Chapter 175 – The Miraculous Talent, Self-Help Guru! (First Update)

Chapter 173 – The Miraculous Talent, Self-Help Guru! (First Update)

“Self-Help Guru?”

Su Xing stroked his chin after seeing this talent and murmured:

“This talent is quite interesting.”

“So basically it’s a con-artist master… able to deceive targets?”

“I just don’t know how effective this thing actually is. It depends on the target’s strength and status…”

Unable to gauge the talent’s exact effects for the moment, Su Xing decided to test it out in a simulation.

His gaze turned to the simulation panel.

【In the spirit field grotto-heaven, you realize you are in a simulation.】

【You leave the spirit field grotto-heaven and return to the real world.】

【You prepare to test the effects of Self-Help Guru.】

【You walk through the school and casually pick a random student on the road. You tell him that you are his long-lost mother.】

【The student looks up and sizes you up, a look of confusion in his eyes. He curses at you, calling you insane, then turns and leaves.】

【Dissatisfied with the Self-Help Guru talent’s effectiveness, you decide to find a couple more targets to test it on.】

【You select another passing student. This time, you tell him that you are his long-lost half-brother from a different father.】

【You go into elaborate detail—from how the neighbor Old Wang cuckolded his father, to how his mother became pregnant… to how you were abandoned on a park bench…】

【The entire account is told with incredible detail, as if it had truly happened.】

【In the end, the student believes you. His emotions collapse on the spot, tears streaming down his face as he clutches your leg and cries out ‘Brother!’】

【Seeing the growing crowd of onlooking students, you hurriedly pretend to have urgent business and leave.】

【For the next several months, a figure could often be seen wandering the school, searching for his long-lost brother…】

【After deceiving that student, you seek out a Heavenly King-stage teacher at the school.】

【You tell him that his father just passed away moments ago, and that you came specifically to deliver the news.】

【From the cause of death to the time of passing, you speak with utter conviction.】

【In the end, the teacher breaks down in tears, thanks you profusely, and then runs toward the principal’s office.】

【Afterward, you learn that the teacher’s father was a Martial Emperor-stage powerhouse and one of the school’s vice principals.】

【Thus, you spend three days testing the effects of your new talent.】

【A few more days pass, and the Tarot Society’s mining zone instance launches successfully, bringing you a substantial supply of exotic metal each week.】

【After confirming that the Tarot Trading Company has no issues, you prepare to infiltrate the Advent Cult.】

Su Xing’s eyes flickered with a peculiar look when he saw this.

“I see. So this con-art… Self-Help Guru talent isn’t omnipotent after all. There are still many conditions required for it to work.”

“For example, at the very beginning, even though that student was probably only Silver or Gold rank… because what I said was too outrageous—wrong gender, massive age gap—it defied common sense, so he saw through it immediately…”

After a pause, Su Xing continued his analysis.

“However, once I provided a well-constructed logical explanation, the success rate of the Self-Help Guru talent increased dramatically!”

“Even things like a long-lost brother or a Martial Emperor father suddenly dropping dead on the spot—people will believe it based on nothing but your word alone…”

“Hiss… this Self-Help Guru really does have something going for it!”

Su Xing muttered to himself. He felt that he still hadn’t fully unlocked the Self-Help Guru’s true potential.

What if the logic was completely unreasonable… but Su Xing forced a coherent narrative onto it anyway? What would happen then?

Su Xing suddenly felt this talent was becoming very interesting.

His gaze turned to the simulation panel.

【You leave the Capital City and head to Shuangqing City in Southwest Province.】

【Afterward, you suppress your spiritual sense while blanketing all of Shuangqing City, ultimately drawing out Zong Laogou.】

【You tell Zong Laogou that you are his long-lost father, providing a detailed account of how you were separated and the circumstances surrounding it. You express with deep sorrow that you have searched for him for thousands of years and have finally found him.】

【After hearing your words, a look of confusion appears on Zong Laogou’s face, as if he is thinking it over carefully.】

【After a long while, he forces a smile and says, ‘Senior, please don’t joke around.’】

【Clearly, because the gap in strength between you two isn’t large, and because Zong Laogou is cautious by nature, the talent fails to activate.】

