Lingxu looked at the second jade slip, the title was "Poison Mutation Technique II", he guessed that the first step was to cultivate the wood root into a yin wood rood, which he already had, so he could directly skip to the second technique.
'Well they are indeed two different changes, it just feel a bit like a scam to have to pay for two techniques… haha, at least I don't need it.'
He glanced over it and saw that it was basically what he thought, one had to gather various different types of poisons and inject it into the body. The procedure was detailed and with a lot of anecdotes, he didn't doubt one bit that there were many poison cultivators in this organisation.
The boy looked at Lingxu and said with a wry smile "Now that you have your things… do you want to accept a mission?"
Lingxu nodded, knowing what would happen next. They stood up together and went back to the mission hall. He guessed that only at the initial stage would he go around several times. He didn't really know the procedures anyways.
Once in the mission hall, he sat down at the reception again and the boy started talking "As a special direct member, you can take a rank three mission directly, though with your cultivation, it might be difficult after all…"
Lingxu didn't know and asked honestly "What do the ranks mean?"
The boy explained patiently "They refer to the four phases of cultivation…" looking at Lingxu who seemed at loss, he continued "Which are Refining Essence into Qi, they refer to the qi refining and foundation building, then Refining Qi into Spirit, which is the Origin Light stage and Core Formation stage.
This is followed by Refining Spirit into Emptiness, these are the cultivation stages of Soul Palace and Eternal Soul and finally Refining Emptiness into Tao with the stages of Trinity Fusion and Law Comprehension. Afterward you enter the stage of transcendence and can take the tribulation at any time… well, you do practice taoist techniques, right?"
Even though immortals and demons are different, in fact, they are both part of the taoist teachings. Next to taoist teachings are the Buddhist teaching, who have their own branches of demons and buddhas. Generally, in this world, Taoism is more prominent but the buddhist teachings go deep into the mortal population.
Lingxu nodded and asked "So the third rank refers to the stages of Soul Palace and Eternal Soul?"
The boy shook his head "No, why would you think like that? It refers to the cultivation of Origin Light and Core formation… regardless, this mission is of a higher difficulty, but we have missions that require less strength, spying missions.
I have one right here, which is a new order for a sect that has reached the limit of their karma, they are now open for destruction. Well, you can read the rules of our palace later, they are written in front of the mission hall, but one of them is that only those of the same stage can attack others of their stage. This means higher ranked personnel is not allowed to participate in destructions of sects that are lower than their strength.
This sect has core formation elders at their peak, its own strength isn't weak at all either. Sect destruction involves a lot of things and isn't as lucrative as other missions of the third rank to the strong core formation experts, while the remaining few can't destroy it relying on their power.
Such missions are often open to true members who are low in cultivation but have the potential to advance high. You are supposed to be a shadow spy, with a legitimate identity in the broad light. Generally you will not required to do many things until you are stronger, from then on, you will act as a spy from within to give information that the core formation experts need." the boy stopped here, waiting for a reaction from Lingxu.
Lingxu knew this and fell into thought 'This mission is very good for me. I don't have to run around a lot and can become stronger for now.'
His goal of joining the Earth Devil Palace was never the help in the earlier stages. Although the nether fog art is great, he could still cultivate other arts in his inheritance, although there are few human ones, there are still some.
The goal was to have a background which he could use to defend himself in the later stages of cultivation. After all, for demon cultivators, they become stronger very quickly with enough resources, but once they reach a certain strength, their advancement can be slower than that of immortal cultivators.
There is no other reason that people become extremely vary of such demon cultivators. The immortal path sects will keep an eye on you, hunt you in their territory, forcing you to go back to the demon territory. The demon territory is just a large slaughterhouse where few come out alive, and even then, they have to face the difficulty of a much stronger thunder tribulation.
He would rather take the path of working hard for an organisation in exchange for a good backing than work harder later in his cultivation. He is patient, else he wouldn't be able to endure a decade of being pushed around at his work. Just before he died, he jumped ranks, planning to make those that made his life harder pay the price.
Even afterwards he was able to endure three months of torture, he didn't know of the inheritance at that point, only planning that in case he got spiritual roots, he would kill them, and if he didn't, he would make sure to offend some cultivators and make them hunt his family for him.
'This mission is really lucrative. The only issue is that there is the chance one has to take missions in between, and gaining secret information isn't easy either. Except…' Lingxu looked at the boy and asked, "I wonder if other seniors already accepted the mission?"
The boy nodded, so Lingxu asked "Will they know my information if I accept a rank three mission?"
Seeing the boy shake his head, Lingxu continued "Can the palace establish a way of communication between the task takers?" without waiting for an answer, he said "When you establish the communication, will you only invite those that accepted the third rank mission?"
Hearing this, the spirit answered "It is common to establish communication, as for the mission, this mission is naturally only available for rank three task takers. The mission taskers can also issue rank four missions for this specific mission. Do you have any more questions? If not, are you willing to formally take the risk, bear the responsibility of an agent of earth and fulfil the greater goal?"
Lingxu looked at the boy weirdly and asked "What are the rewards?" what a joke, even if it's a good mission, why would he take it if there is no reward?