Here and now, Xu Yangyi continuously went from a state of heavy injuries to one of gentle breathing in the blink of an eye. An origin crystal was the total bodily quintessence of a Core Formation Greater Demon! Regardless of whether it was used in medicine, substituted as a supreme-grade spirit stone in a Spirit-Focusing Formation, or used casually as a ‘maximum HP/MP specialty potion’, it was a universal panacea in battle!

With it, there was absolutely no concern of qi exhaustion during battle! It was equal to a second life! A protective talisman! Whoever obtained it first would be the one to stand at the very end! That was the situation. But even more importantly… 

Was the fear of the consequences!

Right now, Xu Yangyi was gripping a nuclear warhead in his hand. Whoever dared to come first would be the first to experience the taste of millennium-old Core Formation demon’s explosion!

He just hadn’t discovered yet… that in all the lakewater, a blood pearl was still being congealed. Drop after drop flew into his wounds… as the origin crystal’s qi was flowing right into his qi sea and being fully absorbed by the small stone. 

A sharp crack echoed in his mind! In this instant, the stone in his qi sea, that seed, shattered apart into pieces!

Boom!

 Just as he gently stabilized his body and footing, he abruptly staggered! An incomparably ancient memory bubbled forth in his mind! It bore a nebulousness, yet it was incredibly clear to him. He pondered carefully, but couldn’t remember anything! 

Most importantly, though, some object in his qi sea seemed to be humming, but there was simply no time to see what it was. Not before long, his skin began to split open, inch after inch! Nonetheless… there was no pain!

There was no blood and there was no pain. Xu Yangyi’s eyes saucered in shock as he looked at his hand. After his skin on his hand cracked open… green leaves began to lazy sprout out, to his surprise!

Swoosh!

 A green leaf unfurled. In the blink of an eye, the extent of his skin crumbling apart strung together from his arm to the rest of his entire body!

Swish swish swish…

The sound of countless green leaves rang out, as if they buried a billion-year-old organism, blossoming from within his body!

“M-Master!” Li Zongyuan’s terror-stricken voice screeched out from behind him. “T-This is demonization! Y-Y-You’re a, you’re…”

A demon!

Li Zongyuan dared not give voice to this word, and that was because this answer was too outrageous to be thought of! Xu Yangyi couldn’t possibly be a demon! From childhood to adulthood, there wasn’t the slightest hair of a connection between any of his kin and demons!

“I-I understand… Why I suddenly evolved was because y-your blood fell onto my body when we were at the top of the mountain… Y-You…” Li Zongyuan stuttered.

“Shut UP!” Xu Yangyi exploded with a roar. At this moment, the killing intent in his eyes was crystal clear to Li Zongyuan. Li Zongyuan further realized that if he continued to speak, he would undoubtedly die!

In front of him, this man, who appeared to be truly transforming into a ‘plant man’, he… was a fiend capable of overturning a successor of this era’s God Ming! On no uncertain terms did Li Zongyuan dare to disobey Xu Yangyi! 

God Ming looked on in despair at Xu Yangyi, who was standing ahead of him. Noticing his foe’s body as tree leaves spread forth, God Ming suddenly reared his head back and laughed bitterly!

“Hahaha! HAHAHAHAHA!”

“Hehehe…” His laughter seemed to exhaust his body of all strength. In a flash, he was even feebler, and he used his bloodshot eyes to pin Xu Yangyi with his gaze. “You’re a demon!”

“You ARE a demon!”

“You yourself are the mark that you have always slain!”

“I know… hahaha, I understand… So it turned out this was how Daomaster Jadewave was killed… Mongrel… You are truly fortunate, yet truly unfortunate… You are a demon… YOU are a demon! Hahaha! You’re actually a demon!”

Still, the last laugh was not his. The most crucial thing… His life-saving Phaseshift Talisman was inside his middle finger ring! And as for this ring, it was presently in Xu Yangyi’s hand!

