A young woman ran quickly. Her body did not stop despite being out of breath. She weaved past countless branches and jumped over any thick roots capable of tripping her up. The entire forest shuddered and moved without any wind, letting out ghostly moans and terrible shrieks. This forest was clearly special. It was one of the locations inside Immemorial Desolate Grotto-Heaven. The soil here was more fertile than the top-rate mortal soil and the trees were top-notch sound and soul path materials.
The woman was pale with fright.
Her eyes widened strangely as she screamed!
What was going on?
Why did her body suddenly jump over fifty meters high?!
She leapt past the tall trees and suddenly bit a flying sparrow, chomping it to the death with a single crunch.
"W-What is going on?!" She cried profusely. "What is going on?! Aaaah! Why am I eating this disgusting beast? I don't like its taste. I don't like raw meat and fresh blood. I hate the texture of these feathers and bones!"
She wept loudly and howled. However, she never stopped moving. Every now and then she would hear the spine-chilling sound of several centipedes chasing after her.
"Mother! Father! Where are you?! Help me, please! Somebody!"
"This beast is something else, master. Such a vicious creature…" Old Man Desolate shuddered.
Lo Jik observed everything with a grave expression. His view was different from the unfortunate woman crying and begging in the forest. In reality, she was a source of a great calamity for the beasts living inside the forest and was no different from an apex predator. Her body was not small or weak. She was nearly fifty meters long with several sharp sword-like limbs. Her body was green and there were five protrusions around her face similar to her legs. These protrusions were like thorns or sharp petals and could close around her face. Whenever these protrusions closed and covered its face, it would reveal another face.
As expected, the creature eventually showed the face of a screeching monkey. After a while, it was a burly man. They were all terrified and extremely spiritual.
Yet, they were all dead!
This was a human path ancient desolate beast Lo Jik acquired from his trait—Face Stealer.
Lo Jik was the one who named it so.
Face Stealer was a terrifying ancient desolate beast. The human path dao marks on its body influenced the beast's immediate surroundings. Anyone who came across this beast would feel their expressions changing involuntarily. They would collapse the moment their expressions changed. Ancient Face Stealer devoured these victims and adopted their features.
Not only did its mask-like face transform and match its victims, Ancient Face Stealer also devoured their memories and emotions. Each face had its own personality. They would scream in terror or relish their newfound strength. It was quite uncomfortable to watch at times.
Even Lo Jik fell victim to this ancient desolate beast despite it being held by his trait's treasure space. Else, the beast would have also consumed him.
"No matter how dangerous it is to the weak targets, it is a human path ancient desolate beast. Its threat is greatly reduced when up against another ancient desolate beast. Furthermore, human path killer moves are extremely efficient against resisting its vicious attacks." Lo Jik narrowed his eyes and observed. "In fact, this beast is a good source for collecting emotions and memories. What do you think, Old Man Desolate? Could it be taught the way of gu cultivation?"
"Master?" Old Man gasped in surprise.
Lo Jik chuckled in response.
"Ancient Face Stealer retains the memories of its victims. Of course, it knows many secrets. Look at it. It is a rare beast whose intelligence is extremely close to us humans. It has emotions and takes great joy in hunting its victims. Most of its victims are left with extreme fear because it forces them to run constantly before consuming them. It clearly luxuriates itself in its victims' terror. Such a beast can be taught."
Face Stealer was an interesting specimen. All signs indicated that it was a singular sex species. So, Lo Jik needed to figure out how such beasts reproduced—if at all.
He never forgot about core beasts. However, his current circumstances did not allow him to invest in these beasts fully. Core beasts were a product of formation path and this path already brought great interest to Lo Jik. He realized he enjoyed deducing and refining gu houses. They were like grand puzzles and extremely entertaining.
Others might scream in horror if made privy to Lo Jik's thoughts, but it was the truth. Possessing an attainment in all the paths ensured Lo Jik did not stumble upon any lasting bottlenecks, especially when it came to these 'puzzles.' They were like the toys from his home world, the toy bricks that could be used to build things—just that the bricks of such puzzles in the gu world were gu worms, immortal gu worms, and immortal materials.
Formation path was also extremely versatile and practical for nurturing and managing blessed lands.
