Ascending the Heavens as an Evil God

Gu Nan sat alone in a room inside White Mist’s headquarters, toying with two strange beads in his hand.

Of course Duanmu Sen eventually died, but he didn't die by Gu Nan's hand. Instead, he blew himself up—as expected of a resolute and unyielding person who lived an upright life.

Just as Gu Nan initially suspected, Duanmu Sen couldn’t be refined into a shadow servant either.

However, after four Void Cutter cultivators died and the inspection team they brought over was also wiped out by Gu Nan, people from White Mist found these two beads while cleaning up the battlefield.

"The material is very similar to their Shinto golden body," Gu Nan picked up a bead and knocked it on the table, easily making such a judgment.

He’d fought both the Duanmu father and daughter, so he was extremely familiar with this sort of material synthesized using the power of faith.

"Can you remember anything?" He showed the beads to Duanmu Yin and asked casually.

Duanmu Yin was already a shadow servant, but due to Gu Nan's "meticulous" creation, she still retained much of her memories.

Fortunately, this clone Zi Yi chose wasn’t very strong. Otherwise, Gu Nan wouldn’t be able to let her retain many memories, no matter how much energy he put in.

Take Wang He and Zhou Xiaojing, for example. Gu Nan found out afterwards that their intelligence wasn’t actually low, perhaps because they were Void Cutter cultivators when alive.

But this intelligence had nothing to do with their memories. Rather, it was more like the law of resurrection directly created their intelligence.

Duanmu Yin stared at the beads for a long time and finally said, "Shinto cultivators will not leave the sacred grounds. These beads should be parts they split out from their Shinto golden bodies."

Gu Nan immediately understood upon hearing her explanation.

No wonder those two couldn't be refined into shadow servants after death. This wasn’t their whole body at all; it was just a part of it.

"Floral Jasper Star, huh?" Gu Nan rubbed his chin and murmured to himself.

Even without the Evil God Temple’s reminder this time, Gu Nan also knew that the "Duanmu ancestral tomb" the clues pointed to was bound to contain a big secret.

‘Perhaps Zuo Zuo also wanted me to visit this place when he told me to travel to the Central Region earlier…’

Gu Nan had encountered too many similar situations when he was in the game. When all the evidence points to the same place, then that place is either a mission or a trap.

As for how to determine whether or not it’s a trap, players have an easy solution—as long as an event can be triggered there, then it’s definitely not a trap!

In other words, as long as it can trigger events, players will still step inside, even if it’s also a trap!

As long as he went to Floral Jasper Star and found the Duanmu family’s ancestral tomb, he’d be able to trigger the event after collecting enough clues.

If he still couldn’t trigger any events in the end, then Gu Nan would choose to turn around and leave, leaving all progress stuck at the last step.

"My Lord, everyone from Starry Ocean Pavilion has been cleaned up," the shadow servant of Wang He appeared beside him and reported in a low voice.

The inspection team sent by Starry Ocean Pavilion was cleaned up by a group led by the two shadow servants.

Even if they were weaker than before, they were still more than enough to handle Tier 3 cultivators.

Gu Nan waved a hand to dismiss him, but Red Tail appeared timely. "My Lord, I'm afraid the events here can't be hidden from Starry Ocean Pavilion."

Her face was full of worry, as if she was very concerned that Starry Ocean Pavilion’s army would arrive tomorrow.

Actually, let alone hiding the events here—news had already spread back to the Central Region the instant Gu Nan attacked Starry Ocean Pavilion’s team.

After all, Star Realm was a semi-technological plane. Even Qin Xuanji could manage to contact the King of the Deep Sea back then. It was impossible for the powerful Starry Ocean Pavilion to be lacking in means of communication.

But Gu Nan wasn’t worried about this in the slightest. "Starry Ocean Pavilion won't be stupid enough to continue sending people here to die. I'll visit the Central Region in a couple of days. By then, it'll be easy to decide which side you want to stand on."

