"A Devil Vein?!" Meiying's calm and playful appearance crumbled. "That's impossible!"
Dyon laughed. "Aren't I very capable? If you call me elder brother Dyon, I'll plant it within your Bai family's territory."
"No, no, no. That's too much of a waste. A Devil Vein, even of the lowest grade, needs an entire solar system to itself. If it's a high grade, it needs an entire universe, maybe a few universes to reveal its true potential."
"Hm? Is that so? The one I found seemed to have only had influence on a very small area though. I couldn't sense it more than ten kilometers away. In fact, I almost missed it until I was right on top of it."
Meiying's brow furrowed. "That's even more impossible than the idea of you finding one."
"Tell me about Devil Veins then." Dyon asked with curiosity. Back when he found the Devil Vein in the Demon Tiger den, he had been too focused on collecting the corrosive flame to ask the twins about it. Then, afterward, he had his path blocked by the various fire dao geniuses. By the time he finished dealing with all of that, there were only a few more days until the first phase ended. So, he had to rush to the territory of the diamond skinned apes. If he had allowed the second phase to begin, it would have been impossible to defeat them and retrieve the pulse fruits.
All in all, he simply hadn't had the time to delve into its mysteries. After he managed to use the soul tome to collect both it and the corrosive flame, he had too many other things to do and worry about.
"Devil Veins are similar to Spiritual Veins, however their niche abilities make them far more powerful. Spiritual Veins can't grow past a certain size because it destabilizes the energy of a universe and could lead to its collapse, however, Devil Veins don't have that problem.
"The reason Spiritual Veins destabilize universes is because they collect every form of energy into one. If a universe becomes unbalanced in this way, it becomes difficult for it to maintain its laws.
"Once a Spiritual Vein grows to a certain size, its wanton absorption of energy would reach a level that a universe could no longer maintain. It would even be possible for it to pull upon energy the universe had been saving for the distant future, thus shortening its life span."
Dyon's eyes narrowed when he heard this. Wasn't this similar to what the entity was doing to his home universe? Could he be using concepts of spiritual veins and some other hidden methods to achieve his goal?
This aside, up to now, Dyon knew all of the things Meiying spoke of. In fact, he was also aware that it was possible to use the Energy Core to ignore these limitations. He could also guess with this information why Devil Veins didn't have this limitation.
"You might have guessed it by now but Devil Veins don't have this issue. Because it focuses on absorbing only a single type of energy, not only does it grow faster, but it has the opposite effect of stabilizing a universe.
"Devil Qi is very volatile, so Devil Veins work like poison sponges, eradicating much of the illnesses a universe might suffer from its qi. In fact, Devil Qi is one of the branches of qi types that lead to the heat death of universes." Meiying's face suddenly contorted, she was very obviously remembering something that angered her.
"However, even knowing this, those self-righteous bastards of the conventional path pretend as though devil cultivators are evil. Everything in the universe is meant to have a balance. Devil Cultivators are a tonic that strengthens and adds longevity to universes by absorbing its devil qi. But, because we're so scarce now, Devil Veins are even more rare, so the lifespan of universes and quadrants as a whole have shortened.
"Now they're all scrambling, worrying about how the mortal plane could die out in just another few billion years, but weren't they the ones who caused all of this in the first place?" Meiying's chest heaved.
Seemingly realizing she had had a small outburst, her cheeks reddened adorably as she regained her composure.
"Anyway. Devil Veins are extinct. You shouldn't tease me like that." Meiying said with a pout.
"Is that so?" Dyon grinned, taking out the soul tome and flipping to a particular page.
Listening to Meiying's explanation, Dyon had a faint idea why the effects of the Devil Vein he found weren't so exaggerated. It was likely very much connected to the corrosive flame he found at the center of it.
Due to some freak accident, a unique flame ended up being birthed as the core of this Devil Vein. As a result, it became capable of relying on the devil vein to absorb the volatile devil qi toward it, and thus use this devil qi to grow and mutate. Over countless years, this flame gained an unimaginable amount of power. Had it not been for the soul tome, Dyon wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell in capturing it. Instead, he would have died without a corpse.
Meiying's violet eyes widened. She couldn't take her eyes off of the image of wiggling black crystals that seemed to have a life of their own.
"This is crazy…" She muttered. Part of the reason her mother had died was precisely because someone wanted to exploit her Feng Shui abilities to find this very thing floating before her as an image now… Yet here it was within arm's reach…
"Where did you find this?..." Meiying asked softly.
"It was within an ancestor den of demon tigers. The mystical world was an eco-system of its own, so it probably naturally birthed a devil vein to keep itself stable, believing itself to be its own universe."
"It's own eco system… That's probably why… If only we had this back then." She said absentmindedly.
