Novel Full Chapter 48—Grey-Black Energy Core
Chapter 48: Chapter 48—Grey-Black Energy Core
Chapter 48—Grey-Black Energy Core
Lei Cheng smiled and muttered, "Life Intent."
Green vines erupted from the Inner Demon’s sides—large, thick, spanning several meters—and wrapped around the duplicate in a barrier formation, closing without any gap.
Then he detonated with a snap. "Life Explosion."
Dense green energy flooded the enclosed space, pressing inward from every angle. The barrier hummed and shook.
’Let’s see if an Inner Demon can simply be beaten down.’ Lei Cheng mused. ’Yue never mentioned this method for taking it down.’
The sounds from inside the barrier grew loud, then went silent. For a brief moment, he genuinely thought brute force might be enough.
Thud! Thud! Then the barrier cracked. Then it shattered and disappeared like sparks.
The duplicate stepped through the fragments, his hand glowing with soft green light.
"Life Intent, huh." Lei Cheng said quietly.
The duplicate spread his arms. "Why are you doing all this? I possess everything you have—and I can use it better."
He raised his palm.
Vines erupted again—but this time they were the duplicate’s vines, wrapping entirely around Lei Cheng from every side. Not a single crack of light remained. Air, light, sound—all shut out completely.
Lei Cheng stood in total darkness, his hand glowing green to illuminate the space around him.
Splash!
A small vine came from behind, moving fast and precisely.
The moment he heard it, Lei Cheng flooded his body in small vines as armor.
But it was not enough.
The strike broke through and landed across his back. A long red mark split the skin, bleeding, his robe tore open along the line of impact. He winced, clenched his teeth. "Damn."
"Heal." Life Intent surged through the injury, closing it.
He exploded all his life intent outward at once—a shockwave spread. Whoosh! Bang!The barrier cracked from within and fell apart like scattered sparks.
"We are equal," the duplicate said plainly, from several meters back. "I have just a slight advantage. We could keep fighting for as long as your actual body lasts—which is finite."
Lei Cheng said nothing. He stood and looked at the duplicate in silence.
The duplicate rubbed his forehead. His expression was almost exasperated.
"Don’t you want to stay alive? Don’t you want to avenge your parents?" He let the words sit. "Remember the rich brat who killed you."
"I will handle my revenge myself," Lei Cheng said. Borrowing someone else’s strength was never revenge. It was a surrender.
Purple-gold flames ignited across his body.
He lunged.
His fist connected with the duplicate’s nose. The crack of impact sent the duplicate flying several meters backward. He hit the water floor on his back.
Boom!
The duplicate stood, pressing a hand over his nose, which had cracked from the blow, his palm filled with blood.
"Stop wasting Illusion Intent," Lei Cheng said flatly. "It won’t work on me."
The duplicate grinned. His nose straightened back to normal.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Ten duplicates materialized in a ring around Lei Cheng, each one identical.
"Your Illusion Intent is the same as mine," Lei Cheng said, turning in a slow circle. "I can sense the truth immediately." He glared at the duplicate slightly left of center.
The duplicate snapped his fingers. All ten fakes vanished.
"Did you forget the cold bodies of your parents?" the Inner Demon called across the space, its voice shifting into something sharper, chilly. "Remember the sensation of holding their bodies. Remember your powerlessness, unable—"
"Stop." Lei Cheng raised his hand. "Why are you pulling from my previous life on Earth? I have been in this world for eighteen years. My soul and my transmigrated soul are fused—I am one person. If you want something to use against me, try this life."
The duplicate rubbed his temples. "Fine. In this life... What do you regret? What is unresolved?"
Silence.
Lei Cheng actually thought about it.
He had been talentless in this body, a dandy who spent his days at the Crimson Butterfly Pavilion. But that had changed—changed the moment he woke up, and kept changing since. He was now the strongest person in Azure Cloud City. He had created a new cultivation path that the ancient supreme beings had failed to forge. The behavior of a dandy had ceased the day he regained himself.
There was nothing to pull on.
The duplicate ran a hand through his hair in visible frustration.
"Aren’t you tired?" he tried instead, waving a palm. "Just dealing with everything—don’t you want—"
Two silhouettes began to form.
"Don’t you dare," Lei Cheng said, his voice dropping very low.
The silhouettes had taken the shape of his parents, roughly.
He waved his hand instantly, wiping the images out before they could completely.
"Don’t dare create my parents’ illusions." He roared.
They deserved to remain memories, not weapons to be used against him.
"Yes," the duplicate said, his expression brightening. "That’s the anger. That’s the emotion I need."
