Given the aforementioned premise, expecting Yu Xian to treat every single life with solemn reverence was simply unrealistic.
The mere fact that he refrained from wanton, arbitrary destruction without rhyme or reason was already his greatest benevolence.
However, the reason he had not jumped on the bandwagon of obliterating worlds to refine Calamity Origin was not out of kindness, but out of sheer laziness. As a salty fish, he felt that extracting Calamity Origin world by world was no different from picking cotton in a field, and he could not be bothered with such tedious labor.
If he truly wanted Calamity Origin, plundering it from others was much faster. Why demean himself by toiling away in the fields?
Time flew by.
Year after year passed.
Suddenly, Yu Xian perked up. A Mighty One had finally died!
Pulling out the Gourd of Legacy, he immediately steered the Zhen Realm to jump near the location of the Mighty One's demise.
Not all Mighty Ones transformed into the Abyss upon death; only those who perished during failed transcendence turned into the Abyss. Thus, following this Mighty One's demise, his body simply became a mass of energy brimming with chaotic rules.
This energy was exceptionally volatile, and the Calamity Origin within had already been refined and taken by the Mighty One who slew him.
Strictly speaking, the victor had committed an act of environmental pollution, as the deceased Mighty One was a colossal source of contamination. Wherever this turbulent energy drifted, it would wreak immense havoc until it was completely worn down and spent through endless collisions.
Holding the Gourd of Legacy, Yu Xian called out, "Xiao Yan, in you go!"
In an instant, the tempestuous red energy was sucked into the gourd like a hurricane. After a good while, once the gourd had swallowed the very last trace of energy, Yu Xian replaced the stopper and gently shook the vessel in his hand.
Returning to the Zhen Realm, Yu Xian sat down and tipped out an elixir. Glancing at the Death Emperor, who was still monitoring Li Zhenlong, he asked, "This pill contains fire-related rules. Want it?"
"No thanks. Biting off more than I can chew will do no good. What I lack right now is depth," the Death Emperor replied, shaking his head.
While being battered by Li Zhenlong in the Martial Dao World was partly due to the environment itself, the root cause was that he had not delved deeply enough into the power of laws.
If he could cultivate the Death Rule to a truly profound level, he refused to believe Li Zhenlong would still be able to push him around.
"Alright, then I'll feed it to the Dimwitted Puppy," Yu Xian nodded, muttering to himself.
Though the Death Emperor understood what Yu Xian meant, he was still somewhat speechless. *If I don't take it, you give it to a dog? Doesn't that mean I equal a dog?*
Yu Xian then summoned a Dimwitted Puppy and shoved the Legacy Pill into its mouth. Once the puppy had absorbed all the Legacy Pill's power, he crisply sealed it back into the Book of the Primordial God.
Tossing the book aside, Yu Xian opened his hand, and an eerie blue flame flared in his palm. He chuckled. "Look, this power isn't bad at all. Little Huangquan should love it!"
He decided he would transfer this power to Little Huangquan later.
Little Huangquan had been collecting all sorts of different flames, mainly for cooking. The meat of many transcendent creatures could not be cooked with ordinary fire; it required transcendent flames to prepare.
After toying for a while with the peculiar flames generated by the Fire Rule, he soon lost interest. Dazzling and diverse though the colors and varieties were, fire was ultimately just fire.
As an elder of a thousand years, he was well past the age of playing with matches.
"How far is Li Zhenlong from Margot Moxi?"
Yu Xian pulled out a bag of potato chips and munched on them while watching Li Zhenlong taking a leak on the monitor, inquiring out of curiosity.
"Shouldn't be far. Even without spatial jumps, he should arrive within a few decades," the Death Emperor answered.
Li Zhenlong was not flying straight ahead by conventional means; he threw in occasional spatial jumps along the way, meaning he would actually reach Margot Moxi's territory far sooner than expected.
"Speaking of which, Li Zhenlong is a Mighty One. Why does he still need to pee?" Yu Xian asked curiously.
The Death Emperor rolled his eyes and said flatly, "Master, do you think I would know the answer to a question you can't even solve?"
"Why don't you go ask him?" Yu Xian glanced at the Death Emperor and suggested.
"If anyone's going, it's you," the Death Emperor said impassively. "I don't feel like dying again. Even if I can be revived, the taste of defeat isn't pleasant."
He did not fear death—dead was dead—but the humiliating realization of falling short right before death left an awful aftertaste. He certainly was not going to seek out Li Zhenlong just to let the man beat him to death a second time.
Besides, if he showed up now, Li Zhenlong would likely become suspicious and might hesitate to go pick a fight with Margot Moxi.
***
Atop a meteorite.
Li Zhenlong was relieving himself. He enjoyed taking a leak.
This was an eccentric habit of his, born from an incident during his childhood when he held it in. Having held his urine until his bladder felt ready to burst, he had dashed out of the house and relieved himself against the corner of an exterior wall.
At that transcendent moment, he had felt as if his very soul were ascending to nirvana.
Ever since then, he loved holding his urine, and he loved letting it out.
Fortunately, his home world possessed supernatural power, and he was an elite among elites. Had he lived in an ordinary world, he would have been a regular patient at a hospital's urology department long ago.
"Whew—!"
Li Zhenlong let out a deep breath of turbid air, feeling all his stress drain away with it.
Being a Mighty One did not mean severing all desires and human emotion. Though a Mighty One's willpower, spiritual force, and heart power were terrifically potent, at the core, "I" was still "I"; growing stronger did not reshape a person into an entirely different entity.
He had liked holding his pee as a child, and he still liked it now. He had even specifically constructed a urinary system for this current body.
In combat especially, the sensation of holding it would multiply exponentially, and his fighting strength would surge right along with it. Just to get the chance to finally let loose, his fighting style would grow increasingly ferocious and wild. It had essentially become his personal little cheat code.
"Time to go find Margot Moxi!"
Li Zhenlong felt he was fully prepared.
The next instant, a fissure opened in the Martial Dao World. He stepped through, reappearing near a world several hundred thousand light-years away from Margot Moxi.
This world had already been utterly devastated by Margot Moxi's mechanical army, leaving countless corpses drifting through the void.
However, there were no humans in this world; it was a realm populated entirely by a species of insect. Seeing the dead bugs floating all around, Li Zhenlong felt nothing.
If anything, it was like looking at an overturned beehive.
By this point, Li Zhenlong had already sensed the colossal warship in the distance through the power of laws. That monstrosity was even more gargantuan than he had imagined. Its pitch-black hull radiated a terrifying, primordial aura, as though all matter had been condensed into it, every particle existing like a black hole singularity.
Notably, the warship was not composed of atoms, but assembled purely from black fundamental particles, leaving virtually no gap between one particle and the next.
Furthermore, these particles were not spherical; they were all cubic. Bound together by the power of rules, their defensive capability was astonishing.
"Formidable indeed."
"A worthy challenge!"
Li Zhenlong pulled out his staff, the fighting spirit in his heart blazing to life.
Chapter 699