Something or someone with a lot of energy was approaching. I moved from my meditation spot to the trap I had prepared for an immortal. I kept checking the devices I had with me to confirm exactly when this high energy thing would be showing up.

I took a seat in the courtyard outside of the building with the elevator down to underground and waited. A white streak cut through the barrier around this dead world and lit up the sky. A sonic boom hit me as the streak struck the ground outside the settlement. There was a wave of energy that was from whatever had landed.

There was a lot of danger, but I didn’t run. If I could consume an immortal, the benefits would be immense and I had one chance at this. Looking up a woman with flowing golden hair and dressed in white floated over the settlement towards me. Her eyes were glowing gold as well. She was strong, very strong.

“This place reeks of death,” she stated as force formed around me, pushing me down towards the ground. I let it slam me into the ground as she floated above me and at a distance.

“Greetings senior immortal. I am cultivator Yuan Zhou of the Heavenly Alliance,” I said.

“This place is one of the Crystal Conclave. Where is the immortal master or his disciple?” she asked without introducing herself.

“The master left to investigate. The disciple had fallen to demonic cultivation and I killed him. The corrupted energy consumed his body.” I didn’t speak a lie, just a certain version of the truth. I felt the force on my body lessen as the woman floated lower so we didn’t have to shout at each other.

“I am Saint Jiazhi. You karma is quite poor. You should seek a path of compassion to correct such an imbalance,” she imperiously declared.

“My apologies Saint Jiazhi,” I said.

“You don’t mean that. Looking at you, you have succumbed to demonic cultivation. A tortured soul of this Gu Container. I will release you from your suffering,” she said. She was hit by gravity, vacuum and lightning while I quickly began to retreat. This was just a distraction so I could escape and the activation of this formation was tied into another.

“Foolish,” she calmly said as I reached the elevator and hit the button to descend and the emergency button. The elevator door quickly closed and began to descend towards the center of the world as the gravity struggled to work against the speed of descent and I lifted off the ground. Doors slammed shut behind the elevator, sealing the passage.

Saint Jiazhi quickly pursued me, neither rushing nor letting anything slow her down. The elevator was incredibly fast, but an immortal was no joke. The metal doors were like tissue paper compared to her immense power. She was in the elevator shaft and now there was no escape as the massive formation composed of thousands of arrays activated.

It had taken quite a while to make and I had spent time adding to it while using myself as bait, making it even stronger than previously. The elevator quickly slowed to a stop at the bottom of the shaft, sending me slamming into the floor. I got out and quickly readied my sword and checked the location of Saint Jiazhi. She was halfway down the elevator shaft and her fate was sealed.

Massive amounts of ambient energy had flooded into the elevator shaft. The arrays making up the trap would quickly melt along with the shaft and elevator being destroyed, but it was worthwhile to kill an immortal. The entire world shook and I almost lost my footing as a massive surge of energy hit me.

Several of the machines and devices exploded or melted. The crystal lights broke, plunging me into darkness. I got out another crystal light and activated it, tossing it towards the elevator. The world shook again but the burst of energy was smaller. There was a massive explosion and everything shook. Another trap in the elevator shaft, sealing it and hopefully killing the immortal. I could dig them out later.

Just as I was about to let out a sigh of relief. There was a loud bang as the elevator was crushed and the thick metal doors blown outwards. One barely missed me as it went flying across the massive underground chamber. Standing on top of the crushed elevator was Saint Jiazhi.

Her white robe and body were heavily melted, looking like a deformed wax sculpture. Her golden beauty had been turned into a horrifying visage instead. Her energy was unstable as she stumbled forward. Her left arm was missing, and one golden eye was hanging out of her eye socket.

She opened her mouth and golden blood poured out of it. Saint Jiazhi collapsed to one knee. “One Swing To Separate Heaven And Earth!” I shouted and swung my blade. I also followed it up with an attack from my Combat Cylinder.

A golden shield formed around Saint Jiazhi. My attacks disappeared into the golden ripple. She then looked up at me, her one good eye staring right at me and I felt an immense sense of fear.

