Chapter 109 A Difficult Decision

Amidst Yala's complaints, Su Zhou returned to the ground.

Xijing under the rain clouds was experiencing a thunderstorm. The rumbling thunder mixed with the patter of rain on the streets, creating a particularly noisy atmosphere.

But even in the late night rainstorm, the city lights remained bright.

Flying back to the Qinxing Academy, to his own office, Su Zhou greeted several colleagues who were still awake along the way. Then, he sat down at his desk and began to analyze his strength.

The experiment to see if the 'Fa has its own spirit' (a technique where laws and spells have their own sentience) was successful or not failed because of the announcement in his dream of a Great Existence. Su Zhou felt that he should have succeeded, but he fell from the clouds because he was startled awake.

If that's the case, then his strength has improved significantly.

Don't underestimate this skill. For example, if Su Zhou transforms into a massive beast hundreds of meters tall in the future, he certainly won't have the energy to pay attention to the various minor wounds on his body when he and other equally huge monsters attack each other, which will inevitably affect his condition.

But after cultivating 'Fa has its own spirit', automated restoration spells can ensure that Su Zhou is always in optimal condition, and automated counterattack spells can even defend against unexpected sneak attacks and backstabs.

Not to mention afk cultivation—even when Su Zhou is walking or sleeping, the spiritual energy within his body will not stop circulating. Even if he deliberately focuses on circulating spiritual energy, it would only be slightly more efficient, without any essential evolution.

Becoming stronger while lying down and advancing while sleeping are abilities that are basically racial talents for the Dragon race, and now they have appeared in Su Zhou.

Moreover, the efficiency is even higher.

Currently, Su Zhou's strength is at the mid-stage of the Lord realm. He has perfectly mastered his two Divine Powers (supernatural abilities), 'Devouring Demon Lord' and 'Karma Fire', and can easily differentiate them into many small spells, completely digesting and analyzing them.

As for his total spiritual energy, although his cultivation has been a bit slow recently because he has been pondering techniques and optimizing the quality of spiritual energy in his body, he now has about one week's worth, around 5.5 billion points of spiritual energy, which can be said to be touching the threshold of the high stage of the Lord realm.

If the Awakening stage is the process of constructing energy cycles within the body, then the Transcendent stage is the beginning of reshaping the mortal body and embarking on the path of immortality.

As for the Lord stage, in ancient times, it was enough to be called a demigod, the level of a Human Immortal. Its representative ability is whether one has condensed the various spells they have mastered into one, transforming them into a Divine Power.

And in the mid-stage, the Divine Power is sublimated once again, becoming a power similar to instinct, and the cultivator's body and soul are thus sublimated completely.

Now, Su Zhou is at the final step of this process. He has long mastered the power of his Devouring Demon Lord at will, as can be seen from the fact that he can easily use his own soul as a soul weapon to enchant without any sequelae.

Not to mention his body, Su Zhou's body would have long been called Vajra indestructible in other schools, and even some high-stage Lords cannot compare with him.

It can even be said that Su Zhou is now considered to have just entered the high stage of the Lord realm. The reason why he seems to have encountered a bottleneck is mainly because he hasn't figured out which step he should take next.

"If you want to go further, you must find a goal at the beginning."

Thinking like this, Su Zhou's understanding is particularly clear because he has been going smoothly all the way and has not encountered any cultivation obstacles: "With Yala's guidance and the best cultivation methods, I have had goals all the way—but the Overlord stage is different. I haven't figured out what kind of Overlord I should become in the future."

"So, even if I now deduce the Karma Fire and Devouring Demon Lord Divine Powers to the extreme, integrate them together, and achieve the high stage of the Lord realm, it would only be a temporary pleasure. It would even slow down my advancement to the Overlord stage because modifying Divine Powers after advancement would be even more troublesome."

To give a very simple analogy, starting from scratch to design a new car, with sufficient parts, as long as the professional knowledge is sufficient, this is not a big problem for anyone. At most, it is just a matter of whether it looks good or not, but it can definitely run.

However, if you give someone an old car and a pile of new parts, and the parts on it cannot be modified or replaced too much, and more than 95% of them must be used in the new car, then it is more difficult than ascending to the sky to make the new car powerful—whether it can run or not is another matter.

