High above the Southern Border, a lone figure floated in the sky, fiery wings spreading wide behind him. This was Ning Zu, gliding effortlessly through the air, as free as the wind.
A flock of crows flew toward him, their sharp eyes marking him as easy prey. But Ning Zu was far from that.
With a slight shift in his expression, a wave of killing intent rippled from him. It was enough to send the crows into a frenzy.
They fell from the sky like stones, crashing into the ground below and turning into broken heaps of feathers and blood.
'I really need to learn how to hold back my killing intent,' Ning Zu thought with a sigh. 'Not everyone can handle it like Ming You. But maybe that's for the best.'
He frowned slightly, the freedom to unleash his intent like before now a thing of the past. Controlling himself wasn't easy, but it was necessary.
The Southern Border's vast mountain ranges stretched beneath him as he flew, endless peaks rising and falling like waves.
Ning Zu's gaze scanned the horizon until he finally saw what he was searching for. His fiery wings beat faster, carrying him closer as excitement flickered in his chest.
It wasn't just a mountain.
The massive structure before him stood out from the rest. Towering higher than any other peak, its sheer size was overwhelming. Its surface was split into striking shades of black and white, blending in strange patterns. Deep cracks covered it, adding to its ancient and mysterious appearance.
This wasn't a natural formation, believe it or not, it was a tooth.
A single, colossal tooth left behind by Reckless Savage Demon Venerable.
'Crazy lunatic,' Ning Zu thought, his lips twitching into a faint smile. 'That man fought a Legendary Immemorial here and nearly destroyed the world in the process.'
Over a million years ago, during the Olden Antiquity Era, Reckless Savage Demon Venerable had clashed with a beast of unimaginable power. The fight left a massive hole in the ground, a scar on the world itself.
'And like the mad genius he was, he pulled out one of his own teeth and dropped it here to seal the hole,' Ning Zu thought, shaking his head.
For centuries, mortals admired the tooth, some even worshipping it as a symbol of the Demon Venerable's strength. They carved weapons and tools from its fragments. But as time passed, the tooth became weathered and forgotten, blending into the mountains around it. Only a few still remembered its true origin.
And fewer still knew the secret it held.
Ning Zu landed softly at the peak of the mountain, his fiery wings folding neatly behind him. He stood there for a moment, his gaze steady as he reviewed what he had learned from his split soul's investigation.
'The inheritance of Reckless Savage Demon Venerable lies here. But to claim it, three conditions must be met'
He stomped hard on the ground, his strength shaking the peak. The tremor was slight, but it carried a strange energy, as though the mountain itself responded to his presence.
'First,' Ning Zu thought, 'you must be a mortal. No immortal can access this inheritance. It simply won't allow it.'
He clenched his fists,feeling something move inside his aperture.
'Second, you need the strength of at least a hundred white tigers. Not just any kind of beast strength, it must be specific to the white tiger.'
This was the reason why Ning Zu chose to cultivate the strength of a white tiger despite the better option that his clan offered.
'And third,' he murmured, a faint glow beginning to surround his body, 'you must have one of the Ten Extreme Physiques, the Great Strength True Martial Physique to be exact.'
As the mountain finally sensed his physique, Ning Zu's aperture lit up with a blinding light. The glow grew brighter, wrapping around him until his entire form disappeared into the radiance.
In an instant, he was gone, leaving the peak silent once more, the fiery traces of his wings the only evidence he had been there at all.
———
Ning Zu opened his eyes, finding himself inside a vast land with green soil, trees with mouths for leaves everywhere.
One of the trees expanded its branch, aiming to have him as its meal.
"STOP."
A thunderous sound rang, making the trees halt. They all got up from the ground, running away with their roots.
Ning Zu looked at the thing that just yelled.
It was a little man with long purple hair and multiple tattoos on his extremely muscular body. He was riding a little white tiger who seemed to barely think.
"Are you okay?! You need to be safe! I didn't have anyone here with me in ages! Can you imagine that?" The little figure kept looking around Ning Zu's body, making sure he faced no harm.
Ning Zu looked at the blabbering little man, recognizing what he was immediately.
"You seem to be a heavenly spirit, the both of you."
The heavenly spirit stopped checking him as soon as he said that.
"Oh, you seem to know your stuff. I am indeed the heavenly spirit of this grotto heaven."
The heavenly spirit puffed its chest while having a smug look on its face.
"You're probably thinking, why are there two heavenly spirits? Well, let me enlighten you, junior—"
"I already know," Ning Zu quickly interrupted him as he didn't want to waste time. "The heavenly spirit you're riding is the original spirit of this grotto heaven. You are an artificial one made by Reckless Savage."
The spirit was taken aback. This guy was very rude to him, despite the fact that the spirit could kill him right here and now. It wouldn't do that, though; he was the inheritor of his master's inheritance after all.
"You're right, junior. My main body made me so I can take care of the blessed land since the original spirit is out of it because it consumed a fragment of the green heaven."
Ning Zu nodded. He already knew that too; he just wanted to claim the inheritance now.
"So may I go take the inheritance?"
The spirit was livid, but it agreed.
It teleported them both to a flat terrain.