“I forgive you,” she whispered, but they still rang out loudly in my ears.

“What?! I won’t let my guard down,” I said and prepared to attack again. She puked out more golden blood.

“It was a well planned trap, Cultivator Yuan Zhou. A showcase of the best ingenuity a cultivator can have for the worst of reasons. You have been corrupted by the master of the Gu Container. I don’t blame you and harbor no grudge. But my life will soon end. Either to be consumed by you or the master of this place. I am not sure which one is worse,” she said.

“That is the truth of being cultivator. The only thing to trade is death. The only thing of value is power. The only thing to do is to consume,” I declared.

“Most think like that, but there are better choices. Teamwork, understanding, and compassion,” Saint Jiazhi declared with conviction.

“Energy might be unlimited, but the ability to gather it isn’t. There is always a bottleneck. A cultivator who doesn’t strive for power is no cultivator at all. Teamwork would not save me from this place! Understanding only gave me despair! Compassion is a weakness I can’t afford if I want to survive!” I was breathing heavily as I shouted back at this female immortal.

She might call herself a saint, but there was no kindness in the cultivation world. It all depended on one’s place in the food chain. Kindness and aid was only given for some kind of benefits. This could be using people as research subjects or to act as a patsy. Right before death, I could see a cultivator giving away their stuff.

But for an immortal to lecture me on pursuing a better path, how dare she! Did she think one could pursue the path of immortality and power through farming or some other such nonsense. To meet an immortal this naïve clearly showed that higher powers had corrupted her mindset. She was clearly a slave to forces that were exploiting her.

She used force to push down on me when she arrived. While she might claim that she believed in nice things, she still had her pride. “When the power imbalance is too much, no dialogue can happen. Only equals can speak without fear. Now that you have been brought down to my level, you realize this,” I said and then attacked again without hesitation.

This time her golden shield shattered, and she brought up her single arm, taking the brunt of the blast. Her hand was slightly scorched. “I wish you luck Yuan Zhou, for karma has abandoned you and you have forsaken yourself,” she said and then brought up her burnt hand. She stabbed her hand into her chest and crushed her heart. Saint Jiazhi then collapsed on the floor in a pool of her golden blood. I went over and began stripping her corpse.

There was no spatial storage and no weapon on her person. She had nothing but her robes. I soon had a golden meatball and swallowed it.

“AHHHHH!” I screamed in pain as the energy released inside of me, fought against the energy of this place that had merged with my body. As I collapsed to the floor in pain a ghost formed off to one side. A ghost of Saint Jiazhi.

“I am a Saint. I would never allowed my body to be used for evil purposes. I would have sacrificed myself to kill the master of this place. I might have failed, but instead you trapped and killed me. Now you will suffer Yuan Zhou as the demonic energy is burnt of your very body,” her ghost declared. I didn’t hesitate and lunged with my sword, stabbing her ghost through the chest while channeling my energy.

“I am used to pain. But I won’t let even a ghost like you continue onwards. Once you are gone, your energy will have no owner. If you didn’t have your pride like other immortals, you could have killed me in secret. Now I will live and become stronger,” I said with a focused glare and gritted teeth. I hated hypocrites like this the most.

The ghost opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out, just a long tortured scream. The ghost then shattered into small golden fragments which were quickly consumed by burning by green flames that formed around each fragment for a couple of seconds. I collapsed to the ground in pain, but the energy released from the meatball I had consumed was settling down.

Cultivators like this who had everything handed to them were incredibly annoying to deal with and delusional. Power came at the expense of someone else. To climb to new heights as an immortal energy needed to be compressed more and more. For regular cultivators this meant that they needed to consume more and more to reach the necessary level of power.

This immortal calling herself a saint, was nothing but trash. No combat instinct. No drive to get stronger. She was probably a wallflower who didn’t understand how things worked. If one could merely meditate and think themselves stronger, then there would be no competition. In reality it was all power given from stronger force. That stronger force was either creating beings to be harvested in the future, test subjects, or proxies to act on their behalf.

