"Brother Hao, that little voodoo doll—how much damage can it actually do to Xuanzi?" Tianmeng Ice Silkworm asked curiously.
Though Tianmeng Ice Silkworm had also absorbed the memories of Pudu Cihang, he'd never practiced them, so he couldn't picture how it would actually work.
Huo Yuhao was also using it for the first time, but since he had already performed it once, he wasn't completely inexperienced—certainly more experienced than Tianmeng.
After thinking for a moment and considering the actual results, Huo Yuhao replied, "Damage-wise, at most it might make Xuanzi shiver a bit. He's just too strong, and I'm just a weakling. The curse only works because the voodoo doll technique is so unique."
"But the real effect isn't physical—it's about messing with his fortune!"
"As long as Xuanzi doesn't have a way to protect his own fate, then his fortune will definitely be affected. How much? That's hard to say. His destiny is just too strange."
"But even a little interference in his fate is enough."
The "evil" in "evil cultivator" doesn't just mean cruelty—it also means cunning. What defines an evil cultivator is their myriad of underhanded techniques. They're infamous for using subtle, insidious tricks to defeat opponents far stronger than themselves.
Veteran cultivators all know: if you live on the edge, you better have your bases covered. Otherwise, one wrong move and you might get killed without even knowing what hit you.
You could be a big boss in some powerful sect, but if you expose a weakness and some no-name small fry happens by… you might just end up dead in a ditch.
…
Huo Yuhao carefully stashed the little voodoo doll under the bed.
Then he climbed up onto it—not to sleep, but to meditate and cultivate.
Back when he was in the Star Dou Great Forest, Huo Yuhao had already started using cultivation to replace sleep.
Sleep? What sleep?
Huo Yuhao now had grand ambitions and lofty dreams. To achieve them, he refused to be lazy—working hard every day, using every method and means available to him…
Backed by fate and blessed by fortune.
Huo Yuhao was ready to out-hustle everyone on the entire Douluo Continent!
Technically, Douluo Continent's meditation methods couldn't completely replace sleep—but Pudu Cihang's Buddhist cultivation techniques could.
He began channeling the Buddhist technique once again.
After cultivating for so long, Huo Yuhao had finally begun to grasp the basics.
A faint golden Buddhist light surrounded him, and his expression turned peaceful and serene.
But as his cultivation deepened, a chill began to emanate from his body.
If a cultivator from the same world as Pudu Cihang had been present, they would've immediately seen something was off!
The issue wasn't with Huo Yuhao—it was the cultivation method itself!
Though it radiated golden Buddhist light and peaceful expressions…
A true Buddhist technique would emphasize vibrant yang energy or balanced neutrality. How could it possibly give off a chill?
That's because what Huo Yuhao was cultivating wasn't an orthodox Buddhist technique—it was a modified version of Pudu Cihang's method!
It could be called—the Demon-Buddha Technique!
It wasn't that Huo Yuhao didn't want to cultivate an orthodox Buddhist method. He simply couldn't.
Proper Buddhist cultivation requires: while training the vital energy (qi), one must also chant sutras and comprehend Zen meaning—guiding the Buddha's light with meditative insight, making it both tangible and real.
It's somewhat like the Daoist practice of cultivating both body and spirit.
However, Pudu Cihang's memories didn't contain enough sutras for Huo Yuhao to study.
Don't forget—Pudu Cihang was a demon. When it first encountered Buddhist cultivation, it had already become a man-eating monster. The demonic and corrupt aura around it wasn't just thick—it blanketed the skies and left special effects wherever it walked.
If it tried chanting sutras and practicing orthodox Buddhism, the first thing that would happen is its demonic energy being cleansed—weakening its power.
Pudu Cihang would never allow that.
So it never chanted a single sutra. Its memory contained barely a few incomplete scriptures.
And our classmate Little Huo? He used to be just a regular college monk. He's not like other transmigrators who can recite Buddhist and Daoist classics fluently—at most, he knows a line or two, without even understanding them.
Still, since Pudu Cihang planned to use national fate for cultivation, it couldn't give up Buddhist techniques entirely—the two go hand in hand.
So, it forged a new path. By combining demonic cultivation, it replaced Zen with visualization, and used demonic will to control Buddha's light—a demon in the shadow of the Buddha, thus creating the Demon-Buddha Technique.
