Chapter 1545 - Stepping Stone (1/2)

“Ah!” Yun Che’s order caused Dongfang Hanwei’s heart to skip a beat. The girl lowered her head, bit her lip and trembled slightly. Even she couldn’t tell if she was shaking from fear or misery.

There was no escaping this moment after all...

She was aware of her own beauty, and she knew that she had neither the right nor the ability to turn down any such request from Yun Che. Moreover, she was the one who had said that she was willing to give up everything to save the Eastern Frost Nation.

The blood drained away from her face, but she didn’t resist it in terms of movement or speech. With a simple “yes”, she got up to her feet and tugged at the sash of her clothes with trembling fingers.

When her sash was pulled off, her light purple official dress slid down her shoulders. She bit her lip harder and harder until finally, her undershirt and her bodice slid to the ground as well. Her bare, exquisite body which countless men had lusted for, but never seen was revealed in full view to Yun Che.

Cold, she subconsciously hugged her own chest and shut her eyes tightly, submitting to the fate that was to come. However, she sensed no movement even though a long time had passed.

Confused, she opened her eyes and looked at Yun Che. However, she noticed that Yun Che had his eyes closed, and he wasn’t looking at her at all.

“Senior… Yun?” She asked.

“...I told you to take off your top, not everything,” Yun Che said. He hadn’t opened his eyes once, but his spiritual sense told him pretty much everything Dongfang Hanwei was doing.

“...” Surprised, Dongfang Hanwei looked both embarrassed and at a complete loss.

“Never mind. Sit down,” Yun Che said.

“Yes,” Dongfang Hanwei answered obediently, her hands still guarding her chest protectively.

She had just sat down when Yun Che suddenly pointed a finger at her and knocked away her arms completely. Then, he touched her at her solar plexus and sent a flash of profound energy straight into her profound veins.

Dongfang Hanwei trembled once, and she suddenly felt countless streams of unfamiliar energy spreading throughout her entire body. A faint sheen of black profound light appeared on its surface.

The black profound light lasted for several breaths before it faded away swiftly. Then, Yun Che pulled his finger away and dispelled the darkness profound energy in his finger as well, settling back into his hermit state.

On the other side, Dongfang Hanwei’s mouth fell open as she perceived the changes in her profound veins and her body. For a long time, she was lost in her own mind as if she was daydreaming.

A long time later, she raised her hand and circulated her darkness profound energy. A ball of power appeared in her palm, and it was unbelievably completely quiet, stable and as pure as a translucent black crystal.

“Senior…” She looked up at Yun Che with unspeakable emotions. She felt like she was still dreaming even now.

“From here on, you’ll never have to worry about cultivation backlash any longer. The upper limit of your cultivation speed and power has increased dramatically as well,” Yun Che said slowly.

What he did to Dongfang Hanwei was very simple… He had simply corrected her darkness profound energy! More accurately, he had altered her “devil body” and the laws of darkness that it bore.

Naturally, the art he used to make the “correction” was the Eternal Calamity of Darkness!

Yun Che had come into contact with darkness profound energy long before he went to the God Realm. The first darkness profound practitioner he knew was Fen Juechen, and the second Xuanyuan Wentian. Although both people had become far stronger than before after acquiring darkness profound energy, the price they paid was terrible to say the least.

At the time, Yun Che was given the impression that all darkness profound energy cost profound practitioners their lives and humanity.

After he went to the God Realm and learned more and more about darkness profound energy, one of the bits of common knowledge he learned was that all “devil people” became more “violent, murderous, and inhuman” after cultivating darkness profound energy. Their lifespan was also far shorter than a “normal” profound practitioner at the same realm.

So it sounded like darkness profound energy was debilitating to both the cultivator’s physical and mental health.

However, after Yun Che no longer held back his darkness profound energy and studied the Eternal Calamity of Darkness, he suddenly noticed a strange problem.

The darkness profound energy of this world seemed to exist in a distorted state!

Be it Fen Juechen, Xuanyuan Wentian, or all the people he encountered in the Northern Divine Region, the darkness profound energy they circulated was very different from the purest, most primal form of darkness profound energy he had inherited from the Heretic God.

At first, he assumed that the darkness profound energy might’ve undergone a change sometime while it was passed on to the next generation. It had existed since time immemorial after all. However, he rejected that idea immediately because it couldn’t explain the extreme distortion both Fan Juechen and Xuanyuan Wentian had experienced.

This meant that the problem probably didn’t lie in the darkness profound energy itself. It was because this ancient power that used to belong to devil gods and devil beasts wasn’t compatible with the mortals of the current world.

If that was true, then… all those people who had entered the Northern Divine Region to cultivate the ancient power of the devil gods or escape a sudden change in fate were cultivating a power that didn’t suit them from the beginning.

The main attribute of darkness profound energy was “devouring” and “destruction”. When cultivated inside a body that was incompatible, it would only result in a backlash that “devoured” and “destroyed” one’s life and soul.

The greater the incompatibility, the worse the backlash became.

A person’s nature and roots were fixed since they were born, and whether they were compatible with a certain type of profound energy was immediately clear since they started cultivating. They might be able to suppress the problems that arose with the incompatibility to a minimum after their power and control had increased, but they would never be able to eliminate it completely. As a result, these “devil people” even thought that this was the natural state of darkness profound energy and never questioned the anomaly.

However, the Eternal Calamity of Darkness was the devil emperor’s darkness energy with its own unique laws. Yun Che’s mastery of this art was superficial at best, but he already had the power to interfere with another person’s “devil body” directly. He could now “fix” a darkness profound practitioner’s body so that it would fit their cultivated darkness profound energy perfectly.

Naturally, cultivation became a lot smoother and easier when one’s profound energy was perfectly compatible with their body. Yun Che wasn’t lying when he said that the upper limit of Dongfang Hanwei’s cultivation speed and power had increased dramatically.

It was absolutely a terrifying and incomprehensible ability that defied all common sense in this world.