Way of the Devil

Lu Sheng could feel pain, panic, hopelessness, and confusion being emitted through the eye.

“Hello,” Lu Sheng said in an attempt to communicate with it.

“The pain…” a voice spoke in an unknown yet still comprehensible language through the crack.

“What are you saying?” Lu Sheng frowned. “Can you open the door?”

“Pain…” the raspy voice, neither male or female, repeated.

“Is there a way to open this door so I can get you out?” Lu Sheng said in a low voice, attempting again to communicate.

“Pain….”

Lu Sheng stretched his hand and grabbed the door. He pushed heavily, but the door was surprisingly heavy. Even with his strength, it wouldn’t budge.

The poison mist water still flowed steadily underneath his feet. This was clearly the source of the poison mist river, but his path was blocked by an odd door.

“I came here by accident and wished to find the source of this water. Could you tell me where it comes from? I cannot tell from this angle.” Lu Sheng tried to ask the voice directly. “I will trade you items from the outside as a reward.”

“…The pain….”This “person” seem to only know one thing, and that was pain.

“Tap tap tap.”

Suddenly, Lu Sheng heard hurried footsteps from behind his back.

He turned violently, but only saw a flash of someone’s shadow at the mouth of the tunnel.

“Wait!” After finally seeing someone else, of course Lu Sheng wouldn’t give up this opportunity. His Clear Void Earth Stomp Technique activated instantly and he crossed tens of meters in the blink of an eye and caught up to the shadow in the corner.

But at the corner of the tunnel, he only saw a shadow.

The person seemed quite small, like a little girl. She just ran past another corner, and Lu Sheng was left only with her shadow again.

“Wait!” Lu Sheng caught up again.

This time he didn’t miss her. In the dark tunnel filled with gray mist, Lu Sheng heard a faint cry.

“Sob… sob…”

He followed the voice.

In the corner of the tunnel sat a girl in a tattered and dirty dress, crying with her back turned against him.

“Can you tell me how to enter that door? Also, what is this place?” Lu Sheng didn’t approach her. Everything here seemed off, and he didn’t want to be rash.

The girl did not respond, and kept on just sitting there and crying.

Lu Sheng frowned and released a Yin Devil which happened to be the Ox of Pain. Swarms upon swarms of Devil Qi formed the body of the four horned ox.

“Whoosh!”

The Ox of Pain breathed heavily and glanced at Lu Sheng with its red eyes. It shivered and hurriedly moved his gaze to the girl in the corner.

“Moooo!”

The Ox of Pain charged forward violently, its heavy body producing the sounds of its heavy hooves beating on the ground.

“Boom!!”

Everything suddenly became quiet. The ox disappeared like a phantom into the rock wall. The little girl was still sitting in the corner and crying, still sitting in the exact same posture.

“Wha…” Lu Sheng hesitated. He was debating if he should continue his attack. The Ox of Pain had been strengthened substantially by his Prime Devil Qi and was many times stronger than the original Yin Devil of the Phantom Listening Devil Body.

But it just somehow disappeared?

“You must have something you want if you chose to appear before me, right?” He tensed up his body, ready to switch to his normal form at any moment, and slowly walked toward the girl

“But if you keep on crying I wouldn’t know what you want me to do.” He tried his best to sound gentle while approaching the girl.

“It hurts…” the girl suddenly spoke.

“What?” Lu Sheng didn’t hear her, and walked forwards a few more steps.

“I said… it hurts really bad…” The little girl slowly turned her head, and her voice suddenly turned from innocent and childish to old and hoarse.

And Lu Sheng finally saw her face.

It was a face that was continuously melting, like a white candle.

The little girl’s chin was continuously dripping white liquid, and her face was melting every second. But strangely, every time her face completely melted off, another appeared where flesh and blood was supposed to be.

One face under another, forever melting and dripping.

“The pain… it hurts…” The girl cried in pain, but her voice sounded weak and ancient like an old man.

“Ka!!”

Suddenly, in the moment when Lu Sheng was briefly distracted, the little girl threw herself toward his head.

Lu Sheng grabbed at her without thinking.

Fast as lighting, he grabbed her neck before she could touch him and released Devil Qi.

“Boom!” The little girl exploded into dense black liquid.

Everything was quiet again.

