Way of the Devil

There was lava everywhere. It danced and circled in the air like scarlet ribbons.

The skies were blackish from all the smoke. The color blue was not visible at all.

Several huge black beasts shaped like oxen but with sharp fangs were resting their hill-sized bodies on the sooty ground. They were searching for food that they could eat.

On the black ground, a big man with a height of five meters and a dozen bull horns on the sides of his face had eyes that glinted with peculiar starlight. He looked at the lava in the skies and exclaimed with emotion. “The exit is closed again…”

The man wore a black armor, which only protected his lower body. Two greatswords were crossed behind his back. The blades emitted dark red fumes. If one took a closer look, one would see that the fumes consisted of countless black runic particles.

“Adien, do you really want to kill us all to the very last one?” A huge voice came from afar.

“As a fellow Night Emperor, you should understand that we shouldn’t fight amongst ourselves. Our futures and dreams lie beyond these lands, beyond this universe! Our universe is approaching its coffin, but there are countless wonderful worlds out there waiting for us to conquer them.” The voice was thick with restraining fear as it continued slowly.

“But we can’t get out. It’ll be a problem if we can’t get out…” said Adien calmly. He gazed at the lava in the skies. There was a disappointed look in his eyes.

“That’s alright. Masters from the Other Worlds have opened up the passage to our universe before. I have ordered my subordinates to remember the space-time road sign! It won’t be long before we get a response from them.”

A big and tall man covered in golden flames was hovering in the air far away. He looked upon this spot from a distance.

“I nearly succeeded in crossing over once. Alas, the passage was too small, and there was too little time. I’ve wasted many of my generals! However, it’ll be different this time! Jorah, who’s under me, has remembered the road sign of the previous universe!” the flame man spoke quickly.

“Oh? Are you serious?” Adien said, astonished.

“Yes, I won’t fool you. That’d be meaningless. Even if I fooled you, it’d only be delaying the inevitable,” the flame man spoke in his deep voice. “Jorah has remembered the place for me.”

Adien, a man who was deemed unparalleled in the Evil Spirit World.

The flame man had thought that he himself was powerful enough. Even if he were to face off against this legendary most powerful being, he would at least be able to flee even if he could not defeat him.

Unfortunately, he’d been wrong.

If Jorah, who had also attained the rank of a Night Emperor, had not shielded him from the impact, he would have been torn to shreds by the aftermath of Adien’s fight with another being.

The might of the blade had completely crushed his ambition to struggle and expand his influence. He was content with merely preserving himself for now.

“Jorah?” Adien paused. “That guy is good. He was able to receive my blade strike. He can be considered an expert among the Night Emperors already.”

He knew about his own constitution. He grew more powerful as he fought, as he lost more blood, and as he inched closer to death.

If he lost control over his emotions, he would become stronger. If he was in a bad mood, he would become stronger. If he was in a good mood, he would become stronger.

The Other Worlds referred to him as Chaos Child.

This was because he was the most powerful in a chaotic condition. It was not strange for his combat prowess to instantly spike 10 or even 100 times.

Since he was 15, he was already unparalleled among his tribe. When he was 18, he was unrivalled in the entire Evil Spirit Nation.

He was now 20, and he roamed the entire Evil Spirit World in search of an expert who could fight against him. However, his efforts were futile.

Even the greatest experts, the Night Emperors, were only clay chickens and pottery dogs before him.

His body was like a sponge which continuously absorbed energy from the outside world. That was how he became stronger.

Gradually, someone started calling him the Destroyer.

Wherever he went, he could kill countless living beings due to his overly powerful energy within his body just by standing in a spot.

He was just like a storm which was capable of killing off countless living beings in its wake. He had just recently learned how to rein in the power within himself.

“I won’t fool you. Just you wait. I can send you to other universes. It doesn’t mean that you’re the most powerful being in the other universes just because you’re the most powerful being here. There are countless experts out there. There are primal beasts, terrifying monsters as colossal as planets, all kinds of experts.”

The flame man laced his words with some enchantment.

“…Very well. How long do I have to wait? Three days? I’ll wait for four days, max. If you’re not sending me out by then, I’ll kill you,” Adien said calmly.

“For sure! I’ll send you out for sure!” The flame man gritted his teeth and nodded.

**********

Heart World.

Lu Sheng stood at the edge of the world. He stared silently into the black mist.

The black mist was still receding swiftly. His Heart World was still expanding.

He could feel this world expanding quickly with every passing second.

Although it was much larger than it had been in the beginning, if he calculated it precisely, the size three days ago had been 500 times the initial size.

Now, it was 1,000 times the initial size, and it was still growing.

However, the rate at which it grew was slowing down.

“I understand now…” Lu Sheng looked at the continuously receding black mist. The combination of his heart and mind had made him understand the trick behind it.

‘The Heart World will expand according to the number of living beings it contains…

‘The more living beings there are, the more powerful the world will become…’

Lu Sheng turned around, and walked slowly along the green grass.

In no time, a gray duck walked slowly up to him. Then, it stood still and looked at him.