Saint Jiazhi was probably a combination. A carefully grown cultivator, like a flower in a garden. Ready to use against a threat and destroy it like the demonic cultivator in the Gu Container. But she didn’t realize how foolish she was, revealing her soul after her body had been destroyed. The demonic cultivator would have defeated her even more quickly.

No matter how well grown, a flower grown in the garden could never stand up to a tempered sword. Just because I didn’t like fighting, didn’t mean I would do anything less than my absolute best and exploiting every advantage. But tempering such a cultivator with the truth of the world would have removed her foolishness, making her a less useful sacrificial tool to be thrown at a problem.

The pain had greatly decreased, but I felt a clarity of mind, I hadn’t in a long time. If the demonic cultivator had put this Saint Jiazhi into his Gu then it would have only become stronger once her soul was dispersed. Perhaps she was forced to reveal herself and couldn’t hold on in this environment, it mattered not. She was completely dead due to over estimating her abilities and pride.

Power coursed through me. A couple more immortal cultivators and I would break through to that level myself. If had to estimate, I would put myself around low rank 7. It was hard to say, since I didn’t have any easy to use comparisons from my old continent on hand.

The world shook again. I went over to the equipment and the defenses around the world had collapsed when Saint Jiazhi blasted her way down the elevator shaft. I wanted to take to fully digest my gains. Spending energy would reduce the impact of my consumption, and I wanted to maximize the benefits of my victory.

It wasn’t easy to defeat an immortal, and I wanted to savor my victory to the fullest. At least the secondary protections around the large underground chamber were still intact. I went over to check on Chicken, my flying brick. It was fine, since it had been left in the void chamber. That way the ambient energy wouldn’t break down the devices that made it up.

My escape and travel method was secured. The world shook again. The spatial turbulence would break apart this dead world. It would have happened eventually. At least the beings left here had contributed to my power before their demise, giving meaning to their existence even after death.

A shame that Saint Jiazhi didn’t have anything with her, but that was all the information I needed to understand she was a cultivated flower, not a real immortal cultivator. A living bomb against demonic cultivators poorly crafted and far too prideful. It would have been nice to have amazing equipment.

Since she had been tossed inside of this space, that meant forces outside the Gu Container were trying to deal with it, but didn’t have any good methods. That meant rescue from the outside would not be coming. There would be no intervention from anything outside the Gu Container. I didn’t think it would happen, but until the appearance of Saint Jiazhi I hadn’t been entirely sure. Super organizations had hidden depths and a group like the Xyon Front could pull out more powerful means.

The entrenched powers would not be happy with the disruption the Gu Container had caused. But I also knew that they wouldn’t be outside the Gu Container if it turned into a Gu. Once the demonic cultivator emerged at full power, no one would want to attract their ire until they had a better grasp of his new strength. The powerful were risk averse, that was why there was someone like Saint Jiazhi tossed in here, instead of whoever her master was.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She didn’t even realize she had been turned into a living weapon to be used against demonic cultivators. She couldn’t even do that properly. Whoever was her master was probably disappointed that she failed, but someone powerful enough to raise an immortal wouldn’t care about losing one. If a someone created a garden, they would not care about the death of one flower they had plucked and cast aside. They might get upset about the garden being destroyed, but even that was something that could be recovered from.

For the first time I felt I had an understanding of the world once one reached immortality. I had glimpses of this world before, but now I finally understood. There were those who were free to choose their own actions and those who served in some way. That was it. One’s progression to that level determined what kind of immortal one would be.

The entire place shook again. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling and I felt a slight shift in gravity. The devices protecting the chamber, might not be doing as well as I had assumed. I got up and checked on them. The formations were failing and several components were deformed.

There was a sudden flash and an old man with white eyebrows, beard, eyes and clothing stood before me. I didn’t sense anything and he wasn’t disturbing the air. He clearly wasn’t here physically. He was using some kind of projection technique.

“Where is Saint Jiazhi?” he asked while looking intently at me. This was probably her master or possibly her handler.

“What will you give me in exchange for such information?” I casually asked.

“Your life,” the old man responded casually back.

“My life is my own. If you can make me bleed, then I will believe you can truly harm me and answer all your questions,” I declared, and the old man frowned at me.

