"Why don't we cooperate?
"Senior brother, our goals do not conflict. You must be waiting for the Golden Buddha's descent as well.
"How about this: when the Golden Buddha arrives, you use his blood and bone to cultivate your Bone Temple.
"I will use his soul as a parasite to grow my Sukhavati.
"We join forces. A win-win. What do you say?"
Chen Zhou slowly withdrew his death qi. He looked at the giant face on the wall and smiled.
"Not interested."
"Given a choice, I'll take it all."
Bodhisattva Jieyin froze. "Senior brother, you are too greedy."
"Win-win?" Chen Zhou's smile grew colder. "A win-win means I win twice."
"What, do you think I truly can't do anything to you?"
Chen Zhou's laughter made Bodhisattva Jieyin feel a flicker of unease.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean..."
Under Bodhisattva Jieyin's suspicious and uncertain gaze, Chen Zhou slowly raised his hand, tapping at something in the void before him.
"...that it's time for you to go."
In Chen Zhou's vision, the system panel unfolded.
【Breakthrough Task】
【Abnormal Grade is the fourth stage for an evil spirit. The evil god's body is beginning to take shape. Please collect broken divinity and evil god points to complete the breakthrough.】
【Broken Divinity: 0/1】
【Evil God Points: 10,000/10,000】
【Note: The traits of the divinity may affect the evil god's authority. Please choose carefully.】
Chen Zhou glanced at the 【10,000/10,000】 evil god points. He had saved enough long ago.
He had been waiting to see if there was a divinity more suitable for him, but within Thousand Isles County, creatures capable of reaching the sixth stage were far too rare.
Piao had gone out to consume copper poison and helped him open a few 'blind boxes,' but they were all low-grade Aspects of All Beings, barely enough to fill Piao's stomach.
Choosing between the two broken divinities he had, the one obtained from Lady Zhi—【Broken Divinity: Resentment】—was clearly more suitable.
A divinity born from nightmares and forged from emotions paired well with an evil spirit that beguiled the hearts of men.
"Submit task."
Chen Zhou clicked the button.
Instantly, an indescribable aura of terror erupted from within his body.
"What did you do?"
The moment Chen Zhou's aura shifted, the giant face on the wall displayed a look of horror, its voice shrill and piercing.
As a Buddhist cultivator at the first transformation of eerification, he could clearly feel that his opponent, who had been on the same level, was ascending on the spot.
How was this possible?
He had lain dormant for a century, parasitizing the dreams of countless living beings to siphon their souls, and only then did he barely achieve a minor mastery of the Arhat's body and break through to the first transformation of eerification.
They both practiced Buddhist methods; how could this man ascend just by having one fight?
Bodhisattva Jieyin could not understand.
"Stop him! He must be stopped!!"
Jieyin went mad.
He didn't even have time to wonder how Chen Zhou was doing it; he only knew that if this man completed another eerification, he himself would become nothing but nourishment.
The entire Hall of a Thousand Dreams went into a total frenzy.
The hundreds of millions of meridians and vessels forming the hall surged from all directions, transforming into countless sharp tentacles that stabbed toward Chen Zhou’s position.
The white cocoons at the top, along with the dream monsters fighting the skeleton army, detonated simultaneously.
They turned into dreamlight, flowing into the meridian tentacles.
This was the strongest attack from Bodhisattva Jieyin, the Lord of a Thousand Dreams, wagering everything.
He had to interrupt the process!
However, facing an attack powerful enough to crush anyone at the first transformation of eerification, Chen Zhou remained unmoved.
He simply closed his eyes.
When the tentacles reached within three feet of Chen Zhou’s body, they were blocked by an invisible barrier.
Then, they began to burn violently.
The dark red karma-fire was tinged with a layer of resentment, causing spiritual pain with just a glance.
Jieyin's full-force blow was judged to be lower than Chen Zhou's rank now that he was undergoing the breakthrough.
"Impossible! This is impossible!"
Jieyin's will roared in madness.
Ashen death qi, mixed with intense resentment, began to flow along the meridians, frantically eroding the Hall of a Thousand Dreams.
Large sections of the walls began to grow brittle and harden before finally shattering into a cloud of bone meal.
The entire Hall of a Thousand Dreams was slowly dying.
And Chen Zhou, the cause of it all, was currently experiencing a different kind of peril.
The moment the divinity of resentment merged into his body, Chen Zhou felt an endless flood of resentful emotions crash into his sea of consciousness like a tsunami.
This was the true danger of the second transformation of eerification.
And Chen Zhou was merging with the divinity of resentment.
At this moment, the extreme resentment accumulated by Lady Zhi over untold ages—drawn from countless living beings—exploded within his sea of consciousness.
'Why!'
'Why wasn't it you who died!'
'I hate! I hate so much!'
'Give it back... give me back my life!!'
'Kill, kill, kill them all!!'
Countless distorted faces and shrill curses turned into a guide for mutation.
They guided Chen Zhou's body to mutate toward a form of pure resentment.
They wanted to turn Chen Zhou into a monster that knew only slaughter and hatred.
They wanted his mind to sink completely into this vast ocean of resentment, becoming one of them.
Had it been any other sixth-stage cultivator facing the eerification mutation triggered by divinity, they would have had no choice but to lose their minds and descend into madness without a countermeasure.
But Chen Zhou was an evil spirit, and his true body was the Bone Altar; his sea of consciousness was already a place of dead silence.
The distant Bone Altar seemed to sense something. Death qi overflowed, boldly meeting the ocean of resentment.
Resentment was a negative emotion.
But death qi was the end of all things.
All resentment was assimilated into the death qi, becoming a part of it.
Under the infusion of massive resentment, Chen Zhou's aura climbed steadily!
"No! Stop! Stop it!"
Outside, Bodhisattva Jieyin's wails had turned into desperate pleas.
He could feel the Hall of a Thousand Dreams being eroded by death.
Those areas that had been ossified had completely escaped his control, instead becoming a source of nourishment for Chen Zhou's death qi.
He was watching himself being eaten alive.
Finally.
The last wail in Chen Zhou's sea of consciousness was crushed by death qi.
The broken divinity of resentment had completely merged with him.
Chen Zhou slowly opened his eyes.
His power had firmly settled at the level of the second transformation of eerification.
The system refreshed his status.
【Breakthrough Task Completed!】
【Current Grade: Abnormal Grade (second transformation of eerification)】
【Forging Bones Progress: Grade 4 Flesh x0/10,000】
【Painting Skin Progress: Grade 4 Blood x0/10,000】
【Refining Body Progress: Grade 4 Soul x0/10,000】
【You have obtained a new ability: Hate Prison】
【Your ability, Bone Erosion, has been upgraded】
【Bone Seed Update: Seed of Resentment (Ultimate Edition)】
【You can transform a sliver of your death qi into a Seed of Resentment, implanting it into the mind of a sentient being to perform mental pollution and spiritual corruption.】
【Your artifact, Eternal Calamity Karma-Fire, has been upgraded】
【Karma-Fire Protection Update: Hatred Fire】
【Immune to all attacks not higher than your own rank. Hatred Fire is saturated with the curse of the divinity of resentment, capable of bypassing defenses to directly strike the mind and soul.】
Chen Zhou finished reading the system panel and understood the general role of divinity: it added a skill and enhanced existing abilities based on its traits.
In short, it acted like a soul ring.
Chen Zhou slowly raised his head, looking at Bodhisattva Jieyin's giant face, which was frozen in terror.
He curled the corners of his mouth into a smile.
"Now.
"How do you want to 'win-win'?"
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