Chapter 3501 — The Five Miasma Divine Art
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
In truth, most who came here—Inheritors included—hoped to use the crushing pressure of the dense Five Miasma Qi to break through their limits. Ordinary cultivators sought to surpass themselves; Inheritors sought to empower their own legacies.
The so-called Five Miasma Qi was in fact a kind of demonic qi similar to heaven-and-earth spiritual qi, yet fundamentally different. Spiritual qi was universal, but the Five Miasma Qi was not. It was a mixture of true qi of the five attributes—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—and such true qi was called demonic qi.
Because it carried five attributes at once, a normal cultivator could never absorb or use it. To draw in the qi of one's own attribute meant simultaneously drawing in the true qi of the other four—and the consequences ranged from qi deviation at best to the body bursting apart at worst.
Of course, in the Five Miasma Wasteland this was not a grave matter: so long as one did not cultivate, there was no problem. But the Five Miasma Mountains were another story. Here, even if you did not cultivate, the Five Miasma Qi came hissing into your body of its own accord—you could not simply refuse it.
Thus you were forced to fight the Five Miasma Qi with everything you had, to resist its oppressive force, and to break through your limits in that struggle, raising your own strength.
The same principle applied to Inheritors. They too relied on their formidable five-element attributes to withstand the Five Miasma Qi, and in doing so to reinforce the legacy of their own attribute.
Apart from them, the only ones untouched were likely five-element cultivators like Wei Zhao and a handful of demonic cultivators—Zhang Naipao, for instance. The Bee-Devouring Divine Art he practiced could absorb all manner of true qi, demonic qi, and even poison, refining them into true qi for his own cultivation.
Years ago he had trained amid swarms of poisonous bees and toxic venoms, and now the Tomorrow Upon Tomorrow sect called him a walking antidote pill. If the food was poisoned, one need only have Zhang Naipao take a sniff; if someone was poisoned, again one need only have Zhang Naipao take a sniff.
So in the Five Miasma Wasteland, Zhang Naipao was not only unaffected—he could even cultivate. That was precisely why he had shone so brilliantly in the Mystic Pill Sect trial last time.
Dongfang Badao, by contrast, stood alone and weak, and he well knew the perils of this trial. On the road he had encountered two formidable experts of the Tomorrow Upon Tomorrow sect—though he still burned with hatred for Zhang Naipao, who had once killed his grandson.
But Dongfang Badao was a man of deep scheming. He knew he was no match for Zhang Naipao at all—not even worth a spar—so he chose to submit outright and become a humble follower of Zhang Naipao and Zhong Yongliang.
By comparison, he loathed Wei Zhao far more. Dongfang Bushu, after all, had died in a trial, and trials were a matter of life and death left to fate—no blame could be laid at the feet of other trial takers. Wei Zhao was different: that had happened in the secular world, and he had killed more than one expert of the Dongfang family. The Dongfang family had once counted ten Heaven-rank experts; six had died untimely deaths, leaving only Dongfang Badao and Dongfang Jinxing, and two of those remaining were not even of the family proper but retained elder guests.
The Dongfang family had plummeted straight from the pinnacle of ancient sects to the dust. After all, apart from the Ice Palace and the Five Luminaries Sect, most ancient sects and families had only two or three Heaven-rank experts—the Night Palace and the ancient Feng family, for instance, had pitifully few, only one or two apiece before Gu Mengyao and Feng Shihua broke through.