【After the failed attempt, you show no embarrassment whatsoever and follow Zong Laogou to join the Advent Cult.】

【After joining the Advent Cult, you stand before the assembled followers and declare that you have admired the Advent Cult for a long time and have always wanted to pledge allegiance to the foreign races.】

【You claim you traveled tens of thousands of miles for the sole purpose of serving the Advent Cult, and you pledge to lead the church to ever-greater prosperity.】

【Your speech lasts a full three days. Many of the Advent Cult’s followers are deeply moved by you, believing every word without question.】

【Some followers even contact you privately, hoping you will establish a fourth faction beyond the Transhuman Faction, the Zealot Faction, and the Coexistence Faction.】

【And he would personally lead the charge for you!】

【What surprises you even more is that there are quite a few such followers—several hundred, in fact.】

【Later, faction leaders even seek you out, hoping you will take the position of Protector, declaring that their seats will eventually be yours!】

【Marveling internally at the power of the Self-Help Guru talent, you privately seek out Luo Shuying.】

【This time, you don’t even need to give the secret passphrase—you convince Luo Shuying through storytelling alone.】

【She completely believes you and is moved by your countless journeys across timelines to save the world, expressing her desire to do more for you.】

【With Luo Shuying’s help, you quickly gather a considerable amount of medicinal ingredients.】

【You then begin your daily routine of refining pills while cultivating the primordial energy divine ability Protective Hardened Qi.】

【However, due to the Self-Help Guru’s outrageously effective performance, many followers come to you privately, leaving you distracted and unable to cultivate in peace.】

【So you simply announce that you are entering seclusion to contemplate strategies for leading the Advent Cult to its Peak.】

【To your surprise, this declaration causes the number of your die-hard fans within the Advent Cult to skyrocket instantly!】

【Countless Advent Cult followers believe in you without question, convinced that under your leadership, the church will achieve glory and reach new heights!】

【Even quite a few Elder-level followers regard you as their guiding light and aspire to follow your example.】

Seeing this, an increasingly strange expression spread across Su Xing’s face.

“Tsk tsk… are all these Advent Cult followers missing a few screws or what?”

“They’re this easy to deceive?”

Su Xing thought it over and figured that anyone willing to become a traitor to the human race probably had something wrong with their head to begin with.

On top of that, these people needed spiritual sustenance in their daily lives to hypnotize themselves into accepting the fact that they had betrayed humanity.

So under multiple compounding factors, the bonus from Su Xing’s Self-Help Guru talent was especially potent?

Su Xing nodded slightly. He figured that was more or less the explanation.

“I just wonder… if I defect from the Advent Cult, how will these followers react?”

Su Xing was sure that watching these followers’ faith crumble would be quite entertaining, so he eagerly turned to the simulation panel.

【In the second year, you continue your daily routine within the Advent Cult—refining pills and cultivating primordial energy divine abilities.】

【Over two years, you accumulate over one hundred thousand pills and more than sixty days’ worth of heightened cognitive states. Meanwhile, your primordial energy divine ability Protective Hardened Qi draws ever closer to the Perfection level.】

【In the third year, you have gathered nearly all the medicinal ingredients you need. There is no longer any benefit to staying in the Advent Cult.】

【And so, on a dark and windy night, you lead Luo Shuying in an escape from the Advent Cult.】

【Before betraying the Advent Cult, you don’t forget to treat Zong Laogou to a meal—and frame him in the process.】

【You and Luo Shuying quickly flee to the Capital City, and news of your betrayal spreads rapidly.】

【At first, the entire Advent Cult—from the Protectors at the top to the ordinary followers at the bottom—refuses to believe it from the bottom of their hearts.】

【They cannot believe that you, whose faith was so unwavering, would choose to betray the Advent Cult.】

【As a result, the entire Advent Cult fractures, splitting into two factions.】

【Some followers are convinced you have been smeared and slandered by other Protectors, and they want to find you and get the truth.】

【Others even believe you are carrying out a secret mission—infiltrating Xia’s military from the inside to orchestrate a coordinated attack from within and without, ultimately destroying the human race.】

【In the end, these followers band together and leave the Advent Cult overnight, heading for the Capital City to find you and get a clear answer.】