Eventually, Lo Jik wanted to relocate most of the core beasts into his own human path blessed land. There were some interesting specimens among the core beasts, including a luck path ancient desolate core beast.
Lo Jik and Old Man Desolate observed Ancient Face Stealer for a few more minutes before leaving for another location.
The next location was completely dark. It was a space path formation Lo Jik designed specifically to heal and nurture the Void Anaconda he captured during the Tian Ti Mountain's beast tide. Ancient Void Anacondas had both space and phantom path dao marks on their bodies. They would hibernate every three thousand years and surviving three hibernations would let them completely shed their space path dao marks in the form of a skin and become Immemorial True Void Anacondas. During their hibernation, the space path dao marks on their bodies would leave their bodies and influence the surroundings, creating an isolated space capable of hiding them from most predators. However, this left them weakened and prompted them to search for blessed lands, where they consumed the space path dao marks related to the space of a blessed land to recover. With time, the space path dao marks of the blessed land would be completely devoured by the recovering Ancient Void Anaconda, its space reduced to nothingness.
The Ancient Void Anaconda Lo Jik captured had been awoken from its third hibernation. This was a blessing in disguise. Such a Void Anaconda was extremely weak and was effortlessly beaten into submission by Lo Jik. The current formation mimicked a blessed land's environment, healing and nurturing the captured Ancient Void Anaconda. Since it was extremely close to its evolution, Lo Jik did not need to spend an exorbitant amount of cultivation resources to raise it as an Immemorial True Void Anaconda.
The darkness in the formation posed no issue for Lo Jik and Old Man Desolate. They observed the resting snake. It was pitch-black with dark mist flowing through the gaps between its scale.
'An Immemorial True Void Anaconda is extremely special and resourceful. After completely shedding its space path dao marks, it would start consuming more space path immortal materials. Its best nurtured using a space path formation and the meat of Ancient Remnant Heavenly Dogs. Consuming Ancient Remnant Heavenly Dogs would accumulate space path dao marks in the snake, which it will shed consistently in the form of a huge snakeskin. Such a snakeskin is an extremely precious rank 8 space path material.'
Lo Jik felt satisfied with this gain. True Void Anaconda might not be docile, but taming such beasts early on was relatively affordable. Furthermore, this was Immemorial Desolate Grotto-Heaven, a location housing four immemorial desolate beasts. It could bear the burden of such fearsome creatures.
'It still needs some time to recover and transform into a True Void Anaconda.' Lo Jik calculated the time. He could add time path materials into the formation and speed up the process, but it would cause an unnatural pace of growth and recovery to the beast, forcing him to incorporate even more precious space path materials. He was already limited in terms of precious materials and needed to preserve his strength. Furthermore, he wanted to raise True Void Anaconda for the precious space path immortal material instead of its battle strength, so he could take things a bit easy instead of burning through the pitiful stock of the remaining space path immortal materials.
Lo Jik and Old Man Desolate moved to the third location.
They were inside a massive cave. A formation around the cave manipulated the two ancient desolate beasts into sleep peacefully. These beasts had eagle heads but human bodies. Feathers grew on their upper bodies, covering their shoulders and arms but leaving the majority of their torsos exposed. The thick fur and feather extended down from the waist and reached their talon-shaped legs.
These were none other than the two Ancient Mixed Heavenly Eagles.
Hundreds of Lo Jik's clones moved around in the cave. They were all focused on the female Ancient Mixed Heavenly Eagle and used several gu worms on its breasts. Boasting a human body, her breasts were humongous, to say the least. These were all doctors clone, specialized in healing their targets using poison path.
Lo Jik stepped forward and climbed atop the gigantic ancient desolate beast. He pressed on the female Ancient Mixed Heavenly Eagle's left breast with both of his hands before smiling in relief.
"She's almost healed."
This pair of beasts lived on Tian Ti Mountain for a long time but gave birth to no offspring. Boasting human bodies, the beasts also shared some similarities to humans, especially their reproductive organs. Such a pair should already have a few dozen young Mixed Heavenly Eagles to nurture.
Unfortunately, the female ancient desolate beast was infected. He realized the truth once he inspected their previous cave at Tian Ti Mountain.
