Way of the Devil

“Combining with Laws…” Lu Sheng perked up. It was so much help to finally meet someone who could answer his questions. The long-term build-up of questions in his mind was finally released.

“Obtain the Law, Combine with the Law, Become the Law, Control the Law, Walk the Way of the Law,” Divine Lord Tong Yi said slowly. “This is what you must do in the Jade Star level. The Gold Leaf level is when your soul goes through a complete change, and the Jade Star is when you finally understand and take control over these changes.”

“Thank you for answering my questions.” Lu Sheng stood up solemnly and bowed.

Tong Yi accepted the bow. He Lu Sheng’s senior by far, be it in terms of age or strength and experience. Of course he would be okay with taking this bow.

“Come to think of it, most of the Divine Lords in this world are stuck at the Jade Star level. If Gold Leaf is when your soul changes, the bottleneck most Divine Weapon Masters are stuck at, then Jade Star is the path to controlling the Law, the bottleneck for many Divine Lords becoming gods.”

Lu Sheng stood up and asked one last question. “Fellow Daoist Tong Yi, where do Laws come from?”

“There is Law in every living being. All you need to do is understand them,” Tong Yi replied calmly.

***

After sending Tong Yi on his way to look for more clues, Lu Sheng returned to the silent room and shut himself in.

The five different levels Tong Yi mentioned before were still resonating in his mind.

“Obtaining the Law, Combining with the Law, Becoming the Law, Controlling the Law, Walking the Way of the Law.”

Lu Sheng sat down cross-legged. Threads of golden smoke formed the five phrases in front of him.

“Everyone’s Law is different. If you pick too general a Law, you can’t even obtain it. The powers of the sky and earth are infinite, but the power of man is finite.”

Lu Sheng started to understand Tong Yi.

There were infinite rules in space. Law was a form of energy manifestation of the rules. If you picked a very general type of energy, it was true that you would have infinite power if successful, but it was almost impossible to reach that point.

So, most Divine Lords picked smaller branches of more general types of energy. Tong Yi himself confessed that his Law was Crimson Lava of the Rising Sun, the powerful flame resulting from burning of a very special type of mineral. To research this type of flame, he spent five hundred years familiarizing himself with all its attributes before he dared to combine it with his soul and become a Jade Star.

Tong Yi also mentioned that a Divine Lord from the Youyan Sect he had visited before used a type of gray Qi from the earth. This gray Qi was one of many types of Earth Qi, formed from the poisonous combination of multiple extreme toxic and corrosive things below the surface. After this Divine Lord found about this Qi, he dived into deep research about it, and after a few hundred years, also became a Jade Star.

During their discussion, Lu Sheng kept asking questions, and found out about many experiences of Divine Lords combining with Law.

And Lu Sheng finally understood what type of existence a Divine Lord was.

From his own summary, using a western term from Earth, Divine Lords were Masters of the Elements!

They were ordinary people who cultivated different powers to become a Master of an Element.

They could be half solid, or completely transform into elements.

‘ Then the final Weapon Grandmaster is probably also down this path…’ Lu Sheng once again looked at his own path.

Using Deep Blue, he had skipped across the foundation other people needed thousands of years to cultivate, but that also meant he walked a different path than other Divine Lords and Weapon Grandmasters.

‘The beginning was similar, and nothing was wrong. But after accidentally seeing the Eight-Headed Griffin… the Yin flames in my Technique are no longer pure. I was not familiar enough with the Yin flames from the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl to begin with, and now with a new force in it… ‘ Lu Sheng frowned.

He saw his path clearly. If he followed everyone else, he had to spend much time analyzing the core of Yin flames and find its patterns, attributes, etc. This required a lot of time and energy. It would take at least a few hundred years.

After staying in the silent room for a while, Lu Sheng was still stuck. The time and energy requirement for the traditional path was too much, but Lu Sheng realized that the Infinity Technique he created did not have these sort of limitations.

As long as he could find enough Divine Weapons and Devil Blades and devour them, he could keep leveling up.

After looking at it more closely, he found that the Infinity Technique Deep Blue had created followed a mixed path. It took any type of energy and converted it to Yang Essence, and after spending large amounts of Mental Energy, forced it to the next step.

Lu Sheng didn’t know what Deep Blue was trying to do, but compared to the hard, difficult path most Divine Lords had to take, he trusted Deep Blue more.

In other words, he couldn’t turn back anymore. His core had gotten contaminated. If he didn’t rely on Deep Blue, there was no guarantee he could even separate that one strand of Eight-Headed Golden Lava from his core.

Others’ core Laws were extremely pure, but his was still in the unstable stage. On top of that, it was now contaminated.

But in that state, Lu Sheng still managed to become a Jade Star. He was purely relying on his body to absorb the side effects of the Yin flames.

The second day, Tong Yi wasn’t back, but a group of messengers from the palace appeared. They secretly asked to see Lu Sheng, who was currently in charge of Autumn Moon City.

“Second Prince Qiong Zhen?” Sitting in visiting room, Lu Sheng watched the eunuch with a white beard, Sir Liu Shangyong.

“That’s correct. Second Prince, his royal highness, heard that you got injured in the fight with the devil lord, so he commanded me to bring this thousand-year jade herb and ten violet cordyceps to help you recover.” Liu Shangyong was a subordinate of the second prince Qiong Zhen, currently the biggest force in the royal family.

The reason for his visit was already very obvious.

In the entire Great Yin, there were very few Divine Lords. Even the three sects together had less than twenty, and the same went for the three noble families. Under such conditions, every Divine Lord was a very powerful person.

So, it was normal that the second prince wanted to get Lu Sheng on his side as quick as possible.

But Lu Sheng did not want to be caught in the midst of a battle for the throne. He waved his hand.

