Way of the Devil

“There’s no breath…”

Lu Sheng drew a deep breath and took one step backward.

The man seemed to have been pushed backward by his touch, and fell flat on the tiles of the living room with a loud thud.

Lu Sheng was silent. He calmed his emotions down before slowly walking through the door.

The furniture in the house was just as he had remembered it. The only difference was his own corpse on the floor.

“…”

Lu Sheng sat down on the couch. He seemed to have grasped the key point here.

After staring at his own corpse for some time, he suddenly had a thought.

The corpse slowly melted away into the tiles and vanished.

“So, this really is the case…” Lu Sheng stood up and looked out the window.

The residential area was pitch-black. Devil Qi gathered under his feet, and he immediately leapt. He traversed a distance of a dozen meters in the blink of an eye and landed on a random balcony.

“Bang!”

He pushed the doors of the balcony open. He saw two familiar ice-cold corpses on the floor.

He recognized these two. They were the two robbers whom he had killed in the Nine Links City before this. They were the criminals who kidnapped Lu Qingqing.

‘As expected… This is the world of my heart. To put it more precisely, it’s a virtual world that had came into being after the substantial change in my spirit.’ Lu Sheng suddenly understood the mystery of this world.

At the same time, he started to understand the true strength of a Weapon Grandmaster.

He went to the living room and sat on the couch. He fixed his eyes on the two corpses of the robbers on the floor. His mind, however, was already starting his derivations.

‘If this is the method available to a Weapon Grandmaster… Then…’ Lu Sheng suddenly closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he had returned to the Research Temple where he had been cultivating in seclusion.

‘As expected… I can go in and out of the world as I wish.’ He closed his eyes again, and opened them.

He was back in the living room of the residential building.

It was all quiet around him. Not only was there no sound from any living being, there was not even the sound of wind or air flow.

Lu Sheng stood up. With a thought, his body suddenly appeared in another room.

A beautiful pale woman in a white dress was lying in a recliner in the kitchen of this unit.

The woman’s eyes were slightly parted. She seemed to be wearing a faint smile.

Lu Sheng walked up to her and recognized that she was the ghost lady whom he had killed on the red ship.

He reached out to touch her head. As he expected, he found a crack that was created by his blade.

“…it’s just as I thought.”

Lu Sheng pulled his hand back and left the kitchen.

He came into a short passageway when he came out of the kitchen. On the left was the bedroom. On the right was the toilet.

The bathtub in the toilet was filled with water. A little girl with braids was soaking in it, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. It seemed as if she was taking a bath.

The bathroom was extremely cold. Water trickled down the side of the tub.

Lu Sheng stood before the tub and saw the little girl. Her face was filled with sew marks. It was as if her head had been forcibly crushed by someone before this.

Lu Sheng remembered that he had killed this little girl before this as well. This happened back in the Great Song.

“I understand…” He slowly exhaled. He closed his eyes and opened them again. He was back in the Research Temple.

Lu Sheng stood up. He had understood the substantial change of a Weapon Grandmaster after he pushed the door open.

“Deep Blue,” he called out in his mind.

Deep Blue’s interface suddenly appeared.

The first frame clearly stated his current tier.

“Infinity Technique, sixth tier, Backtrace. Backtrace tier first level, Heart. (Special traits. Heart Devil World. Eight-Headed Devil Art. Time Freeze. Powerful Spirit…)”

‘As expected. I’m right. Although I’ve eaten the door, I have achieved the breakthrough. I’m already at the Weapon Grandmaster rank.’

Lu Sheng’s spirit rocked. He started observing his own body. Compared to before his breakthrough, there was no exceptional change.

The only difference was that a symbol in the form of a gray winged serpent appeared in the depths of his spirit.

If he touched this symbol with his consciousness, he would instantly enter the deathly still world.

‘How strange. I can feel the existence of that world, and I know that it’s a unique place that’s somehow created by me. But aside from being able to enter and leave that world at will while possessing the ability to teleport over short distances in it, I can’t control anything within it.’ Lu Sheng started to feel puzzled. ‘Oh, that’s right. I can still control one thing, and that’s my own corpse.

‘This means that although that world appeared because of me, it’s not an illusion conjured up by my spirit. It might really be a physical world that actually exists.

‘So, what’s the use of that physical world after I’ve ranked up to a Weapon Grandmaster?’ He was lost in thought.

He attempted to place the objects around him into that world. However, he failed at every attempt.

Also, he figured out one thing. When he entered the world, he was not in his main body.

‘This is getting more and more interesting…’

Lu Sheng reached out and grabbed a black crystal. After playing with it for a while, he held it between his fingers, let it hover in midair, and loosened his grip.

The black crystal did a freely fell toward the floor.

“Enter.” Lu Sheng suddenly closed his eyes.

The gloomy bathroom appeared before his eyes again. The girl with the cracked skull was still lying in the bathtub. A faint smell of rotting flesh filled the air.

Lu Sheng stepped out of the bathroom. With a thought, his vision blurred, and he found himself in another place.

His surroundings were a flower patch outside the residential building.

The corridor’s shadow completely shrouded this area in darkness. The glow of the faraway streetlight was blocked.

Lu Sheng sat down on the cold stone border of the flower patch and waited silently for the time to pass.

Without him knowing, he had already counted to his 200th heartbeat. He stood up.