After Gu Nan’s trip to the Central Region, either he’d have surrendered to Starry Ocean Pavilion, or Starry Ocean Pavilion would’ve silently acknowledged his existence. Of course Red Tail wouldn’t have to struggle over which side to pick by then.

Gu Nan's blunt and straightforward words frightened Red Tail. She shook her head repeatedly, but Gu Nan interrupted her.

"I don't need your loyalty. I just want you to manage White Mist into the organization I want and provide me with what I need," Gu Nan said thus.

"In exchange, I will become your backing."

Red Tail gradually fell silent. She believed that Gu Nan only said this because he was about to leave, so he spoke honestly and laid out all the cards on the table. A purely transactional relationship was more conducive to him controlling White Mist.

What she didn’t know was that Gu Nan had always viewed White Mist like this. For players, most interactions with NPCs were transactions, which was no different from completing missions and getting paid.

"I see." Red Tail finally nodded, then smiled. "Then… My Lord, I wish you a smooth trip in the Central Region."

……

Gu Nan didn’t immediately leave for the Central Region after handling matters on Heaven and Earth Star. Instead, he first returned to Immortal Demon World.

This time he didn't come back alone, but took Lan Si along with him.

With Gu Nan's current strength, it wasn’t too difficult to take another person along and travel between different planes. It’s just that it consumed a lot of his law of shadows.

"This will be my future Divine Kingdom. Cultivate here for the time being and learn how to manage the Divine Kingdom," Gu Nan told Lan Si.

Heaven and Earth Star was no longer safe, and Lan Si possessed an important item like the Godhead, so she naturally couldn’t be allowed to remain on Heaven and Earth Star.

On the other hand, Lan Si's cultivation was also entering a bottleneck, and the rate of increase in Gu Nan's Evil Value had slowed down considerably. It might be possible to speed it back up by using the ten times faster flow of time in Immortal Demon World.

Lan Si just nodded silently. "Who should I learn from?"

After a drastic change in temperament, Lan Si seemed to have gained considerable enthusiasm for wielding authority as well, showing a clear desire for control more than once.

"You’ll be learning from someone who had a similar experience as yours twenty years ago," Gu Nan answered with a smile.

……

After leaving all the shadow servants inside Immortal Demon World and handing Lan Si over to Yan Xiaoxiao, Gu Nan tore open space again and started heading for the Central Region.

Void Cutter beings were completely different lifeforms from Prodigious cultivators. Prodigious cultivators couldn’t even cross between the various regions within Star Realm, yet Void Cutter existences had the ability to leave the entire Star Realm.

Gu Nan was standing in the endless starry sky using just his physical body. After finding the Central Region’s coordinates, the power of shadows instantly broke through the law of space, and he stepped through the portal.

However, the instant he entered the Central Region, three rays of lights—gold, blue, and purple—simultaneously lit up in front of him and suddenly descended with unparalleled ferocity!

Gu Nan didn’t even have time to speak before he was directly submerged by these three rays of light.

Three figures stood in front of the portal Gu Nan opened.

They were two men and one woman in Daoist robes. Besides the colors being different, their clothes looked exactly the same, and even the folds were in the same position.

"Gu Nan? Nothing impressive."

"To think you came to our Starry Ocean Pavilion looking for trouble when you’re this weak?"

"Haha! He didn't really think we were just going to sit back and wait for him to come, did he now?"

The three of them sent telepathic messages to each other in space and smiled at the same time.

Among them, the woman who spoke at the end smiled the most gorgeously, not hiding the mockery in her eyes at all.

"The last fellow who was known as a heavenly genius was eighty years ago, right?"

The woman sneered. "Do these backwater fools think we’ll just keep sending people to die? Our Starry Ocean Pavilion’s style has always been to stamp out the danger swiftly and decisively!"

After dropping such a sentence, she looked up to tell her two companions to leave, only to find that they were staring at something behind her in horror, as if something terrifying was there.