Pain flared behind Lin Xiao's eyes. Weeks bled into a blurred expanse of ancient texts and fragmented memories. His mind, now a Nascent Soul powerhouse, still buckled under the sheer volume of the Demonic Ancestor's inherited knowledge. Every scrap of information screamed of ultimate power, but also of ultimate sacrifice. He had seen the vision. He had rejected it. Searching for an alternative felt like sifting through stardust. The residual will of the ancient demon lord was vast, chaotic. It offered glimpses, not answers. A flicker of an alternative path, a desperate, forgotten whisper from the fringes of true demonic ascension. Frustration clawed at his throat. He smashed a fist onto the stone table. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ancient surface. His breath hitched, a raw sound in the cavern. Losing his essence, his humanity, was a price too steep, even for sovereignty. There had to be another way. Days blurred into nights. His spiritual energy waned, then surged with renewed desperation. He pushed past fatigue, past the gnawing hunger for sleep. The ancestor's will was a labyrinth. Each turn promised insight, then delivered only more questions. Suddenly, a faint echo. Not a clear instruction, but an impression. A concept. The ancestral will, in its final, fragmented moments before oblivion, had explored methods to circumvent the most brutal requirements of Dao Transformation. A desperate, almost heretical path. It spoke of external conduits. Of spiritual vessels capable of bearing emotional imprints, of absorbing the very essence of sentient life without consuming the wielder's own. A substitute. A placeholder for the humanity he refused to yield. Intrigue sharpened his focus. This was it. This was the hint he'd been agonizingly searching for. The whispers grew clearer, leading him down paths of demonic lore previously deemed too dangerous, too unstable, even by the ancient cults. Demonic arts weren't just about power; they were about manipulation. Of Qi, of souls, of reality itself. The idea of an emotion-absorbing artifact, a spiritual entity that could *feel* for him, felt both ingenious and profoundly disturbing. It resonated with the core principles of villainy. His research intensified. He delved into the deepest, most forbidden sections of the ancestral library. Scrolls brittle with age crumbled in his grip. Runes glowed faintly under his awakened perception. Forgotten rituals, dark pacts, and the bizarre ecology of spiritual artifacts filled his vision. Rarely mentioned, often dismissed as myth, these artifacts were said to be born of extreme emotional trauma, or forged through rituals of profound despair. They were not tools for the faint of heart, or for those seeking mere cultivation advancement. They were instruments of twisted design. One particular entry caught his eye. A faded diagram, surrounded by warnings of madness and eternal suffering. It depicted an object, crystalline and dark, referred to as the “Spirit-Echoing Amethyst.” Its primary function, according to the cryptic annotations, was to “gather the unburdened heart’s lament.” “Gather the unburdened heart’s lament.” Lin Xiao repeated the phrase aloud, his voice rough. It meant absorbing pure, raw emotion. Specifically, sorrow, grief, despair – the very human feelings his true Dao Transformation would strip away. This was precisely what he needed. Its legend described it as a volatile, living artifact. Not merely a stone, but a condensed pool of resonant spiritual energy, capable of forming a symbiotic, albeit parasitic, link with a cultivator. It would absorb the emotional burdens, leaving the wielder unfeeling, detached, yet fully capable of wielding their power. The text warned of its inherent sentience, its potential to develop a consciousness forged from the aggregated emotions it consumed. A dangerous prospect, but a necessary one. This was a gamble, but a calculated risk. Better than dissolving his own identity into nothingness. Locating such an artifact, however, was a task bordering on impossible. The lore placed its origins in the

Chapter 37: Forbidden Ritual's First Step