Chapter 818: The southernmost part of the world, the place of the devil

Li Qi and his wife were anxious about their daughter’s situation.

So, Li Qi prepared to visit a Senior, seeking guidance from a wise elder who had similar experiences, hoping to find answers.

Meanwhile, Shen Shuibi prepared to enter a death seclusion, first to Breakthrough her Cultivation, gaining power, which would make future actions more convenient.

As for Zhu Fengdan…

Li Qi didn’t even go to find her, because he knew that Teacher Zhu was definitely entangled with Huodou at this moment.

From Huodou’s demeanor, it was clear she was not an easy woman to deal with; he figured she probably couldn't spare any attention for Li Qi right now, so Li Qi simply didn't bother her.

And on the other side, the Nine Lands Under Heaven—

The territory belonging to the Demonic Dao.

The Demonic Dao, as one of the Nine Lands Under Heaven, is located in the true south of the Nine Lands Under Heaven, amidst the extremely hot sands.

However, this place is actually quite desolate; the concealment of the Four Demons directly resulted in the Demonic Dao lacking top-tier powerhouses to guard it, and coupled with the fact that the Demonic Dao is not a unified faction, this area, though called the Demonic Dao… is more like a chaotic mix, with everything imaginable, a complete free-for-all, its level of chaos even surpassing that of the East Sea.

Almost all Dao Orthodoxy, as well as various stowaways from outside the realm, choose to settle here.

Perhaps this is intentional on the Demonic Dao’s part.

After all, the Demonic Dao actually needs Cultivators from other Dao Orthodoxy as a 'host' for their growth.

The Demon is a Dao that parasitizes other Dao paths, seizing wisdom, corrupting Dao methods, Karma, and good nature, hence the name Demon.

The foundation of the Demonic Dao is the suffering of the world; Heavenly Demons enjoy toying with Mortals, Demon of Afflictions feed on the Dao Heart, Demon of the Five Aggregatess obstruct sight and hearing, impeding others' Dao paths, and Demon of Deaths even desire to push the world into death.

All of this can only develop based on the existence of other Dao Orthodoxy.

Therefore, the Demonic Dao has almost no concept of 'cultivation'; very few of the Demonic Dao's new blood are self-cultivated, all of them 'fall into the Demonic Dao' from other Dao Orthodoxy.

For example… Li Shiwei.

Under these circumstances, the Demonic Dao would naturally hope that the more people who come, the better; whether as new blood or as fresh sustenance, a large number of Cultivators are indispensable to the Demonic Dao.

All of this also led to the current state of the Southern Hot Sands.

After all, even in a chaotic place like the East Sea, order still exists, mainly because order can effectively enhance competitiveness and is extremely useful for natural evolution, so the True Dragons do not reject order.

But the Demonic Dao is different.

The Demonic Dao does not reject order, but prefers chaos; Cultivators of the Heavenly Demon lineage act as they please, the Demon of Affliction lineage feeds on the troubles of others, the Demon of the Five Aggregates excels at creating illusions, and the Demon of Death simply kills everything.

Each kind is not easy to deal with; just one can make an area miserable, showing what a living Hell this place is.

But even so, many people still flock to it.

No other reason: the Demonic Dao has almost no entry requirements; if you want to come to the Nine Lands Under Heaven, if you want to Ascend to the Immortal Realm, then the Demonic Dao is your easiest choice.

Going to the Human Dao means enduring extremely harsh reviews.

The Shaman Dao simply does not accept any visitors; to be precise, it does not accept any 'stowaways'; if you want to come, you can only rely on your own abilities.

This 'stowaway' doesn't mean sneaking in, but rather that you must have sufficient strength to climb to the Nine Lands Under Heaven on your own, rather than being transported there by some other means.

The True Dragons and the Dao Sect also share the same attitude; they do not accept stowaways; if you want to come, you can only do so through proper Ascension procedures, such as defeating the Patrolling Envoys with your own strength, or evading the Patrolling Envoys and breaking through the fierce wind layer yourself; as long as you can do it, they won't care about you.

The Buddhist Sect's attitude is similar to that of the demon race; they have set up a strict, automatic management system that covers their sky, which naturally filters out many beings attempting to reach the Nine Lands Under Heaven, but apart from this system, they rarely pay attention to 'Ascenders'.

As long as you can break through this automatic defense, they won't bother you, regardless of whether you're from somewhere else.

