Sage Monarch

A horde of devils was powering a devil formation of immense size and intensity. The formation's eye was the sheepskin scroll, and as they poured devil vitality into it, the formation took shape. A short time later, it was fully activated, and boundless devil light shone from it to cover Yang Qi, who was seated in the middle.

He had already steadied his energy flows and was ready when the devil vitality poured into him. Normally speaking, the devil vitality from so many different top experts, being so mixed and varied, would have instantly devilized any human. Either that, or killed them. But having been converted by the formation and the sheepskin scroll, it became gentle and mild, and actually conformed to new, unique characteristics.

"Hurry and begin forming your Unspoiled Body," the mahātmā said. "Adjust your energy to its optimal state and do not resist in any way, lest you be destroyed, understand? Remember, don't use any energy arts while the devil vitality is activating the Unspoiled Body. This energy art is one of true devils, and is beyond anything ordinary in nature. Compared to it, other energy arts are empty and absurd. The most important thing to focus on is pushing your will to the Terrifying level. After that, things should go smoothly. Got it?"

In response, Yang Qi summoned a vortex in his sea of energy, which led to the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart. Into it, he threw the Strength of the Hell-Crushing Godmammoth, the Seventy-Two Monarchs Energy Art, the Martial-God Hegemon-King Heaven-Propping Pillar, and everything else from his collection.

Soon, he was like an empty husk, void of any energy arts whatsoever. The only things left behind were his fleshly body and near-Terrifying will.

The devil vitality could now flow through him without facing any obstacles.

'Such incredible devil vitality!' he thought. Preparing his meridians, he opened his mind and unleashed the myriad tribulation characters inside of it.

BOOM!

The first to fly out was the very first character to appear on the sheepskin scroll, that of 'flame'. Of course, it didn't represent ordinary flame, but rather the most ultimate of flame tribulations.

As soon as it appeared, Yang Qi felt like he was engulfed by flame. That single character contained all sorts of flames. The flame of desire, the flame of truth, the flame of cultivation, the flame of gods.... A huge variety of fiery tribulations filled him. And if he had possessed any energy arts in that moment, they would have all been burned away.

He quickly took control of the devil vitality within him and sent it into the flame tribulation. The devil vitality burned, but slowly transformed into the ultimate meaning of scorching fire, and the character for fire was imprinted onto his heart.

That flame character was the first level of the True-Devil Unspoiled-by-Myriad-Kalpas-and-Tribulations Body, and it was something mysterious and profound. Upon assimilating it, Yang Qi could command the fires of millions upon millions of tribulations, and would be like a god of flame descended upon the world.

Seeing what Yang Qi had accomplished, the mahātmā said, "Well done. I never would've guessed that you could succeed with the first character so quickly. Remember, there are over ten thousand characters in the True-Devil Unspoiled-by-Myriad-Kalpas-and-Tribulations Body, and each one is a tribulation that contains a myriad of subsidiary tribulations. With our help, you should be able to finish the first verse of the scroll, which contains sixteen characters. Let's get to it!"

'This is more difficult than I'd imagined,' Yang Qi thought. With the help of the devil vitality, he had cultivated the first character, the flame tribulation. Even just that had come with spectacular results. In fact, he could now tell that it was stronger than the one third of the Strength of the Hell-Crushing Godmammoth that he had. After all, thanks to the sheepskin scroll, he was dealing with the full cultivation method of this True-Devil Unspoiled-by-Myriad-Kalpas-and-Tribulations Body.

Without the scroll, Yang Qi was certain that he could never cultivate this technique without dying in the process.

'This mahātmā is really playing games, isn't he?' Yang Qi thought. 'Well, it's not like I'm easily taken advantage of!' He knew that getting his hands on the sheepskin scroll was an absolute necessity, and was already coming up with a plan to do so.

After succeeding with the flame character, he proceeded on to the second character, which was 'doom'. It was the same 'doom' from the word 'doomsday', and contained countless tribulations of doom. Almost immediately, he was filled with such intense rumbling sounds that he instinctively wanted to abandon this session of cultivation. It felt like his skin was pulsing, and his meridians were about to experience the destruction of doomsday. The pain was almost unbearable.

But Yang Qi was not the type of person who gave up easily. He had immense willpower, and had experienced all sorts of deadly situations in life.

