Tainted will

Bai Ming lightly tapped his bag of holding and multicolored lights quickly escaped the confines of his storage bag, the lights quickly faded away revealing seventeen spirit herbs in their place.

The seventeen spirit herbs that were quietly floating in the air were all of the 5th-grade spiritual herbs that Bai Ming owned. They were Bai Ming's harvests in the mystic realm, he had picked them up while wandering around. The mystic realm had both riches and dangers accompanying each other. The further one journeyed in the mystic realm, the greater the danger was but the benefits that escorted them were just as enticing.

"Come out," Bai Ming muttered to himself and then stretched his mouth wide open.

An eerie green glow could be noticed on Bai Ming's heart before it progressed towards his throat and soon the primordial spirit came out of his mouth and jumped on the tier-5 spirit herbs with frantic eyes and started gnawing on it like a hungry wild beast that hadn't eaten a proper meal for days.

Primordial spirits have to be fed.

Cultivators have to first refine spirits using their essence to overwrite the spirit's true essence with their own essence imprints, then the cultivator can use the spirit's unique abilities as they see fit. And at the same time, they need to raise them adequately.

Refining a spirit is difficult; there is the risk of counterattack causing one's spiritual essence to go chaotic and it tests the persistence of the cultivator. Using spirits is easy, just sending a mental command to the spirit is enough.

However, raising a spirit is more extensive and profound, because there are all kinds of primordial spirits and their food is exceedingly strange. Some need to drink gallons of exceedingly pure spiritual liquid, some need meat from extinct demon beasts, some require human sweat, some feed on human and demon beast souls, and the list just keeps on going.

Just taking Bai Ming's primordial spirit for example, his healing spirit requires spiritual herbs, three meals a day. In the morning, afternoon, and night one meal, every meal requires ten tier-1 spirit herbs.

But if it could get its hands-on spirit herbs of higher grades its feeding period would be extended. But that wasn't the biggest advantage of this practice; instead, it was because higher-grade sustenance nourished the primordial spirit with exemplary life essence that in return augmented its healing power.

To better understand, if Bai Ming's primordial spirit consumes tier-1 spirit herbs and uses its healing ability, it can probably regrow your lost limbs within two weeks, but if it has consumed tier-5 spirit herbs then it can regrow the lost limbs within two or three minutes.

Bai Ming expressionlessly watched the healing spirit devour his hard-earned spirit herbs.

After a short while, the healing spirit drifted towards Bai Ming with a very satisfied smile on her cute little face. As she approached Bai Ming she automatically lowered her head, but at times she took covert glances at him before returning to his heart.

Bai Ming shut his eyes momentarily before opening them once again, a dreamy light flickered past his crimson pupils as spoke internally;

'With the amount of herbal essence it has currently reserved in its body, the spirit can last for another month before it needs to be fed again. But of course, if I exploit its regenerative powers then nothing can be said, as it will then directly depend on how much I utilize it.'

'Now I have another task of collecting huge amounts of spirit herbs, preferably higher-tier spiritual herbs. Should I put the spirit to a little test? Hmm, let's see how well it can perform.'

Bai Ming's eyes showed a tint of expectation as he placed his left palm on the ground and pulled his right hand back, spiritual essence swirled inside Bai Ming, and began converging on his right fist.

Without a change in his expression, Bai Ming heavily punched his left palm, and the fingers in his left hand immediately deformed.

"Once again," Bai Ming wasn't done yet, he repeatedly smashed his hand two more times. His actions were ruthless; being cruel to others and being even crueler to oneself was the motto of the demonic path.

Being ruthless to others was easy, but only those that held an incomparably tenacious will and a bit of insanity in their hearts could truly walk on the demonic path. Why else would the world fear and despise these so-called demons? It was because of their uncompromising nature.

In essence, the demonic path is nothing but a band of extremists who are willing to do whatever it takes. How they achieve their goals is of no value to them, but whether they can achieve it or not is of great importance to them.

Bai Ming's apathetic gaze landed on his left hand, his left hand was in terrible condition. Not only was the blood and skin mashed, but because of the huge impact his bones were completely shattered.

"Don't disappoint me.." Bai Ming closed his eyes and transmitted a mental command to the healing spirit, not a second later the eyes of the little spirit became incredibly focused.

She clasped her little palms together and began emitting otherworldly energy from her bead-like eyes, the otherworldly energy rushed to Bai Ming's left hand at incredible speed.

Bai Ming's eyes immediately lit up, On the bones, the cracks started to mend, and the flesh and skin started to grow rapidly and heal.

Within five breaths of time, the injuries on his hand had disappeared without leaving a trace as if they had never existed.

"Good, good, good!" The result made Bai Ming very satisfied, but before the pleasure could eat his mind he noticed that the little spirit had consumed three percent of its essence reserves to achieve such a fine outcome.