However, the Dao Sect, Spirit Dao, and Divine Path are entirely different; they resist all Ascenders and do not accept any Ascenders' arrival… No, to be precise, they resist all outsiders, even people from other Dao Orthodoxy or even their own Dao Orthodoxy; for example, the Dao Sect's Penglai Immortal Mountain or the Divine Path's Thirty-Three Heavens are inaccessible to outsiders, and even their own Dao Sect members might not be able to see them.

But the Demonic Dao is different from all of these.

They welcome all comers.

No matter who you are, no matter your background, as long as you get on the Demonic Dao's transport outside the realm, they will bring you here, no matter what; the more, the merrier.

This also led to the Southern Hot Sands of the Nine Lands Under Heaven being the most densely populated place in the entire Nine Lands Under Heaven.

The Baiyue nations, each with an area comparable to a normal Earth-like planet, generally have populations in the order of a billion, indicating their sparse density, averaging about ten people per square kilometer.

However, in the Southern Hot Sands, this number can reach about a hundred thousand times that.

One million people per square kilometer.

No joke, it really can reach this density, and this density doesn't even account for 'Immortal Caves'.

If you include the capacity of various Immortal Caves, Immortal Caves, and small worlds, the population density of the Hot Sands might reach hundreds of millions of people per square kilometer.

Even without considering Immortal Caves, just with this ordinary density, there would already be no standing room on the ground.

One square kilometer equals one million square meters, which means people are standing everywhere, packed tightly, with virtually no gaps.

Therefore, the Hot Sands region is actually layered.

The very bottom ground, then layer upon layer, divided into dozens of layers, all the way up to the highest dome, and only on that dome layer can you see the sky.

As for the beings living in the lower layers, they have no sunlight, traffic congestion, and almost no public security.

It's simply a harsh hive-city world.

But… isn't this what the Demonic Dao wanted?

Only such a place can give birth to extreme demonic thoughts; the Demonic Dao, as the controller of all this, is at the very top, looking down upon the beings who came to the 'Immortal Realm' with hope.

They thought they had arrived at the 'Immortal Realm', the most supreme place in all the heavens, where even breathing could improve their Cultivation.

But… only after they truly arrived did they realize that places easy to reach might not be as good as they imagined.

They were housed on the Hot Sands land, in those colossal urban complexes that accommodate vast populations for work and life; these complexes are stacked layer upon layer, like hamburgers, and people gather within them like cockroaches, carrying out material cycles, then fermenting intense Demonic Qi and demonic thoughts from their noble, advanced intelligence.

At this very moment, Li Shiwei and the Demonic Prince had arrived at this place.

Li Shiwei was on the twenty-fifth floor.

The Demonic Dao's area certainly couldn't accommodate so many people on a single floor, so they used super-large building complexes, stacked into layers.

The twenty-fifth floor was considered the middle section; people here had higher status, mostly Cultivators, and being able to reach here meant they had made something of themselves, even having a chance to go to the 'outside world'.

Li Shiwei looked down; the sun had never truly shone on the beings here; they only enjoyed the faint glow of Spiritual Artifacts filtering through thick smoke and 'internal clouds', so they appeared pathologically pale.

The reason it's called 'internal clouds' is because each 'layer' here is actually very large, hundreds of meters high, enough to generate many clouds and mists inside, and combined with the artificial suns on the ceiling, it barely counts as 'having light'.

After tens of thousands of years of construction, a massive city covered this area.

Unlike the picturesque beauty of Shaman Dao or the orderly prosperity of the Human Dao, this place was incredibly chaotic and unimaginably noisy.

With such a large population, everyone needs to survive; in this situation, industrialization is almost indispensable.

Never-ending industry, drawing vitality from heaven and earth, even drawing vitality from other lives, at all costs, just to barely survive; such actions have turned the land into a vast radioactive desert, perhaps fitting the description of 'Hot Sands'.

Steel forests, ash-filled wastelands, and oceans made of toxic sludge comprise most of this area, and the reason for this is that in such a place, the only effective industrial energy is Great Sun True Fire.

After all, it is the Nine Lands Under Heaven; no matter how dilapidated it appears, the technical level cannot be low; even the lowest-level Mortals have already mastered controllable Great Sun True Fire, and they can create artificial suns using Spiritual Artifacts.