He sent the devil vitality slamming into the doom tribulation, and tribulations like that from the end of the world surged within Yang Qi as they clashed. They formed concentric circles which rapidly rotated, then eventually headed toward his left hand.

He extended his hand and the concentric circles began shrinking, eventually settling onto his ring finger in the form of a ring.

As of this moment, the ring finger of his left hand represented the tribulations of doomsday.

Next came the third character, whereupon Yang Qi sensed a major decline in the devil vitality pouring into him from the formation.

Looking over, he saw that some of the weaker fiend-devils were trembling, and their faces were ashen. Some began crying out in loud voices.

"Mahātmā, our energy arts and quintessence vitality are running out! Please, dispel the formation before we're completely drained!"

"Once the spell formation is activated, there's no reason to stop it!" the mahātmā replied coldly. "As hell-born fiend-devils, you should understand what it means to sacrifice yourself to the True Devil...."

"Aaaiiiieee!"

One of the fiend-devils with a power index of two thousand screamed as he transformed into a skeleton, which subsequently clattered to the ground.

The other fiend-devils were visibly shocked as they realized that they had been fooled by the mahātmā. Now that they were part of the formation, they were stuck, and were slowly being drained of power by the sheepskin scroll.

These fiend-devils were all important people on the Ancient Road to the Gods, each of them invincible in their own right, and wielders of immensely powerful energy arts. But now they were being sacrificed by the profoundly sinister mahātmā fiend-devil.

One of the fiend-devils suddenly howled in rage and tried to attack the formation itself, but as soon as he did, devil light shot out from the sheepskin scroll and enveloped him. An agonized shriek rang out, and a moment later he was nothing but a skeleton.

Another of the fiend-devils contemptuously spat. "I thought you people from the Hell of Sages and Mahātmās were wise and virtuous! You're supposed to be sages and mahātmās among fiend-devils! How could you possibly come up with a scheme as vicious as this? You're really going to sacrifice us?"

"You'll eventually die a horrible death, Mahātmā!"

"I admired you, Mahātmā, and was always there at your every beck and call. I was your most loyal servant and believer! Please, spare me!"

"Mahātmā, you know who my backer is! I'm from the Extreme Dao Devil Sect!"

Some of the fiend-devils were weeping, some were shouting threats, some were cursing, and some were begging. But none of it did any good. The mahātmā completely ignored them and focused on the operation of the spell formation. Slowly but surely, more of the surrounding fiend-devils crumbled into ash, their devil vitality flowing directly into Yang Qi, who continued to face the waves of tribulation.

Each new character that Yang Qi assimilated required even more devil vitality. And when he realized that the devil vitality was coming from the dying fiend-devils, he was struck with how merciless the mahātmā was. Although fiend-devils in general were usually merciless, this mahātmā was really pushing things to a higher level. Although he seemed dignified and honorable, he was really the most vicious and cruel kind of creature imaginable.

That begged the question of what other vicious tactics he might try using on Yang Qi.

In fact, Yang Qi's first guess was that the plan was to use him as a cultivation furnace. The mahātmā couldn't personally cultivate the True-Devil Unspoiled-by-Myriad-Kalpas-and-Tribulations Body, so he hoped to have Yang Qi cultivate it, then steal it from him.

Sadly for him, Yang Qi would ensure that he tried to steal a chicken only to end up losing the rice he used to lure it.

"Aaagghhh!"

More screams rang out as fiend-devils continued collapsing into dust. Each of these creatures was powerful enough to found a sect as strong as the Profound Killing Dao Sect or the Profound House of Battle Energy. But now they were dropping like flies, with even their nascent divinities being wiped out.

At this point, the mahātmā's expression flickered, and he said, "Hurry up and cultivate the next character, boy. Once you finish with the first line, you'll be vastly stronger, and will be able to keep Lord Blood River in check. Understand?"

Declining to comment, Yang Qi continued with his cultivation. He had just come to realize that some strange fluctuations were emanating from the sealing mark beneath him, fluctuations that contained traces of blood energy.

1. It's not really relevant to the plot because (spoilers) the "Extreme Dao Devil Sect" is never mentioned again. However, I did spend some time researching this, and the "Extreme Dao" is a real-life term from Daoism. There really are said to be 3,000 Daos in Daoism, but the "Extreme Dao" is one of abandoning all other Daos and choosing one specific Dao to follow. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen this term come up before in the other series I've translated.