Eight Steps to Destruction

Xiao Lian didn't know about his niece's psychological state, he had too many things to take care of. After warning everyone that he would be entering cultivation behind closed doors, he secluded himself in his training chamber.

Taking three items from his storage ring, he sat in lotus position and placed the items in front of him. In front of him was a dark-colored pill, a scroll, and a letter.

In the letter it said, "My good brother, I am sorry to have gone and left you to take care of everything by yourself, but that's how life is, you don't get to choose when you die, but how you die. I don't regret the decisions I have made, for they all make me who I am today. I don't know what danger you are going through to need to use this technique, but I will help you as best I can."

Below he left hints and observations, which would greatly help Xiao Lian, and would reduce the time needed to learn such a skill from years, to mere months. At the end, San Meili further added, "Use the clear sky pill, it will help when you first use the technique. I look forward to your success."

The name of this technique was Eight Steps To Destruction. This is a simplified version of the technique that San Meili created, Destroyer Of Worlds. This technique was a movement technique, and at the same time a sword technique.

This technique was not considered a technique of the highest, transcendent level. But it had something never before reported in the world. It had a soul!

This soul acted as a guardian of this Dao, judging who it deemed worthy or unworthy to use it. Whoever she deemed worthy would have the right to use it, but whoever was not, something worse than death awaited them.

After reading the scroll several times and making sure everything was correct, Xiao Lian stood up and took a deep breath. He was wearing the sect master's Daoist robe, which was red with black details, with the figure of a demon on the back. The funny thing about this robe, however, was that San Meili had always hated demons and being associated with them. But since it was San Mei'er who gave the idea and asked for it, he always wore it and never complained.

After taking off his cloak and placing it in a corner of the completely empty room, being left with only a simple gray-colored outfit, Xiao Lian prepared to begin his ordeal with the soul technique, he took the pill and took a deep breath. Taking his sword from the storage ring, he began.

First Step - Contemplation

Xiao Lian started out a bit clumsy, but soon got used to the erratic movements of the First Step. The First Step is mainly based on studying his surroundings and making sparse movements, always using the blade horizontally and only at the last moment using a powerful blow from top to bottom, stopping only an inch from the ground.

The closer he got to the end of the first step, the a more shapeless and violent pressure approached him and spread throughout the room, making it difficult for him to breathe and concentrate. He did it, the Soul Dao came to check if he was worthy!

One blow, two blows... ten blows! With each movement, his body became heavier, his body sweated profusely. It seemed that instead of holding the handle of the sword, he was holding the blade, causing his hands to bleed. He was a Nascent Soul cultivator! Above all and below only one rank in cultivation! How could anything hurt his body?!

Xiao Lian's sparse movements while swinging his sword around the great hall was a beautiful scene for anyone to see, but also incredibly deadly. Xiao Lian had reached the fifty-ninth cut with his sword... just one more, he could finish the first step!

It was at that moment that everything around him changed. The world turned gray, he was no longer in his training room, but in a world without light, without air, without movement and completely absent of life!

In front of him stood a being more than a hundred meters tall, and it seemed to be made completely of smoke and shadows. It had the shape of a hawk-king, with its mane standing upright as if wearing a crown made of the darkest shadows and purest darkness!

He turned his head and stared with those black eyes, looking at Xiao Lian with curiosity as he approached the last move. This was not the first time Xiao Lian had seen this world, he had already seen it once San Meili had used his ultimate technique, Dark Dimension. But this time it seemed much worse.

The pressure he felt seemed to want to crush his body, his clothes were torn apart, the body was riddled with wounds, and every time Soul Dao looked at a part of his body, other cuts appeared. His Ki was almost completely depleted, his soul overloaded, and an overriding fear arose from him whenever he saw pairs of purple colored eyes glowing in that darkness.

There were hundreds of thousands of them, and each one seemed to pierce his soul, just waiting for him to miss devouring the very existence known as Xiao Lian. All of this takes a while to describe, but it happened in less than a second.

In the last blow, something fantastic happened. With the descent of the sword, there didn't come an explosion, bright lights or anything flashy. With the last blow, that entire gray world that was filled with purple eyes returned to its previous calmness, no pair of eyes could be seen outside the eyes of Soul Dao.

Xiao Lian lay on the ground, gasping for air, but there was no air for him to breathe. Soul Dao approached him, while a dying Xiao Lian watched him. The Soul Dao looked at Xiao Lian for a second before it spread its gigantic wings and a single gigantic feather from its belly flew out with unstoppable speed and entered Xiao Lian's brain. Without waiting for Xiao Lian to recover or understand what was happening, the Soul Dao grew even larger, surpassing tens of kilometers in height and its wings that were now at least a hundred kilometers in wingspan, and shot out at a speed that was impossible to calculate towards the void of the Dark Dimension.

As if it was all a dream, Xiao Lian found himself lying on the floor of his training room. The proof that this was not a dream, however, was his body completely wounded in several parts, with several pieces of flesh missing in some areas.

"That was only the First Step... of Eight Steps... of the simplified technique. How powerful big brother was...?" Thinking aloud, Xiao Lian ended up laughing lightly, interrupted only by vomiting blood.

"I need to heal myself, there are still seven more steps to learn after mastering the first one."

And so, he began to meditate to heal himself, and start all over again.