Way of the Devil

October.

Pouring rain seemed to envelop the entire White Bell City in a white fog.

A few white, red-eyed pigeons had built nests underneath roof ledges and were cooing rhythmically.

Blood Infant Huang Fu stood in front of a window with his hands behind his back. He silently looked at the empty North Road. [1]

He had been standing there for a long time. Ever since the person behind him passed through the door, he hadn’t moved.

“I thought you knew,” the man behind him said in a low voice laced with anxiety.

It was Bai Xiu from the Wan Shun Palace, who was also extremely talented like him.

“Knew what? So what if I did? If the sect master decided to do so, he must have his reasons,” Huang Fu replied.

“But with such a tight blockade, if anything happened, neither side would be able to reach the other… you should know the consequences,” Bai Xiu said seriously.

Huang Fu didn’t say anything. He knew that all the preparations the sect master made didn’t seem like he was hosting a banquet, but rather, more like he was about to start a war…

Neither of them said anything for a while. After a few moments, a sect disciple hurried over.

After the disciple came inside, he came over and whispered into Bai Xiu’s ear.

“Are you interested in going? They caught the suspect for the recent serial murders in the city.” Bai Xiu suggested.

By serial murders, he meant the killing of multiple families in White Bell City. It was extremely horrific.

The Court’s police found it fishy, so they gave this case to the Hundred Lineages. So right now, the Wan Shun Palace was overseeing the case.

After a few unsuccessful chases, not only did they not manage to catch the suspect, a few disciples from the Wan Shun Palace were even injured or killed. Stronger groups were sent, but to no avail. So finally, Bai Xiu, who was in charge of such things, was alerted and went to catch the suspect himself.

“Serial murder cases… I heard that the Shangyang Family was also looking into it. Let’s go.” Huang Fu turned around.

“I still feel like something is off. Let’s go see what the suspect looks like.” Bai Xiu had spent a lot of time and effort on this case.

The two walked out of the room and onto the carriage prepared for them by servants outside. As they went along the road in the middle of the rain, the dense raindrops hit their carriage with a soft pitter-patter, giving off a hollow echoing sound.

After turning this way then that way and cutting through a shopping area, the carriage stopped in front of a large house with white lanterns hanging by the door.

There were also white lotus flowers, which symbolized funeral on the red door frame. Long paper strips were also hung on both sides of the door, beaten and blown around by the fierce rain.

In the rain, a few servants were waiting alongside their masters, standing at the door with umbrellas, watching the carriage drive closer.

The two got off of the carriage and were immediately hustled into the mansion by these people. There were already a lot of people standing in the garden: the police head from the Court, the head constable of the prison, and the relatives of this family who had positions in the government. They were all standing together, waiting.

Bai Xiu and Huang Fu ignored everyone and walked into the main hall. Instantly, they saw a skinny man tied up in the corner and three different-sized corpses lying on the ground.

The constable followed them in and explained in a low voice, “That man is called Huang Bianhe. This morning, someone saw him acting suspiciously. He was walking along the river with a big bag of foul-smelling clothes. They caught him and questioned him, but got nothing from it. In the end, someone called the police, and that’s when they found that this family of three had been killed a long time ago…”

“He’s the suspect?” Bai Xiu asked.

“Yes. A lot of witnesses saw him walking in and out of this house,” the constable replied respectfully. “We sent two groups of people but both failed. Only with the help of the disciples from the Wan Shun Palace did we finally catch him.”

Bai Xiu frowned and examined Huang Bianhe, who was sitting on the floor blankly.

This person was very skinny and short, his face was pale and eyes yellow, as if he had some sort of sickness. Otherwise, the most eye-catching thing about him was his gaze.

His gaze was blank, dead, without any sort of life in it. Even his pupils were dilated and completely unfocused.

Bai Xiu looked towards Huang Fu. Huang Fu shook his head.

“Nothing wrong?” Bai Xiu knew his good friend’s ability. He could check the internal condition of a person by taking control of their flesh and blood. A secret art like this was really powerful, even in the Noble families. A lot of disciples from the Noble families weren’t even as good as him.

In front of Huang Fu, unless the opponent’s strength was way above his, no one could hide anything in front of him.

“He’s only a normal person,” Huang Fu said quietly, “and he’s in a really bad condition. Even a slightly stronger than average child could knock him down with a single punch.”

“Then what is all this?” Bai Xiu asked, confused.

He walked closer.

“Be careful, this person is crazy!” The constable hurriedly tried to stop him.

But Huang Bianhe had already moved.

He was originally lying on the ground, but right now it was as if someone pushed a button. His legs suddenly straightened, some unnamed transparent liquid started flowing out of his ears, mouth, and nose, and he started roaring and growling like a wild animal. He attempted to leap towards Bai Xiu.

“Roar!!”

Huang Bianhe sounded like a real animal, crazy and without reason.

Bai Xiu extended a finger lazily and poked him hard in between his brows. He immediately got knocked out.

“This is why he attacked other people?” Bai Xiu turned to look at the constable.

“That’s true. Before, this person had already injured a few officials. He might seem weak now, but he had a lot of strength a while ago,” the constable added.

“This strength…” Bai Xiu thought about the force he just felt. He frowned slightly. A normal person could not exert such strength at once; that was at least two strong men put together.

