Chapter 56 Spiritual Root

Was Jian Shiyuan surprised to find out that the master of the servant's brand was actually him?

The answer is: No!

Jian Shiyuan's personality is different from others.

If it were someone else, they would be ecstatic to find that they had escaped the trap of becoming someone else's lackey. No one wants to be controlled by others, and no one is willing to risk their life for others.

But Jian Shiyuan thought of more.

There is no free lunch in the world. If there is, he will have to pay a greater price to repay it in the future.

——What is a greater price than life and freedom?

If the servant's mark belonged to a cultivator, Jian Shiyuan could still find a way to crack it. But if it belonged to him, he knew without further ado that he had fallen into a conspiracy.

[Condensing mist to destroy the immortals, slaughtering all the heavens]

[All your misfortunes are arranged by God. We exist only to please Him. If you want to break free from fate, you must——]

This inheritance is tricky, and the information it reveals is too dangerous.

The owner of the inheritance was a highly accomplished cultivator, standing at the top of the cultivation world. He should have achieved great things and become famous, but he was filled with anger and depression, and died with hatred in his heart.

Jian Shiyuan thought about something and pondered for a moment, then subconsciously touched the servant mark on his soul to carefully sense the specific content of the blood oath.

[You must not betray your master, obey his orders, and protect him at all costs. You must not let the legacy be cut off and the torch be passed down.]

Wait, passing on the torch?

This servant brand actually needs to teach and impart knowledge?

The typical Servant Brand simply binds another's life, reducing them to a controlled puppet, the equivalent of finding an obedient slave. More greedy masters will use their servants to control even more people, thus forming a massive organization.

But no matter how greedy you are, it is just controlling the body and mind of others, which is the control of the current state.

However, this "passing on of the torch" has obviously overdrawn the future. Do servants have a future?

The monks are very short-sighted. If they subdue servants, most of them will use them as tools, and kick them away after squeezing out all their value. They are like thugs and bodyguards. The usefulness of servants depends on their own value.

Monks don't train their servants carefully.

The reason is simple: it's not worth it. Instead of training him, it's better to contract a stronger servant.

Moreover, even if the master wanted to train a servant, he would not let him teach and pass on the legacy. This was because the successor trained by the servant would not necessarily be loyal to his master, and for the master, this would undoubtedly be a loss-making business.

The term "passing on the torch" reveals a lot of information.

First of all: This artifact is extremely precious and it is estimated that only Jian Shiyuan can inherit it, so the inheritance must not be cut off. It needs to be passed down from generation to generation.

Secondly: He is not required to be loyal to the "master" as a slave, but to pave the way for the "master" as a capable minister.

There is only one word difference between "master" and "owner", but the meanings are actually different.

The Master represents absolute dominance, requiring the Branded to serve wholeheartedly and be a loyal slave. The Master, on the other hand, represents joining another interest group, where they can rise to prominence by "following the dragon's lead."

To put it simply, they are like the slaves and ministers around the emperor. They all need to be loyal to the emperor, but their duties are different and the ways of training are also different.

This servant brand is a "subject" contract, and the branded person must assist his master with all his strength.

What kind of master would be so ambitious and need the assistance of his "ministers"?

——He has ambitions to dominate the world, or perhaps he has something even more dangerous planned.

Now Jian Shiyuan has become the "master"

——He clearly felt that he was caught in a conspiracy

Greatly accomplished cultivators are at the top of the food chain in the world of immortal cultivation, and from ancient times to the present, there have only been a handful of them.

Kaiyuan Daojun, Lingguang Zunzhu, Madam Fen, Kuang Emperor, Yan Chunjun, and the former Holy Son of Shangcang Sect who was killed by Kuang Emperor.

These people are all famous heroes and their life stories are recorded in detail.

There is no master weapon maker among these people!

No one died in the Ice State!

There are two possibilities: one, someone among them has concealed their weapon-making skills and secretly cultivated themselves into a master weapon-maker. The other, there are other great cultivators hiding in the dark and making secret plans.

No matter which of the above possibilities is true, there is a big conspiracy hidden in it.

Weak cultivators will keep a low profile, while powerful cultivators are mostly fearless. A fully accomplished cultivator has already reached the top of the world and can be said to have no rivals in the world of cultivation. So why should he still be so cautious?

The answer is obvious.

——His enemies are far more powerful than him, and he can only hide in the dark like a mouse, waiting for an opportunity to spy.

Thinking of this, Jian Shiyuan's mouth curled up slowly. He deduced a more important information, which now needed to be verified urgently.

Jian Shiyuan tried to separate his soul from the system.

A cultivator's spirit guards the heart palace, making it nearly impossible to move. If dislodged, it would be as painful as a swarm of ants gnawing at the heart. Cultivators typically employ defensive measures to protect their spirits, refusing to touch them lightly.

But Jian Shiyuan is different from them. He protects it in another way - walking it.

When he was young and traveling, he once saw a monk who had become demented due to a sneak attack on his soul. The monk was once a local hero, but he became a disabled person due to carelessness.

Jian Shiyuan is good at learning from other people's tragedies. In order to avoid such tragedies from happening to himself, he would rotate his soul whenever he had nothing to do, moving it from top to bottom, from left to right, and letting it circle in his body whenever he had nothing to do.

It does hurt at first, but once you get used to it, it's fine.

He played with his soul day and night, refining it until it was solid and lustrous, like a mutton-fat jade carving, naturally emitting a golden glow.

