"With this, I now have access to three paths of power."
The martial peak world opened the doors to the path of energy, while the path of divinity and the magus path opened the doors to the power path of the soul.
With the Eldrtch path representing the path of will, Noah now had knowledge about three different power paths.
"Now there remains the body..."
Rubbing his chin, Noah stopped thinking about that and instead focused on his next move.
First he lit a bonfire before he started throwing all sorts of ingredients inside.
The fire from the bonfire rose up to six feet before turning into a green fire.
Noah began chanting a spell before pulling out a vial with a few hairs and a few drops of blood, throwing it directly into the bonfire.
He then clasped both hands together and began chanting harder until he started bleeding from his nose but he didn't care.
He kept chanting until the green fire turned into a purple fire.
Above the fire, the illusion of a silver-haired man formed.
"Let's see if you can get rid of this one."
Pulling out a dagger, Noah slashed his finger and let his blood spill into the fire, evaporating immediately.
In a cultivation room in a faraway place, a silver-haired man was sitting cross-legged while meditating.
Suddenly, his blood flow became chaotic and his qi went haywire.
Opening his eyes wide, the man spat out a mouthful of blood.
"What the hell just happened?"
This hormbre lying on the ground was none other than the new demon lord and Lin Tai Xu's former disciple who fell into the demonic path, Yang Bai.
What Noah did was to cast a powerful curse on him using some of Yang Bai's hair and blood that he collected from the coiling dragon stream.
The curse was not intended to kill him by any means, a curse of such a level would require Noah to sacrifice his own life to achieve it, something he didn't even bother to think about.
The curse's goal was to affect Yang Bai's blood flow at every turn, forcing him to suppress it all the time, making it impossible for him to cultivate.
With this, Noah would ensure that Yang Bai would not advance any further in his cultivation, stagnating at the third rank of the transcendent realm at the same time as his battle power would be greatly weakened due to his unstable blood.
Sensing his current condition, anger seized Yang Bai and his aura exploded, frightening all the servants in the area.
Noah could care less about Yang Bai's feelings.
Now that the curse was lifted, he sat down to recover from his wounds before beginning to cultivate.
Several months later, he reached the second stage of the immortal ascension realm.
"Sigh, this realm requires one to deepen their understanding of the martial path in order to rise through the ranks.
I don't have that much time to develop a deep understanding about the martial path, that would require many years of cultivation and I've barely been cultivating for a couple of years.
Fortunately, I have a way to cheat.
I think it's about time to go hunt down some unlucky old men."
Noah teleported to the sea city and began visiting each of the small sects with immortal ascension realm cultivators in that region before transporting their souls to his spirit sea and destroying them with the demonic eye of annihilation before absorbing their knowledge and ideas on the martial path.
He also plundered the treasure vaults and libraries of those sects.
In total, he killed four masters of the early stages of immortal ascension before news of his massacre reached other regions.
Knowing that the other cultivators might unite to march against him, Noah decisively left the area.
"With those four souls, I've managed to advance two ranks minor."
Noah was now at the fourth rank of immortal ascension, something that would have required another many years of effort and dedication to deepening the martial path.
Now that he had considerable strength, Noah teleported to coiling dragon stream before heading to the stone door with the wormhole inside.
Pouring much of his energy into the gate, he opened the passage and entered before the wormhole took him over 10,000km away, arriving in the evil land of the ash gray cloud, the land of evil cultivators and where the new demon king's base of operations was located.
Several days of travel later, he bought a clay jar from a store before wandering into a sinister looking cave.
Noah encountered a few evil spirits but defeated them all, causing their spirit bodies to disperse, leaving only their essence. He collected those essences in the clay jar, which refined them and purged the negative energy from within.
The name of the jar was the spirit purifying bottle and as the name implies, its purpose was to refine the essences released by the spirits Noah managed to kill.
A commotion deep in the cave caught his attention.
Hiding his aura, he hid behind a rock while preparing an attack.
Two wounded elders whose auras placed them at the eighth stage of the immortal ascension realm shot out of the depths of the cave with their faces filled with terror.
As they looked behind them at the place they had exited, they did not notice Noah appear in their path and activate a martial art.
The ghosts of an ox and a tiger came out of his fists, striking the two old men who failed to react in time, sending them flying.
This was a martial technique he learned from absorbing the pearls he got from the two giant skeletons on the ghost mountain.
Noah went to one of the elders and pierced his head with his sword before capturing his soul and sending it into his spirit sea before doing the same to the second elder.
The demonic eye of annihilation took care of destroying the newcomers, leaving only two energy balls containing a mass of spirit energy and the two old men's understanding of the martial way.
