Way of the Devil

“Bam!”

There was a loud, dull thud despite Lu Sheng’s hands not even connecting with the minotaur’s. Both were forced to retreat.

“Secret Art: Forging Cloud!!” The black Qi surrounding Lu Sheng’s body flashed and exploded into a mass of pale white flames in front of him. Chains made out of runes surrounding the flame shot out at the minotaur.

The deer-antlered minotaur’s right eye flashed red and a raven flew out from it, pecking at Lu Sheng violently.

“Ka-kaw!!”

The raven grew as it flew towards Lu Sheng, its wingspan expanding to seven or eight meters. It almost blocked Lu Sheng’s field of view with black feathers.

The pale white flame collided with the raven in an instant and both exploded into countless pieces of white embers and black mud.

“Die, worm!!” The minotaur took a few steps back to create some distance and clawed at Lu Sheng.

But amidst the mess of white embers and black mud, a shadow shot out in an instant, leaving a straight trail in the air.

“Hiss!!”

The shadow dodged the sharp claws and lightly dipped down, slashing a giant wound on the minotaur’s arm.

“The Coming of Holy Shadow!” The minotaur roared. At the same time, a flood of black mud flowed out of its wound, trying to pull Lu Sheng in as if it had a will of their own.

Simultaneously, all the shadows in the cave seemed to have gained consciousness and surged toward Lu Sheng.

Shadows swirled everywhere around him.

Lu Sheng lowered his arms. Vast amounts of Prime Devil Qi flowed out and formed two giant knives.

“Buzzzzz!”

Many dark-purple Eight-Headed Divine Pearls started to surround the edges of the knives. Lu Sheng simply gave up on dodging and charged toward the antlered minotaur openly.

The knife gleamed for a brief moment.

“Ripppppp!!”

With a crisp sound, a startling tear wound stretching from head to toe appeared on the minotaur’s body.

The dark-red flesh inside the wound started to creep out and quickly flew towards Lu Sheng, once again trying to draw him into the wound.

“Bam!! BAM, BAM, BAM!!”

At the same time, a string of dark-purple flames exploded around the wound, while all the Eight-Headed Divine Pearls blasted open. Fire quickly spread throughout the minotaur’s huge body.

“AGHH!!” It howled in agony, the shadows around it retreating hastily as if they managed to lose their lives once again.

Lu Sheng landed lightly on a rock, raising his head to watch the minotaur scream in agony.

He was going to use his full power to fight this thing that seemed to be quite powerful. But the dark-purple flame that appeared after he threw the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl seemed to be extremely destructive: the fire spread on the minotaur the moment they came in contact with it.

“What kind of fire is this!!?” The minotaur’s entire body was burning. It rolled over and over again on the floor, trying to extinguish the fire, but to no avail.

As time passed, the entire body of the minotaur started melting. Huge pieces of burnt flesh started falling off of it, while its bones and muscles were dissolved into a substance similar to lava and flowed down onto the ground.

Before long, the enormous deer-antlered minotaur dissolved completely, very much contrary to what anyone would’ve thought.

“Ummm….!!?” Lu Sheng was still in his Yin Yang Integration Mode, his two meter tall body standing still like a piece of art: with his slender and balanced frame and mirror-like scales on it. Adding on his long swaying tail, he didn’t look like human at all from a distance away. More like the human form of some devil.

‘Theoretically, the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl is only an extension of my Yin Flame. No matter how powerful it is, it shouldn’t be crazy to the point where it can easily slaughter a monster at a level at least above the third grade. Is it because that wasn’t the sealed devil in the first place, or is it because the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl is way stronger than expected?’ Lu Sheng was quite suspicious.

After the deer-antlered minotaur’s death, a white wooden door of an ordinary size appeared under where its body was.

There was a stairway extending down drawn on it. The painting was so realistic that someone might mistake it for an actual stairway.

Lu Sheng walked in front of the door and pulled slightly. Nothing happened. He tried again, and finally the door opened.

There was a similar huge cavern on the other side.

The only difference being that this cavern was deeper than the last. The wooden door happened to be on top of the cavern.

Lu Sheng looked inside.

There was no visible devil inside the cavern, only a giant altar in the middle. Half of the altar was piled up with raw, unprocessed flesh and blood. Some had been dried, while others had mold growing on them. Some others looked like black, dried jerky.

Strangely, there was also a delicate wood carving of a minotaur with deer antlers in front of the sacrifices.

The brown wood carving had many cracks in it as if it was going to break at any moment.

‘Does that mean… the thing I just encountered was not actually a devil, but only a creature formed out of the contamination of Devil Qi?’ Lu Sheng suddenly understood. He leapt down lightly and landed in the second cavern.

Countless tiny voices started whispering in his ear the moment he entered.

“A Devil’s contamination field…” Lu Sheng even had one of his own: the Snake of Bitterness had this effect. However that was only a secret art that attempted to replicate a Devil’s, and what little contamination field that came with it was nothing compared to the voices whispering in his ear right now.

