Way of the Devil

“Using a live bait?”

“Ka-cha.”

Razor-sharp blades ejected out of Chao Long’s arms like machinery. Under the moonlight, they reflected a cold, cruel glint.

“Swish!”

The two of them moved lightning quick at the same exact instant.

Saber and arms drew arcs of black light in the air as they crossed paths with each other.

“Ultimate Crimson—Divine Might!!”

With a flip of his saber, Lu Sheng brought it down in a cleaving movement towards Chao Long’s head. A crimson glow radiated off his saber blade, turning into a large dense crimson saber web in the blink of an eye, enveloping the entire courtyard and coming down on Chao Long.

“There’s no need for us to fight each other. This is meaningless.”

Chao Long rapidly retreated, leaping clear of the range of Lu Sheng’s saber. Even then, however, a corner of his robe had been caught by the crimson glow, instantly lighting up into a small ball of flame.

He pinched the flame to extinguish it. The smoke blew past his face and was dispersed by the wind.

“What’s your motive?” Lu Sheng kept his saber and stood silently in the courtyard, as if that saber stroke had not come from him.

Even in his present Yin Extreme Mode—his weakest state—any random strike could attain the might of his full strength in the past.

“Motive?” Chao Long looked in surprise.

Moonlight spilled down through the parting clouds, illuminating his face. He looked like a muscular man with a wooden expression.

One could not tell his age, but that did not stop one from noticing the strapping muscles bulging out all over his body, near the point of bursting. His nearly two-meter-tall stature was accompanied by steel-like muscles. A Y-shaped symbol spread across his scalp in the middle of his short gray hair.

“Since you already know about the Anomaly here, you should know the rules of Three Sacred Gates. The passageway this time belongs to us, Wandering Heart Society,” Chao Long growled.

“Passageway?” Lu Sheng was stumped, completely ignorant of what he was talking about.

“Oh, I see…” Suddenly, Chao Long seemed to have recalled a certain something and realization dawned on his face. “No wonder he said that then. So this is the moment he wanted us to make a promise about…”

Instantly, he looked at Lu Sheng in a different light. A colder one.

“Pardon me for asking.”

Lu Sheng eyes narrowed. “What is it you wish to ask?”

Slowly, Chao Long took two steps forward.

“A Three Sacred Mirror once appeared in this place. Were you the one who shattered it?”

Lu Sheng’s eyes widened. Immediately, he thought of that copper mirror he had obtained from Tea Sect.

From the looks of his expression, Chao Long got the confirmation he sought.

“Looks like it was you. Three Sacred Gates planted the location here again for a reason indeed.”

“The passageway is mine. If you want to fight me for it, I’ll just have to get rid of you first…” The spikes on his arms suddenly protruded sharply, elongating till they reached his ankles.

Just then, Dong Qi fled and stumbled out of the room and was overjoyed to see Lu Sheng and Chao Long. She dashed towards them madly.

“SAVE ME SECT MASTER!!” she screamed.

Behind her in the house, the dual images of Unlaughing Master fused and merged together, becoming one again. Placidly, he charged towards the door.

Without so much as a look, Lu Sheng did a backflip and delivered a slash towards Unlaughing Master.

“It’s mine! THE PASSAGEWAY IS MINE!!” Chao Long roared.

His feet pushed off the ground and a ball of white fog exploded behind him. Like teleportation, he appeared in front of Unlaughing Master and clawed downwards with the sharp blade on his right arm.

“BAM!!”

At the same time, both of them kicked hard at each other in midair.

Their feet struck each other squarely, causing a cloud of white dust to erupt between them. The massive impact sent both of them flying to the left and right.

“I’ve got no intention of seizing that passageway away from you!” Lu Sheng said incredulously. He had thought that Chao Long was the one behind it all. But now it seemed that it had been Three Sacred Gates all along.

