Chapter 106: Reducing Bones to Dust, Reopening Heaven and Earth

The fire burned fiercely, yet it was but a mere flicker, failing to count as even a single spark within the vastness of the Great Desolation. Luo Zu did not allow the forest fire to spread; by midday, he extinguished the final embers, ensuring the situation did not escalate.

This fire had consumed more than just the forest; it had scorched the earth a hundred feet deep, incinerating every lurking specter, demon, and monster, turning the soil over again and again. Naturally, the eggs of those fish-monsters could not escape this fate. Exercising extreme caution, Luo Zu exhaled a breath of celestial energy to churn the charred, sun-baked earth once more. He swept his gaze across every inch of the land until he was certain that all the eggs had been reduced to lifeless ash. Only then did he feel at ease.

This is how a villain ought to act. This is no social banquet; there is no need for hypocrisy. When cutting weeds, one must remove the roots; when killing, one must ensure there are no survivors, lest these troubles befall the "cave dwellers" of the future. As for talk of sin and karmic retribution? Please, this is the Great Desolation, not a Buddhist realm filled with such concepts of cause and effect. There is no cycle of reincarnation, no divine catastrophe, and no celestial punishment. The moral codes of his past life—those human-conceived notions of good and evil—do not apply here. The Way of Heaven seeks only the stable and normal operation of the Great Desolation; it cares nothing for these definitions of "good" or "evil." This was the conclusion Luo Zu had reached after years of surviving in this wild world.

By the time Luo Zu finished his work, the sky had dimmed. The moon hung over the treetops, urging the sun to hasten its descent into the west. At this hour, the wild ghosts of the Great Desolation began to emerge in swarms, warming up to claim the night and transform the wilderness into their home turf.

*Woo... Woo...*

The ghostly wails, sounding like mountain winds, flooded into Luo Zu's ears. He felt no fear; the malevolent spirits near Luo Village were no match for him. He only feared those that might travel from thousands of miles away. Such wandering souls were fickle, drifting from one place to another; here tonight, and thousands of miles away by the next. As for using these wandering spirits for his experiments, his "World within a Pot" was never lacking in such specimens.

Most wandering ghosts are merely a combination of baleful energy and consciousness. Strictly speaking, baleful energy is a form of the world’s spiritual essence. Energy is divided into the pure and the turbid; using the surface of the Great Desolation as a boundary, the pure rises and the turbid sinks. On the surface of the earth, however, these two energies are still entangled, inseparable from one another. Only ten thousand miles above the surface does this entanglement cease, leaving only the pure energy, while three thousand miles beneath the surface, only the turbid remains. Thus, wandering ghosts can only wreak havoc on the surface, unable to ascend to the nine heavens to become celestial spirits. Perhaps, in time, some malevolent ghost might cultivate a prowess comparable to the Heavenly Emperors of the demon race or the Ancestral Witches of the witch race.

However, the threat Luo Zu faced at the moment was merely a toxic miasma formed by a gathering of ghosts. With a wave of his hand, Luo Zu unleashed an internal fire explosion, manifesting a fireball ten miles in diameter that instantly reduced the swarm to ashes. The remaining spirits, realizing Luo Zu was not to be trifled with, retreated in terror. Only one giant corpse crawled out from the mountain ridge, scuttling rapidly toward him. This giant corpse was a bizarre sight: its head was as large as a mountain, yet its body was as thin as a rope. Its flesh had decayed to the point where its original form was unrecognizable; it was impossible to tell what manner of gargantuan beast had been reanimated after death.

*Chi-chi!*

It emitted a chilling sound, spitting out a dark, jade-colored tongue as long as its own body, thrusting it straight toward Luo Zu. Luo Zu countered with a gust of wind. Within the swirling currents, countless invisible blades swept through the air, slicing through the tongue and the rotting body until not even a shred remained, grinding the corpse into dust. Luo Zu then utilized the "World within a Pot" to collect the remains.

This time, Luo Zu opened a new pocket dimension. He did not store spiritual energy within it, but reserved it solely for the powder of these giant corpses. It was a sudden whim that led him to create this new space. Once the corpse powder fell into his world, it obeyed his will, and he molded it into a landmass. But this was not enough. Luo Zu set his sights on the other walking corpses under the cover of night. He did not need to burn or strike them with lightning; he simply used the wind to extinguish them, and their remains were gathered into the newly opened world.

After a night of hard work, Luo Zu had unearthed and reduced to ash nearly every walking corpse within a radius of five hundred miles. One must be thorough when doing evil. The "terrifying upright apes" of the Great Desolation were surely destined to drive more species to extinction than their counterparts on Earth; otherwise, how could he justify the effort of his rebirth?

After his night of toil, Luo Zu finally gathered enough bone ash to form a solid landmass, binding it all together into a "vast" continent. Once this land was born, it began to naturally exude baleful and yin energy, requiring no further input from him. Luo Zu then projected his divine sense into this land and began to draw in the wandering ghosts of the mortal world. Though the two realms were separated by a great distance, under Luo Zu's manipulation, the ghosts were rejected by the mortal earth and drawn into the land of ash, as if they had fallen into this realm of their own accord. Only those wandering souls who had achieved the status of "Ghost Immortals" were spared.

Yet, how many Ghost Immortals were there in the world? Luo Zu counted them; there were only seven. Among them, Yang was naturally the strongest. He, too, felt this suction, but he easily resisted it, choosing to remain in the mortal world, presiding over the "Divine Mountain" of the demon race.

"Recently, this Master of Demons has not grown stronger, and the wandering ghosts of the world have been collected into the netherworld. The human race shall flourish," Yang thought, his mind immersed in the information that had suddenly surfaced in his consciousness. He already had his conclusion. Though he was curious about this netherworld, now was not the time to explore it. He still wished to slay the Master of Demons.

"My obsession," Yang mused. He had been on this "Divine Mountain" for over two years now. From time to time, new generations of great demons would arrive to fight him to the death, only to be easily dispatched. As for the news from the Central Plains, it was equally dramatic. The wielder of the Savage God’s Hammer was still alive, and he had truly turned the world of martial arts upside down. Tai could no longer hunt him down, as their strengths had reached a stalemate. Yang felt a sense of frustration, never expecting these fellows to be so incompetent, allowing the current wielder of the Savage God’s Hammer to step by step become a land-shattering force. At times, Yang considered abandoning this place to return to the Central Plains and personally sever this calamity. Yet, he could not bring himself to leave the Master of Demons behind.

"A stubborn man," was Luo Zu’s assessment of him. However, Luo Zu’s attention was mostly focused on the newly opened world. Hundreds of thousands of wandering ghosts now inhabited the continent of ash. As for how there could be so many, it was the accumulation of years in the mortal world; they had originally been scattered everywhere, some drifting in a dazed, slumbering state.

Luo Zu circled through the wandering ghosts. "The cycle of reincarnation cannot be built," he thought, though he felt no regret. After all, it was truly beyond his power. Nevertheless, he gave this new world a name: Nine Serenities.