Way of the Devil

 “Red Bird Crosses the Sea!” Lu Sheng spun the mill in his hand and slammed it forward like a greatsword.

“Boom!”

The mill flew for a dozen or so meters before landing heavily onto the mud field in the training ground. Mud few everywhere, and the nearest family guard got a faceful of it.

“You see that?” Lu Sheng pulled back his arms, his bell-sized eyes looking back and forth among the family guards.

“Strength depends on muscle, and muscle depends on weight! The more you weigh, the more muscle and blood you have! The more blood you have, the more energetic you are! Everything else would move toward a better direction!

“All you have to do in the future is to try your best to put on weight and increase your workout load. Don’t worry about food, I will make detailed arrangements for that!”

The family guards were silent, followed by a few responses.

“Are you all awake?? ARE YOU!?” Lu Sheng roared so loud everyone’s ears rang.

“Yes… Yes Sir!” the family guards hurriedly replied.

Lu Sheng was finally satisfied, and walked toward his brother and sister after giving a few more orders to the family guards.

“You have the time to come watch me train the guards today? Where is Dad?”

“Dad told me to get you, Brother,” Lu Quan said in a soft voice.

“Oh? Time for new ceremony?” Lu Sheng raised his brows.

“Yes… We had another leak a while back, and the influence of the previous ceremony was almost exhausted.” Lu Quan nodded. Ever since he went through the ceremony and gained the acceptance of one of the Protectors, he had matured quickly.

He was a different person compared to the innocent boy from their first meeting.

Lu Zhenling, who was standing to the side, went through similar changes as well.

“Who’s in charge of the ceremony this time?” Lu Sheng asked again.

“The Second Elder… but I think Dad wants you to observe,” Lu Quan explained.

“No. I don’t have time right now.” Lu Sheng stopped caring when he heard Lu Dangfeng wasn’t in charge. He was too lazy to care about the other second or third or whatever elder.

All he wanted was to take care of Lu Chong’s last wish—to protect Lu Dangfeng, his brother and sister, and the safety of the villa. That was it.

Nothing else concerned him.

“Alright…” Lu Quan noticed a drastic change in his brother. His mild and approachable manner was gone, replaced by one more decisive and serious. Every word he uttered had an unexplainable strength to it.

When he made up his mind, he’d basically never change his decision later.

“I will tell Dad what you said.”

“Mhm. Go now.”

Lu Sheng watched the two of them leave. In his mind, he had made plans and arrangements for the future of the villa. The training of the family guards was only a backup plan.

He was the center of everything.

His current body was extremely powerful and vigorous, almost past the limit of a mortal, all thanks to the influence of his Divine Lord level spirit. Besides, he didn’t only focus on training his body, either, and continued his research of supernatural forces.

Since the various forms of energy derived from the Yang Essence didn’t adapt to the laws of this world, he decided to try several dozens of different ways to cultivate Essence Qi or Inner Qi from scratch.

As expected, success soon came.

In Essence Qi and Inner Qi, the ones belonging to Essence Qi achieved the novice level, which also activated his Deep Blue Cheat Machine.

‘It seems I need to start preparing again… The once-a-year increased seal activity is about to start. If I encounter trouble, I might need to continuously hold ceremonies… ‘ Lu Sheng thought, and looked straight ahead.

‘Deep Blue,’ he called out silently.

A light blue window appeared before him.

The area about Lu Sheng’s power only had one very clear section left for the Infinity Technique. Aside from that, it was a section for Lu Chong’s martial arts.

Lu Chong’s section had two: Upper Forest Sword Forms and Unnamed Essence Qi Technique.

Upper Forest Sword Forms was an intricate sword form passed down in the Lu Family of the Purple Smoke villa since ancient times. Of course, its ‘intricacy’ was relative: to the people of this world, that might be the case, but to Lu Sheng, it was simply an impressive sword form for mortals.

Meanwhile, the Unnamed Essence Qi Technique was Lu Sheng’s biggest achievement in the past year.

After constant experimentation, he finally found a basic technique to gather and cumulate Essence Qi.

And using that as a stepping stone, he started to cultivate rigorously.

But, he didn’t expend too much Mental Energy despite the fact he had 10,000 or so units left. They were the parts he obtained from consuming Divine Weapons that weren’t thrown into the bottomless hole evolving Death Blaze was.

With only his own effort in cultivation, he cultivated this Unnamed Essence Qi Technique to the powerful level where the Essence Qi was dense enough to cover his whole body, and even concentrated a sliver of silver Essence Qi in his heart.

It was called Essential Essence, and was created after condensing vast amounts of Essence Qi.

After condensing this one sliver of Essential Essence, Lu Sheng realized that the laws of this world didn’t allow Essence Qi to take on any other energy form. Even when Essential Essence appeared, it was very hard to control, and his body also showed signs of exploding if he wasn’t careful.

More specifically, it was extremely difficult for the energy and physical things of this world to coexist. It was either something purely physical or pure energy.

It was impressive that he even managed to come up with Essential Essence in the first place.

