Infinite Slaughter System: I Kill, Therefore I Ascend!-Chapter 175: Upgrading Daoist Arts! 8

Thinking back on the Nine Heights Pagoda, Li Ling had to admit it was one of the more obscure upgrades he’d bought.

Back then, when he first opened the manual at the Five Elements Sect outpost stalls, the technique had seemed almost underwhelming.

Merely an old-era half Daoist art, half cultivation method written on paper instead of jade, whose entire point was to visualize a nine-storey pagoda and build it out of spirit sense.

Most people, now or back then, either used it as a crutch to awaken spirit sense at Qi Refinement with a second-grade material, or ignored it entirely until they reached Foundation Establishment and attained spirit sense normally.

He, of course, didn’t practice it like ’most people’.

In his practice, he had chosen the outline of Leifeng Pagoda from his memories of Earth, stretching the five-storey tourist trap he’d once visited into a nine-level, gray-black tower in the middle of his Sea of Consciousness.

The moment he locked that image in, the visualization took hold as the phantom tower rooted itself at the exact center of his Sea of Consciousness, and everything in his mental world began to orbit it like a core.

The price of admission had been pretty cheap: 10 Slaughter Points for the first level, and the ’normal’ cultivation practice said to pour one’s existing spirit sense into the illusory pagoda to fortify it, thereby consuming, compressing, and toughening one’s spirit sense as each floor became real.

The Infinite Slaughter System, as always, ignored the manual.

When he paid those first 10 points, a storm tore through his Sea of Consciousness as the base floor of the Leifeng-shaped pagoda simply manifested with no drain on his existing spirit sense, just a completely fully formed first storey and a new pool of spirit sense fused into it.

The difference was night and day between the spirit sense of the pagoda and that of his cultivation realm, even though level one of the technique only reached one meter from the tower. But within that meter, it was thick, sharp, and fluid.

His original spirit sense back then still stretched out over a thousand meters, but it couldn’t merge with the refined version, so the two simply overlapped, and wherever the one-meter radius existed, the pagoda’s quality took precedence.

That was the initial issue, and unless he found a way to refine his old sense up to the same grade, he’d always have a tiny sphere of perfection floating inside a sea of lower-quality fog.

It was exactly the sort of ’good problem’ only a system host could have.

Li Ling had looked at the cost curve—20 points for the second level, 30 for the third, 40 for the fourth—and simply shrugged.

Why grind comprehension and risk subtle flaws when the system would lay each floor with machine precision? He blitzed through six levels in one sitting!

2nd floor: 5-meter refined radius.

3rd floor: 10-meter refined radius, already matching the range of a normal first-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, but at a vastly higher quality.

4th floor: 30-meter refined radius, comparable to a third-level Foundation Establishment cultivator’s sense, except his pagoda sense would crush theirs in a direct clash.

5th floor: 70-meter refined radius, equal to the seventh stage of Foundation Establishment.

6th floor: 100-meter refined radius, now at the peak of Foundation Establishment!

Now, he would continue from here, onto the seventh floor of the technique!

Of course, in doing so, the spirit sense which reached 100 meters evolved into a 300-meter Dharma Sense, with all the strength and power of a typical Dharma Sense cultivator while still retaining Li Ling’s specific Dharma Sense nature.

After all, Dharma Sense was an evolved form mixing Dharma Power with the core of the Sea of Consciousness and the remainder of Spirit Sense, whereas Dharma Power was borne by mixing Magic Power with the newly born Void Core, while the Void Core was born from compressing the dantian and the stacked spirit roots into that shape, merging the two into one.

This was all to say that the process of birthing Dharma Sense was extremely long and complicated, and very unique. Dharma Power and Dharma Sense were powerful because they discarded the ’universal’ nature and became ’unique’ and ’personal’ to the cultivator in question.

But the Infinite Slaughter System didn’t care about this, spawning fresh Dharma Sense that was perfectly mirrored to Li Ling’s own, with all the steps that needed to be taken having been taken, leaving the young man dry-mouthed, unable to even feel shock at this point.

After all, if the Infinite Slaughter System could do this, then it could also recreate a replica of him that was 100% his likeness, with the same memories, soul, and spirit.

Hey, maybe that was what it did to reincarnate him into Firmament Heaven?

Then, if so, the existential question came into play: was he really himself, the Andrew Han turned Li Ling, or just a copy made from the original? Could there be an Andrew Han still on Earth working as an architect for a middle-tier company while he, Li Ling, was here cultivating?

More importantly, did it matter?

Li Ling briefly remembered a short video he watched of that controversial male motivational speaker of sorts who was also a kickboxing champion, where he said something that was quite fitting.

As a man, even if you know that doing an action would make you sad, unhappy, or trouble you, but you still had to do it anyway, then why bother about it?

In other words, if the action you were going to take, like going to the gym to lose weight, was going to be done regardless, then why bother yourself about the fear of pain or the ridiculing looks?

In this case, Li Ling was still going to cultivate, ascend realms, and achieve the peak of his life doing what he wanted, so why bother about this existential crap? What exactly would it change?

Clearing his mind, he felt his thoughts become sharper, noticing a wailing sound in his Sea of Consciousness which was revealed to be a hideous face that was illusory and half-formed.

Li Ling breathed out with interest, because this was an unformed heart demon that didn’t even get the chance to fully exist before being eliminated and dealt with.

Heart demons, huh? Ever since he resolved himself to the system and avoided exploding back then, he had been extremely sure of himself and never doubted himself until now, which was why he avoided this pitfall throughout his cultivation climb.

Anyway, focusing on the Nine Heights Pagoda once more, Li Ling invested 70 Slaughter Points to advance to the eighth level, where his Dharma Sense expanded to 700 meters. Comparing the Dharma Sense of the pagoda to that of his cultivation realm, he still had to feel some level of awe at the fact that what he already thought was perfect in his cultivation-based Dharma Sense was still improved upon by the Pagoda Dharma Sense.

Paying the final 80 Slaughter Points, he reached the ninth and final level of the Nine Heights Pagoda, where his Dharma Sense reached 1,000 meters, the natural peak of the Core Formation realm.

After this, the pagoda was complete and resplendent, looking like it was overflowing with an ethereal golden mist.

However, Li Ling knew it was not the end, for the Nine Heights Pagoda’s line on the Infinite Slaughter System showed that it could be limit broken for 1,000 Slaughter Points. This must be because it was a peak third-realm art, so limit breaking it counted as a fourth-realm price.

Li Ling naturally paid the full price straight away and smiled as he felt a wave of comprehension hit him. Upgrading the Nine Heights Pagoda from tier to tier only took seconds at best for each climb, but this time, he could feel that it was developing in the direction of a Unique Immortal Art.

It was only about a day later that Li Ling opened his eyes, and in the depths of them one could see a resplendent sight of a nine-storey pagoda that breached the heavens itself.

Li Ling’s heart was filled with a mixture of shock and elation, because the Nine Heights Pagoda had evolved in the exact way he hoped it would, as if the Infinite Slaughter System had taken his ideas and mixed them with what the Dao could allow.

The end result was a brand-new Unique Immortal Art for spirit sense that encapsulated all nine mortal realms of cultivation, with the possibility of even being extended further into the immortal realms.

Li Ling laughed uproariously as he stood in the center of his Sea of Consciousness in a spiritual state, looking upwards at the much larger and more imposing pagoda that looked like it could suppress anything within its walls.

With a smile, he raised a foot—a spiritual foot—and walked into the first level of the newly born pagoda, prepared to experience the changes for himself directly.