'All good things come with a price to pay, the price to pay for this superior healing strength is to offer up spirit herbs.' Bai Ming smiled lightly and shook his head sideways.

Then without wasting a second Bai Ming once again changed his clothes, and then got up and retrieved all his formations, only leaving behind a single transfer array. Then he immediately left this place and headed towards a certain location.

Bai Ming had previously gained huge amounts of information from the little spirit, unlike him, the primordial spirit had spent all its life in this mystic realm, hence it had a bit of information regarding this place. Right now Bai Ming was heading to a certain place according to the little spirit's instructions.

Bai Ming flew for a long time in the inner area, he stopped at a certain mountain range. According to the little spirit's memories, this was a mountain range of volcanos.

Currently, the green sky was clear for 10,000 kilometers. His body moved and he flew to a nearby volcano.

Shortly after, Bai Ming arrived at the mouth of the volcano and looked inside. Below him was a large pool of lava. There were many large bubbles in the pool, and every time one burst, black gas would rise.

Scorching hot waves of heat floated up from inside the mouth of the volcano, Bai Ming's eyes lit up and he jumped in without any hesitation. He used his wings to control his descent.

Bai Ming had learnt from little spirit's memories that this place had a spirit herb that emitted extreme Yang energies. Bai Ming only thought about it for a second before immediately deciding to visit this place, he had previously failed to obtain the Yang core of the Golden Yang Crab but he was both determined and prepared to succeed this time around.

On this day, Bai Ming wasn't the only one who had come here. After Bai Ming entered there were a total of three figures appeared, two males and one female. The three of them held black spears with them as they stood at a volcano opening, waiting for the right time to go in.

The three of them conversed for a while before one of the young men named Tang Ming said impatiently, "My spirit compass is reaching its breaking point, if we miss this opportunity to grab the spirit herb we can only depend on our luck to find more spirit herbs in the future."

"Fine, let's go down and look." The female spoke while gripping her spear tightly. With that, they were about to jump down when suddenly an evil aura came from inside the volcano.

Shortly after, a youth filled with coldness appeared. The three figures were dumbfounded as they watched him fly out while carrying a purple vine as thick as a person. The vine was filled with flaming golden-colored fruits.

This person was Bai Ming. After he appeared, he didn't even look at the three as he left. He had already noticed the three a while ago, but he was having a headache figuring out how to take the fruit. Every time he pulled the fruit off the vine, it would be magically turned into dust.

Thus, Bai Ming decided to just pull the entire root of the blazing heart fruits out. However, what made him helpless was that he couldn't put this vine into his bag of holding, so he had to carry it. If it wasn't for the fact that he had great use for these Yang-element fruits, he wouldn't be bothering with all of this.

The young man named Tang Ming swallowed hard as he stared at the vine on Bai Ming's shoulder. His expression changed many times, but soon rage boiled in his heart.

He was already in an angry mood after getting his storage pouch destroyed earlier during a fight and saw that Bai Ming was only at the peak of the spirit realm while the three of them were at half-step Yin-Yang, yet he dared to ignore the three of them and was going to carry the root away, So Tang Ming shouted furiously, "Stop! I don't care who the fuck you think you are, Handover that vine immediately or accept death!"

With that, he pointed his spear at Bai Ming and stood straight. Slivers of black gas came from his Black spear and a feeling of heaviness immediately began to spread in the atmosphere.

The two other figures also pointed their spears at Bai Ming and angrily stared at him.

Bai Ming slightly turned around, looked at the three, and rubbed the Blazing Heart Vine as he declared, "Why don't you ask my hot-headed brothers behind you?"

As Bai Ming's words fell, An enraged roar came from behind the trio and the heat in the area suddenly intensified.

Tang Ming and his two companions immediately felt their hearts jump, they quickly turned around while vigilantly pointing their spears at the newcomers.

Their faces turned ashen as they saw an ocean of flames gathered and the fire formed a creature with a pair of golden triangular eyes and a pair of bat wings, it had a body of a tiger and the head of an ape. It glared with unconcealed killing intent.

Bai Ming noticed that the fire beast's immense killing intent was mostly placed on him, his expression darkened and he immediately flapped his wings with even more vigor and directly charged out of the volcano.

But merely a few breaths had passed after Bai Ming charged out of the volcano, as the countless volcanoes in this area started emitting thick black smoke. The smoke became even denser as it leaked spiritual energy filled with rage.

Thousands upon thousands of enraged roars suddenly resounded within the volcanoes, causing a great disturbance. And now one of the volcanoes abruptly erupted, spewing lava hundreds of feet into the air.

At the same time, large amounts of black smoke filled the sky. This wasn't much, but what caused the Bai Ming's scalp to go numb were the ten thousand-plus fire beasts that charged out with the lava.

Bai Ming watched with a shocked gaze, then his pupils shrank as he saw those three cultivators desperately escaping but they got jumped on by fire beasts and instantly died. And at the very next second, Bai Ming started fleeing madly.