　In short, it was something that had nothing to do with Li Changshou.

　　The paper dolls conjured hand seals, hid behind a tree, and began to execute the Earth Escape.

　　The sound of a chanting sutra came with the wind and reached the paper dolls’ ears and Li Changshou’s heart. He heard the sutra being chanted.

　　“With great aspirations to validate the supreme Dao, it is the enlightenment of the West…”

　　‘The Western school?’

　　The paper dolls conjured hand seals a little faster. As soon as a few ripples appeared on the ground in front of them, the paper dolls couldn’t wait to get into it.

　　They ran even faster than before.

　　At the same time, Li Changshou’s original body on the deserted island also stood up and cast an Illusion Spell to transform into a fish, which headed straight towards the east.

　　The Western school caused great karma, so what was he waiting for if he wasn’t going to leave this place?

　　Unexpectedly, this was still the southwestern part of the South Continent, which was very far away from the Aparagodānīya Continent. Yet, the Western school had already come here to collect incense offerings.

　　However, as Li Changshou was about to retreat, his immortal sense suddenly captured something strange in the seawater in the southeast direction.

　　About 80 kilometers away, there was a dense cloud of demonic aura that was now swimming in the direction of the precious shining light.

　　Li Changshou immediately stopped and fell into the bottom of the sea, doing his best to conceal his tracks.

　　He stopped the paper dolls, which were still traveling underground as well, and they stayed still.

　　‘Was a sea demon attracted to the precious light of the village? This is not a good thing.’

　　After carefully observing it, the cultivation level of the great demon in the sea was equivalent to a cultivator at the early-stage Perfected Immortal Realm. The body wrapped in the demonic aura was a big, odd-looking fish, which was somewhat similar to a manta ray. However, its body was larger and more than 1,000 feet in length and width.

　　If he considered that the other party was concealing its cultivation level, it was probably around the late-stage Perfected Immortal Realm.

　　Under the rich demonic aura, this demon’s body was also wrapped around a wisp of sanguine glow, which was like flames.

　　This was a sign that this creature was vicious, and its karmic hindrance had taken shape due to its sins.

　　Li Changshou’s heart was pounding.

　　Of course, it wasn’t that he had any special preference for such a strange, bizarre object. It was purely because he was attracted to the power of the negative karma on this great demon.

　　Removing such a thick negative karma would earn him a lot of merits!

　　‘Should I kill this great demon at the same time?’

　　Li Changshou’s heart was racing with thoughts.

　　After Immortal Ascension, his foundation was too weak, and he didn’t have many treasures.

　　Merits were a good thing, and quite rare.

　　If he locked himself in the sect to cultivate and did not do good deeds that contributed to Heaven and Earth’s stability, he would not get a single one for hundreds of years.

　　If he was a ruthless person who was dedicated to validating the Dao with power, he would have to avoid being blessed with merit, thus ensuring that the later stages would not be influenced by the Heavenly Dao.

　　However, Li Changshou didn’t have such lofty aspirations, and the problem he was considering was practical.

　　If there were more merits to protect him, he would be safer as well.

　　If he could obtain great merits in the future, he wouldn’t follow the elders’ example of cultivating Dharma treasures. Instead, he would first create a Golden Body of Merit!

　　A Golden Body of Merit was equivalent to having a gold token for a death penalty exemption. There was no need to be too afraid no matter what calamities he would encounter.

　　At that time, even if a Saint were to forcefully hit him, he would have to hesitate whether to lose several times the merit power of the Golden Body of Merit.

　　Of course, the Golden Body of Merit was extremely difficult to obtain, and it required a massive amount of merit power.

　　To this day, the Heavenly Dao was becoming more perfect. There weren’t many chances for him to obtain great merits.

　　Going to the Heavenly Courts would be a better chance to earn merits. Li Changshou had also previously considered related matters.

　　Let’s talk about matters on hand first.