“Let me see.” Huang Fu, who had been standing to side, walked up. His right hand suddenly shot forward.

“Squelch!”

His hand grabbed Huang Bianhe’s chest on the left, his fingers sinking deep into flesh. With a clawing movement, he tore off a large piece of flesh and clothing, revealing an empty hole.

“It’s empty?!” Bai Xiu was stunned.

Everyone behind them was startled at first because none of them expected Huang Fu to suddenly attack. But now, seeing this, all of them were chilled to their bones.

There was nothing inside Huang Bianhe’s left chest. It was empty.

There was no heart, no blood vessels. Only a dark-red empty space.

“This…!?” Bai Xiu and Huang Fu exchanged glances, their hearts sinking.

***

The Prime Devil Sect, Lake of Poisoned Fog.

Lu Sheng was in his Yang Extreme Form, holding all the poisonous materials he previously collected.

“The 124th type.”

After counting it silently, Lu Sheng stuffed the double-headed green snake into his mouth.

A minty taste filled his mouth. Then came numbness, itchiness, and a slight pain. Numerous different feelings coursed through his body.

Lu Sheng closed his eyes and felt the differences between the poisonous items closely. To him, eating these deadly poisons that could kill ten, twenty people at once was just like eating peppers. It just made his mouth a little numb, nothing else.

Because his resistance to poison had become so strong, the part of cultivating the Desolate Devil Body that required him to absorb poison was extremely easy.

“The 125th one…”

Lu Sheng grabbed a living green scorpion from his cloth bag and put it in his mouth.

His two rows of sharp teeth opened and closed, instantly chewing the scorpion up and swallowing it.

“The 126th one.” He took out a blue toad the size of a human head from another bag. He bit down on the head and pulled, tearing the toad into two pieces. He then rolled up the bloody flesh and stuffed it into his mouth.

Ever since he drank the water from the Lake of Poisoned Fog, Lu Sheng’s standard for food had fallen to a frightfully low level. Dirty? Stinky? Poisonous?

It didn’t matter.

As long as it was useful and he wouldn’t die from eating it, Lu Sheng had no problem with stuffing it into his mouth.

The notion that as long as it was useful, it was edible had been deeply engraved into Lu Sheng’s brain after trying to cultivate his Desolate Devil Body.

With the Nine Great Yin Devils helping him digest, even the most deadly of poisons could be separated and digested by them.

The 131th one…

The 135th one…

Lu Sheng kept on eating all different sorts of deadly poisons. 50 each day was the limit he found after testing out his limits.

This amount of poison was enough to kill hundreds or thousands of people, but his terrifyingly strong body completely digested it and used it for his Desolate Devil Body’s Toxic Roulette. Even if he accidentally hurt himself, the Aquarius Qi would instantly heal him and prevent him from taking any damage.

So Lu Sheng continued eating until the one hundred fiftieth one, when he finally felt the Toxic Roulette inside himself getting full.

“Finally enough. Now, I can officially start cultivating my Desolate Devil Body…”

He stood up in the cave. His body was eight meters tall, with chilling, monster-like spikes on the back, bull horns, hard, tumor-like muscles, black, coarse scales, and two rows of sharp, fine teeth that looked like saws.

If any disciple from the Prime Devil Sect saw him right now, nobody would be able to guess that this was the first seat, the Senior Apprentice Brother Lu they all respected and worshiped.

The cultivation for the Desolate Devil Body wasn’t easy, but neither was it difficult. To Lu Sheng, who easily absorbed the required amount of poison, all he needed to do was to condense the poisonous Prime Devil aura in himself into the Seed of Desolation.

The Seed of Desolation was the real centerpiece of the Desolate Devil Body. No one knew how it came about, but what was known was that as long as one continued forming patterns with 39 different Prime Devil auras, they could form the Seed of Desolation within themselves.

The 39 patterns made from Prime Devil auras got harder from the first to the last. Each pattern was more strong and powerful, so much so that the last pattern was much more difficult to assemble than most of the large scale formations that sects used to protect themselves with.

And those advanced formations needed more than ten people to ceaselessly research and develop, and then multiple weeks to assemble.

“Whoosh!”

A ball of black Poison Flame appeared in Lu Sheng’s palm.

“Deep Blue,” he called out to his skills cheating device, then quickly pressed down on the evolve button.

The light blue square had just appeared before blinking and entering the modification mode.

“Begin with the first pattern.”

Lu Sheng found the Desolate Devil Body on the cheating device, then closed his eyes and started leading the Prime Devil aura within his body, pushing it slowly towards the Poison Flame in his hand.

The Poison Flame for the Desolate Devil Spirits was called the Fire of Desolation, and its main ability was to increase the poison level in his flames. It didn’t help much with anything else.

“The fire of the Phantom Listening Devil Body is just normal, the fire of the Enmity Fire Devil Body can form the Enmity Fire, and the Desolate Devil Body can give me the Fire of Desolation. All three Devil Bodies use the same source fire, so let’s see just what kind of final change might take place.”

The Prime Devil aura started coursing through his body quickly, soon forming a twisted and weird shape.

And with the fast depletion of the Aquarius Qi, Lu Sheng easily completed the first pattern.

Then, it was the second one’s turn.