 ‘Is this how much I can do by myself? This is as far as I got without the Cheat Device… Far from enough to take care of this kharma… As expected, I’m still a long way off from no longer needing to rely on Deep Blue.’ 

After his brother and sister left, he returned to the training grounds, and found a chair to sit in. He appeared to be watching the family guards train, but he was actually thinking about Deep Blue.

‘ It seems the only way to further my progress is to improve this Unnamed Essence Qi Technique. The Upper Forest Sword Form is only a sword form used for purely physical attacks. That would be its peak without inner techniques, limited by its fundamental concept. It could, at best, evolve to a pinnacle of purely physical technique like the Nine Swords of Dugu ¹ . Useless .

 ‘Everything still has to rely on Essential Essence…’

Lu Sheng slowly moved his gaze on to the Unnamed Essense Qi Technique section.

To prevent being limited by its fundamental concept, he only gave this technique the ability to extract and store Essence Qi.

Hence, it would have a high potential for future evolution.

 ‘Begin… Let’s see if I can take care of these sealed evil creatures and Protectors at the same time…’

He pressed the modify button. Deep Blue’s window blurred, then cleared again in an instant.

Lu Sheng looked straight at the Unnamed Essence Qi Technique section, and lightly pressed the evolve button.

“Hiss!”

The window blurred and cleared in an instant for a second time.

Originally, the sections displayed ‘Unnamed Essence Qi Technique: Full Completion tier’. Afterward, one unit of Mental Energy was expended. The Essence Qi technique changed as well. The Essence Qi spread out throughout his body and, through the transformation and sync of Mental Energy, gradually became denser and tighter, exerting even more pressure on the physical body.

After 10 or so breaths, Lu Sheng let out a big sigh of relief, for all of the Essence Qi in his body had turned into the silver Essential Essence.

He looked again at the section in Deep Blue.

“Unknown Essence Qi Technique: Limit tier.”

‘Went from Full Completion tier to Limit tier…. That only took 1 unit of Mental Energy… again! ‘ Lu Sheng wanted to put in even more Mental Energy to evolve, but the moment the thought appeared, he felt a throbbing pain in his body. Apparently, even the previous evolution was too much to bear… He needed to rest a while.

 ‘This world places too much of a limit on supernatural power…’ He sighed in his heart.

 ‘I need to do this gradually… I will take the outer technique and hard body skill road in the future!’ He raised his arm and glanced at the bulging, muscular curves he’d gained in one year.

Since pure forms of energy were suppressed, he might as well take the physical route.

After a detailed recollection of all the physical-body-related outer techniques, Lu Sheng soon locked onto certain parts of the Ultimate Eight-Headed Devil Way. Even without Devil Essence or Devil Qi, he would make considerable progress with the help Essential Essence repairing his body and the precise tampering of his Divine Lord level spirit to refine its results.

After a bit of rest and letting his body adapt to the sudden increase in Essential Essence, Lu Sheng grabbed a steel knife, and tested the change that came with Essential Essence while supervising the family guards’ training.

Soon, he understood the effect of the silver Essential Essence.

High speed regeneration, immense stamina and vigor, shocking immunity. In simpler terms, it made his cell more active and vigorous.

Aside from that, the silver Essential Essence could not be released during fights, and could only serve as a support for his body. That seemed to be the theme of the laws of this world.

By the time he understood all the effects of the Essential Essence, the training of the family guards was also almost finished. Lu Sheng released everyone to rest after a few speeches.

He, on the other hand, went to the Liancao Hall to watch the progress of the ceremony.

Just after he left the training grounds, Lu Sheng heard a booming sound of an explosion in the direction of the Liancan Hall. There was also a faint sound of horrifying screams and enraged roars.

His face sunk, and he walked faster in that direction.

He met several maids and servants running away with nervous expressions, and saw a disgusting scene as soon as he arrived before the Liancao Hall.

The second elder of the villa was charging out of the inner chamber of Liancao Hall, his belly bulging like a pregnant woman’s. Sticky dark yellow liquid with a vile stench flowed out of his mouth as he screamed in pain and stumbled about.

The setup for the ceremony and the floor were ruined by the explosion, and that sticky liquid was everywhere too.

Lu Dangfeng and the other family elders hastily formed hand signs while chanting something.

Soon, the second elder charged forward a few more steps before falling to the ground. His whole body dissolved into the sticky dark yellow liquid, then disappeared into the ground.

“Immediately appease all the servants, Yuncheng! Block the front and back gates of the villa, allow no one to enter or leave. Yunbiao! Make the announcement as we arranged, kill anyone who spreads rumors!” Lu Dangfeng ordered one by one.

After they took care of the second elder, no one was in the mood to continue the ceremony. Everyone left after a hasty conclusion.

Lu Sheng was late, and only saw the end of it. He didn’t bother the extremely tired Lu Dangfeng, and instead asked Lu Zhenling about what had happened.

From his sister Lu Zhenling, he found out that during Second Elder’s ceremony, he encountered an evil spirit that escaped. The Protector he chose was not enough to completely destroy the evil spirit, and he had to bear the leftovers by himself, causing him to die on the spot.