　　Killing this great demon would certainly give a huge amount of merits.

　　As the saying went, “Sand accumulates into mountains, and water drips into oceans.” Everything had to have a beginning.

　　It went as far as to get karma from the demon race.

　　The human race and the demon race were archenemies. Even if Li Changshou was polite to the demon race, if he fell into the hands of a demon race expert one day, he would only be thrown into the deep-fryer.

　　He did not need to be polite towards the demon race.

　　However, if he considered that the other party might have hidden their cultivation level, Li Changshou would also have to take a slight risk.

　　This was the South Ocean and not a place for demons to gather. There was only this great demon’s demonic aura within a radius of 1,000 kilometers, and there was an island with just random little demons.

　　Now that Li Changshou had succeeded in evolving the Water Escape and Earth Escape, it was no problem traveling 50,000 kilometers in a day. After he killed that thing, Li Changshou would immediately run away and hide in the mortal world. He did not need to be afraid of other demons taking revenge on him.

　　Moreover, he had the ability to stop it while ensuring his own safety. However, watching this big fish demon kill the people from his fellow race was a bit unreasonable.

　　After all, he had gone through two lifetimes.

　　Despite Li Changshou wondering whether the people from the Xiong Village were from the same race as him, he held reservations.

　　…

　　With the mindset of giving it a try, Li Changshou cast the Water Escape and was ten times faster than that great demon. He quietly rushed to a sea region 50 kilometers from the shore.

　　Except for the Three Schools’ Immortal Sects, most of the escape techniques in the Primordial World were quite hard to find.

　　Nowadays, valuing treasures over spells was prevalent in the cultivator community, causing many to belittle the escape technique’s role.

　　After predicting the great demon’s route, Li Changshou’s robe sleeves shook, and six paper dolls flew out from his sleeves, transforming into men and women with different looks, figures, and aura.

　　The six paper dolls immediately got busy at the bottom of the sea and began to quietly set up a trapping array suitable for casting in the water.

　　The Precious Umbrella was useless for the time being and hadn’t been upgraded yet.

　　Li Changshou retreated towards the shore, met up with the paper dolls hidden underground, put the paper dolls away, and then found a forest by the sea to hide.

　　He closed his eyes and put his heart into the rustling of leaves in the wind within a radius of 50 kilometers.

　　A moment later, huge waves surged on the sea 50 kilometers away!

　　A circular array appeared on the surface of the sea, trapping this giant wave directly!

　　The hundred-meter-long demon didn’t notice the ambush and crashed into the temporary trapping array. Then, it noticed that something was wrong and immediately started jerking!

　　The six paper dolls had appeared from all over and rushed to the demon’s surroundings, each sprinkling several bottles of poisonous powder and using their immortal powers to adhere to the great demon’s body.

　　In a split second, the seawater around the demon became turbid. The demon’s body was corroded, and its soul was severely damaged!

　　“Who! are… you guys…”

　　This time, Li Changshou had sacrificed the last two bottles of transcendent-grade Soft Immortal Disperser.

　　Although this great demon had a higher Dao cultivation realm, it was significantly less resistant to medicine than the Second Prince of the Eastern Ocean Dragon Palace that he had encountered previously, and his actions immediately became incomparably slower.

　　Li Changshou was highly tense.

　　After the six paper dolls had finished scattering the poisonous powder in their hands, each of them held a sword and charged forward in a criss-cross manner. A talisman, which was established by the immortal light, also appeared in the sea.

　　The sword array and the True Samadhi Flames had shown their power at the same time!

　　The talismanic array was like chains, locking this great demon in all directions. The talismanic power erupted, sealed, electrocuted, froze, roasted, and so on.

　　The demon body, which had been mostly corroded by the poisonous powder, had lost much of its defensive power.

　　Six strokes of the immortal sword wrapped in True Samadhi Flames sliced through, and the great demon’s body immediately had six more intersecting cracks!