“Then move aside! After I dispatch the Unlaughing Anomaly, I’ll compensate you,” Chao Long said coldly.

“Help yourself, I won’t make a single move!” Lu Sheng took two steps back. Judging from the other party’s reaction, he realized that there must have been some misunderstanding between them.

“You serious?” Chao Long’s eyes narrowed.

“Of course.” Lu Sheng took two steps back and shielded Dong Qi behind him.

Chao Long gazed at him intently, then walked slowly towards Unlaughing Master.

“Hoo!!”

Without warning, Chao Long disappeared as the spot on the ground where he had been standing on collapsed. He appeared in a split second beside Lu Sheng.

“But I think that it’s safer to get rid of you first before collecting my passageway!!”

“CLANG!!”

Saber and arm struck against each other, resulting in a deafening clang.

‘It’s that bizarre stealthy movement technique again!’ Lu Sheng almost did not react in time. But in the nick of time, he blocked the other party’s penetrating stab at the last moment with his saber mixed with blood web.

The way Wandering Heart Society had contacted him previously had completely escaped his detection. And now this Chao Long could use a similar movement technique as well.

Chao Long’s arms spun like a top at high speed. Like a tornado, the blades on his arms delivered dozens of slashes in a second. The torrent of slashes landed on Lu Sheng’s blocking saber.

The two of them moved at blinding speed, with one party attacking and the other on the defence. With a bang, they smashed into the wall of the adjoining courtyard.

A gaping hall was smashed through the wall, revealing the garden behind it with artificial mountains and pavilions in it.

“Boom!!”

In that instant, a loud bang reverberated in the courtyard. Chao Long, who had just thrown Lu Sheng outside, once again flew in the opposite direction at an even more terrifying speed. He landed on the ground with a loud ‘BAM’ as he stomped on the ground, causing a thunderous boom to ring out across the entire courtyard.

“Get rid of me? Just you??” A flash of black shadow gradually floated out from the cloud of swirling dust caused by the smashed wall.

Shockingly, it was Lu Sheng, who had just been beaten out of the courtyard.

His present physique began to slowly distort and swell, as if something had been released in his originally delicate and weak body. His muscles, bones, and skin all began to swell intensely, turning both black and hard at the same time.

A massive amount of flesh piled and bulged out of him, packing into his entire upper body such that it continued to expand. Two enormous mounds of flesh even grew out on his back.

In an instant, both his temples suddenly protruded and bulged outwards like two uneven cow horns. The muscles on his back inflated as a row of black flesh rose from his back, forming spikes that jutted outwards.

His physique also ballooned from his ordinary self to grow and expand, larger and higher, until he was five meters tall in the blink of an eye.

“SWISH!”

The corners of Lu Sheng’s lips cracked open to reveal his sharp, glistening teeth within. The two rows of sharp teeth, packed tightly together, no longer looked like those of a human; instead, it seemed like those of a ferocious, carnivorous beast.

“Come on. Let me see just how you intend to get rid of me!?”

“BAM!” The entire courtyard seemed to tremble as he stepped outwards and stomped his giant foot on the courtyard.

“HOO!”

Suddenly, a flash of black shadow shot towards him from the side; surprisingly, it was the Unlaughing Master. His face was expressionless as one of his claws aimed for Lu Sheng’s back.

“Scram!!” Lu Sheng’s hand, the size of a fan, smacked into the Unlaughing Master and threw him into the distance. Without missing a beat, his giant frame burst towards Chao Long.

“COME ON, weren’t you about to get rid of me??!”

“BOOOM!!”

His fist pounded the spot on the ground that Chao Long was on.

The surface of the earth exploded into cracks as a large amount of mud and pebbles flew into the sky. A pit lay where the ground had been. Unexpectedly, Chao Long had disappeared and resurfaced behind Lu Sheng, just like teleportation.

“Heart Penetration!!” he uttered a low grumble. He put his palms together, aimed his blades straight at the center of Lu Sheng’s back, and thrust forward suddenly.

