Way of the Devil

“Hiss!”

The block of ice which condensed around Lu Sheng increased in size, while its color darkened, now being somewhere in shades of blue. In the air inside the cave, several blue serpents that could be vaguely seen were attracted to it. They danced slowly around the block of ice.

Lu Sheng felt the changes within himself carefully. Huge amounts of Yin Chill Pure Qi continued to surge wildly into his 99 vortexes. His body grew heavy to the point where he could not even move a muscle. His attempt to break through to the Late-stage Foundation Building tier was a slightly different experience from what he went through before this.

After the 99 vortexes madly absorbed huge amounts of Yin Chill Pure Qi, the middle of his lower dantian released copious amounts of pure cold air silently. A vague small semi-transparent ball was condensed before him.

This little ball had just appeared, and Lu Sheng already felt illusions flickering in front of him. Hints of special aura which Lu Sheng was extremely familiar with suddenly lingered in the air.

In the quiet cave, the eyes of the blue semi-transparent snake-like creatures which were slithering around moments ago turned red at the same time. They unleashed strange screams and pounced toward Lu Sheng in a frenzy.

“Devil Tribulation?” Lu Sheng opened his eyes in shock. The Devil Tribulation was a special tribulation which one would only face after one started to condense a Virtual Core in the Late-stage Foundation Building tier.

It was one of the complications faced by any Foundation Building cultivators. From this moment on, every improvement in tier would result in varying degrees of tribulations.

The serpent-like creatures plunged into the block of ice as if they were illusory images. They instantly dived into Lu Sheng’s body and disappeared.

They had no physical bodies. They were but some Wicked and Devil Intentions that lingered in the world. After the appearance of the Virtual Core which was an extremely pure and a vacuum-like region devoid of thoughts or desires, they were inevitably drawn toward it by nature’s law, and surged into it with the intentions of filling and destroying the Virtual Core.

“Aarrrgghhh!”

“Whoosh! Whoosh!”

Lu Sheng was about to make a move when the semi-transparent serpent-like creatures which had just entered his body shrieked and escaped from his body in all directions. They instantly disappeared without a trace in the blink of an eye.

Lu Sheng’s main body was curled up in his heart. He did not even have the chance to grab some of them to have a taste when this bunch of little serpents fled at lightning speed and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

‘What the… Have they become demons already? I thought these were only Wicked and Devil Intentions that did not have individual intelligence.’ He had just stretched out his claws and was poised for strike. The only thing left for him to do was to exert force.

He understood that he was a Foreign Heavenly Devil. This was genuinely not a misunderstanding, and the original inhabitants of the Worlds did not call him that by chance. He knew from seeing the reactions of the Wicked and Devil Intentions that his identity as a Foreign Heavenly Devil placed him at the top of the food chain.

‘Forget it… At least I’ve completed this Late-stage Foundation Building. I can’t move my body now. After this, I’ll have to form my Virtual Core and gather my mind before reaching the Complete stage. I’ll only be able to condense my Core after that. The tiers after this will undoubtedly involve me condensing the pure Yin Chill Pure Qu with the 99 vortexes and infusing it into my Virtual Core to solidify it. Then, I’ll merge my spirit into it. After my Core Spirit is completed and the foundation lain, I can allow my Virtual Core to come into contact with pure Yang and give rise to the possibility of actually condensing my Inner Core.’ Lu Sheng reviewed his situation. The breakthroughs after this were not difficult. All he had to do was to follow the steps laid out for him.

After consuming another 200 units of Mental Energy, he easily entered the tier of Virtual Core. The steps after this would be gathering his mind and merging his spirit with the Virtual Core. His Divine Lord-level spirit merging into and controlling a tiny Virtual Core was too simple a process for him. He could achieve complete mastery in a few minutes.

In truth, a small Virtual Core such as that could not contain the entirety of his spirit. It managed to contain less than a tenth of it before it overflowed. Its capacity was exceeded.