"You are wasting both our time," Lei Cheng spat.
He sat down cross-legged. "Let me ask you something. Can you return to Earth?"
The duplicate froze. That brief silence had already given Lei Cheng the answer he wanted.
Lei Cheng smiled.
"As I thought. You don’t have the power to travel between planets. You possess the same strength I have... Which means you cannot kill me directly, and I cannot kill you directly. We are locked." He looked up at the duplicate with cold eyes. "So here is my offer: if you can go back to Earth right now, I will give you my body willingly."
The duplicate’s grin returned, broad and sharp. "Ha! Yes, I can travel. I possess Instant Enlightenment—I can create any ability—"
"Do you take me for a fool?" Lei Cheng said, cutting him off. "I have the same ability. Whatever technique you can create from it, I can create as well. There is no difference between us." He stood up.
He didn’t expect the Inner Demon to answer so quickly. "And you know as well as I do that traveling between planets requires a cultivation level far beyond where either of us currently is. Comprehending a technique alone won’t accomplish it."
Vines began to spiral around his body, thickening and solidifying—forming shaped plates along his shoulders, his arms, his chest, his legs. The armor took on a cold, metallic quality despite being made entirely from vines. Gauntlets. Leg guards. Arm guards. A chest plate. Everything except his head.
"Give up," he said simply. "Or fight until one of us dies."
The Inner Demon stared at him.
Then—without warning—it collapsed into a single gray-black energy orb and shot directly into Lei Cheng’s body, phasing through the armor as though it were not there.
"What—"
Lei Cheng spat the word, and his eyes went black.
He fell to his knees, hands pressed to his head.
The pain came immediately—not from injury but from memory forced open: the cold weight of his parents’ bodies, the specific temperature and stillness of them, the exact sensation of that grief pressed back onto him without warning, onto his hands.
And then the second memory—the impact. The moment the rich young man’s vehicle had struck. The bone-deep sensation of his body breaking apart. It arrived in full.
Every forgotten sensation returned with merciless clarity, as though the accident had happened only moments ago.
He slammed his palm against the water pool at his feet. Water splashed up into his face.
A cold, eerie voice spoke from inside his mind.
"How about it? Don’t you want to avenge yourself and your parents?"
Lei Cheng raised his head. His black eyes did not waver.
"Is that all you can do?" he said. "Amplify emotions. Make me feel old pain. You think that moves me?"
"I amplified everything beyond what you originally felt... How are you this... calm?"
"Disappear," Lei Cheng said.
His voice dropped to something that was not quite anger—colder and more certain than fury.
"What you can do, I can do better. You are a fragment of me with nothing I don’t already possess. You have no leverage that I cannot match."
"Just disappear, you pitiful excuse for an Inner Demon."
A purple light descended simultaneously—brilliant, large, warm—and struck his body from above.
"Ahh!" The sound of acid dissolving metal—Zzzz!—and black fog erupted from his pores in sheets.
"I will return," the Inner Demon shrieked as it died.
The screaming stopped.
The black fog condensed—tightened—and formed a small, dense, gray-black-shining orb the size of an adult fist, floating in the air in front of him.
Lei Cheng looked at it.
’It might come in handy,’ he thought.
"Now," he muttered. "Let’s return."
He closed his eyes.
In the physical garden of the Lei household, Lei Cheng opened his eyes and took a long, slow breath.
Hua Mingyue was standing in front of him, fanning herself, looking at him with a quiet expression.
"Not bad," she said. "Your Dao Heart appears to be at Noble Stage."
"Noble Stage?" he asked, standing up.
"You don’t need to understand the stages beyond your own right now," she said. "The first step—Noble Dao Heart—is sufficient." She tilted her head slightly. "Noble Dao Heart is where a mortal sheds their ordinary will and acquires something more powerful in its place. At this stage, a person can resist many of the world’s pressures and pleasures—they can maintain diligence and endure where others would crumble."
Lei Cheng nodded. "And it advances—similar to how the cultivation foundation develops."
"Correct."
She returned to her rocking chair.
Lei Cheng stood in the garden and noticed something extraordinary—a sensation spreading through his body steadily, as if it were filling up from the inside. Energy accumulating and settling.
’My lifespan...’ He could feel it—not the vague impression of good health, but an actual sense of extension, of more.
He smiled, nodding to himself. "My lifespan has increased." It was the first tangible reward for every impossible decision he had made since arriving in this world.
"Of course it has," Hua Mingyue said, without looking up from her book. "You have completed the basics of your cultivation path. Open your status."
"Status," he said.
A luminescent panel updated across his inner vision.
『 STATUS PANEL 』