【These followers numbered eighty percent of the entire Advent Cult!】

【Over twenty thousand followers, ranging from Heavenly King-stage Elders down to ordinary Master-stage members, all came to the Capital City searching for you.】

【For a time, many unfamiliar powerful faces appeared throughout the Capital City.】

【You quickly noticed this anomaly and went to meet with these twenty-thousand-plus followers.】

【They asked you why you had left the Advent Cult and joined Xia’s military.】

【On one hand, you coordinated with Xia’s military, keeping them ready to capture all these people in one sweep at any moment.】

【At the same time, you knew you couldn’t tell them the truth, so you could only continue leveraging your Self-Help Guru talent and keep up the con.】

【You told them that you felt the Advent Cult’s ideals had become impure—their three factions were all fighting independently and could no longer be called the true Advent Cult.】

【You continued your spiel, telling them that during your seclusion, you had comprehended an entirely new path.】

【That path was to slaughter the alien races and fight them to the bitter end!】

【When you proclaimed this path, Advent Cult followers immediately spoke up to refute you.】

【But you explained that by killing the great alien races, you would thoroughly enrage them! And since the alien races’ power was incomparably strong, they would inevitably destroy the human race even faster!】

【This, therefore, was the fastest way to let the alien races unify the entire real world!】

【Your reasoning was so flimsy that even you couldn’t believe it yourself.】

【And yet, after hearing your words, every single follower fell into deep contemplation.】

【Some followers quickly bought into it. A fanatical gleam appeared in their eyes as they declared that the path you had found was the true path of the Advent Cult!】

【Others were torn with indecision, but were soon swept up by the emotions of those around them and threw themselves into the army of mindless believers following you.】

【Even the last batch of relatively clear-headed Advent Cult followers were brainwashed by your speech and wanted to try walking the path you had laid out.】

【Some followers even proposed bringing the remaining members of the Advent Cult into the fold as well.】

【What happened next almost made you question reality itself—these twenty-thousand-plus followers had all been conned by you into becoming soldiers in the fight against the demon army!】

【Most of these followers were formidable in strength, ranging from Master-stage to Heavenly King-stage. If they joined Demon-Sealing Pass, they would absolutely be a force that could not be ignored.】

【Without spilling a single drop of blood, you had directly dismantled the vast majority of the Advent Cult’s strength and turned them into loyal soldiers fighting against the demon army.】

【Under Xia’s military’s arrangements, all twenty-thousand-plus followers joined Demon-Sealing Pass, forming a special legion called the Advent Army!】

In the real world, Su Xing stared at the simulation text before him, his jaw nearly hitting the floor.

“What the hell, is this some kind of joke?”

“These Advent Cult followers are really that easy to con… They didn’t just get swindled out of their legs—they went and bought the wheelchair on the way out too!”

Su Xing had finally realized that when his Self-Help Guru talent was fully unleashed, its effects were nothing short of terrifying!

“Good lord, turning enemies into allies just like that…”

Su Xing smacked his lips and continued reading.

【After finishing your con on this group of followers, you threw yourself back into your busy life of cultivation and pill refinement.】

【In the fourth year, you handed over all two hundred thousand-plus pills you had refined over the years to Xia’s military.】

【Xia’s military’s strength surged dramatically, and the situation at Demon-Sealing Pass improved steadily.】

【After finishing the pill refinement, you devoted more of your energy to cultivating the divine ability Protective Hardened Qi.】

【In the fifth year, aside from cultivation, you began researching the Rebirth Pill, wanting to see just how much these pills could elevate Great Xia’s overall strength.】

【Through constant experimentation and refinement, your mastery of the Rebirth Pill gradually improved.】

【In the sixth year, you sensed that your divine ability Protective Hardened Qi was only one final step away from reaching the Perfection realm.】

【So you used all of the one hundred-plus days of Great Wisdom duration you had accumulated over the years, hoping to break through to Perfection in one push!】

【Finally, on a night when the moon was bright and the stars were few, you trained alone, gritting your teeth through the effort.】

【As you continuously poured primordial energy into your Protective Hardened Qi, at a certain instant, you finally felt it undergo a transformation!】

【The upper limit of Protective Hardened Qi’s defensive power doubled in an extremely short span of time, becoming twice what it had been!】

【And as the power of Protective Hardened Qi increased, you also felt that its consumption of primordial energy had grown significantly higher.】

