Way of the Devil

Zhao Ling Mystical Land.

A dozen silhouettes with Hundred-Spirit Qi under their feet moved swiftly, surrounding Lu Sheng and his companion from all sides.

These men all wore white belts on whose right side an embroidered character “Zhang” hung. They were clearly defenders of the Zhao Ling Mystical Land from the Zhang Family.

“Elders, head formation master.” The strongest among them was a whiskered man who had already attained Full-mastery in Hundred-Spirit Qi.

The cultivation of Hundred-Spirit Qi was only categorized into Initiated, Sub-mastery, Full-mastery, Clan Elder level, and Supreme. There were six levels all in all.

This was the standard system followed by the three families, the Lu Family excluded—they did not cultivate Hundred-Spirit Qi. Instead, they were in direct contact with the Spirit Qi beings, the guardian spirits. Hence, they did not follow such a system.

The Spiritual Power of true Spirit Qi was the Lu Family’s basic Initiated level, which was akin to the ultimate level of Hundred-Spirit Qi. If a person could cultivate up to the level of Sub-mastery, it would be just like he was possessing Clan Elder level Hundred-Spirit Qi. When one’s Spirit Qi was lined with gold, which was a sign of increased power, one would have attained the Supreme level.

Before Lu Sheng learned any Spirit Qi cultivation method from Ju Yan, he was already at this level. He had only expended a small amount of Mental Energy to achieve this.

If he had not been skeptical about Ju Yan’s Spirit Qi cultivation method and wanted to let someone else be the lab rat so that he could gather some data, Lu Sheng would have achieved a breakthrough to the so-called Supreme level long ago. He would have been able to enter a higher Spirit Qi level.

Spiritual Essence and Spirit Qi seemed to be closely related as well. The more powerful a person’s Spiritual Essence was, the more powerful his Spirit Qi would be.

Lu Sheng’s Spiritual Essence was already at the golden level. It was scattered all over his body and strengthened his body’s recovery and energy so much that his recovery ability was close to Mortal[1. The one before Bind.] level.

It should be known that even for a person at Mortal tier single Vein, as long as it was an ordinary injury which did not damage his vital points or broke his limbs, he would be able to recover in a couple of hours.

In other words, as long as his vital points were not damaged, Lu Sheng could just let a random person hack away at himself and he would not die. Afflicting him with ordinary puncture and laceration wounds that weren’t too serious was meaningless now. On top of that, he had his Eight-Headed Devil Art.

Even if he allowed a normal person armed with a sharp tool to stab and slash away at himself, it would be meaningless as well. If the person’s force was weak, his skin might not even be damaged.

Naturally, in terms of bodily endurance, his current body could only be regarded as the basic among the basic ones.

Even when he was heavily surrounded at this moment, Lu Sheng’s expression was still calm. He glanced causally at the valley’s landscape all around him.

“Fortunately, Spirit Qi storms only affects an object’s spiritual qualities, otherwise this nice valley would’ve been ruined in an instant,” he spoke in a calm tone. “Tell me, what’s your trial?”

Zhang Mu squinted his eyes, but he sighed with relief in his heart. Truth be told, although they had two Supreme elites here, this young man before him was too terrifying. Since he was able to attain such a height at his young age, Zhang Mu would not want to create any grudges with this young man if there was no dire need. It should be known that casualties would be unavoidable if they resorted to force. If he took this young man’s life by mistake, it might bring a great disaster upon the Zhang Family.

“Elder Zhang Chenshan and I have a trial each. My trial is a question: how many snakedragons are there in Leaving Dragon Lake on a full moon night?” Zhang Mu read out his riddle with a focused mind. It was a question devised by the family head himself. Leaving Dragon Lake was a huge lake located among some mysterious ruins in the Great Xia. Giant snakes with two feet dwelled there, and were known as snakedragons.

These giant snakes were friendly by nature and disliked evil men. On a full moon’s night, they would crawl out of the lake and communicate with good-natured people.

Hence, only good men would know the answer to this question.

Lu Sheng’s expression as calm. “Ten,” he blurted without even thinking.

“Nonsense!” Zhang Chenshan could not refrain from shouting. “There’s always been 21 snakedragons since the ancient times. Where did you produce that fabrication of ten snakedragons?”

“Is that so? If I’m wrong, then I’ll go to Leaving Dragon Lake soon, and make sure that there’s only ten of them left,” Lu Sheng replied calmly. “So, I’m right.”

“You!” Zhang Chenshan was infuriated, and was about to attack him. However, he was immediately held back by Zhang Mu, who was standing beside him.

Zhang Mu drew a deep breath as well. A Supreme-level expert’s power to kill was something ordinary men had trouble imagining. If they wanted to, they could easily trigger the Spiritual Power within ordinary living beings and drive them into chaos, deplete them, or even extract them.

Once a being lost its Spiritual Power, it would lose its spiritual attributes, and would instantly wither and die. Hence, if Lu Sheng really wanted to do as he said, it was highly probable that he would be able to pull it off judging from the look of his immense Spiritual Power waves.

“So, do I pass?” Lu Sheng asked.

In the eyes of ordinary men, Lu Sheng appeared like a terrifying monster in a human hide. He was like a volcano that could erupt at any moment. Nobody knew when he would suddenly explode and threaten their lives.

“If you insist on behaving like this, there’s no reason for us to continue with the trials.” Zhang Zhao drew a deep breath. In a cold voice, he said, “Anyone can act shamelessly.”

“So? What’re you going to do about it?” Lu Sheng regarded these three men with interest. He could see that the three of them were the strongest individuals in this secret land. If he took care of them, it would be equivalent to taking care of the opposing forces on this land.

Zhang Zhao closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.