He had progressed to Complete Foundation Building in one go. Lu Sheng was finally able to move again. His body, mind, and spirit merged into one. Naturally, he could easily control the Yin Chill Pure Qi in his body. The problem whereby his reflexes slowed down due to the cold was easily overcome after he adjusted his blood flow with his spirit.

Then, there was the matter of the Devil Tribulations in the higher tiers. However, after the little serpents were scared away, Lu Sheng met with no Devil Tribulations in his various breakthroughs after that. Instead, he had encountered several instances of Red Lotus Tribulation, City Wind Tribulation, Heavy Water Tribulation, and others. However, for Lu Sheng’s Divine Lord-level spirit, they were child’s play. All he had to do was to casually distort his body’s condition, and he easily duped the lock on mechanisms of these tribulations. He tricked the world into thinking that he had died from the tribulation and had his cultivation base destroyed. Then, he passed the tribulation easily.

Lu Sheng controlled his spirit with high proficiency. He felt that the world here was extremely easy to trick.

After he achieved the breakthrough to Complete, the Pure Qi within his body was like the deep abyssal ocean—its supply was practically endless. The region around his body was even collapsing and distorting peculiarly. It seemed as if there were all kinds of Spiritual Power and other impurities being attracted toward him and covered his skin.

In merely half a minute after he achieved his breakthrough, a thin layer of various impurities, dust, spores, and some unknown insects covered Lu Sheng’s skin. It was a mess.

To avoid these peculiar troubles, Lu Sheng unleashed some vaguely visible Pure Qi which continuously circled him. It isolated him from the mess of impurities which were attracted toward him.

‘I’m done! Next up is to form my Core.’ He got up slowly. The ice around him shattered loudly and scattered all across the floor.

‘Forming a Core isn’t difficult, but I want to improve my Natal Artifact. If I want to fuse it with better materials and increase its might, I must procure some good materials to fuse with it when I form my Core.’

Lu Sheng waved his arm and the cold air inside the cave suddenly shrunk and was sucked into his body. The temperature inside the abode instantly rose and returned to normal.

‘The better the materials I use, the more powerful the Artifact will be. The process of forming a Core is also a process of upgrading an Artifact to an Instrument. Let’s see what I can fuse it with…’ Lu Sheng’s interest was piqued. He reached out and grabbed the silver metal ball, and then walked out of the secluded cultivation cave and went straight to the treasury.

He rummaged the contents of the treasury for a long while. Regretfully, he could not find anything that was worth fusing into his Artifact.

In the eyes of mortals, he was the lofty master of the Wood Martial Abode with wealth that could go against a country’s. In the eyes of cultivators with their Cores, he was only a backward countryman, economically poor and culturally blank. Perhaps the Foundation Building disciples of great sects were richer than he was.

After a long and fruitless search, Lu Sheng went back, disappointed.

‘It seems that I can only try out my idea before this.’ The materials which he wanted to fuse into his Artifact had to be compatible with the properties of his cultivation method.

Moreover, if he wanted to capitalize on the advantage of his overall Pure Qi volume, he needed a great quantity of materials as well. With these requirements, the few clusters of Yin Chill materials the size of his fist in the treasury were not even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth.

‘My current Pure Qi volume is a few hundred times more compared to Mu Yun’s when he was at his Foundation Building tier, maybe even more. The might of the same units of my Pure Qi is even a few times greater than his. If I want to completely unleash the advantage of my Pure Qi, I’ll need more materials. But… With the amount of materials I need, if I require them to be of greater quality, even if I only need hematite, even great sects will be hard-pressed to get it, let alone a mere Wood Martial Abode Master like me. It seems that I can only go in that direction…’

Lu Sheng pondered this and walked out of Wood Martial Abode without noticing it.

The abode faced the ocean. Waves rose and fell on the azure seawater. The sun shone bright in the skies, which were clear for ten thousand miles. The winds were strong.