Su Zhou is now in this state. Devouring Demon Lord and Karma Fire are both Divine Powers with extremely high development prospects and strong abilities. It is not simple to disassemble them, add many new parts, and then assemble them into new powerful Divine Powers, but it is not difficult either.

However, if he has already assembled them into new Divine Powers, and then he has to modify them and add new abilities... It's like modifying the code and fixing bugs on the original program to optimize it. Whether it can be done is one thing, but it will definitely waste time and be troublesome.

Therefore, Su Zhou decided to cultivate skills like 'Fa has its own spirit' before deciding on his future path to ensure that his strength can still grow steadily without breaking through the realm.

——Is it to temper the body to the limit, perform *Fatianxiangdi* (Law, Heaven, and Earth), and cover the sky with one hand?

——Or is it to go to the extreme in terms of skills, one law derives ten thousand laws, and one principle breaks ten thousand paths?

——Or is it to sublimate one's own mind and spirit, transcending into an almost immortal heroic soul?

Of course, there are other paths. Whether it is to cultivate spiritual energy to the limit and prove the Dao with strength, forcibly advancing to the Overlord realm, or like the God of Water and the God of Wind, using the divine objects from the beginning of the era to embark on realms like 'Water Overlord' and 'Wind Overlord' are all good paths.

But Su Zhou always has to make a choice.

On Su Zhou's desk, Yala, who was tapping her phone screen with her tail and watching the late-night news, turned her head and glanced at Su Zhou, who was lost in thought and playing with his phone with his fingers, and couldn't help shaking her head: "Can't you just have it all? You're already in your twenties, act like an adult!"

"I would like to have it all—but first, I have to be able to do it!"

Raising his head, Su Zhou put down the phone he was spinning on his finger. He shook his head: "Body and soul, and spiritual energy, I think I can do it, but that skill, I'm really not good at it—I haven't cultivated for long enough, and my skills are very rough. The reason why I can keep winning is because I rely on my physical hard power and spiritual energy to overwhelm them. It's purely a hard power style of play."

He didn't care about Yala's complaint that "Isn't this just a barbaric style of play!", but continued to mutter to himself: "So I've also started to cultivate skills recently. 'Fa has its own spirit' is my attempt, but this thing requires a long period of accumulation to use skillfully. The current level cannot be used in combat."

"Not being able to fully master it is equivalent to not mastering it—and what I lack the most is time."

Yala clicked her tongue: "Your Devouring Demon Lord Divine Power is obviously the best at saving time—go kill those extremely skilled evildoers, kill a few more, eat evil souls, and you're done?"

Su Zhou nodded slightly. Yala was right. Whether it was the national teacher of the Divine Wood world, the peacock of the Beast God world, or the Water God of the Reincarnation world, or other evil souls, they all filled a large amount of experience gaps for him, allowing him to start from scratch and cultivate to the point where he is now at the beginning stage of the Lord realm in three years.

But this kind of thing can only depend on luck. Yala said it easily, as if it were as crunchy as eating cream biscuits, but even if he really found a powerful evildoer with rich experience, it's another matter whether he can beat them.

"Forget it, just try my luck. Anyway, according to my talent, even without evil souls, I won't gain less if I ponder for a while."

No longer entangled, Su Zhou shifted his gaze to his soul space, next to the Wisdom Tree spirit, to the evil soul that was pure black except for a little silver light in the center.

In fact, this evil soul is also the source of Su Zhou's troubles.

At this time, the Wisdom Tree spirit was tossing this evil soul back and forth with its branches, having a great time.

"Don't... Master..."

When Su Zhou took this evil soul from its hand, the Wisdom Tree also released a strong feeling of "reluctance": "So boring..."

"Okay, okay, I'll save a few evil souls for you to play with next time, okay? Seriously, just like a child, evil souls are not toys."

After coaxing the Wisdom Tree a few words, Su Zhou took back this evil soul, whose owner he couldn't even remember. He stared at the pure black luster on the surface of this evil soul, releasing the wonderful taste of high-concentration resentment.

"Your Divine Power is also very good, but my current abilities are already strong enough. Wouldn't it seem too complicated and messy if I added you?"

Muttering to himself in a low voice, Su Zhou couldn't help but fall into deep thought.