In the middle of the night, the waning gibbous moon almost sank into the earth again. The horizon is already slightly white.

The clock in Ivus's room swayed rhythmically, and the hands on it were already pointing to 4:20 a.m.

And he is still sitting in a wheelchair like a sculpture, motionless and flipping through the Pastor's Tantra.

Two strange tears of purple blood slipped from the corners of Aihuas's eyes, who were sitting at the table in a daze, as if he had lost his soul, and fell on the pages of the book. Then it was directly submerged in it, absorbed by it.

Ivas looked at the secrets in the book with fascination.

The skin on his face was flushed, and the blood vessels on his forehead and forearms were visibly bulging. The blood vessels that were supposed to be cyan revealed dark purple spider web lines.

Even though it was winter, it was still warm in Ivus's room. But with Ivus's deep, heavy breathing, the pale white, hot mist kept exhaling from his mouth. Occasionally, when he coughs low, a little spark bursts out.

It wasn't until early in the morning, when birds chirped outside, that Ivas woke up from a big dream.

His eyes cleared again, and the purple lines on his face slowly retracted.

At this time, this thin black leather booklet had been unconsciously turned to the end. That knowledge was already deeply ingrained in Ivus's memory, and he could remember it clearly the moment he closed his eyes. The words even sparkled.

“…… It turned out to be something like this. ”

Eivus's expression was solemn and he muttered in a low voice.

This black tantric book tells the story of a mystical technique called shepherding.

It was a mystical skill that existed more than a thousand years ago, before the concept of "profession".

At that time, almost all the transcendents were walking on multiple paths at the same time. At that time, I had not yet summed up the extraordinary common sense of "reducing the number of paths that I could go deep at the same time."

Walking on multiple paths at the same time not only makes people mad and makes it difficult for each path to move forward, but it is also very detrimental to the lineage. In that environment, the mystical skills that each transcendent person has developed and mastered with all his or her life's energy must pass on to inheritors who are exactly the same as their own character, hobbies, and essence.

Therefore, in ancient times, transcendent beings were a very small number of beings in human society. And none of their supernatural powers are strong enough.

Because there is no inheritance system, almost all transcendents cannot be passed on for three generations. And each person's own exploration is very limited.

It was not until about the fourth or fifth century that the concept of "occupation" came into being. Through various means of cultivation, transcendent beings gradually make their personalities pure and extreme, and get rid of the paths they do not intend to set foot in. At the same time, we should be vigilant about the essence of our personality not to be polluted, and try to get closer to the safe path that our ancestors have explored on the premise of maintaining our own hearts.

The guidelines for the Nine Great Roads are actually very vague. Their boundaries overlap and are constantly changing.

For example, the path of "beauty" related to art has the most obvious change. Almost every few hundred years, people's understanding of "beauty" changes. Many of the arts, which were previously considered unpopular, have become "ancient trends" decades or centuries later.

But if you are a transcendent without guidance, it is easy to go astray.

Because all ordinary people who are mentally healthy must meet multiple path criteria at the same time.

For example, it is also possible for a wild person who is dedicated, and the transcendent path is also possible. But if they don't know that the core principle of the path of dedication is "altruism", it is easy to go down the path of "using their healing power to gain a voice". For example, become the leader of a small sect.

Then it is easy to unknowingly embark on the path of authoritarianism.

In the same way, if you are too paranoid about the truth, or if you think that you are a genius and superior to mortals, you will embark on the path of wisdom in the pursuit of truth.

If you are too obsessed with becoming a pope or a bishop, and you are eager to be promoted in the church system, you have already embarked on the road of transcendence.

It's good if you walk on two paths at the same time. But everyone's mental strength and energy are limited, and human beings are forgetful.

If you completely forget your original intention and become a completely different person from your original self...... Then the power that originally came from the path of devotion will also continue to weaken until it disappears.

The so-called "professional" inheritance, the most important inheritance is the "bottom line of the path". Even if the scope of the path is vague, its core must be clear. Then don't test the boundaries of the path, only follow the core part of the rules, and only use the safest part of the power, so that you can obtain the relatively pure power of the path.

