Infinite Slaughter System: I Kill, Therefore I Ascend!-Chapter 172: Upgrading Daoist Arts! 5

After perfecting the Yin Yang Reversal Art and spawning his clone turned informal ’sister’ Li Fan, the next Daoist Art to deal with was his very own Meteor Spell. This was something that Li Ling didn’t even waste a second thinking about, paying the 100 Slaughter Point cost to limit break it to the next realm.

After about an hour, he opened his eyes with a brown flash that occurred deep within, his Rule of Mountainous Earth advancing slightly by a few points due to his increased comprehension of the Meteor Spell’s advanced form. However, this advancement was only a hundred points out of a million, but considering how powerful the rule was, this was already a good thing.

The new version of the Meteor Spell at the third realm was called the Star of Heaven’s Fall, and its increase in power over the previous realm was truly shocking to Li Ling.

If the Perfected Meteor Spell could be described as casting the second meteor in the famous Heaven’s Concealed Jutsu, then the Star of Heaven’s Fall was essentially the same as the famous planet-sized Buddha palm falling upon Wukong.

At the Entry level, it already encompassed a range of a thousand kilometers, generating a flaming star like a comet coming from outer space, like a giant piece of magma-covered rock falling upon the land.

At the Advanced level, its range surged to five thousand kilometers, and the magma that coated the incoming comet would splash downward preemptively, causing minor fire damage spread over a large area.

At the Expert level, its range reached ten thousand kilometers, and the comet generated a gravitational pressure that not only locked in place all beings at the third realm and below, but could also affect spirits and semi-corporeal beings due to the Dharma Power within.

At the Mastery level, its range reached fifty thousand kilometers, and the comet now crushed all beings within its range into paste with sheer force before even landing if their physical strength wasn’t up to par.

Finally, at Perfection, its range reached a hundred thousand kilometers, and the attack could now suck beings into its range. If you were standing up to one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from the epicenter, you would be pulled into the hundred thousand kilometer range forcefully unless you were strong enough to pull away.

But that was not all. Li Ling simulated the effects of casting this attack, which was his go-to in most situations involving sect annihilation or mass murder, and felt a chill in his heart. What did those numbers and effects mean in reality?

First of all, to give it scale, there were two main things to use as comparison, which were the size of Earth versus the size of Firmament Heaven. Earth was approximately 6,400 kilometers in radius, while Firmament Heaven was—according to what Li Ling knew—around a million times larger than Earth, so roughly 6,400,000 kilometers thereabout.

Star of Heaven’s Fall had a radius effect range of 100,000 kilometers at Perfection, so about the size of 15.5 Earths.

Holy shit.

The former planet that Li Ling came from, which was already rather huge and seemed almost impossible to traverse in one life, was taken and then multiplied by fifteen times to make just one of his Perfected Daoist Arts, which he could cast at least four or five times before needing to refill.

But... that was only about 1.6% of Firmament Heaven’s entire mass, barely enough to cover half of a mid-tier sect’s region.

Whew. Whoever designed the proportions of cultivation worlds really needed to go back to grade school and understand simple numbers, because this was ridiculous.

At Entry, it was just a mountain-sized flaming meteor which trailed magma and elemental fire that punched a crater a few hundred kilometers across. Within 300 to 500 kilometers of ground zero, everything non–Core Formation would just be gone, turned into molten slag. Outside of 1,000 kilometers—i.e., 2,000 kilometers from the epicenter—nearby cities would be flattened, all forests turned to ash, continuous shockwaves would last for minutes, and literal tsunamis would form if the AOE was near the ocean.

The aftereffects? Say hello to a new geographical feature called a Meteor Basin, which would be a crater with a small lava sea and dense earth-fire qi. Great for sects like the Fire Heart Sect or any fire-element-related sect, but the local climate for around 10,000 kilometers would be wrecked for a few decades with ash clouds, blood-red sunsets, and intense firestorms.

Yet on the scale of Firmament Heaven, it would just be one brutally damaged province at best, not even a quarter of the Boundless Joy Sect’s entire region.

Li Ling sighed and didn’t even bother to continue calculating, feeling that he would find out for himself. This kind of thing was the exact reason why Golden Core cultivators of old acted like they were the top dogs, even calling themselves Land Immortals, and that was just the entry stage.

Looking next, Li Ling was uplifted because his next Daoist Art was one of his most crucial ones, and one that even he feared: the Dao Soldier Technique.

In mortal martial families and even in some powerful cultivation clans, they utilized methods of brainwashing, torture, and other means to create death soldiers, beings who forsook their identities and were mindlessly loyal to their faction, trading away their free will and intelligence, losing identity and choice.

This had to be done from childhood when they were impressionable, to drill the training into their subconscious; otherwise, you would encounter situations like Finn of the First Order, who woke up halfway after being given a shock and overwrote his programming.

However, this was all resolved by the Dao Soldier Technique. Just at the Entry level, he could enslave up to ten people who would retain their free will, their identity, their memories, their thoughts, their dreams, and their goals.

Yet through all of that, they held Li Ling as a god in their hearts, prioritizing his life and values above theirs. If a bullet were to be shot at them and not blocking it would cause Li Ling discomfort, they would gladly dive into its path. If they were an absolutely cowardly traitor who feared pain and would spill the beans if one even made a feint of an attack their way, they would withstand the cruelest torture if the interrogator wanted to know about Li Ling’s matters.

He had seen its effects himself and feared it, but the more he feared it, the more Li Ling craved its power, and more importantly, stronger defenses against anything similar being used on him.

So he paid the exorbitant 5,000 Slaughter Point cost—something he was unwilling to do for the Heavenly Network—and entered a straight week-long comprehension period, the longest ever at the Entry-to-Advanced stage among all his Daoist Arts.

But when he opened his eyes a week later, Li Ling’s breathing was a bit rough, because he didn’t care about the time consumption; what he had comprehended made him tremble deeply.

Firstly, the Daoist Art had some normal functional upgrades as part of the advancement. For one, his cap of ten slots increased to fifteen, and the range of what he could do extended to the range of his sight, not just his spirit sense.

Secondly, there came a new sub-ability of sorts, which Li Ling could only name ’Slave Transfer’. This ability was based on something that all transmigrators feared the most: the ’tracking mark’ placed on the killer of some young master, or the ’recording soul lamps’ that sent images of the killer to their clan, causing the father, the grandfather, and the ancestor to come one by one for revenge.

However, this one was far more insidious, because if a normal person with free will killed any one of his fifteen slaves for whatever reason, that slave mark would transfer from the deceased soul to the killer’s soul almost imperceptibly, making them replace the one they took down without even realizing it.

What made Li Ling tremble was that if he, as a slaughter god who killed millions without even thinking about it, were ever to fall into the trap of such an ability... Even though he knew that this Unique Immortal Art belonged to him alone, there could still be lesser, weaker versions out there.

Luckily, with the knowledge of how to cast this sub-ability came the knowledge of how to defend against it, which allowed Li Ling to calm down.

If it wasn’t obvious enough, Li Ling was one of those fellows who feared illusions and methods of mental manipulation that were unseen and indefensible, giving him existential crises.

He had actually acquired this fear incidentally from reading a sci-fi novelkiss about a fellow who gained a super USB, then had to fight against mimetic technology that could warp minds through pictures and sound, becoming an intense battle of wits.