The crux of the matter seemed to be karmic retribution. He hadn’t thought of this before but, actually, it made sense. His Master was a demonic practitioner and while not all of their techniques were inherently evil, they had a very different code of conduct from the people in the righteous sects.

Killing others for their possessions and using those to advance their own cultivation was commonplace. Needless to say, this kind of act forged a karmic bond, one where they could be said to owe the other person a life that could never be repaid. Of course, this only counted if they killed the other person unprovoked but when was that not the case?

To be honest, even the righteous sects struggled with this sometimes. After all, if you met a demonic practitioner, could you really afford to wait for them to make the first move so you would be ‘justified’ in killing them? No, with the history between their factions, that often wasn’t the case. In turn, even many of their own people were creating karmic bonds that were detrimental to them.

Everyone knew but who could keep a tally of what they had done and how all of it averaged out? In fact, they didn’t even know how this karma would affect them. Some thought it was simply a myth, passed down by their ancestors to make sure the righteous sects would keep as closely as possible to their teachings, not straying onto the dangerous path of disregarding human life like the demonic practitioners did. Others were sure that this would play a vital role either when they died and their souls went to the underworld to be judged or when they ascended to heaven. Nobody knew for sure and there was no way to ascertain the truth without reaching the end of one’s journey one way or another.

Now, Mei Chao Bing felt that he might have touched upon something. If those karmic bonds were real and indeed had an effect on one’s cultivation … maybe what they influenced were your chances of ascending. And maybe his Master — either upon advancing to the Demigod stage or through some lucky coincidence earlier on in his life — had realized all of this.

In that case, he who had betrayed his sect, betrayed the teachings of his Master, killed a fellow sect member unprovoked, didn’t wholeheartedly teach his disciples, likely lied to some of them and took advantage of their dire circumstances to bind them to him, forcing them on the same path as him, even going so far as to ruin the engagement of one of them and forced another to do his bidding by taking another person’s soul from their body … such a person had formed countless negative bonds throughout his life and his chance of actually ascending should be minuscule, despite the fact that he had amassed the necessary energy and cultivated hard for his whole life. How could his Master take that?

Mei Chao Bing felt a hint of schadenfreude when he imagined how his Master had found out. Maybe by then, he had already committed too many acts that went against the heavens and thus, knew that he had no way out. As soon as that thought came up, Mei Chao Bing sobered up. Well, obviously, even if his Master had originally been in what seemed like a hopeless situation, he hadn’t given up hope of ascending and had started to do his research, finally finding the story of the Lin family and drawing his conclusions.

As for what those were, it seemed that he should have seen that things weren’t as simple as transforming energy. No, he hadn’t understood it before but that scroll that showed the relationship between the different kinds of energy … it was only half the truth. Yes, there was energy that was more compatible with a certain kind than others but … that didn’t really matter. Not for ascension, at least. Unless, of course, there were energies that would allow you to ascend more easily than others.

Under that assumption, the role of the Lin family suddenly made a lot more sense. If the energy at the end of the transformation they could do, heightened the chance of ascension, then of course cultivators would go crazy about this ability.

This theory might sound like the ravings of a lunatic when looked at on its own, but it became a lot more reasonable when taking the energy of the person locked down by the array into consideration. After all, this was an energy that felt twisted as soon as you perceived it. It was even so bad that it could contaminate the energy in its surroundings, even polluting the land itself due to proximity.

Such an energy should have been created through the most vile of practices, something Heaven couldn’t tolerate. Thus, ascension would be nigh impossible if this was what your dantian was filled with. This was likely also the reason why that person had never ascended despite their strength.

Overall, this meant that there was a large source of energy that couldn’t be used by anyone simply lying around. At the very least, this should be the way his Master saw it. The only way to tap into this force and make it his own would be through the special constitution of the Lin family’s successors.

At the same time, using this method might dilute the effect his past wrongdoings had. This was something Mei Chao Bing could only guess at but … the specialness of the energy the Lin family created should be that it was no hindrance at all to ascension and might even be beneficial in reaching that goal. Maybe by using this energy to fill up his remaining needs between the beginning of the Demigod stage and the actual threshold of ascension, he could actually make them cancel each other out.

He couldn’t prove it but he knew that his Master did nothing without reason. He could have cultivated on his own and simply would have needed more time. Since nobody was actually coming after him, he would have had that chance. So why rush? The only explanation was that simply continuing his cultivation by himself wouldn’t work and that, no matter how he pondered, only seemed to be explainable if there was indeed a link to karmic justice.