He opened his eyes, reassuring the alarmed looking brothers.
In their view, they witnessed him get lost in thought and close his eye. Then, his aura suddenly changed, and he seemed more of a lifeless statue than a living breathing person. Not long after, he coughed out blood.
"I'm fine" Kong Xiang smiled bitterly. He could sense his cultivation foundation had weakened a bit. Coupled with his previous injury, he would have to tread carefully and stabilize his cultivation if he didn't want to regress. Karma was a dangerous law. There was no guidebook on cultivating it, one just had to figure out how to go along with the flow.
Like now, he had learnt a valuable lesson. For karmic threads that weren't lit by his karmic radiance, he was better off not trying to connect to them. Instead, the weaker, easily illuminated lines were more ideal.
His mind raced as he realized he could make use of his karmic connections to sense the state of his closed one; Li Luo, the remaining clan members of his' alive, his master...the probabilities were endless. He stifled the impulse to investigate further, knowing he had all the time in the world to explore the usage and applications of his recent breakthrough. Instead, he cast his gaze downwards to the seal in his hand, remembering what Lu Ming had told him earlier.
"The remnant souls of those ancient cultivators who died in the Great Wars lingered after their death, by virtue of their willpower and obsession" Lu Ming had said. "Their Dao rhythms and charms lingered with their spirits too, and gradually, the Wildlands became a chaotic conglomeration of Dao wills. The region became dangerous, and was pretty much abandoned. But much later, some demonic cultivators realized and speculated there was an opportunity to try to make use of these lingering spirits"
One in particular, the legendary Devil Scion Mo Nian of the Spirit Cult, after cultivating his ultimate demonic art, the Spirit Refining Abyssal Canon to completion, tried to make use the remnant spirits to refine and prove his Dao.
"While he did succeed in proving his Dao, there was a variation. The clash of several wills and Dao rhythms resulted in a backlash, destroying his corporeal body and polluting his true soul. He ultimately fused with all the resentful energy, becoming an ominous existence with a desire to plunge the world into madness and absorb the negativity he caused. He became a puppet, an embodiment of resentment and demonism"
Similarly, his already devilish arts and abilities morphed into even more devilish ones. His signature one was his Demon Heart Seedling Technique, which let him induce negative energy to his targets to turn them to mindless puppets of his.
This was the art from earlier, which tried to sketch a devil image of Kong Xiang. If it had succeeded, Kong Xiang would have turned to a mindless puppet, his true soul replaced by a tainted demon seedling at Mo Nian's bidding.