“Abode Master.” When the children on guard duty saw that he had exited his seclusion, they quickly bowed their heads and greeted him.

“If Iron Hammer and Yun Huan look for me, tell them that I have gone to gather materials. If they have really urgent matters, inform me with a messenger talisman.” Lu Sheng gave simple instructions and ignored the young children. He waved his sleeves softly and leapt, disappearing down the black cliff in the blink of an eye. He plunged into the ocean and vanished from sight.

The two children looked at each other. They did not know what the Abode Master was up to again this time. Could it be to deal with the Mist Clam Clan?

….

Under the faint blue seawater, rays of sunlight penetrated the ocean’s surface and formed golden columns.

A rocking sea surface glittered gold on top of Lu Sheng’s head. Bluish cold air lingered around him. He strolled leisurely toward the deeper regions of the sea as if he was in a courtyard.

The Triad Brilliant Nether Collection had a certain ability to control water. The Pure Qi cultivated according to it could also repel water. As he circulated his Pure Qi, he continually parted the water before him and went deeper.

He could see bright-colored coral reefs that were resplendent with variegated coloration where schools of anchovies swam. Occasionally, some larger-sized sea serpents would appear. However, when they were about a hundred meters from Lu Sheng, they turned around and fled.

The anchovies, on the other hand, were brainless. The did not know what fear was, and dared to linger around Lu Sheng.

Lu Sheng kept walking forward from the shallow regions toward the deeper regions of the ocean.

The Mist Clam Clan lived in the underwater sand layer in the shallow regions, which was right next to the middle-depth regions. They had occupied the most beautiful coral reef, and even built a delicate palace.

Lu Sheng had no intention of drawing the attention of the Mist Clam Clan. Instead, he kept going deeper and deeper.

If it was Taoist Mu Yun from before, the most he could do was dive up to a depth of around 2000 meters. However, Lu Sheng was different. Whether it was his Pure Qi’s quality or volume, they were both greater than Mu Yun’s. Hence, Lu Sheng planned to challenge the deepest depth he could reach.

He quickly found a pitch-black submarine trench and swam downward in a straight line.

With the circulation of his Pure Qi, he dived at a great speed. In less than ten minutes, according to his estimation of his distance to the sea’s surface made with his spirit, he was almost at the depth of 6000 meters.

“Glup.”

A chain of air bubbles was released from Lu Sheng’s body. The Pure Qi barrier which he maintained around his body was currently under great stress.

Fortunately, the rate of consumption was still manageable.

Lu Sheng looked around him and saw nothing but a pitch-black environment. The light that came down from the sea surface was already completely negligible.

He could feel that the temperature here was very cold. Although it was not low enough for ice to form, the bone-chilling cold was already seeping through his Pure Qi protective barrier into his body.

“Although I can still go deeper, there’s no need for that now. Here is enough.” He circulated his Pure Qi and hovered where he was.

All around him was a mass of pitch black and deep silence akin to death.

Lu Sheng slowly spread his arms and the 99 Pure Qi vortexes and his Virtual Core pumped out copious amounts of blue Pure Qi.

His entire person was like a glowing blue light source in the sea.

“Birth of Prime Blood, may all things return to nothing…”

In the darkness, his initially pitch-black eyes gradually lit up with a brilliant and even blinding blue light.

“Assimilate!”

Amid the loud explosion sound, Lu Sheng roared furiously.

“Boom!”

In the blink of eye, countless blue threads shot outward with him as the center in a manner that seemed to cover the heavens and the earth. Among the huge amounts of threads, 99 vortex discs of varying sizes quickly formed. A light blue ice layer that was bordering on white started to form.

All the vortex-shaped ice layer discs formed a huge fierce-looking ice-cold beast around him.

From afar, the entire huge beast was like a mammoth blue serpent that sat up straight.

“Hiss!”

The huge serpent opened its jaws and swallowed seawater like a whale.