——The patina is showing

If a cultivator who has practiced soul arts and has reached the state of transformation uses the "Zhao Hua Guan" to take a look, he will be shocked. Jian Shiyuan is so young and yet he has achieved the state of 'the original soul is one'. His talent is truly terrifying.

It was also thanks to Jian Shiyuan's active use of his soul that he would have otherwise been captured and devoured by the system during the thunder tribulation. How could he have even had the chance to play around with the system, circling it within his body, and how could he have possibly survived the thunder?

Jian Shiyuan easily separated his soul from the system.

As expected.

Servant brand pointing to the system!

In other words: the "master" corresponding to this servant brand is the host of the system.

Jian Shiyuan's lips curled up as he asked in his heart: "System, how many masters have you had?"

The system beeped, and the electronic voice said steadily: "437."

Jian Shiyuan: "Who among them has the highest level of cultivation?"

System: 'Shu Su, a Jindan cultivator.'

Jian Shiyuan: 'How did they all die?'

System: 'Two died in accidents, and the rest were sucked dry by me.'

The system that was filled with consciousness was very honest. It answered everything Jian Shiyuan asked, even the secret that it had drained more than 400 hosts.

More than four hundred hosts, the system has quite a big appetite—

Jian Shiyuan smiled meaningfully and looked around. The white stone hall was empty.

He understood everything.

This system was also artificially created. Its owner and the owner of its genes participated in the so-called [Destroying Immortals] plan. Perhaps they are the same person.

The reason is that the highest level of cultivation among all previous hosts of this system was only a Jindan cultivator, so it was impossible for them to have the ability to lay such a legacy. The blood oath in this legacy locked the host of the system, which was clearly a planned lock.

This can be inferred that the owner of the genes participated in the secret operation of manufacturing the system, and laid down the inheritance to cultivate suitable talents for the future host of the system.

The passing of the torch also reveals a message, that is, the owner of the genes also feels that the success rate of the [Destroying the Immortals] plan is not high.

Otherwise, he would not need to set the clause [the inheritance must not be cut off and the torch must be passed on].

The subtext of this clause is: "If the master you assist fails and dies, you must remember to leave the inheritance before you die so that your successor can assist the new host."

In the eyes of the genetic owner, both "capable ministers" and "emperors" can be replaced at will.

Only the goal remains unchanged.

Oh, the arrogance of a great cultivator is evident. However, he never imagined that the tools he created would betray him and disrupt his plans, right?

He arranged for the system to assist the host, but he didn't expect the system to drain the host one by one.

Jian Shiyuan remembered what the system said when it betrayed him:

"You are too strong, no one can control you, and I can't let you control me."

Perhaps there was a possibility that once the host truly took power, the system would simply become a tool of the host and lose its self-awareness. Therefore, the system did not want him to have power. It was afraid, afraid that it would be controlled by Jian Shiyuan.

The system has become selfish, perhaps even has emotions, and it betrays its creator.

Perhaps it was because the system had to be bound to the next host after the previous host died. Over the years, it tried every means to sneak attack the host and drain the host. Before Jian Shiyuan introduced the Tianlei Explosion System, hundreds of people had been harmed.

[True killing host, fake gold finger, evil-filled system]

There is really no free lunch in the world. When those hosts bound to the system, they must have been overjoyed, thinking that they were the chosen ones. However, they would have expected that fortune would turn to misfortune in an instant and they would lose their lives instead.

There is no absolutely perfect plan in the world. This great monk has been lurking for many years, working hard and making plans stealthily. Unexpectedly, the system he helped to create directly betrayed him and cut his plan in half.

It's like taking great pains to bury a bomb at the doorstep of the enemy's house. The time, place and people are all right, and the enemy happens to be at home. He is ready to find a chance to detonate it, but finds that the fuse is damp and cannot burn.

Jian Shiyuan smiled slightly. This plan had been shelved for so long, could it still proceed smoothly? Besides, Jian Shiyuan didn't want to participate in their plan.

Even if one day he really wants to rebel against "God", he will not become someone else's pawn.

You don't give him the right to know, and you still want to manipulate him? Dream on.

He would still take the inheritance, and as for the plan, he would just assume that it had been sucked dry by the system.

Jian Shiyuan was just about to organize the inherited knowledge in his mind, but unexpectedly, on a whim, he suddenly sensed that someone had touched the servant's mark again!

At the same time, in a cave in Zhongzhou, a dirty boy felt the bright red fluctuations on his soul in disbelief.

——The direction guide that was not lit at all in the previous life was actually lit up!

Before he could finish his shock, the servant mark of his soul trembled. The young man trembled all over and knelt on the ground. His sharp and handsome features were twisted into a ball. He kept hearing voices in his mind, "The master responded to me" "The master is back" "Master, master"

No! Don't let it brainwash you!

The boy fell to the ground, hitting the ground hard with his fists, trying to use the pain to wake himself up.

Never succumb to the Servant Brand, it will forever

The boy's fists were clenched tightly, sinking deep into the dirt. He tensed his body, veins bulging on the back of his hands. He tried to struggle, recalling the scenes before his rebirth. He was a giant of the magic path, how could he become someone else's slave? How could he—

Suddenly, he raised his head abruptly, his eyes blurred and full of fanaticism for his "master", and indescribable excitement filled his heart.

'Master, do you need me to come to you?'

"Master, what can I do for you?"

"Master, you are so majestic. I wish to serve you."

Servant branding is complete!