Life-essence curses sounded somewhat nonsensical, as if there were no connection between the two.
In reality, using positive buffs to interfere with or harm enemies was a mature school of magic known as World Blessing curses.
The favoritism of one world, when placed in another, became absolute loathing.
This curse system was first created by a mage civilization that frequently invaded other worlds.
These mages keenly observed that the chosen children of heaven, who had everything go their way in their home worlds as if destined for greatness, always hit walls and faced constant misfortune when they entered other worlds.
After in-depth research, they discovered that worlds possessed consciousness and showed varying degrees of favoritism toward the beings within them.
This favoritism was a form of blessing. Those who received it acted as if they had divine help within that world, with everything going smoothly and every wish coming true.
However, once this favoritism entered another world, it became a curse—a form of hatred.
A world was a creature with a strong sense of boundaries, highly sensitive to the aura of other worlds.
Entering a world while carrying the favoritism of another was like walking into someone's house holding a pile of filth; the consequences required no further explanation.
Through their research, the mages actually managed to create a World Blessing technique.
Using this system, the mage civilization was unstoppable, quickly conquering many worlds.
However, the good times didn't last. This World Blessing technique worked well against worlds with low intelligence, but when faced with active world consciousnesses like the Heavenly Dao of Blue Star, its flaws became apparent.
The world consciousness collaborated with the beings within its realm to set an ambush, dealing a heavy blow to the mage civilization and wiping out years of accumulated progress in an instant.
Consequently, World Blessing curses became known as a system only good for bullying the weak.
The powerful had no use for it, and the weak risked a disastrous backlash by using it. Over time, it gradually faded from the sight of transcendent beings.
But the life-essence curses Chen Xu envisioned were different. He would pour a massive amount of life essence into a target's body and then guide it slightly to turn it into a hidden danger.
Chen Xu quickly cleared his thoughts and developed four skills.
【Life-Essence: Flesh Curse - Flesh Aberration】, 【Life-Essence: Flesh Curse - Xenogenic Embryo】, 【Life-Essence: Soul Curse - Mad Babbling】, and 【Life-Essence: Soul Curse - Illusory Perception】.
As the foundational skills of the system, these four were not of high quality—only transcendent-tier. They were skills that anyone with basic spellcasting knowledge could master.
They also required no understanding of Dao principles from the caster.
【Life-Essence: Flesh Curse - Flesh Aberration: Chant the incantation to inject a surge of mental energy into the target's body. This energy will stimulate the target's cells to undergo disordered proliferation. Ineffective against non-flesh-and-blood beings.】
【Life-Essence: Flesh Curse - Xenogenic Embryo: Chant the incantation to inject a surge of mental energy into a single cell within the target's body, causing it to undergo a transformation and develop a consciousness that continuously drains the host's nutrients. Ineffective against non-flesh-and-blood beings.】
Chen Xu divided the life-essence curses into two major categories: flesh and soul.
Flesh curses specifically targeted the physical body. By constantly replenishing the target's mental and life energy, they caused irreversible aberrations in the target's physical form.
Chen Xu's ultimate goal was for a single curse to cause multiple uncontrollable aberrations to sprout within the target, forcing them into a chaotic struggle against their own body.
【Life-Essence: Soul Curse - Mad Babbling: Chant the incantation to inject mental strength essence into the target's soul, accompanied by pre-designed whispers. Ineffective against mechanical beings.】
【Life-Essence: Soul Curse - Illusory Perception: Chant the incantation to grant the target's soul a brief moment of high-dimensional perception, causing their senses to fall into chaos. Note: High-dimensional perception easily attracts entities like aberrations and vicious ghosts. Ineffective against mechanical beings.】
The direction for soul curses was also simple: drive the target into madness until they self-destructed, much like the previous Lords of the Undead.
As for how to induce madness, it was nothing more than tampering with their perception.
The soul was a vital sensory pathway for transcendent beings.
Aside from those born with unique pupils like Mutated Pupils, the Heavenly Eye, or Fiery Golden Eyes, soul perception was the primary sensory method for other transcendents.
Once something went wrong with soul perception, transcendents easily fell into self-doubt and chaos.
Since these were initial-stage skills, there was plenty of room for refinement.
Chen Xu uploaded the four skills directly to the Undead Network and handed them to the two artifact spirits of the Necrotic Archmage Tower, telling them to find opportunities to spread them within the tower.
Whether it was a mage's spells, a cultivator's Daoist laws, or a martial artist's techniques, all required extensive practice for optimization.
This process usually took a very long time, but Chen Xu had the combination of the Necrotic Archmage Tower and the Undead Network.
As long as he threw the skills into the tower, there would be thousands—no, tens of millions—of laborers who would automatically help him test the skills and provide feedback to the Undead Network.
Just like the skeleton hero summoning skills Chen Xu had placed in the tower earlier, there were now massive amounts of debate posts about them.
Some analyzed the characteristics and suitable scenarios for each skeleton hero, some ranked them, and others gave feedback on the convenience and stealth of the casting formulas.
One post mentioned that the wind-up for the skeleton hero summoning formula was too long and caused too much of a commotion, making it very easy for enemies to close in on the caster.
Then, a bunch of people replied to the post, discussing how to optimize the formula.
This was the atmosphere of an open-source community; everyone could participate in the improvement of skills.
After venting his creative urges and burning through his inspiration, Chen Xu returned to his previously peaceful life.
Every day, he either watched the martial artist allied forces battle demons or watched the undead battle demons.
Disaster Bone and the necrotic archdukes were truly showing their real power now, as swarms of undead overwhelmed the demons.
Furthermore, these necrotic archdukes didn't play by the rules. Taking advantage of their numbers, the eternal-tier necrotic archdukes directly entered the fray, taking the lives of countless demons with every breath.
When the Hell Archdukes on the battlefield saw four or five eternal-tier beings appearing simultaneously in such a small theater of war, they were so terrified they didn't dare show their faces and fled back to Hell.
The undead legions led by Bone Guard One and the Black Knights also won battle after battle, driving the demons back toward Hell.
Among them, Patchwerk even used himself as bait, collaborating with Kunpeng to capture a Hell Archduke and bring him back to the Undead Dao Court, where he was currently being suppressed outside the Overlord's Castle.
Kunpeng, in his Golden-Winged Great Roc form, continuously tore flesh from the Hell Archduke and swallowed it.
The Hell Archduke, suppressed by both the Undead Dao Court and Chen Xu, could only watch helplessly as he was treated as a renewable source of meat.
The reason he was placed outside the Overlord's Castle was that Chen Xu discovered the demon's wails actually triggered emotional responses in the ten Nephalem embryos.
Every time the demon shrieked, the speed at which the Nephalem embryos absorbed necrotic aura increased slightly.
Chen Xu was a bit surprised. Could it be that the angel bloodline in their bodies was at work, giving them an innate hatred for demons?
Would there be a similar effect toward angels? Given the current trend in the myriad worlds, hating demons was fine, but hating angels might be a bit problematic.
But this was all just Chen Xu's speculation. The actual situation would only be known once the embryos hatched.
...
Another year passed. During this time, the undead had opened over a hundred battlefields against Hell, officially entering the sight of the myriad worlds and becoming the third-largest force resisting Hell, following only Heaven.
The second-largest, naturally, was the Martial Arts Alliance established by Li Taiji.
Today, the long wait finally yielded a result. The ten high towers guarding the Nephalem were now emitting a brilliant light.
Various visions appeared in the sky above the Undead Dao Court.
"Visions have appeared in the heavens! My son Nephalem has the makings of a Great Emperor!"
Rate on N.U.