Even if you are a pastor who is eager for promotion, or if you use it to seek wealth and power, as long as you remember that the core principle of the path of dedication is "altruism", you will not lose your pastoral rank.

With the "profession" system, transcendent knowledge can be officially passed on. Since then, the transcendents have generally grown stronger and stronger.

But that doesn't mean that ancient mystical skills are weak.

In the pre-professional era, almost every mystical skill was inherited by the strong people of the year.

For example, the "Pastoral Tantra" obtained by Eivus is a mysterious technique engraved from the memory of a man called "The Pastor".

This skill requires both the adaptability of the devotional path and the transcendent path, and the two paths must be as balanced as possible – the art of shepherding can only be used if the depth of the two paths is the same.

When Ivus's priesthood level up, he was temporarily unusable until the Demon Scholar advanced.

And this mysterious skill can be called an evil art-

Its basic principle is "to nourish the intangible with the visible, and to nourish the tangible with the invisible".

Overall, it tells the story of a mystical skill that can make anyone stronger......

After opening the book, Ivas fell into a hallucination. From that text, he vaguely saw a black-robed man wearing a hood, feeding weak demons with his own flesh and blood.

He did not make a pact with the demon, but tempted the demon to follow him with his flesh and blood. It's like having a pet, and it's like herding cattle and sheep. These weak demons were raised by him and became more and more powerful.

He also became skinny and covered in scars because of it.

After that, Ivus saw someone kneeling in front of the black-robed man, praying for something.

And the man used a special technique to infuse the invisible power of that demon into the body of the supplicant. In a burst of fire, it underwent a drastic change and gave it strength.

So the supplicants became followers of men. He killed many people and offered them as sacrifices to more and more demons. And after he weakened, he was ruthlessly thrown to a new group of demons as blood food.

With this repeated use, the demons gradually became stronger and more numerous. After that, he used the same secret method to inject these demons into the bodies of other power-hungry followers.

In this way, he obtained an evil legion of demonic possessors.

The legion collected all kinds of secret treasures and seized all kinds of riches for him. The thinner and thinner man began to cultivate more and more illusions. At this time, it was no longer only the demons who followed him. Even the illusions of the light attribute appeared around him.

They were all raised by men from a young age. In the absence of a contract, he is willing to accept the man's dispatch and share a part of his power with others.

Under the operation of the black-robed man, there are more and more followers around him, and they are getting stronger and stronger.

They snowballed and formed a terrible force in a short period of time. and attracted encirclement and suppression from all sides.

Eventually, when he was surrounded by the coalition forces, he sacrificed his followers as food and fed them to the powerful illusions with the art of shepherding.

All who have been shepherded by him are powerless to resist the forcible sacrifice of the shepherding technique.

They were fed upon, summoning even more powerful illusions.

Ivus saw clearly in the vision.

Although it is only a silhouette, there is no doubt that it was the "Fallen Celestial Division" that came and was defeated in version 3.0!

The black-robed man's plan went awry at the last moment - he tried to use the art of shepherding to inject the power of the Fallen Heaven Division into himself.

- But I didn't expect that the shepherding technique suddenly failed at this time.

He himself could not properly contain the power of the Fallen Celestials. The best time was missed.

Without using the shepherding method that extracts the essence of the illusion without harming its essence, his actions become stealing the essence of the illusion, and the enraged Fallen Celestial Division backhanded him and killed him by the Coalition Assassins.

The man who was called the "shepherd" was thus cut off from his evil heritage.

“…… Because when he tried to inject the power of grabbing into himself, he had already strayed from the path of dedication. ”

Ivus sighed.

He really didn't make a mistake about the name.

Use humans as sacrifices to feed the illusions, and then draw power from the illusions, or directly sacrifice the entire illusion to feed the humans.

It's like a true shepherd.

The ubiquitous grass is used to graze cattle and sheep, and milk and meat are obtained from the cattle and sheep.

That grass is mortal.

Cattle and sheep are illusions.

Such a bad analogy.

- If you don't see the endless grass as a price, "shepherding" cattle and sheep is a secret art that creates something out of nothing.