With a thought, his vision blurred. He was back in the Research Temple.

“Bam.”

A crisp sound came from beside his feet.

Lu Sheng lowered his head, only to see the black crystal rolling beside his feet.

‘As expected, the time in that world is close to stagnant. Or, maybe I should say that it’s extremely slow…’

Then, Lu Sheng tried several other experiments to try out the various unique traits of that world. He quickly noticed, to his surprise, that even if he used his full strength in that world, he would not even be able to create the slightest vibrations in that space.

In Great Yin, if he activated a formation, or stockpiled his energy without releasing it, he could easily create spatial ripples.

However, in that world, he could not even describe the stability of the space. It was far greater than Great Yin’s.

‘Next, I should try this with a living thing.’ Lu Sheng felt that he was starting to have a vague understanding of a Weapon Grandmaster’s true strength.

He stood up and walked up to the door of the great hall. He knocked on it lightly.

The hall’s door gave dull thuds. Then, it slowly slid to the right.

“Sect Master! You’ve exited your seclusion?!” the guarding disciple exclaimed in surprise.

“Go notify Xu Feila and the others.” Lu Sheng nodded slightly. “I’ll be going out to settle some things first. I’ll be in the vicinity, and will be back after that. If they come looking for me, have them wait in the main hall.”

The disciple hastily nodded, and responded, “Understood!”

Lu Sheng walked out of the door and looked up at the skies. It was noon. Cold rays of the sun managed to penetrate the thick layer of gray clouds.

“Pooh!”

Black gas suddenly gathered under his feet. He was supported by Devil Qi as he quickly flew far away.

He quickly rose higher and higher. The buildings of the Devil Palace retreated quickly all around him. Then, he was above a dried yellow land which was full of cracks. There was no sign of life.

Lu Sheng continued forward at high speed. He quickly spotted a target.

‘People always say that they’ve never seen a Weapon Grandmaster’s moves. Maybe it’s not that they didn’t have the opportunity to see it, but… they can’t see it to begin with.’

Lu Sheng pressed on the Devil Qi cloud and landed softly on a small hill. He looked down at the Demons who were fighting with the Evil Spirits.

These Demons had stag horns on their heads. They were clearly from the nearby Deer Demon Tribe.

However, unlike the other demon tribes, this group of Deer Demons did not seem to be in harmony with their own kind, either. As they fought valiantly with the Evil Spirits, they were also bickering with their own kin.

The Evil Spirits grew in numbers. Although each one was only as powerful as a single vein being, when they increased in numbers, even the Demons were starting to have trouble.

Very quickly, a big and tall Doe Demon at the rear saw that the situation was turning against them. She silently turned around and retreated quickly. She disregarded her own kin, left them to their own devices against the Evil Spirits, and fled on her own.

‘She’ll do.’ Lu Sheng tapped the ground with the tips of his toes and followed this big and tall Doe Demon as he moved like a phantasm.

The Doe Demon did not pick a particular route in her haste. She kept sprinting wildly, and only slowed to a stop when she could no longer see the shadows of the Evil Spirits.

Lu Sheng slowly appeared behind her. In a deep tone, he said, “Giving up on your own companions and dragging out an ignoble existence on your own. Can you really live with yourself like this?”

“Who’s there?!” the Doe Demon screamed in fright. She turned to look at Lu Sheng.

However, what she saw was a scene of pitch-black darkness. She was standing in a pitch-black alley. A dim streetlight stood before her…

The gray winged-serpent pattern shone between Lu Sheng’s brows. However, it had only lasted for an instant. It quickly disappeared.

He looked at the Doe Demon whose eyes had lost all sense of intelligence before himself. He understood what the Heart Devil World mentioned in Deep Blue’s interface meant.

In that very instant when their eyes met, he had pulled this Doe Demon’s consciousness into the deathly still world.

Then, in a few breaths, the Doe Demon stopped breathing. She no longer had a pulse, and no longer showed any signs of life.

‘Did she die in the Heart Devil World after her spirit was extracted?’ Lu Sheng frowned. He had followed the Doe Demon into that world as well in that instant.

In the Heart Devil World, he saw the Doe Demon frantically looking for a way out—to no avail. Then, after running around for slightly more than an hour, the Doe Demon’s spirit suddenly staggered and fell to the ground. She slowly lost her consciousness.

‘So, the Heart Devil World has the ability to suck out vitality…’ Lu Sheng looked at the Doe Demon’s corpse before himself. He seemed to have understood something in his heart.

He left the place and continued to search for other prey.

In about two hours, he had made a dozen attempts with Evil Spirits and humans of different cultivation bases.

He di1scovered that when an hour passed in the Heart Devil World during which time vitality was drained, it was only equivalent to three breaths in the outside world. This was fixed.

In other words, the depth of his target’s cultivation base would not affect the time it took to kill them. Naturally, the most powerful of his test subjects were only at the Earth Prime rank. He would need to verify this finding further.

Also, Lu Sheng noticed that although he was capable of entering and exiting the Heart Devil World at will, he could not kill anything within it.

He could only allow the Heart Devil World to drain the living beings’ vitality of its own accord.

However, although he could not kill anything within the Heart Devil World, he was perfectly capable of killing his opponent’s physical body in Great Yin after pulling them into the Heart Devil World.

This way, he could establish the fact that his opponent died.