This technique could be practiced by demons and humans alike. In fact, humans found it even smoother to cultivate, since it leaned heavily toward Buddhist methods.
In its cultivation, Pudu Cihang visualized its own demonic form as the object of meditation.
Demonic cultivation is a crude and direct practice—consuming the essence of sun, moon, mountains, and rivers to awaken wisdom and transform bloodlines.
Tianmeng Ice Silkworm also tried this method—attempting to absorb celestial and terrestrial energy—but always failed.
He couldn't even get a single bite of sun or moon essence.
Back to the main point.
For Pudu Cihang, visualizing itself was easy.
In the process, it discovered something astonishing—the transformative aspect of demonic cultivation was being inherited by its meditative form! As this visualized form was nourished by fate, it began to transform—growing stronger.
Even more surprising, this transformation fed back into Pudu Cihang's real body!
Unfortunately, Pudu Cihang lacked sufficient fate energy. This slow nourishment made its transformation crawl.
So, it set its sights on national fate.
While most cultivation techniques used national fate as support for battles or training, Pudu Cihang had a bolder idea—why not turn national fate into personal fate and speed things up?
Thus, it merged this approach with the Fate-Stealing Technique of evil cultivators and created the first version of the Dragon Ascension Through Stolen Fate technique!
No more polite "collaboration" with kingdoms—it would just rob them.
One has to admire Pudu Cihang's ambition—it actually dared to dream of becoming a dragon.
Yet Pudu Cihang had no dragon blood—it was an ordinary off-spec creature with no special lineage.
But if it used fate to transform, it didn't need bloodlines anymore.
This wasn't a traditional evolution—it was a rebirth.
If the visualized demon-form became a dragon, then its real body would follow suit!
So Pudu Cihang entered human empires and began devouring officials tied to the national fate—stealing kingdom fortune and accelerating its transformation.
Soon, another issue emerged: even if it transformed into a dragon without dragon blood, it lacked Dragon Qi.
Such a transformation would be superficial—it had the form, but not the essence. To become a true dragon, it still needed Dragon Qi!
It began seeking dragonkin—real dragons, or at least flood dragons.
No luck.
In that era, dragonkin were too rare. If it had found one, added some dragon blood, it would've succeeded already.
Just as all seemed lost, Pudu Cihang made another discovery—the emperor and the royal family carried Dragon Qi too!
It was human Dragon Qi.
The human race revered dragons as totems. Over time, emperors, claiming to be "true dragon sons of heaven," gathered Dragon Qi around them, which protected them from demonic corruption.
The emperor, of course, had the strongest Dragon Qi.
With no real dragons around, why not target the Son of Heaven?
So Pudu Cihang set its sights on the emperor and the royal clan.
To steal their Dragon Qi, it had to infiltrate the dynasty.
No more force—it returned to "collaboration," this time maliciously.
Eventually, the centipede demon took on the guise of Pudu Cihang, seduced the emperor, and became his imperial preceptor.
During this process, the Dragon Ascension Through Stolen Fate technique was further refined—able to extract Dragon Qi from the emperor himself.
The version Huo Yuhao now practices is the perfected version.
With Pudu Cihang wreaking havoc beyond its grade, stealing Dragon Qi and kingdom fate, its path to dragonhood entered the fast lane. Soon, it discovered something special about heavenly Dragon Qi.
If one used regular dragonkin Qi to transform, they'd likely be absorbed into the dragon race—a bloodline advancement, a leap in status.
But if one used Heavenly Dragon Qi, they'd ascend as a Heavenly Dragon—advancing in rank and essence, becoming neither demon nor human… but a god.
Who wouldn't want that instead of just being a common dragon?
…
The Dragon Ascension Through Stolen Fate technique is a combination of:
Evil fate-stealing methods
National fate cultivation
Buddhist techniques
The Demon-Buddha Technique combines:
Demonic cultivation
Visualization
Buddhist techniques
Together, they form a path to the Great Dao.
A crooked path, perhaps—but as long as it gets you to the end, who cares?
Since Huo Yuhao is cultivating the Demon-Buddha Technique, he too must visualize a demon-form…
[End of Chapter — A quick setup of Pudu Cihang's backstory and the logic behind the Demon-Buddha technique. This will be the protagonist's primary cultivation method going forward! (^▽^)]