Lu Sheng stared at the duck for a while.

‘I’ve seen ordinary ducks, but I think ducks more than three meters tall can only be found here…’

He had tossed several small animals and insects into this place before. Under the radiant disc’s influence, not only did the terrain change, even such ordinary livestock experienced shocking changes.

Lu Sheng left this duck alone, and went ahead where the other living beings lived.

The ground started to shake in no time. An earthworm with a diameter of a dozen meters and a length of several hundred meters suddenly emerged out of the ground. It charged past Lu Sheng and leapt into the air in an elegant arc. Then, it plunged back into the ground at another spot, and soon vanished from sight.

Then, there was a beetle the size of a small island in midair. It buzzed its huge wings as it flew everywhere in search of food.

A rooster several kilometers tall pounced and fought with the beetle.

The two mammoth beasts tore at each other wildly. Even Lu Sheng stopped in his tracks to observe them.

It had only been three days. He did not expect his Heart World to have changed this much.

The livestock and insects grew larger as if they were inflated balloons. The effects of his nine cornerstone rule systems dictated that everything would depend on power.

This resulted in all the animals, insects, and even the human spirits he’d tossed into this world morphing into forms that represented pure power.

Lu Sheng soon reached the central area where the intelligent life forms lived.

The buildings of the town could clearly be seen. People filled the streets inside. However, compared to the animals, they did not display any changes in body size. They were merely more muscular now.

Regardless of their gender, everyone walked around with muscles bulging on their bodies.

However, in terms of body size alone, they were not huge. However, when he got closer, he could feel the power contained within their bodies. Their power was certainly much greater than that of the mammoth beasts outside.

To exterminate the God’s Eye before this, Lu Sheng had pulled in the spirits of the sinners from the outside world in one go.

These were the loyal painters of the God’s Eye. However, time passed extremely quickly here in the Heart World. In the outside world, merely three days had passed, yet several years had already passed in here.

What surprised him was that his Heart World’s initial population had been only in the tens of thousands. Now, it was in the hundreds of thousands.

Although most of them were children and infants, with the birth of these babies, his entire Heart World grew more stable and wider.

However, the slight change was that these newborn babies were extremely muscular.

Lu Sheng did his observations. The strongest of the toddlers was thrown into the wilderness by its own parents three days after birth. It snapped the necks of two leopards with a single hand, killed four elephants by stomping on them, and tore a dozen white tigers to death with its teeth.

It nearly upset the ecosystem, and that was why it was soon retrieved by the others. Lu Sheng was speechless when he learned about the baby’s combat prowess.

‘Although the strongest among these people are only at the Snake Level, this is still a good sign.’ Lu Sheng made some more careful observations. He soon noticed that the living beings in his Heart World were gradually forming a natural cycle.

‘With this, given more time for them to multiply for a dozen generations and forget their grudges, I’ll be able to use them completely.’

Lu Sheng left his Heart World, and returned to the Painter World.

Currently, as the greatest expert in the world, he had harvested all there was to harvest in this world.

Perhaps it was because of the low energy rank of this world, but he did not manage to gain much Mental Energy here. Out of all the antiques collected, he merely obtained several thousand units.

However, in order to trade it at the Iron Flag Council, he recorded his cultivation pathway here in great detail. He intended to sell it for other resources.

In the next half of the year, Lu Sheng had made arrangements for the future development of the Zhuo Family in detail. He healed Zhuo Siqing’s wounds and retired into the shadows. The God’s Eye and the Silver Hand were both controlled by individuals he had personally chosen.

Then, after arranging other matters in great detail, he chose to return.

He would return to the Heavenly Devil World and break through to the Confusion Realm. This was the plan Lu Sheng had had all along.

He felt that there was no way to unlock any more potential in the Painter World. He waited for two final weeks, using his Heart World to pull in the spiritual forms of the soil, seawater, and rocks to complete it. Then, he began setting up the formation to return.

**********

Within a spacious and dark sealed room.

Lu Sheng wore only white trousers as he sat cross-legged in the center of the sealed room. A semi-transparent disc resembling the moon hovered and turned slowly behind him.

There was a total of nine crests on the round disc.

Poison, Yin Flame, and Mystic Water took three crests that were evenly distributed along the periphery of the disc. If they were connected by straight lines, they would form a triangle.

The others were pale yellow crests which represented power.

The round disc was his radiant disc. Initially, Lu Seng’s Spirit Power should have been at its limits, and unable to progress anymore.

However, with the consolidation of his Heart World’s foundations and the absorbing of living beings, his Spirit Power started experiencing new changes.

The total volume of his spirit increased again. The quality of his spirit improved as well.

Lu Sheng knew that this was the so-called transformation of the Confusion Realm. The journey from a Weapon Grandmaster to the Confusion Realm was akin to a sublimation process from within a planet to interstellar distances.

Naturally, it would not take place in an instant.

Also, due to the sheer number of his rules in his Heart World being close to the crest formation level, the world was becoming more complete. At a glance, it did not appear much different from the outside world.

This was why his Heart World’s structure was extremely stable.