Way of the Devil

“Hiss…!!”

A large suction force came from the gap.

King Shadow could clearly sense his Devil Essence being quickly reduced to less than a tenth of what he had had.

“Ohhh?? Interesting move. Very nice.” He was a little astonished. Lu Sheng was the first one that he’d seen in all these years that could even briefly stop the absorption after being hooked.

Another half hour passed in the blink of an eye.

Lu Sheng seemed to have a new idea. He stopped the absorption process again, stood up, and took several steps back.

“Oh? Is he almost at his limit and trying to escape?” King Shadow was confused again.

But immediately, the scraping sound of blood and bones expanding echoed around inside the altar.

King Shadow could only stare as Lu Sheng’s body expanded from the normal two meters to a monster seven or eight meters tall.

“That’s better.” Lu Sheng shook his horrifying crocodile-like head and stepped heavily toward the gap, opening his mouth to absorb more.

“…”

King Shadow opened his mouth in awe as he watched Lu Sheng’s sudden change of appearance.

“How… how very interesting…” He let out a dry laugh, curious as to what Lu Sheng was going to do next.

“Does he think this form will make absorbing Devil Qi easier?” He felt perplexed.

“Boom!!!”

Suddenly, a violent suction force once again started coming from the gap on the altar.

Quickly, one hundredth of the King Shadow’s Devil Essence was pulled towards the gap by that force.

King Shadow was briefly shocked, but quickly started smiling again.

“Absorb it, absorb it… No matter how much bigger you make yourself, my true form is at least twice as as big. Can you absorb the entirety of my Devil Essence?!”

No matter how strange his appearance, it was impossible for a mere mortal to compete with him.

The storage of Devil Essence was directly tied to tenacity of the body, and comparing a human’s body to a devil’s body was like comparing tofu to steel: they were simply just two completely different substances.

A bit of time passed.

Lu Sheng abruptly stopped again.

“Finally at your limit, aren’t you?” King Shadow let out a slight sigh of relief, then couldn’t help but laugh at himself. He, the king of a devil tribe, got nervous because a strange-looking human. If any other devil king heard of this, they would probably die laughing.

Lu Sheng again sat cross-legged, Prime Devil Qi condensed to its limit started to flow around his body. Behind his back, shadows of monsters flashed constantly: be it lion, snake, ox, and others.

All of these shadows were projected onto him, combining into one.

“Roar!!”

Suddenly, Lu Sheng’s whole body swelled rapidly.

He was eight meters tall, covered in spikes and scales to begin with, and now expanded to ten or so meters within a breath!

The most noticeable feature was his belly: a large, bulging mass. From far away, he looked like an obese man with horns on his head and spikes on his back. Furthermore, this fat man’s mouth was disproportionately large, his body was covered in pure black scales, and his legs and tail were thick like pillars.

“Whoosh…”

Lu Sheng cracked open his mouth and exposed the dense teeth within: three rows of saw blades, easily enough to crush anything.

He moved his body in satisfaction. After getting used to the changes in his muscles and joints, he strode with booming steps towards the altar once again.

Breathe…!!

“Boom!!”

“What the f*ck!!!”

King Shadow’s face turned green.

He felt the unprecedented suction force coming from the gap, and a tenth of his Devil Essence was gone in the blink of an eye.

“This guy… this guy… how is this guy human? Is it some other devil tribe trying to swindle me?” King Shadow couldn’t move because of the seal, and could only watch as his Devil Essence decreased at a visible rate.

After a while, Lu Sheng stopped once again and moved back before sitting down again. Before King Shadow could let out a sigh of relief, his body expanded again.

After all that was done, he went back for another round of feasting.

Repeating this process several times, not only did Lu Sheng not get contaminated by the Devil Essence, he also drastically increased in size. He had absorbed all of the Devil Essence that King Shadow managed to save up within the seal.

One hour later…

“Huh?” The flow of Devil Essence have been cut off. Lu Sheng’s body had now expanded to thirteen meters tall, and standing in the cavern looked like a hill. His most obvious feature was still the giant stomach in front of him.

Horns, a giant tail, a pure black body covered in spikes, a giant stomach, knots of muscles that might as well be tumors, and finally, the wandering eye grown on his back: this is what Lu Sheng looked like right now.

“Devil Body mutation caused by the change in Prime Devil Qi, which is in turn caused by Yin Flame evolving into the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl.”

“Luckily there is enough Devil Qi here, or else I might have dried out the entire Poison Mist River…” Lu Sheng sighed and reached his hand into the gap; still no Devil Essence.

“How? This is supposed to be a seal from ancient times. Don’t legends describe devils as invincible and infinitely powerful? How did it run out this fast? Did something clog it up?” Lu Sheng felt odd.

Meanwhile in the altar, King Shadow wanted to curse.

“Why don’t you take a look at your size! With that small mountain of a body, be thankful I had enough essence for you to fu*king absorb!”