The female Ancient Mixed Heavenly Eagle would release an unpleasant odor during the time of their heat, forcing its companion away instead of attracting him for a round of mating. Lo Jik suspected such an event probably left the couple extremely irritated and they would instead lash out at other creatures during such a time, explaining why the pair had extremely high battle strength and even greater ferocity when compared to other eagles of the same species.
Doctor clones worked hard to heal this issue.
'The pair will probably mate more than usual due to being repressed for so long. They will give birth to many young Ancient Mixed Heavenly Eagles. Once they grow, they will craft and nurture bone weaponry. Each of these bone artifact is a rare bone path material. The feathers of Ancient Mixed Heavenly Eagle by themselves are an extremely precious wind path materials and their bones can be used to feed bone path immortal gu.'
Satisfied after this round of inspection and seeing things progressing in the right track, Lo Jik returned to his residence and practiced using immortal killer moves with Accumulation Immortal Gu Worm. He also dedicated himself to create new disguises every day. Faceless Transformation was a passive killer move. Once used, it created a rectangular ornate mirror in his human path blessed land and allowed Lo Jik to adopt the appearance of the individual displayed inside the mirror. It could disguise aura, clothes, and bone structures. Since it used Familiar Face as its base, Lo Jik's transformation were not limited to other humans. He could transform into a rock as well as a beast.
He merely needed to accumulate these transformations beforehand.
Of course, the greater the level of transformation he prepared beforehand, the more price he paid in terms of mental energy and immortal essence stones. But that was before.
Adding Accumulation Immortal Gu improved the effects of Faceless Transformation immortal killer move, which already used Disguise Immortal Gu as its core, and helped create the same level of disguise for half the cost.
Lo Jik had already accumulated tens of disguises by now. The benefit of this killer move, again, was its passive nature. After creating these mirrors, Lo Jik did not need to spend immortal essence stones or even much mental energy to disguise himself instantly and maintain it for a long time.
Aside from this, he cultivated with Dreamer Immortal Gu.
Now that it was at the immortal level, the dreamer immortal clone could finally speak. They cultivated and deduced killer moves. Feng Jin Huang's Shatter Dream allowed them to adjust and improve Dream Summoning before focusing on Dream Creation immortal killer move.
Things progressed smoothly and there was another reason for Lo Jik to feel somewhat hopeful.
Dual Cultivation.
He obtained the core of Chen Jiu's inheritance and could resolve the conflict of dao marks between rule and wisdom paths. As Lo Jik expected, this method was simply too wonderful. The foundation of this killer move was rule path, but Lo Jik quickly deduced that this method could be adapted into dual cultivating any combination of two paths.
'This method can be improved significantly using human path!' Lo Jik came to a shocking realization after a few hours of deductions. 'No, any path boasting non-conflicting nature of dao marks such as human and painting paths can work just as well. Wonderful. Simply wonderful.' His breathing sped up the more the comprehended this method. He could almost see the towering talent behind this killer move's creation. Such a monster far surpassed the likes of Imaginative Strength Immortal and Nine-Headed Schemer. However, he could only deduce so deeply because of his own attainments. On its own, this method was only applicable to rule and wisdom paths. Any other gu immortal would need decades of secluded research to modify this into something more useful to their own circumstances.
'Earlier, I developed Fake Isolation and False Transformation immortal killer moves. Fake Isolation can attract the dao marks of the corresponding blessed lands from the body and keep them from interfering with each other. This was in the same line of thought as using Fake Mind Gu to isolate two different spaces in the mind using human path dao marks. All this came to be due to my earlier idea of 'slotting' out the paths in my body. This wasn't true dual cultivation and more like cultivating several paths one at a time. One of the greater dangers of developing a third blessed land, aside from the resources necessary to nurture it, was the fact that the third blessed land's dao marks would conflict with strength path dao marks on my body unless I chose to become a painting path gu immortal as my third ascension.'
'False Transformation works after Fake Isolation. Once the dao marks converge upon the blessed land, isolated by the killer move, I can use my immortal level clones to temporarily carve my body with thousands of dao marks and masquerade as a gu immortal of a different path. This method has a great synergy with Faceless Transformation and I can hide my identity completely.'