【The steady stream of primordial energy replenishing from within your body was now far outpaced by the rate of consumption!】

【Over the next month, you carefully studied the usage of Protective Hardened Qi and its primordial energy consumption.】

【Finally, your mastery of Protective Hardened Qi naturally reached Perfection—an utterly transcendent level of control.】

【You could precisely control the strength of Protective Hardened Qi at every angle.】

【If an enemy’s attack came from the front, you would channel the primordial energy at the front to its maximum while reducing the energy at your back and beneath your feet.】

【This way, you could minimize consumption to the greatest extent possible.】

【At the same time, with Protective Hardened Qi at full power, your defensive capability could be directly doubled—but the primordial energy consumption within your body would also reach a staggering level.】

【After testing, at full primordial energy output, the energy within your body could only sustain it for one shichen.】

【Even so, you were highly satisfied with Protective Hardened Qi’s effects!】

【You were confident that your current Protective Hardened Qi could absolutely withstand two—or even three—consecutive strikes of thunderous force!】

【At this point, everything was in place. You only needed the giant beast to descend, and you would be able to reach the land of ultimate limits…】

【And thereby shatter your own limits and reach the Void-Shattering Realm!】

【But you had no intention of wasting the next dozen or so years. You planned to further test the power of the Rebirth Pill.】

【In the seventh year, you arrived at Demon-Sealing Pass. With your current strength, killing Demon Kings was as easy as slaughtering chickens.】

【And even Demon Emperors couldn’t last more than three rounds against you.】

【In just one short month, you slew over ten Demon Emperors and several hundred Demon Kings.】

【Just as you were preparing to use the blood essence from these kills to continue researching the Rebirth Pill, you unexpectedly spotted a unit fighting valiantly on the battlefield.】

【This unit numbered only a few thousand, yet they fought with reckless abandon, often trading their lives one-for-one to kill a demon beast.】

【Even in death, the soldiers of this unit wore smiles on their faces and shouted something with their final breaths.】

【Moved by this unit’s fighting spirit, you asked Lu Yuanwu about their origins.】

【When Lu Yuanwu heard your question, a strange expression crossed his face.】

【He told you that this unit was made up of the former Advent Cult followers.】

【When these followers first arrived at Demon-Sealing Pass, Lu Yuanwu had been deeply uneasy, ordering his soldiers to keep constant watch over them.】

【But before long, everyone was moved by this death-defying unit’s fearless fighting style.】

【They always charged at the very front lines of demon slaying, utterly indifferent to their own deaths, even willing to trade their lives one-for-one with the demons.】

【Under this fighting style, the unit had become the most prolific demon-killing force in the entire army.】

【At the same time, in just three short years, the original twenty-thousand-plus followers had been whittled down to a mere three thousand survivors…】

【After hearing Lu Yuanwu’s account, you fell silent.】

Su Xing’s eyes went wide when he read this, almost questioning reality itself.

“Holy shit, the Self-Help Guru… absolutely legendary!”

Even Su Xing could only manage a “holy shit” at this point.

The degree of brainwashing from this master of deception was truly beyond the heavens.

Turning traitors to the human race directly into fearless, iron-blooded soldiers?

“Tsk tsk… Still, for these followers, this is probably the best possible ending, right?”

“Hopefully the killing can lighten some of the sins weighing on their souls…”

Su Xing shook his head gently and turned his gaze back to the simulation panel.

【In the eighth year, after countless attempts and failures, you finally succeeded in developing the Rebirth Pill and reduced its side effects to a minimum.】

【In one year’s time, you refined a full ten thousand Rebirth Pills.】

【What delighted you even more was that the cost of the Rebirth Pill was extremely low—on average, the blood essence of a single Demon King could produce one hundred Rebirth Pills.】

【And one hundred Rebirth Pills were enough to increase the strength of thirty Grandmaster-stage powerhouses by fifty percent!】

【After their strength increased, they would have a much better chance of passing the advancement trial and becoming Heavenly King-stage Class Users!】

【By your calculations, over three thousand Grandmaster-stage powerhouses took the Rebirth Pill within a single year.】

【And one year later, Great Xia had gained a staggering one thousand additional Heavenly King-stage Class Users!】