Seeing that Lu Sheng still wasn’t content, King Shadow wanted to cry but couldn’t find any tears. The plan was to lure Lu Sheng in with the pure Devil Essence, then digest him through the overly condensed essence he absorbed. Who would’ve thought….

“Bump… bump… Boom!”

Suddenly, a strange sound came from outside the altar.

King Shadow didn’t have any time to feel astonished before his body tilted towards one side and nearly lost his balance. He hurriedly looked outside and was stunned by what he saw.

Lu Sheng, trying to find more essence, dug up the entire altar, and was now shaking the altar in midair.

Now King Shadow was dumbstruck. As Lu Sheng started shaking more heavily, he could only flatten his body against the inner wall of the altar.

A Demon King without his essence could only wield about one or two tenths of his normal power.

Just thinking about having to fight this human who absorbed more than half of his essence was giving King Shadow goosebumps.

Unlike King Dark Cloud, he wasn’t dumb.

King Shadow didn’t even dare to breathe. He was tightly hugging the inner wall of the altar, praying that Lu Sheng would leave soon.

“Nothing left?” Lu Sheng held the altar directly above his head and peered inside; there was nothing, the whole altar was empty like a box.

“There’s actually nothing left…” He dropped the altar in disappointment.

“Boom.”

The altar made a dull thud as it hit the ground.

Lu Sheng burped in satisfaction. The Devil Qi he absorbed this time was more than enough. After the first round he promptly decided to use mental energy to further evolve his devil body.

He also made use of all the excess Devil Qi by going through every tab of the Cheating Device.

All martial arts skills, especially the miscellaneous ones and the weaker, more basic ones, had been combined into one tab called “basic martial arts.” The tab represented basic leg skills, basic knife skills, basic sword skills, etc.

The stronger inner and outer force ones, on the other hand, were all separated into two tabs called Outer Skills and Inner Arts.

All inner and outer forces like the Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Skill, the skill in charge of switching forms—the Extreme Way of Yang, and the Clear Void Earth Stop Technique were all categorized under Outer Skills.

Meanwhile, the Aquarius Qi and other Yin type inner forces were categorized under Inner Arts.

Then there were secret techniques. The precious secret arts from the nobles in reality resembled martial arts evolved to their extreme. Lu Sheng separated a tab for Secret Techniques and put all of them there.

After this sorting, the whole window was no longer filled with tiny writing everywhere. Now, there were just four concise and organized tabs.

‘Outer Skills, Inner Arts, Secret Techniques, Basic Martial Arts.’

The four categories summarized everything he knew. Since the Cheating Device reflected the contents of his brain, if he categorized all of his knowledge into these four tabs, the Cheating Device would do the same.

All of this was done right as Lu Sheng reached the limit to his Devil Qi capacity for the first time.

He decisively went under the Secret Arts tab, found the eight Great Devil Bodies and combined them all into one Ultimate Eight-Headed Devil Way.

With his vast amount of of Devil Qi, Lu Sheng started evolving the Ultimate Eight-Headed Devil Way.

This was like like evolving all eight Devil Bodies at the same time, and Lu Sheng had already cultivated all eight to their limits. With the help of Mental Energy, he was evolving all of them to a new state.

The result did not disappoint: the Ultimate Eight-Headed Devil Way expended almost 200 points of mental energy and finally entered a new stage, which at the same time made Lu Sheng’s body larger.

‘Ultimate Eight-Headed Devil Way: 4th Tier, Return to Origin and Source of Flow. Special Effect: Eight Devil Body, Corrosion level 32, Mind Contamination level 40, Hardened Skin level 40, Reflect Damage level 40…’

Lu Sheng slowly retracted his gaze from the large string of special effects. Since he had enough Devil Qi, he put all eight devil bodies into one tab and separated everything into three tiers.

First Tier, Devil Qi Refining.

Be it the Karmaless Skill or Devil’s Shadow Heart, or any other basic secret art of Devil Body, their only goal was to allow the cultivator to adapt Devil Qi and let it become part of his or her body.

Second Tier, Myriad Laws from Within.

All Devil Bodies really did was to utilize and develop Devil Qi in order to stimulate the mind, and from it derive quality similar to a superpower. This was the so-called way of developing an Origin of Laws, and was then able to generate all kinds of laws from within.

Third Tier, Peak Stage.

This pretty much meant that all of the Devil Bodies had been cultivated to their final stage, with nothing else to accomplish.

The next and final extraordinary tier four, Return to Origin and Source of Flow, was theorized by the Cheating Device but named by Lu Sheng. At this stage, Lu Sheng’s flesh, blood, and bones had all evolved into specialized structures that would easily integrate Devil Essence.

This kind of structure could expand or shrink easily, and when it came to resisting physical, flame, and poison damage, it could do so much easier than the original human cells.