Unfortunately for him, the present-day Lu Sheng was already at the level of Five-Vein even in his weakest form. This meant that with his bodily transformation, his power was even more frightening—he had directly broken into the Snake realm.

Unlike the balance of Yin Yang fusion, the greatest advantage of this bodily transformation lay not in its speed, its reaction, nor its explosive power, but in its defense and raw strength.

“Thud.”

Chao Long’s face was dumbstruck with horror as he realized that all his hands had managed to do was to pierced a wee bit into the opponent’s skin, as if he had stabbed into wood.

“Fool!”

With an abrupt turn of his massive frame, Lu Sheng’s struck with the back of his elbow.

“BOOM!!”

The gigantic elbow, as thick as Chao Long’s waist, slammed into him, causing his body to jackknife under the smash.

Terrifying might exploded in mid-air in a resounding boom, dispersing waves of dust and ash like ripples.

In the blink of an eye, Chao Long had been smashed into the ground. A loud explosion rang out as the ground collapsed into a huge pit several meters wide.

“This is how you intend to get rid of me? Chao Long of Wandering Heart Society?” Lu Sheng walked to the edge of the pit and stared down into it. “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have used this mode. It’s really too ugly. Unfortunately… you left me with no choice.”

Lu Sheng reached with his hand into the pit and groped around. Before long, he fished out a body that was damaged beyond repair.

It was none other than Chao Long, who had fainted from the impact just moments before.

“Compared to the other Wandering Heart Society Deputy Leader, Chao Hu, you are such a disappointment.” Lu Sheng recalled that single-eyed titan Chao Hu, who had been able to battle Hong Fangbai at the peak of her power. And yet, this one before him was merely at the pinnacle of Seven-Vein and had not even broken into the Snake Realm.

“Just what should I do with you?” Lu Sheng lifted Chao Long’s body up in mid-air in front of him. Next to Lu Sheng’s hulking physique, Chao Long’s nearly-two-meters-tall body was like an infant.

“Cicada Moult!”

Out of the blue, Chao Long’s body trembled and suddenly moulted a layer of skin in a sliding sound. A smaller version of Chao Long slid out from Lu Sheng’s grasp and landed on the ground.

With a swish, countless thin blades ejected out of his arms like cicada wings. Translucent and densely packed, the blades glinted like crystal.

Chao Long’s face distorted into a hideous, savage blackness, like that of a worm. His mouth in particular had turned into a thin, long black spike which extended to his abdomen.

“I had intended to reserve my strength to deal with what’s inside that passageway. But now it looks like I can’t…” Chao Long extended his arms. A faint green hue lit up in his eyes.

“Cicada-Winged Flying Dragon—Nine Heavens!!”

“SWISH!!”

A streak of green glow flashed across Lu Sheng’s chest like lightning.

“BOOM! BOOM BOOM BOOM!!”

Lu Sheng’s hulking frame was forced several steps backwards by the massive explosions which erupted on his chest. A shallow cut was left on the black skin on his chest.

While he had not been hurt deeply, he had been thrown off balance by the massive impact.

“HAHAHA!! Interesting! INTERESTING!!” Lu Sheng laughed madly. All around him, scorching blood web began contracting in a frenzy, condensing into a layer on his skin and forming a faint, translucent red membrane.

“COME ON! KILL ME! If you can!!” Without warning, his giant hand grabbed at the green glow hurtling towards him.

“SWISH!”

Another green glow streaked towards him. Lu Sheng’s hand missed; the price was an additional wound on his arm.

Strangely, however, the earlier wound on his chest had almost completely healed.

Dark red and golden sparks burst out of the last wound on his arm. Not only were the sparks caused by the massive friction produced at high speed, they were also caused by the scorch of Lu Sheng’s blood web, supplemented by Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi’s automatic anti-tremor effect.