Lu Sheng landed on the altar and stood before the wood carving, picking it up.

But the wood carving splintered across the ground with a single touch, obviously completely broken.

‘No wonder why that minotaur was so weak. It was just a monster derived from contamination.’

He threw away the carving and instead focused his gaze on the altar.

‘It makes sense to assume, then, that this altar is sealing away the actual devil.’ He noticed the complex rune carving on the edge of the altar.

These runes looked almost exactly like those in the Palace of Secret Arts. Of course, though the style was the same, the complexity displayed here far exceeded those in the Palace of Secret Arts.

If the complexity of the rune in the Palace was 1, then the ones here could’ve been rated at 10 or even 100. The difference was quite obvious.

Lu Sheng circled the altar and promptly found a half-buried stone tablet on the side of the altar.

The tablet was only a ten or so steps away from the altar, with strange curly language on it that seemed to record something. Lu Sheng couldn’t really make out what it described.

But behind the tablet, there was a dense mess of words written in Ancient Song script.

Lu Sheng looked closer. The most obvious lines were bulging slightly to indicate their importance.

‘9th altar of the Mouth of Devil’s Abyss. Sealed within: King Shadow of the Shadow Devil Tribe. Danger Level: C.’

That was the content.

Above that line appeared a similar one.

’10th Altar of the Mouth of Devil’s Abyss. Sealed within: King Dark Cloud of the Moon Devil Tribe. Danger Level: D’

Lu Sheng frowned and kept on reading.

‘8th altar of the Mouth of Devil’s Abyss. Sealed within: Lord of Madness of the Chaos Devil Tribe. Danger Level: B’

‘7th Altar of Devil’s Abyss. Sealed within: Lord of Ice and Sand of the Chaos Devil Tribe. Danger Level: A. Caution is advised.’

Below that were the 6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd altars listed in order, but the words under the 2nd and 1st were heavily blurred. Lu Sheng couldn’t tell if they just didn’t have devils sealed within or because time had worn them away.

‘The names on the upper portion all don’t have “caution” in the description. Seems like the lower you go, the stronger the devil.’ Lu Sheng theorized. After reading everything, he walked around the cavern a few times to find any other clues.

However the evil whispers in the air were making him very anxious and annoyed. Even though his Devil Body was fully completed and even possessed a similar field (and therefore gave him higher resistance), the constant nagging like monks reading scripture in his ear was making him very uncomfortable.

‘Not sure who left these seals. Could it be a Divine Weapon Master from Ancient Song period?’ Lu Sheng returned in front of the altar.

‘Whatever, might as well go back first, then come back and seal this place later so people wouldn’t enter by accident.’

He turned and was about to walk towards the opening.

“Snap…”

Suddenly he heard a small snapping noise.

“What is this..?” Lu Sheng stopped and turned towards the sound.

On a corner of the altar, there was a gap that he didn’t notice before.

It was pitch black inside the gap, and Lu Sheng could see vast amounts of condensed Devil Qi wallowing and rolling. The Devil’s Qi was similar to those found in the Poison Mist River.

‘This is…’ Lu Sheng finally understood where the alluring fragrance was coming from when he was fighting the minotaur.

‘Come… come… You won’t find such pure Devil Essence anywhere else…’ A light and evil voice slowly rung beside Lu Sheng’s ears.

The voice was buried under a countless number of other whispers, not very remarkable. Even Lu Sheng didn’t notice anything wrong.

‘Such pure and dense Devil Qi… absorbing for a day here is equivalent to doing the same for half a month outside!’ A strong desire started to rise in Lu Sheng’s heart as he happened to be lacking a large amount of Devil Qi to alter his Devil Body. Now, seeing the amount of pure Devil Qi inside the gap, he was quite tempted.

Deep within the altar, inside of a pitch-black vacuum, a pale, bloodless face was observing Lu Sheng greedily through the altar.

Luring outsiders in with Devil Qi and tempting them to absorb large amount of it so they could be contaminated, then dissolve and consume them as their body and mind disappeared. This was the strategy that he, King Shadow, used to expand the crack on the altars for all these years.

Lu Sheng stepped closer and sat crossed-legged right in front of the gap.

“Hisss…”

Countless amounts of Devil Qi circled around and were absorbed into Lu Sheng’s nose.

“Huh? Impressive speed; his body seems to be able to handle this rate of absorption… According to his smell… seems to be a pure human.” Inside the altar, the King Shadow was mildly surprised. “Are all the humans’ bodies this strange now? Interesting.”

After half an incense length of time.

Lu Sheng suddenly stopped, cut off his absorption, and stood up.

“What’s he doing? Leaving? That can’t be, my Devil’s Essence possesses a very strong allurement. I can’t sense any reaction in his mind.” The King Shadow was very confused, and decided to continue watching.

He saw Lu Sheng walk next to the gap, and then unexpectedly continued to stick his entire head into it.

Then he opened his mouth.