Lu Sheng raised his hand and looked at the place where he touched the girl. He saw a black mark that he didn’t know when he had got.

During the attack, he didn’t feel like he used any strength, but the girl threw herself into his hand as if she was committing suicide.

“It’s like she wanted to die.”

Lu Sheng suppressed the queasy feeling and knelt down to check the black liquid.

The liquid was very dense, like oil that had been boiled for a long time. It emitted a weird smell, like unprocessed flesh and blood mixed with plants.

“Is this…?” Lu Sheng suddenly became intrigued.

This black oil was somehow making his Prime Devil Qi boil. He smeared some on his finger tip and tried to use Yin Flame to purify it.

Soon, a wave of pure Prime Devil Qi flowed into his body. The Yin Flame’s color was no longer a pure purple and now had a tinge of black.

But the Prime Devil Qi obtained this way seemed…

Lu Sheng didn’t exactly know why, but it just felt weird. Despite the fact that the power emitted was strong and there weren’t any abnormalities, he just felt odd.

Not that it was harmful, but this power just seemed different from the poison mist river.

“Although this place is strange, it still is the source of the poison mist river.” Lu Sheng went back to the door, and touched the root on it.

“Hisssss”

Unexpectedly, the light touch triggered a mysterious force that swarmed upwards through the root.

“Crack…”

The root on the door started moving and more Mental Energy, as if having found an opening, swarmed toward Lu Sheng.

“Even though this place seems strange, but as long as there is Mental Energy it is fine!” Lu Sheng cracked open his mouth and revealed a row of sharp teeth.

The more Mental Energy was present, the more ancient this place was. The more ancient this place was, the more emotions must have been put into it by mortals.

100 units, 200 units, 300 units… This trip became an amazing harvest.

However, the more mental energy he absorbed, the warier he was of the thing behind the door.

This meant that the thing behind the door was very ancient, and carrying something very important.

After absorbing around 400 units, the Mental Energy on the door finally start subsiding.

Finished with absorbing Mental Energy, Lu Sheng was about to retreat when he realized that something was wrong. The door was still producing new Mental Energy. Even though it was faint and the rate was slow, less than half a unit per day, it was still the first time he seen something capable of generating Mental Energy.

“What is this door… ” He had absorbed many things before, but never had he seen anything like this.

“Must go back first…” He still felt odd about this place, and decided to go back to the Prime Devil Sect. It was the same feeling as when he saw the mirror in the Three Sacred Gates.

A feeling independent of power—a purely emotional feeling, a deeply mysterious existence.

Either way, he had absorbed enough Mental Energy to improve his Three Yin Technique.

Lu Sheng went back without hesitation. He felt a sudden relief at the tunnel entrance, like he peeled something off.

But no matter how much he checked he could not find what he “peeled off”.

He continued to follow his path without hesitation.

***

Golden Plaza.

Inside the mysterious tunnel.

“Sob sob sob…”

A girl with tattered dress still sat in a corner, weeping just as before.

Inside the gray mist, there seemed to be something flowing through.

***

The Northern Territory.

In the depth of a desolate sea of dark green forest.

“Hisssss….”

A giant green lizard as big as a grown man slowly crawled down a tree.

The lizard’s face was facing downward, its bulging eyes looking at everything around it. Its gray-red tongue darted in and out, and its coarse green skin slowly turned to the same color as the bark around it.

“Someone else encountered the Source of Pain,” the lizard said slowly in a raspy and sharp voice. “When we intentionally released information about the creation of a Holy Gate, the point was to distract the demons so they could attack the Great Song. But who would’ve thought someone else found the Source of Pain!”

A pure-black buck wearing a white mask walked towards the lizard with a lowered head and said in a low voice, “That is what you all have decided. It was also you who leaked the information about the Door of Contamination and the Door of Pain. Are you telling me you didn’t foresee this?”

“The Door of Contamination brought about the demons. As to what’s inside the Door of Pain, no one knows. Regardless, the war is between humans and demons and does not concern us. We have no need to feel afraid, just need to carry on through this time.”

“The Kind Ice Fox holds a different opinion.” The buck shook his giant horn of 5-6 meters big. “Two of The Three Holy Gates have been opened. Only one remains. We can’t repress it for much longer. We have prepared and collected enough, and must find a place to digest them soon.”

“I will pick a spot soon,” the lizard said in a mild tone.