　　Wisps of True Samadhi Flames penetrated the cracks everywhere and ignited using this demon’s essence, Qi, and spirit as fuel.

　　The huge fire wrapped around this great demon in the sea in the blink of an eye, but the latter couldn’t utter any screams.

　　Among the trees on the shore, Li Changshou clenched his left fist while the six paper dolls each held fire swords and rushed into each part of this demon’s body.

　　Within the array wall, the flame burst forth in the seawater!

　　The surface of the sea exploded into columns of water, and several pieces of the wrecked body wrapped in the True Samadhi Flames rose into the sky. The demon’s soul was locked in midair by long chains of talismanic arrays and was directly engulfed by the True Samadhi Flames!

　　Li Changshou cast the Five-Element escape technique—from Wood Escape to Earth Escape and Water Escape. His figure rushed towards the place where the trapping array was.

　　When he arrived in the array, three paper dolls were sitting in a lotus position on the sea’s surface and chanting the Salvation Sutra, the Rebirth Mantra, and the Blessing Mantra.

　　The three paper dolls disposed of the poisonous powder remaining in the seawater and opened their mouths to suck the polluted seawater and indestructible flames into their stomach for recycling later on.

　　The True Samadhi Flames were really fierce. In ten minutes, the great demon’s huge body was already nothing more than a puddle of ashes on the surface of the sea.

　　Li Changshou got out of the water, and a question suddenly popped in his mind.

　　The power of True Samadhi Flames was too strong. If he needed to use it for alchemy within the sect and a bystander suddenly asked him how his True Samadhi Flames cultivation was coming along, wouldn’t that be…

　　It was time to figure out how to reduce the power of this True Flame. It would be best if the power was controllable and could be adjusted at will.

　　Li Changshou threw out the Soul-Bewitching Pearl. As his sleeve robe lifted, the pile of ashes and seawater was taken into his palm, clumped into a ball of water, and thrown into the air before exploding apart lightly.

　　It was unexpectedly somewhat relieving…

　　As the chanting continued, Li Changshou gripped the Soul-Bewitching Pearl and checked the remnant memories inside.

　　Well, this great demon really wasn’t from the South Ocean. It originally lived in the West Ocean.

　　There weren’t many powerful people among their ancestors. The demon race deep in the ocean had been unable to help themselves up due to the lack of luck.

　　This fish demon had killed countless people, and countless fishermen had been buried in their hands. He was killing it on behalf of the heavens.

　　A ray of golden light suddenly flew up on the sea’s surface and entered Li Changshou’s arm.

　　Li Changshou was suddenly flooded with a small amount of enlightenment, feeling that his own Dao had additional protection, and his quest for longevity seemed to have become slightly smoother.

　　This was merit.

　　By rough estimation, probably by killing a few millions of these murderous demons, he would be able to condense the Golden Body of Merit. Or he should forget it. It was nice to stay in the mountains without going out.

　　“Eh?”

　　Li Changshou furrowed his brows as he saw something strange in the thing’s memory fragments.

　　It had snuck an attack on the village, pretended to be repulsed by a clay statue, and returned to the sea to lurk…

　　Then, it had snuck an attack on other villages, pretended to be repulsed by clay statues, and returned to the sea to lurk…

　　The corner of Li Changshou’s mouth couldn’t help but twitch. The chanting had just ended, and he immediately packed up his paper dolls, Dharma treasures, and storage sacks.

　　He did not recycle the array base. He hastily destroyed the array, cast illusion techniques, and Illusion Spells, and madly executed the Water Escape towards the east.

　　This great demon was from the Western school!

　　It was with those preachers in Xiong Village!

　　They first propagated the essence of the Western school there, waited for the demon to sneak an attack, used the clay statue to pretend to repel the demon, and revealed the ‘miracle’. Thus, they reaped a harvest of a group of die-hard believers to provide incense offerings for the Western school!