“Grandfather, I’ll leave this up to the two of you.” He swiftly took one step back. Zhang Mu’s and Zhang Chenshan’s figures suddenly shot out from his sides.

Unlike before, the two of them were now covered in translucent, formless flames. A Spirit Qi Image of an old tortoise appeared behind one of them, and an image of a stag appeared behind the other.

The two of them moved with incredible speed, almost at the level where they were like the sudden peal of thunder, and one would have no time to cover the ears before they arrived. It was clear that they wanted to end this battle as quickly as possible while they caught Lu Sheng off guard.

Their eyes glittered gold. With a dash, they closed the distance and were upon Lu Sheng.

Sharp tearing sounds filled the air as they launched their attacks.

The two of them attacked Lu Sheng’s entire body with lightning speed. Their every move was filled with vast amounts of condensed Hundred-Spirit Qi. If their target was an ordinary living being, their fists needed only brush past, and not necessarily hit it—a glancing blow was sufficient to trigger the living being’s spiritual attribute and cause instant death.

Currently, these two elderly men were attacking with their full strength. Such was their plan. They would not easily resort to force, but once they did, they would end the battle as quickly as possible.

Lu Sheng was like leaves swaying in the storm. He moved with extreme precision so he found gaps in the attacks of the two elderly men and dodged their attacks perfectly.

He even had the time to talk.

“You’re not fast enough! Too slow, too slow, too slow!”

The trio’s silhouettes in midair were reduced to a mass of faint golden shadows now. This mass of shadows quickly flew toward a nearby patch of ground, which happened to be near a cliff.

“Pccht!”

Zhang Mu aimed a palm at Lu Sheng’s neck, but he missed, and his hand stabbed into the rock wall before him. The hard limestone was easily cut through like tofu.

“Bam!”

Zhang Mu flailed his arm, and a horizontal stone pillar a few meters long was lifted out of the rock wall with a crash. Being guided by the powerful force, it spun at a high velocity and flew right at Lu Sheng.

Lu Sheng raised his right hand and landed a fist on it.

“Boom!”

The stone was blasted into large chunks, which scattered far away to lands unknown.

“Again!” Facing such mighty opponents, even Lu Sheng was filled with slight excitement.

Lu Zhong’s body had not been cultivating for a long time. On top of that, he did not have enough Spiritual Power to use his skills. He genuinely could not unleash a move which applied extreme force strengthening like Zhang Mu.

The reason why Lu Sheng was able to crack the huge rock was purely because of his current body’s own strength. After he enhanced his body with Spiritual Essence and trained this body with the Eight-Headed Devil Art’s hard body skill, his strength and defenses were far superior to those of ordinary Arts in this pugilistic world.

However, even with this body’s full strength, he was really pushing it to face two Supreme elites at the same time.

Zhang Mu snorted. He buried his palms into the rock wall repeatedly. Huge slabs of rock were hurled toward Lu Sheng.

On the other hand, Zhang Chenshan smacked the huge rocks with his full strength. Every huge rock that was hit would burn with formless flames. Those were Spirit Fire ignited with Hundred-Spirit Qi. They were formless flames fueled by Spirit Qi.

“Fuuhh!”

His palm strikes had ignited the dozen of huge rocks, and they crashed toward Lu Sheng.

“What fire is this?” Lu Sheng’s curiosity was piqued. If he had not wanted to see more of their skills, he would have retaliated with his full strength and ended the battle a long time ago.

From the beginning until now, he had only used the Spirit Qi of this body and a dozen guardian spirits to fight with these two elderly men.

He had not utilized his own Spiritual Power yet.

Lu Sheng shattered the huge rocks easily. Rock powder scattered in the air after the rocks exploded, and he suddenly felt that something was wrong.

He raised his hands and saw that they were burning with the same formless, transparent flames!

The flames raged. He could feel his own Spiritual Power being quickly exhausted. If his Spiritual Power were completely burned away, it would mean a one-way ticket to the afterlife. This was the law of nature.

Spiritual Power was a special entity that contained life and a part of a being’s spirit.

“This skill’s nice.”

Lu Sheng was not shocked. Instead, he felt happy. He flung his hands sideways at the ground. Balls of flame instantly flew toward a faraway patch of land. When they landed on grass, the grass would quickly turn from an azure green to a withered dark yellow.

“Interesting.”

“Boom!”

Lu Sheng punched the ground. His wild Spiritual Power gushed forth from where the Spirit Fire burned like a high-pressure water cannon. It instantly extinguished all the Spirit Fire around him.

Just like how flames needed oxygen to combust, Spirit Fire needed additional conditions to burn. However, the Spirit Fire did not have the time to burn before being forcibly overwhelmed and extinguished by an overly large supply of Spiritual Power.

The two elderly men’s eyelids jumped at the sight of this.

“Allow me!” Zhang Mu quickly produced a light purple fish-shaped pendant from his pocket and tossed it gently in front of himself.

“Summon, Sword Spirit!”

“Bam!”

The pendant suddenly exploded. It turned into a puff of purple powder which lingered before Zhang Mu.

In seemingly the same instant, sword marks appeared in the air around Lu Sheng.

The air was filled with slashing sounds.

In an instant, hundreds of blades slashed away at where he stood in a frenzy. There was no room for escape.

Lu Sheng’s clothes were immediately torn, and his strong muscles were exposed. The sharp blades cut his body wildly, but they could only leave white marks on his skin.

On some parts of his body, sparks flew. It was obviously the result of intense friction against two hard objects.

“No bad! Not bad at all! This move if nice!” Lu Sheng guffawed. “But, it’s still not enough to defeat me.”

Two streaks of blood started appearing out from Zhang Mu’s nostrils with his attempt to continue this ultimate skill of his. When he saw that Lu Sheng was not affected in the least, the shock he felt was difficult to put into words.

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