Chapter 1428 - 676: Demon

Chapter 1428: Chapter 676: Demon

"That’s right, I’m one of the very first Demon Fetuses born of heaven and earth. I was summoned by humanity’s madness, sacrificed with humanity’s flesh and blood, condensed from humanity’s resentful souls, born from humanity’s remains. From the moment I came into this world, I was meant to be the embodiment of Demon Consciousness that should annihilate humankind. To spell it out a bit more clearly: I am the Demon of Taixu Heaven, destined to be rejected by the Tai Chi Heavenly Dao."

Black didn’t even deny White’s accusation. As he spoke, he turned to glance at the gate of the Taoist Do.

"Originally it should’ve been like that. But Emei took me in as a disciple."

Tie Dan slurped his tea. "Emei? Oh, those three outside? They’re your parallel masters too?"

Black nodded.

"Back then, the masters didn’t know about Demon Consciousness, didn’t know the sky had already changed. They just thought I was a premature orphan persecuted by the Demon Sect, merely tainted by Magic, born a bit ugly and twisted.

So they just followed the usual rule of saving the dying and helping the wounded, took me under Emei’s roof, taught me how to be a person, passed me the Righteous Path, gave me their lineage, willing to give me a chance to convert to the Righteous Path, willing to accept me as one of Emei’s own.

A Demon Fetus is still a fetus. Once it’s born, somebody has to teach it. I was raised by humans, so of course I wanted to be human. It’s just that in the end, I am a Demon, the embodiment of Demon Consciousness in the Mortal World. And as long as it’s a human, somewhere deep in their subconscious they’ll sense that Demon is the end of humanity. So out of instinctive self-preservation, they’ll develop hatred and a killing urge toward a Demon Fetus...

Anyway, I had no fate to formally enter Emei’s ranks, then I went through Soldier Disintegration and reincarnated once more. But by a twist of fate, I still ran into a band of righteous men, met a lot of good people. Everyone was willing to accept me, give me a chance to start over.

So when I attained the Dao, I also made up my mind: I’d help humanity find a way to survive, give humanity a chance, give humanity a future where it can still find a place to exist."

White snorted.

"So you actually picked up Qiao’s pretentious-ass script."

Black shot back,

"Better than you grabbing Mi’s dumb-ass script."

White,

"Ah, fuck the shit outta you!"

But Tie Dan got it.

"No wonder you two start bickering the moment you meet. One Tai Chi Taoist, one Taixu Taoist—like hell you’d ever get along. All right, all right, talk business."

So Black brought out the second piece of business.

"This time I descended ahead of schedule precisely to give humanity enough time in the Mortal World to undergo completion and evolution.

Isn’t there that old saying about man triumphing over Heaven? During the process of human evolution from apes, there were also drastic environmental shifts where many branch subspecies went extinct. But as long as a single breath remained, there was always a chance to be reborn from the ashes. So as long as we can survive, there will always be hope in the future.

So taking ten thousand steps back, as long as we base it on the principles of Sha, carry out targeted evolution and completion, tune for matching adaptability and resistance—even if we’re naturally hated by the Heavenly Dao—so long as we don’t get directly purged and annihilated by the fleets, there will always be a chance to cling on like cockroaches and rats, endure through a Desolate Land where Heaven severs and earth is Destroyed, and scrape by as lucky survivors from the ruins of Sha.

Besides, Refining isn’t inherently beneficial to the human body; it was humanity that discovered the methods to apply Refining. And Sha isn’t truly toxic to the human body either. It’s just that in the previous natural environment, this substance didn’t exist, so human organs can’t metabolize it properly.

So once we suddenly lose all life-support means from both science and Cultivation Technology, and don’t have enough time to evolve naturally, nature gets crushed in fierce competition. Survival of the fittest—humans are filtered out and eliminated by nature."

At this point Black paused, and pointed toward Chi Yang at the entrance, who had already passed out from listening to the Heavenly Book—eyes rolled back, foaming at the mouth, limbs splayed on the floor—and nobody cared.

"But then again, looked at from this angle, demons ought to be the same: born from an environment of Refining, unable to metabolize Sha. Yet from what I observed in my era, demons actually adapted to Sha and to Taixu’s timing earlier than humans.

Maybe part of it is Demon Consciousness’ protection, using demons to wipe out humans. But I think it’s still because the demons of the Taiji Realm are essentially Artifacts the corporation uses to cooperate with the storyline and weapons tests. They’re wetware for unlocking the evolution lock, weapon-grade Chimeras. They were never reproducing via natural breeding, but constantly iterated, updated, and improved by the corporation’s systems.

So in the thousand-year war of Xuan Demon to come, there have already been many generations of demons, subjected to fierce selection and updating, going through many rounds of Destruction and evolution. Finally, one or two mutated special breeds managed to keep up with Taixu Heaven’s version updates, cash in on Sha’s benefits, and happened to catch the window when humans self-destructed and self-erased. That’s how they broke loose, unstoppable, and rapidly seized the top of the food chain.

So the simplest survival route for humanity is hybridization.

First we teach demons the Magic of the Mystic Sect, so a batch of demons can transform into humans. Then we use the Carefree Method to guide racial fusion, bringing forth human-demon hybrids. After fifteen hundred years and more than twenty generations of selection, we finally unlock the Genetic Lock, realize the transformation into Demons, follow Heavenly Destiny, and join the glorious evolution."

White sucked in a sharp breath.

"Holy fucking shit! If you run it like that, I’m afraid the genetic drift’ll be so bad even reproduction’s gonna be fucking isolated! Can you still even call that the same species as humans?"

Black chuckled.

"Isn’t the current split between immortal and mortal already reproductive isolation? Are the Children of the Stars and the corporation’s draft animals still ’one species’?

Oh right, this line of work isn’t called draft animals anymore, is it? If I remember correctly, the term now is ’maggots’, isn’t it."