Noah appeared before the two balls and absorbed them without wasting any time.
His aura immediately shot up from the fourth to the seventh stage of the immortal ascension.
Turning towards the interior of the cave, he pulled out the demon sealing chain before entering where the old men had exited, finding the corpses of two other old men lying on the floor while a gigantic five meter tall demon was constantly gathering its energy.
The demon focused on Noah and was about to attack when the latter activated the demon sealing chain, causing it to envelop the demon who began to roar like a maniac.
"Release me! I command you to release me! I am the great demon general Meng He! You brat, since you have dared to harm my soul clone, this general will not forget you! I hope you dare not come to the upper realm because my main body will hunt you to death.
Noah paid no attention to what the guy was saying and instead focused his attention on manipulating the demon sealing chain, causing it to wrap itself tighter and tighter around the demon's body to the point where it began to crumble.
Five minutes later, the demon general's body completely crumbled, leaving behind only a mass of dark-colored demon essence.
Noah absorbed the demonic essence before teleporting to the crimson island and beginning to refine the mass of demonic essence.
Half a month later, his aura exploded and he managed to reach the ninth stage of the immortal ascension.
A couple of days later, he appeared outside a mansion before exploding his ninth rank immortal ascension energy, alarming everyone inside and causing them to panic.
The Lu family had only one elder at the third rank of immortal ascension and to top it off he was injured.
Noah did not attack or make any move, instead he withdrew his aura and waited outside the mansion.
By now, his intentions were quite clear.
A gray-bearded old man dressed in a white robe came out to welcome the visitor.
"Greetings brother cultivator. May I ask what your excellency desires in my humble family?"
Noah smiled and took out a jade vial with a pill inside, tossing it to the old man.
"This is it!"
"A high grade sky rank healing pill. It's yours, in exchange I want your jade yang bed."
The old man stopped smelling the aroma of the pill and looked at Viltz in confusion, not knowing how he knew he had a Yang jade cultivation bed but faced with the opportunity to heal his wounds that had been plaguing him for so many years and Noah's unfathomable cultivation, the man didn't hesitate to agree.
After entering his cultivation room, he pulled out a large rectangular piece of jade.
Noah stowed the jade bed in his magic gourd before flying off into the horizon.
Landing on a random spot, it teleported to its lair before pulling out the jade bed and beginning to absorb the qi yang emanating from it.
Two days later, the original jade bed had shrunk to the size of a chicken egg.
Inside the small jade was a faint spiritual presence.
It was a true spirit, with it, if a weapon is refined it will gain its own sentience, becoming a living artifact.
Despite his courage, Noah squeezed the piece of jade hard and broke it into pieces.
A spiritual presence surrounded by flames emerged from the broken pieces of the jade but before it acted, Noah dragged it into his spiritual sea before having the demonic eye destroy it.
What remained was a jumble of soul essence surrounded by flames.
Noah devoured that flame essence and his spiritual sea suddenly lit up as golden flames of ignited throughout the spiritual sea.
"Conflagrated spiritual sea."
The conflagrated spiritual sea was how the spiritual sea that possessed yang flames within it was known.
Such a spirit sea was coveted by alchemists as it was the best for controlling fire when refining.
Rising up, Noah teleported back to coiling dragon stream only to find that the demonic spirit had completely refined the scattered demonic aura.
Now in this new body his cultivation reached the first rank of the transcendent realm.
Noah opened a portal and teleported together with the demonic spirit to the crimson island.
Noah and the demonic spirit joined hands before the demonic spirit began to circulate its demonic energy bit by bit into Noah's body.
The latter activated his secret art of true yang along with the heavenly devourer skill and began to devour all the demonic energy transmitted by the demonic spirit.
Half a month later, the demonic spirit's body, which was initially full of vitality, had now become that of a withered old man with nothing but skin and bones.
A week later, Noah felt he was just one step away from breaking through and reaching the next rank.
A light breeze passed and the demonic spirit's body dispersed into wisps of dust that flew away, leaving behind the demonic spirit's soul.
Noah transported the demonic spirit to its spiritual sea and let the demonic eye of annihilation purge it before absorbing what remained of its spiritual energy and understanding.
A shackle seemed to break as Noah began to advance to the next rank.
A massive storm that covered nearly half of the eastern sea manifested and began to roar with electric lightning.
Noah looked up at the giant purple cloud overhead with no fear on his face. In his eyes only resolve could be seen.
Half a month later, all the inhabitants of the South Sea islands watched as two giant dragons, one golden and one black, clashed in the air.