“She was my disciple. You will have my anger if you don’t answer,” the old man answered.

“Benefits old man. Can you get me out of here to kill me? Can you send me benefits to answer your questions?” I demanded.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“All your knowledge on this place, Gu Containers, and the demonic cultivator that created this space,” I said.

“You demand quite a bit for some simple questions,” he replied.

“Then you are welcome to come inside and converse with me. Someone of your power and capability would be useful in breaking the Gu Container,” I declared. The old man closed his eyes and waved his hand. A glowing jade talisman, appeared in the air before me and fell down on the ground. It was there physically.

“Now answer,” the old man said.

“I killed her when she escalated against me,” I said and pulled out her melted robes and tossed them on the floor in between us. I wasn’t worried about the reprisal of this senior. He could only kill me if entered the Gu Container or broke it open. But he wouldn’t enter and he didn’t have the power to break it open, or he wouldn’t have sent in Saint Jiazhi in.

“You have angered me. I won’t forget you,” he replied and I shrugged.

“Well I am trapped in the Gu Container,” I said with a shrug and the old man disappeared with no sign of him leaving. A powerful projection technique to appear here. I looked at the glowing piece of jade. I wasn’t going to touch it. I had no doubt it had useful information inside of it, but this place had lost its usefulness. If the old cultivator could a send a jade slip to this specific location inside the Gu Container and converse with me, he could also send me a bomb or something equally annoying and horrible.

Getting up, I made my way to Chicken. I brought it to the other exit and opened the thick metal doors and began flying down the passage, coming to a stop and opening each set of doors as I came to them. I had left the jade slip and Saint Jiazhi’s melted robe behind. Let the old cultivator attack this place, I wouldn’t be here.

Once I entered the dark gas clouds, he would have a much harder time following me, at least that was my hope. I had no idea what esoteric techniques he was using or capable of. The fact he could project himself to me, converse, and teleport an item was incredibly scary. Better to get away as from the threat as far as possible. I doubted I would see the old man again, unless I had significant power if I managed to escape. It was a problem that was far in the future.

Several of the passages had cracks in them and the surrounding spatial turbulence got worse. There were ten doorways I had to pass through, with the dark gas showing after the ninth doorway. Thankfully the protective created around Chicken protected me. A flightless bird carrying me through this place, I would take amusement wherever I could find it.

I couldn’t even look back at the world as it was breaking apart and being reshaped by the forces and environment present in the Gu Container. I checked my personal devices and began flying towards the center. I hadn’t detected anything else of note. No one else had been trying to lay a trap like I had by broadcasting their position through energy emissions.

It wouldn’t be easy to find another place to set up a trap. But as long as my meals didn’t posses the strength of an immortal, I felt confident of fighting them to a standstill and forcing a draw at the very least. This level of confidence in my martial ability was after experiencing the danger of various beings at or above my level.

I had a better understanding of the threats I was facing as well as their power level. I could also spam ranged attacks at a rapid pace with all the ranged weapons in my possession. The ability for persistent ranged attacks along with the shields in my possession gave me a lot of peace of mind. I didn’t regret getting a blade from my master Yi Rong so long ago.

The blade had seen me through a lot and was one of my treasured possessions along with a hand-drawn picture. The blade was showing the limit of its strength. It was no longer suitable for me, but I hadn’t found something better. I needed a melee weapon that matched or exceeded my current strength. I was both lucky and unlucky with Saint Jiazhi.

If she had been more martially inclined, I would have gotten better items from her, but it would have been more difficult to defeat her. While a lower ranked cultivator killing an Immortal was probably a large number due the Firmament being infinite, it was probably small compared to other events.

My mind turned back to flying through the darkness. The lighting on my ride, lit up the surrounding dark gasses. Once I got out of here and became an immortal, not necessarily in that order, I was going to return to my continent and live quietly for at least a century to mentally recover. As for the Heavenly Alliance making a fuss or one of their factions, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I absolutely hated this place and how frustrated it made me feel.

