The sinful life of Celestial Master Lü comes to an end here.
Xu Qing glanced at the life experiences of the other person.
This Celestial Master Lü was actually a figure from three hundred years ago. At that time, although the Celestial Master's Mansion was also full of the stench of money, it was not as crazy as it is today.
When the Elder Celestial Master passed away, Lü Shanhe, who was just in his early twenties, accepted the talisman from the Celestial Master in front of all his fellow disciples, took up the treasure seal of stabilizing the altar, and became the new Celestial Master.
The Elder Celestial Master admonished Lü Shanhe, saying that although he had spiritual bones and exceeded mundane norms, his disposition was insufficient. He was only indulged in pursuing profit and was infatuated with sensual pleasures, turning a pure cultivation place into a market for business.
This was contrary to the essence of cultivation and went against the teachings of the ancestral Celestial Master. It was precisely because of this that he had cultivated all his life in vain, unable to achieve the true fruit of his efforts.
The Elder Celestial Master surveyed his disciples and finally rested his gaze on Lü Shanhe, earnestly saying, "The benefits of the worldly market are all illusory, and in the end, all becomes emptiness. We cultivators ought to purify the mind and soul, nurture our nature, and refine our life. Only with such single-minded devotion can one behold the true essence."
"Remember well the words I speak today, do not say you were not forewarned."
The words of a dying man are always sound.
But Lü Shanhe did not take the Elder Celestial Master's words to heart. He had finally become the Celestial Master, should he not enjoy it to the fullest?
As for cultivation... he was one of those rare talents, the "Immortal Talent" as the Elder Celestial Master called it, stepping into the third realm of the Xuan Sect, the Penal Soul Realm, at the age of just over twenty.
In this realm, besides capturing souls and cultivating true spirits, a cultivator could also travel the yin and yang realms and even borrow three hundred years of life from the heavens.
Considering his extraordinary talent, having entered the path of cultivation at the age of twelve, gaining three additional centuries of lifespan in just eight or nine years, why should he heed the Elder Celestial Master's advice, give up worldly desires, and pursue pure cultivation?
He could enjoy all the glory of the world, and it would not be too late to retreat to seclusive cultivation afterward!
With this mindset, Celestial Master Lü managed the Celestial Master's Mansion all the way until he relocated it from Yuzhang to the capital region. Only then did he start contemplating cultivation.
At this time, although Celestial Master Lü was deeply tainted by fame and fortune, he had not yet fallen into the Demon Dao.
However, when Celestial Master Lü concentrated on cultivation and finally touched upon the fourth realm of cultivation, the Decaying realm, he realized the true meaning of the Elder Celestial Master's last words.
The fourth realm, Decaying, was essentially like the Heaven and Earth Silver House, with deposits and withdrawals. Once one stepped into the Decaying realm, one had to repay lifespan to the heavens, cutting off five hundred years...
No wonder the Elder Celestial Master always said that he wasted too much time when he was young. How was this just wasting? Even if he cultivated nonstop, there would still be a gap of two hundred years!
How does this differ from taking a loan to cultivate immortality?
Celestial Master Lü suddenly recalled the nurturing life and refining life cultivation technique the Elder Celestial Master had mentioned, which emphasized purifying the mind and soul.
If he had followed the Elder Celestial Master's advice, while cultivating in seclusion, also practiced that nurturing life cultivation technique, consumed Xuan energy, and used the breathing technique of the tortoise, delaying the aging process, perhaps he could have compensated for the time owed to the Decaying realm.
But now it was evidently too late.
Celestial Master Lü's heart was filled with resentment and frustration. Although the Elder Celestial Master taught him the path of cultivation, he never informed him how immensely difficult the rightful path of cultivation in the Celestial Master's Mansion would be under the age of great calamities.
In the face of life and death, nothing else matters. Celestial Master Lü no longer cared for worldly fame and fortune. He searched far and wide for a solution, investigating in the Scripture Pavilion about ways to exempt the costs of cultivation in the Five Filthy Evil Worlds.
In the end, however, his conclusion was that past Celestial Masters never sought a solution. They either awaited death after breaking through the Penal Soul realm or followed the Elder Celestial Master's path of nurturing life and refining life, hoping to repay the lifespan to the heavens.
How could Celestial Master Lü resign himself to fate?
Since proper cultivation yielded no good results under the Five Filthy Evil Worlds, he decided to practice the Evil Technique!
Otherwise, the Elder Celestial Master would praise Celestial Master Lü as a rare talent. In just two short years, Celestial Master Lü, who had read all the Daoist classics in the Scripture Pavilion, had squeezed out a God Shadow Technique and a Reincarnation Technique of Borrowing Infant.
It was from that time that Celestial Master Lü started reincarnating, borrowing infants, and cultivating through three lifetimes.
In his first reincarnation, he went on a killing spree after assuming his new identity, but was unable to achieve the God Shadow Technique.
Celestial Master Lü did not understand why. Upon returning to the Celestial Master's Mansion, he experimented on the disciples for decades until he finally realized that the God Shadow Technique required sacrificing close blood relatives and that the victim had to harbor deep emotions and trust towards the perpetrator. Only then could 'attachment' be created, and only then would the God Shadow become his 'root vessel,' aiding him in ascending to immortality!
In his second reincarnation, with the principles of the Evil Technique understood, Celestial Master Lü borrowed a new life again. This time, he pretended to be an obedient son and grandson for twenty years. After slaughtering his entire clan, he ended up collecting only five shadows.
Father gone, mother gone, brother gone, along with grandfather and grandmother, added up to precisely five root vessels.
Even counting himself, it was only six, while according to his deductions, the maximum God Shadow Life Shaping Technique could yield nine celestial shadows.
What to do?
This time, Celestial Master Lü practiced for over fifty years. After accumulating sufficient cultivation, he decisively initiated the third reincarnation of borrowing an infant.
Before this reincarnation, he specifically instructed his disciples to search for a family with abundant children and grandchildren.
After half a year of research and field inspection, Celestial Master Lü finally selected a large family in Xiangyin with five generations living under one roof.
This family with the surname Tian had more than fifty members all under the same household!
With fifty people, if nine root vessels were to be taken, perhaps dozens of people could still live. But to ensure no failure, Celestial Master Lü slaughtered forty-nine of the Tian family's fifty members in his reincarnation!
The one remaining was not spared due to a fit of kindness but because that half-grown child had disappeared three months earlier. Some said he was kidnapped by human traffickers, some said they saw him tricked away with candy by an old man, and others said he fell into the river.