On the ground were multiple tiger limbs, with a mix of white and green stripes on them. They were extremely big, even bigger than the mountain he was just on.
Ning Zu felt shivers down his spine seeing that.
The reason for his reaction wasn't because of the size of the limbs, he had seen much bigger things.
(One of them is in his pants….. alright I won't make a joke again.)
It was because of the sheer amount of the food path Dao marks on them.
Normally, a person would need to be a grandmaster in a path to feel the Dao marks of that path, and they would need to be a great grandmaster to manipulate those Dao marks.
Ning Zu was a master in food path, meaning he shouldn't feel food path Dao marks. But the food path Dao marks on each limb were so intense that even he could feel them.
The heavenly spirit noticed, a grin forming on its face.
'Fufufufu, he is but a mortal after all.'
But Ning Zu quickly composed himself, which made the spirit's grin turn into a frown.
'This isn't the time to feel amazed,' he thought.
Ning Zu and the spirit walked for a little bit, reaching the center of the blessed land, where a head of a white tiger with green eyes and stripes lay.
The head was big too, looking as if it was as big as the moon in the black heaven. The teeth on it were still sharp and long, even after millions of years.
'So this was the beast that crazy bastard fought. Even if I don't like him, I have to admit he was very strong.'
But Ning Zu didn't show his admiration. He almost died on his way to talk to Reckless Savage's will, and he didn't even get a lot of information out of him.
'He kept telling me I needed more muscle, which didn't make sen—'
An aura quickly stopped his thoughts, as he couldn't keep himself composed anymore. It was an aura of a rank 9 existence!
"This is the inheritance," said the spirit with the smug look back on its face. "Put some of your blood inside the tiger's mouth, and you will get your inheritance. It will take a while for you to claim it, so you have three months to do so in this grotto heaven. If you fail to do that, you will be kicked out immediately."
Ning Zu, still shaken by the Gu's aura, nodded, approaching the rank 9 aura coming from the tiger's mouth.
There, he could see a rank 9 Gu looking like an ancient broken silver shield.
This was the rank 9 Dao Guardian Gu.
According to legends, Reckless Savage Demon Venerable got this Gu after annihilating a super force that used to reside in White Heaven.
'According to the split soul's information, the bastard couldn't refine this Gu no matter what. It was like Fate Gu in a sense. He didn't know it at the time, but he couldn't do it because it was a Heaven Path Gu. So what he did was kill this tiger, using the abundance food path Dao marks on its body to suppress the Gu, making it weak enough to be used in a formation. But since he was an immortal at that time, the Gu almost broke, and he barely salvaged it.'
This is why his inheritance could only be claimed by a mortal. If an immortal were to use it, the Gu would break.
Ning Zu bit his finger and dropped some of his blood into the tiger's mouth, making its eyes shine brightly.
It closed its mouth, as steam poured out of its ears and nose.
Then, its mouth opened again, letting a smaller version of its head out.
The small tiger head flew to Ning Zu, opening its mouth as if waiting for something.
The heavenly spirit spoke, "Put your hand inside that thing's mouth. At that moment, the three-month timer will begin. If you get it earlier than that, you can leave or stay for the remaining time, which I doubt will happen, fufufufu."
Ning Zu slid his hand into the tiger's mouth, and as soon as he did that, it exploded into steam that was gone instantly.
"Alright, the timer starts now. You may do whatever you want in this short time… hey, why do you look like that?"
Ning Zu's face was frightened, as if he saw a nightmare.
What he was seeing was something that reminded him of memories that he tried to forget.
He was seeing a bald man with skin so pale that he looked sick. On his head were multiple crosses of different shapes piercing it.
He was wearing black metallic armor that covered his whole body except for his face, with a green five leaf clover mark on his chest.
"Ning... Ning Tang?"
The guy was someone Ning Zu knew, he was from his clan, after all. But the guy had died long ago, killed by a metal path Gu Master who pierced his head.
The spirit was confused. It couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Was he seeing things?
It pulled an investigative immortal Gu from afar, only to be horrified by what it found.
'What... What the fuck?!' The spirit couldn't keep its composure.
'It took my main body three months to form his guardian… why did he get it instantly?'
Unknown to both of them, the Dao Guardian Gu's effects take less time to activate if the person has high attainment in human path.
Heaven path and human path conflict with each other, but without one, the other can't exist.
'This... this is extremely dangerous. He needs to die, right here and now!'
The spirit wanted to kill him, but it had no way of doing so. It was tasked with protecting any inheritor at any cost inside the grotto heaven.
'Maybe if he is outside the blessed land, he may die when trying to understand the guardian's abilities!'
Unbeknownst to it, Ning Zu already knew the abilities of the guardian. His human path attainment made him know it as if it was the most common knowledge in the world.
"Hey! You already got your inheritance, mortal! How about you leave now?"
The spirit tried to persuade him, but Ning Zu wasn't about to be fooled like that.
"Heavenly Spirit, I will stay here until the timer is over. I want no disturbances while I am here."
The spirit wanted to argue with him, but it couldn't. It just left him alone, but it still kept an eye on him from afar.
Ning Zu, on the other hand, paid it no attention. His mind was too focused on his new guardian.
The guardian smiled, as if it was happy to be next to Ning Zu.