A massive shockwave of energy originated from behind me. I was smart to escape when I had. That old man had probably teleported in a bomb of some kind to take me out. Sorry old man, I wasn’t foolish enough to accept anything from you, since the only thing cultivators traded in was death.

I still I hadn’t come to another personal realization about cultivation, but pride needed to be included with my sense of self in some way. Then I needed to distill this concept down to its true form. My newest hobby was cultivation philosophy.

After experiencing so many different cultivation cultures, I felt like I had come to understand them at their most basic. This truth I wanted to condense down to a signal phrase was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t work it out. I could come up with a lot of nice sounding statements, but they weren’t quite right.

A shame that I couldn’t become stronger, by just thinking about cultivation. That would be the best. No killing, no fighting, no chaos, no demonic consumption, just think my way to power. My mind was my greatest weapon against everything I faced. That was why I hadn’t died back there, in a massive explosion.

I probably would have recognized such a danger previously, but I could state the truth and know the base reason why I needed to escape. The best people to work with were those beings who weren’t cultivators. The Free Port Administrator, Yang Zi, and DZ the cyborg were all examples of this. Perhaps this was another truth.

There was a sense of danger ahead of me, so I focused more on the environment and slowed down rapidly. Slowly advancing, I came across a large chunk of floating rock about the size of a small town with a singular stone building on it. The space around the building was clear of the dark gas. The only light came from my light sources.

I got off of Chicken and pushed it along as I explored the ruined building. There was nothing useful. Just a chunk of rock and a building on it that had survived all the way to this point. There was a protection array set up, which was nothing special. There were no hidden supplies or valuables.

It was probably the remains of a rich estate from some sort of environment that some super organization had crafted. It got pulled in from wherever it was and managed to survive, while it was split off from the rest of the rock and dirt this portion had been connected to. After looking around, I set off once more since there was no reason to remain.

The Gu Container was massive and it would take time to get to the center. At least I didn’t have to go by foot or by ship. My time working with energy pumps and on a vessel with Yang Zi had opened my eyes to a fraction of various arrays and formations. Without that experience I would have most likely died after getting pulled into the Gu Container, even with Luo Lingtai’s help. She had been a decent person.

It was hard to keep track of time as I flew, but my body had strengthened with my consumption. I needed less sleep, my reactions were faster, and my senses were sharper. My body had been enhanced. Even with the energy from Saint Jiazhi fighting against the demonic cultivator’s energy inside my body, I had managed to triumph. It was risky to have unrefined energy contaminating my cultivation and energy, but there was nothing I could do. Saint Jiazhi’s energy was not a perfect balance against the energy of this place. While water and fire might seem like opposites, they weren’t. One was a state of matter and the other was an exothermic reaction.

The demonic cultivator’s energy was like water. It went everywhere and got into every portion of my cultivation. Saint Jiazhi’s energy was like fire, boiling away the water, eventually being snuffed out by the water, but this energy had helped stabilize things in its own way while I became stronger.

While she had said I had lost my karma and had forsaken myself, the words of a puppet that I killed held no weight. Only the strong or the independent were entitled to opinions. For someone who probably had everything handed to her on a platter, her opinion was worth less than a mug of gunk. Her master on the other hand didn’t talk about high minded ideals with me.

That just confirmed what I already knew about cultivators. Saint Jiazhi might have gathered energy to become stronger, but she was not a true cultivator, just a pale imitation. There was no such thing as a selfless or compassionate cultivator. It was a contradiction in terms. A cultivator focused on themselves and individual growth, while focusing on others was the mark of someone who pursued different ideals.

It wasn’t wrong to pursue something different, but those people would never reach the heights of power that true cultivators dreamed of achieving. The ascent to reach the top was the goal. Trillions upon trillions of beings tried to climb this path across the Firmament. Even beings who might not call it cultivation but something else. I was too far away to see the true peak, but that made it the most challenging goal in reality.

Once one stood at the top, there would be other challenges out there. Other peaks to conquer. That was a joy that I savored. The challenge and the constant growth, with myself the master of my own destiny. That is why I disliked the Gu Container, it had forced me onto a path I found distasteful.