　　This scheme was certainly contemptible. However, Li Changshou was not so righteous to debunk this matter and did not want to have anything to do with the Western school.

　　The Two Saints of the West, who loved to send people westward, were also plotting to confer the gods.

　　Many of the unnecessary conflicts between the Dao Sects before and after the God-Conferment Tribulation had been plotted by these two Saints!

　　After the god conferment, Laozi had turned the barbarians into Buddhas with one hand and forced the Western school to become a Mahayana Buddhist Sect.

　　It was a matter of propaganda. The Five Saints had been involved!

　　The Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal had only been a pawn in this game of chess that the Saints were casually playing with, let alone a small immortal like him, who had just passed through Tribulation Transcendence.

　　‘I can’t afford to provoke them. I should quickly slip away.’

　　Li Changshou used the Water Escape and Earth Escape alternatively to the east as fast as lightning.

　　He originally thought that he was already at the limit of 50,000 kilometers per day, but he didn’t expect that he had exceeded that in half a day.

　　He still had the potential after being frightened.

　　After Li Changshou went ashore, he found a place to do a touch-up on his makeup and got all the physical disguises and magical disguises ready.

　　This time, Li Changshou transformed into a weak scholar and rushed towards the northeast.

　　His right hand hiding in his sleeve grasped onto the Soul-Bewitching Pearl as he scrutinized this large demon’s fragmented memories.

　　Not long after, he actually found some more useful information.

　　Li Changshou even heard of the Three Schools’ Immortal Sects right in the middle of a conversation about them, which was spoken by someone else to this great demon.

　　…

　　When Li Changshou fled 25,000 to 30,000 kilometers…

　　Outside the Xiong Village, a group of strong men and women were bored and yawned while watching these people on the platform jumping around.

　　These cultivators were also a bit puzzled and constantly communicated with their eyes.

　　Theoretically, their boss should have appeared. Why was there no sight of him?

　　Had their boss overslept? Had he gotten the place wrong?

　　This prayer dance had been danced three times, and the simple villagers below had grown tired of watching it.

　　“Ahem!”

　　The old Daoist priest coughed and stopped the chanting. He first shook his head and then shouted in an odd tone, “If you believe in God, you can be protected by them! You are invulnerable!

　　“Wang Cai, come demonstrate for everyone.”

　　The young man who had been chosen agreed to it. Immediately, he secretly was able to put a talisman on himself and knelt in front of the clay statue to offer incense. A golden light then appeared in front of his chest and on his back.

　　This talisman was called the Vajra Talisman, which was considered a relatively early-stage talisman. It naturally had no problem resisting the weapons in the mortal world.

　　However, the young disciple took half a step forward and was just about to follow the ‘process’ of calling out for one or two people to come up and slash him with the blade.

　　As far as his eye could see, his thoughts gathered, and his heart pounded wildly, signaling madly.

　　When looking at the field, the humanoid creatures seemed so strong that it was unbelievable. Wang Cai’s entire body was gradually engulfed by shadows, and the corners of his mouth twitched a few times.

　　Suddenly, he found a young lady with swollen eyes and looked rather cute behind the group of people. He pointed at the young girl with a happy heart and said, “Young lady, can you come up here and try to slash me?”

　　“Huh? Oh.”

　　Xiong Lingli looked up and wiped her tears. Her little face looked very pitiful.

　　The moment she squeezed out of the crowd, Wang Cai’s legs couldn’t help but shiver.

　　This was a personal habit, which was understandable.

　　Xiong Lingli asked softly, “Do I really have to hit you?”

　　“Yes, yes.”

　　Wang Cai turned his head to look at the second person on the team, and that old Daoist priest glared at him. Wang Cai could only agree while his mind was constantly telling him, ‘This young lady is just a little stronger. She’s just a mortal. Right, she’s just a mortal. We are cultivators. We… will not be scared.’