'The only limitation of this method was none other than Love Gu.'
'But this method…'
The gears in Lo Jik's head turned and a sea of thoughts ebbed and flowed. Tides crashed and developed countless ideas and plans under the effects of Pool of Wisdom.
'I can develop it to its limits…' Lo Jik came to a mouth-watering conclusion. Resolving the conflicting nature of the dao marks of two paths? No! He could do something much greater than that!
This method was simply a nascent idea to greatness.
Why should he focus on dual cultivating two paths when he could surpass such limits and cultivate all the paths without any conflicts?!
'Love Gu truly benefited me this time. Luck path is amazing!' Lo Jik gushed. He wanted to leap in the air once his thoughts flowed in this direction. As a mortal, he aimed to cultivate two paths. Yet, he always ran into several troubles. He never had any time to properly to work towards this goal due to various external threats. These threats only grew in nature and strength once he became a gu immortal. In the end, he developed methods that merely moved around this issue.
Now? He acquired a firm direction and a solid foundation. Deducing this method was not only convenient for Lo Jik but ridiculously easy because of his attainments in all the known paths.
This goal of cultivating all the paths was not some dream realized after decades of dedicated research and countless run-ins into errors but something to be put into practice in a few years!
As if to confirm this insight—this intuition of the fact that his goal was extremely close to the current him, Lo Jik activated several killer moves.
Fake Isolation.
The strength path dao marks on his body retreated to their corresponding blessed lands. Ever since he created this killer move, he kept the human path blessed land and its corresponding dao marks isolated to keep them from being discovered by other gu immortals. It helped that this killer move, once activated, could keep the dao marks isolated passively and did not consume Lo Jik's mental energy.
After practicing for a while, Lo Jik started activating several food, dream, human, and rule path gu worms. The cores of this killer move were none other than Wine Drinker and Dreamer Immortal Gu Worms.
Wine Drinker Immortal Gu and Dreamer Immortal Gu dissolved into motes of light. Thousands of sources of light shot out of his blessed land and carved themselves upon Lo Jik's body. His entire body released a sharp glow as countless markings appeared on his skin, hair, bone, flesh, blood, and various other organs. These bright marks were horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. They were straight and sometimes they were curved. Some parts of his body had greater clumps of marking and the other parts only had a sparse number of these marks.
These were all dao marks!
As if an illusion, the light dissipated and Lo Jik felt his own body.
He activated his investigation killer move. Being human path, this method did not conflict with the dao marks on his body and Lo Jik soon realized he had 9000 food path dao marks and 9000 dream path dao marks!
The total number of dao marks in his body already surpassed most peak-stage rank 6 gu immortals and rivaled veteran rank 7 gu immortals!
Immortal killer move—False Transformation: Dual Cultivation Variation.
'This… is a good start.' Lo Jik's smiled.
Earlier, he only planned on using the dream path variation of False Transformation when sneaking inside Lang Ya Blessed Land. But Chen Jiu's 'revival' granted him an outstanding assurance.
'And I only lost 3000 immortal essence stones in return.' Lo Jik nearly laughed. 'Oh, Love Gu. You are truly amazing.'
However, Lo Jik was unaware of a certain event. There was a reason why Love Gu consumed 3000 immortal essence stones.
<<<>>>
'Where are they?!' Black Moon tried several different methods but failed to locate two familiar entities in her mind. She was pale from shock and horror. How could anyone target her without her knowledge?
Where…
Where were Fairy Mo and her mother's will and emotion?!
***
Alternate Title: It was necessary to mention the eagle's huge boobas; Mixed Heavenly Furries; Could transformation path be the furry path all along?; Freaky Reckless fr; Reckless af: MEN MUST BE FURRIES!; Koh, the face stealer; Lo Jik about to be the Avatar of the gu world; And when the world needed him the most, he came *Happy cumming noises?*; New variation; Dual Cultivation baby; Love Gu really helping out, hmm, suspicious; Nurturing an immemorial desolate beast; Food and dream path menace; The current world: Wholly unprepared for dream and food path *Lo Jik af: Going crazy on the gu world using these paths*; Surpassing rank 6
***
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