As I flew through the dark gas, I felt a sense of danger and slowed down, moving forward in a slower and safer manner. While my shields might protect me, I preferred not to stress them and have them melt on me. There was already some damage from their previous activation.

Appearing in front of me was a slight gap of the dark gas and then nothing. I couldn’t see anything in front of me or to either side, it was just darkness. That was quite disturbing. I flew forward slowly, constantly checking around me for any changes in the environment and why my sense of danger was getting worse.

It hadn’t gotten bad enough that I would turn around, but it was more than enough to put me on edge. I pulled out a light crystal, activated it, and threw it forward. It went flying into the darkness ahead of me. For a single moment I saw something red. The light crystal hit the red thing and vanished into what looked like a liquid before quickly being snuffed out.

My sense of danger didn’t increase and I remained where I was, waiting for any kind of reaction that might come from the red thing in front of me. Nothing happened after several minutes. I slowly advanced at a snail’s pace. Normally that would have frustrated me, but I needed to be extremely careful in this kind of unknown situation. I also noted that there was very little spatial turbulence, since leaving the area of the dark gas.

“RAAAAAW!” I heard a massive roar in the distance that shook the very air around me and I felt the surge of energy in that roar. A massive wave of terror struck me, which I quickly suppressed. My sense of danger hadn’t increased, so it was a mental effect. I had become really good at resisting mental effects after practicing demonic consumption.

Whatever had released that roar was powerful and not that far away. Looking around, I only saw darkness. While it was tempting to turn off the light on Chicken, I was hesitant. I turned off the light, plunging myself into near complete darkness.

Only the faint glow of the arrays inside the body of Chicken had a slight light to them, but everything else pitch black. I closed my eyes for now and steadied my breathing. There was the sound of wind blowing every which way, which hadn’t changed even if the dark gas wasn’t present any longer. One could easily lose their mind in such a situation if they gave into fear.

While the Life Light had been annoying at the center of the Great World, it was a guiding star. Here, inside the Gu Container, there was nothing so considerate by the demonic cultivator that had created this place. In fact he probably enjoyed the terror the environment inspired in others. While it was tempting to check what the red stuff was, for now I needed to make sure my mentality was stable and there was no hidden threat near me.

That was why I waited patiently, while my senses slowly adjusted. After several hours, I opened my eyes once more. I could barely see in the darkness. I suspected there might be something in the energy that targeted light with how dark it was. I could see red in front of me, going off in all directions, left, right, up, and down. Behind me was the dark gas swirling around.

This wasn’t something small. It was a change in the environment that had been set up ahead of time. It was like the bands in the Great World where there was a transition from one environment to another. The first environment was the dark gas area with spatial turbulence. Then there was a short transition area of nothing and then the red in front of me.

To get to the center of the Gu Container I would have to get through that red stuff, whatever it was. I waited and eventually I was awarded with a large chunk of rock falling out of the dark gas and flying towards the red. It impacted the surface and there were slight ripples that quickly disappeared along with the rock.

It was a liquid of some kind. A massive sphere of liquid that could be nothing good. Despair threatened to grip my heart once more as I realized the truth of what was before me. The demonic cultivator was truly insidious. But I should have expected something like this.

The dark gas environment was too nice. But it was meant to give false hope. It was slowly being compressed smaller and smaller as the space was removed. This would force everything inwards towards the center through a range of environments to kill and weaken whatever would transverse them.

There was no need to play fair. No need to create a structure or path that was present in the center of the Great World. No need make a livable environment, since everything would be consumed. This red layer was the first in what I could only guess would be a series of super hostile environments that were designed to kill without mercy or regard for fairness.

“Well played Mister Demonic Cultivator. Well played,” I muttered quietly. There was no response of course and I didn’t expect one. That roar from earlier was probably from some larger creature that had been pulled into the Gu Container and then made its way all the way here. It then flew into the red stuff in front of me and meant a horrible end. That was why my danger sense was triggering.

The longer I put on checking exactly what the red stuff was, the long I could hold out some kind of hope, any kind of hope. But I knew it was about to be crushed once more. I didn’t think it was possible, but my dislike for demonic cultivators reached new heights.