Annoyed beyond annoyance, and frankly pretty confused on the meaning of the presence of two copies of the Poison God's Heritage. Though I doubt that finding this one would mean that's the only one left, as I believe that there could also be more Poison God Books all over the world.
But why this place in particular? Why not in another planet?
Since I had no way to figure that out, I dropped the thought and made sure that I'll be cultivating this Poison God's cultivation method carefully. One can never know when shit can go down, and I might as well make sure that I'm not taking any risky and wrong steps along my cultivation path.
As I was about to leave the chamber, I wanted to put the second Poison God's Book inside the first, but it apparently refused to do so as a light rejection force stopped me from doing so, then immediately afterwards, the second book melted into a floating globe of green liquid, that instantly shot towards the first book, increasing its volume and actually changed its forma bit.
The green covered Poison God's book had more golden symbols on it, and looked slightly more prestigious than it already was.
I opened the 'upgraded' book, and tried to find some differences, but nothing seemed to have changed besides the aesthetic look.
After giving up on trying to understand the mysteries happening here, and how the Poison God thinks, I decided that I would have better use of my time leaving this place and working on figuring out the situation with Lucid Springs.
Once I was out, I headed to the Soul Transformation Cultivator's holding bag, and realized that I hit a pretty steep jackpot.
The holding bag had at least thousands of years worth of gathered treasures that will take several days to sort out. This is a great powerup to my arsenal, from Spirit Stones, materials, and a lot of pills and cultivation materials. Though its no match to the Lord of Lord's pagoda, this holding bag I more important because its content is highly related to my own low level cultivation, as the materials here are more than enough to get me to climb higher cultivation stages rapidly.
Secondly, there was something that held my attention, it was a stockpile of notes that were placed on one side along with several Yellow Flags that had too many restrictions on them. the flags' purpose was clear to me the moment I inspected them deeply, and they were used to trap souls.
I skimmed through the notes and figured out the reason behind these kidnappings, and actually found out, that this whole mess was somehow related to the destruction of Lucid Springs.
From what I could figure out through the notes, a Nascent Soul cultivator, who apparently succeeded in reaching Soul Formation, had made contact with the man I just killed right now. He showed him a way to abuse the Bone and Body Grinding Poison, as once it is introduced to someone with broken meridians, and that person survives, their Souls can be extracted and used as nutrients to fuel one's cultivation.
The flags were already holding several souls of cultivators that survived the Bone and Body Grinding Poison. And once their souls have been harvested in the flags, the Nascent Soul cultivator used them to increase his own level.
With this method, the Soul Transformation cultivator, finding that raising his cultivation base was too hard using the scarce resources of this barren world, began using this Devil Cultivation method.
The method was evil, and ugly, and extracting someone's soul is not a fun experience. It involves a lot of screaming and pain, and they did that to so many people it's close to mass genocide.
And apparently, I was gonna be paying to have my soul extracted and used as an experiment.
The success rate is still low from reading the notes, and only one among a few hundred can survive, but even then, their souls are too weak to give a greater boost to one's cultivation base.
Something is very fishy here, and I don't like it.
From the Soul Transformation Cultivator's reaction when I opened the door, he had no idea what's behind the door, but for the cultivators who captured me and opened the door, they probably didn't have an idea about this Soul devouring method.
The worst thing would be if one of each school of thought were to meet one another and share their discovery. This will reveal the Poison God's cultivation method, and not only that. Since I have a powerful soul, a very strong one capable of leaving a Domain at will, and not be affected with Soul pressure.
I think I make a very, very, very tasty and delicious meal to anyone who can know these facts.
Not to mention, the owner of this cultivation method.
Now this is some scary train of thought to get into. If it appears that the poison god is actually not here to help me, but actually use me as a cultivation pill nothing more nothing less.
And if I were to think about it, this is a cultivation world where all is allowed, and this won't be out of reach. Especially with finding a second book, this would undoubtedly mean that the Poison God is actually trying to get many 'disciples' to grow so that he will have the chance and opportunity to consume them, and break through a bottleneck.
This seems like the most plausible outcome of this discovery, and I somehow stumbled upon it, in this planet, in this random place, because two people were greedy to eat up low level cultivators souls.
This is a conspiracy theory at the finest level, revealed by the actions of small fries.
Finding this out this early is pretty damn good, though I can't change my cultivation method, as long as I'm careful and know what's coming, I can prepare for it. I'm like batman, just give me enough prep time, and I can beat anyone. But right now, I'm better off finding a way to either remove my whole cultivation base, which will be stupid, or outright branch out from the Poison God's own cultivation method.
Though both seem the most extreme solutions, for now, I can't afford to pursue either one of them. I'll keep the thought of me being a pill in the making in my mind, but at the same time, I'll make sure to find ways to grow stronger, without fully relying on the Poison God's teachings alone.
I've had my doubts that if I was spreading my attentions to various means of cultivation, pursuing Pill making, Puppet Making, craftsmanship and inscription, that I will be too stomped with work that I'll never be able to grow my own cultivation, but apparently, the fact that I pursued many things slowed me a bit from further ascending as a Poison Cultivator without this knowledge.
Now, with this information figured out, it's time to pay the Soul Formation cultivator a visit, I already vowed a revenge like no other for destroying my city and killing my people, and now that I found out that he was actually wanting to use me as a cultivation experiment, I'm even more pissed at him, and will definitely be paying him tenfold for his boldness.
Once everything was settled, I headed out of the room and went up the stairs, but not even a moment later, hell broke loose as dozens of guards came rushing down the Black Tower Pavilion and down the stairs.
And since I had no way to teleport, or escape, I could only watch in slight vexation how dozens of guards came down, with weapons ready and aimed at me.
While two Soul Formation Cultivators came after them, the look on their faces was that of disgust and hell untold waiting to be unleashed on someone who tried to 'steal' whatever that it was in their vaults.
"You damn thief! You think yourself smart for luring everyone! But we're the Black Tower! We'll never be fooled with such despicable methods!" one of the guards said.
"Quiet, don't you think that he was smart enough to fool all of you into leaving, look even the vault's door is already opened. So, tell me, cultivator, what brought you in here? If you were smart enough to unlock that door, you should have already known that moving any object from that room without the appropriate pass would have told the alarm."
"I didn't really take anything from here, to be honest," I said looking at everyone who clearly didn't believe what I was saying.
"Yes, because we caught you before you did, but that doesn't pardon your crime!" the second Soul Formation cultivator said.
"Now Fess up! What did you take from the Black Tower's Vault?!"
'Ah shit, this is gonna be annoying to explain. Especially since the guy responsible for this whole mess is a puddle of ash....'