“It’s okay, take your stuff back. Tell the second prince that I don’t want to meddle in mundane affairs.”

Liu Shangyong was about to say more, but Lu Sheng pointed at him and instantly sealed his mouth with Yang Essence. Unable to talk, he could only take his men and leave.

There seemed to be a lot of Divine and Devil Lords, but that was in the entirety of the Great Yin. Those also included the ones hiding in Secret Areas or other places. To be honest, there were no more than twenty who were willing to walk around and meddle in mundane affairs.

So, these twenty people, minus the five Weapon Grandmasters, were the strongest people in the Great Yin. And now, Lu Sheng was one of them.

After sending away the messengers, Lu Sheng followed Tong Yi, and visited a few Divine Lords in the Secret Area. They were all people from the three sects in hiding. So, Lu Sheng got to see the powers of many different types of Laws, and gained much more new understanding about his own Yin flame.

If it hadn’t been for an abundance of spiritual essence in the Secret Area and the shortening of distances, even with the Secret Area being much smaller than the Great Yin, there was no way they could have visited so many Divine Lords in such a short period of time.

After seeing these new Laws from new Divine Lords, Lu Sheng started respecting Tong Yi even more. Both on the surface and subconsciously, Tong Yi was answering all of Lu Sheng’s questions and dispersing his confusion. He had no reason to visit the other Divine Lords, but for Lu Sheng to personally see where he ranked among the Divine Lords, he spent the time and effort to take Lu Sheng to visit each one.

After these days of visitation, Lu Sheng gained more understanding. He shut himself off again, but this time only for a morning before he ran to the library.

He needed to first get rid of the physical side effects after combining with Yin flame since it was now contaminated with the Eight-Headed Golden Lava.

And then he could think about what to use as his basis for the combination.

Lu Sheng thought back to the scene where he first created the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl and Yin flames. He knew that he could probably create even more powerful Law as long as he had enough Mental Energy.

Compared to other Divine Lords, who could only look for basic kinds of energy that already existed, Lu Sheng could pick one and keep pushing, evolving it with Mental Energy to reach an indescribable point.

Yin flames, from their original ground level, were made into a Law by him, and then evolved into the Yin flames on the level of the Eight-Headed Divine Pearl.

If he had more Mental Energy, Lu Sheng believed he could keep on upgrading his Yin flame to a point no one could imagine. And because it was through Deep Blue, maybe his understanding of Deep Blue could match that needed to combine with it.

But all this required enough Mental Energy.

***

Chongyun City, in the prefecture.

In a secluded house.

Flying Cloud Divine Spear Duan Ze was carefully wiping the long pure white spear in front of him, his gaze as soft as if he was caressing his lover’s skin.

He had been a Divine Weapon Master for hundreds of years. To avoid the Devil Disaster, he came from thousands of miles away to temporarily live here.

He did see the poster from the Three Sects and the Great Yin looking for strong people to fight against the Devil Army, but he wasn’t stupid. The Devil Disaster had a very large scale, and if he really did go fight against a Devil Lord stupidly for the Great Yin, then he really would be a fool.

But he also lived in the Great Yin. If he refused to do what his duty required of him, it would reflect badly on him. So, he pretended to be an ordinary person. After killing a family in the city, he took over their house, using spells to masquerade as them so that he could live quietly like a normal person.

Now that things were getting more and more messy, Duan Ze would go out once in a while and kidnap a few girls to use. After using them, he would sacrifice them for his beloved Flying Cloud Spear. Two birds with one stone.

This city was already trying its best to defend against the Devil Disaster, and would have no time to look for a few girls that disappeared.

“Flying Cloud, oh Flying Cloud, we’ve been friends for hundreds of years. We finally made a name for ourselves at home, but… if I was still at the Cloud Pool, we wouldn’t have to go through all this.” Duan Ze was a little dejected. Caressing his spear, he considered going out to find a few more girls to get rid of his boredom.

“The girl you brought back a while back was drying up and anxious. She didn’t taste good at all, and her talent was also not on point. If you get me something like that again, don’t blame me for anything.” A sharp, piercing woman’s voice sounded from within the Flying Cloud Spear. Although the voice was a little attractive, her tone was extremely cold.

“I know, I know, but… this time…” Duan Ze didn’t finish talking. He looked toward the door. The door had opened, but there was no one there. No one at all.

“Who is it?!” The Flying Cloud Spear suddenly trembled. Faint silver light covered its entire body, and a triangular shell-shaped pattern on its handle started turning.

Duan Ze stood up immediately, also flooding with silver light. The light slowly formed the faint shape of a seashell, covering him. With the Divine Weapon’s power protecting him, Duan Ze felt a little bit better.

This entire house had always been under this Divine Weapon bloodline. Just now, he definitely felt a person walk into the yard, but he didn’t know where that person was anymore.

“Who is this? I am Flying Cloud Spear, Duan Ze. Cloud Pool fell under the Devil Disaster, and I had no choice but to—” Duan Ze didn’t finish his sentence.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to finish, but a finger had appeared between his brows.

The black finger with sharp nails gently pointed right between his brows. But Duan Ze could not react. He just stared at the tall figure clothed in a black robe.

“Don’t blame me…” The figure sighed. “Just blame yourself, you shouldn’t have come here…”

“Ma… Master…” Duan Ze was drenched in cold sweat. He wanted to say more, but it was too late.

“Boom!”

A bit of black light exploded. Duan Ze also exploded, his body contracting, then sending flesh and blood everywhere. But before the blood and flesh could fly anywhere, a ball of golden light enveloped all of it and burned it. Instantly, all the flesh turned to large amounts of black smoke.

The figure breathed in, sucking in all the black smoke into his nostrils. Then he grabbed the Flying Cloud Spear, leapt out into the shadows, and disappeared.