But these artificial suns, besides bringing heat, light, and energy, also cause complete ecological degradation and severe pollution due to their radioactivity; without protection, simply breathing the air here would cause the lungs to rot and melt.

Of course, if your Cultivation is profound and your Physical Body strong, that's another matter.

Above the ground, layers of buildings made of quick Spiritual Artifacts and simple Materials are stacked, countless residences, civilian houses, and industrial factory areas are piled on top of each other; your house is built on my house, my house is next to his house, new communities are built on the rooftops of old communities, stepping out means you're on the second floor of the factory next door, looking up you see pipes flowing with chemical waste liquid, and from time to time there's a 'waste liquid drizzle', and on those pipes, people are still building houses, completely disregarding whether the pipes can support the weight.

In reality, collapses happen frequently; these areas are occasionally entirely blocked by the debris of fallen or collapsed layers or sections, and then new buildings are constructed on top of the rubble.

One building after another, like stacking blocks, gradually formed the largest cesspit in the Nine Lands Under Heaven; except for the very top tier of people who can live at the highest level, near the fierce wind layer, life in the lower levels might never see the sun of the Nine Lands Under Heaven from the day they arrive until the day they die.

And many of them will choose to reproduce; their children live their entire lives from birth within these sunless, massive architectural structures; this is their entire world, never having left it until death, and they have no concept of the sky or the ground.

However, they are by no means ignorant.

The Demonic Dao did not suppress their opportunities for learning; in fact, it actively provided knowledge and cultivation methods.

After all… they need to cultivate, they need to be filled with desire, they need to want to break out of this place and move towards a better area, don't they?

Otherwise, their demonic thoughts would not be fervent.

The Demonic Dao does not need foolish, filthy beasts.

The Demonic Dao needs ambitious Dao seekers, so that their Dao Heart can become sustenance for the Demon.

Here, there are hundreds of billions of different Dao Orthodoxy and cultivation methods, mixed together; their living standards are extremely poor, but the quality of their cultivation methods is not low, and their knowledge is by no means limited.

Their inner selves are no worse than anyone else's, and the more so, the more they desire to Breakthrough the prison they are currently in.

“I don’t really like this place,” Li Shiwei said to the Demonic Prince in front of her.

“Oh? I don’t really like it either, but other people like it a lot; the quality of the demonic thoughts produced here is exceptionally high, far surpassing those breeding grounds outside the realm,” the Demonic Prince said casually.

“Annoying,” Li Shiwei shook her head.

“If you find it annoying, then smash it. I smashed it before, but then they rebuilt it, so I couldn’t be bothered anymore,” the Demonic Prince said indifferently, then quickly arrived at his residence here.

Undoubtedly, he lived on the topmost floor, close to the fierce wind layer.

Here, not only was there no smog from below, but one could even see sunrises and sunsets.

In this Hot Sands land, it was an unparalleled beautiful sight.

All the way here, Li Shiwei had followed the Demonic Prince.

The Demonic Prince's residence did not at all match his cold persona; in fact, it was quite luxurious, with a large stack of intricate decorations that, despite not taking up much space, were clearly not cheap.

It also housed a large collection of items from other Dao Orthodoxy, including many top-tier Spiritual Artifacts, each of which was incredibly valuable, more than enough to exchange for several world clusters of the same grade.

“These things…” Li Shiwei asked.

“Trophies, many of them are Lifebound Treasures, so I collected them,” the Demonic Prince said.

Then, he suddenly turned back, leaning on his cane, and said to Li Shiwei, “You’ve already come all this way, are you still going to follow me?”

He asked seriously.

“Yes,” Li Shiwei nodded, without hesitation.

“Interesting, it’s my first time having someone follow me, but… if you follow me, you’ll have to face something very terrifying,” the Demonic Prince chuckled.

“Something very terrifying? What?” Li Shiwei frowned.

“Me,” the Demonic Prince pointed to himself.

“Uncle Mo… you’re joking,” Li Shiwei sighed in relief. “We’ve been together for a long time, haven’t we?”

“So you think you understand me? Heh…” the Demonic Prince said.

But then, he said nothing more, just found a place to sit down, no longer paying attention to Li Shiwei.

No need, since she wanted to follow, then let her follow.

It didn't matter.

Thus, in the Demonic Dao region of the Nine Lands Under Heaven, Li Shiwei took up residence in the Demonic Prince's abode.