“Mongrel…” After a while, his mood seemed to settle down. Xu Yangyi looked indifferently at him. His hand was already clenched to a deathly tightness. He could only take the boundless resentment and rage in his heart and bury it at the very bottom. “There will be a day when my Ming Clan inevitably takes your head…”

Swoosh!

 Before God Ming’s voice even fell, his head soared high into the air. The flying head still maintained the speaking motion of his mouth. 

Severing Dragon Typhoon.

Spurt.

 An arrow of blood scattered across the sky and dyed Xu Yangyi’s body and face. He didn’t even bat an eye.

“Then I’ll be waiting.” Xu Yangyi coldly pulled his hand back, licking his lips that were covered with a bloody flavor. Afterwards, he firmly clenched his fist, studying the green leaves that were still growing on his body! What was this?

No… it couldn’t be, it was absolutely impossible that he was a demon! He… was a demon slayer! Since he was eight years old, this was his identity! It wasn’t true… He couldn’t be a demon in any respect! He gritted his teeth, grabbing at a leaf, yet felt it to be rather strange. Such a situation was similar to gripping one of his own fingers. He sucked in deeply and tore it off!

Swoosh!

 A bloody scar stretched across the sky!

The leaf had been torn off, but nonetheless, a bloody mark suddenly spurted high into the air from his body! It appeared as if he’d torn off a slab of flesh! A layer of skin! Sharp pain abruptly rushed into his brain, yet not a sound made its way past his throat! 

“M-Master! D-Don’t! A demon form is the body… Gurk!”

Before his voice even fell, Li Zongyuan spat out a mouthful of blood and flew several meters back. Prompt, he didn’t risk continue speaking again. Like he was looking at a dead man, Xu Yangyi stared at Li Zongyuan, causing the toad-demon to break into body-wide chills. After ages, Xu Yangyi moved his gaze away. However, like they had suffered acute pain, the green leaves on his body surprisingly receded away layer by layer.

“This?!” Li Zongyuan’s eye went round. 

What the heck is going on? If Master is a demon, there’s no way demonization can be paused once it starts! This is an ironclad law of demonkind’s development!

The more awesome the demon body, the purer the bloodline. This was a natural law; impossible to break! But if it wasn’t, then what were those leaves?! Was he mistaken? No… He shouldn’t have been. As those leaves barely emerged, he really did feel a trace demonic aura. Although it was quite minute, it was extremely distinct!

In Xu Yangyi’s qi sea, the seed was already gone without a trace, the green leaves further unseen. He didn’t say anything, calmly standing at the center of the vortex like so. As he sensed the surrounding thunder progressively diminish… the maelstrom gradually dissipated. He clenched his hand, looking at his body that was normal as always. After a brief moment, he laughed.

“I knew it was a hallucination.”

“I am myself, Xu Yangyi, a demon slayer. There can be nothing else.”

His mind seemed to calm, and he leapt out from the vortex that was just about to fade away. Clutching God Ming’s head, he stood on top of the Mosasaurus corpse. It was over… finally finished. As long as he left his spiritual-sense brand on the core and made this masterless origin crystal acknowledge his aura… none would come pillaging!

But at the far end of the sky, over a dozen earth-shaking auras swiftly drew near. This was a warning. A warning that no one was to make a move on Jadewave’s hidden treasury. Nonetheless, he didn’t care.

Why had he fought with his life on the line for the origin crystal?

How can I abandon my great efforts because of your shred of spiritual pressure? Why even cultivate then, with an attitude like that?

Although this decryption wasn’t as fierce as his battle at Heavens Law, the level of tension has surpassed it! Twenty minutes determined life and death. He and God Ming had exercised the talents of their entire bodies. Any one of his advantages had to be exhibited to the max. In the end, thanks to his overlooked demon familiar, fortune had come to smile upon him!

“Hehehe…” He watched the starfire-like auras at the sky’s edge, silently laughing. Blood on his hand, he smeared it on the origin crystal’s surface. In an instant, the crystal erupted with a dazzling blue glow. In the dead volcanic lake, a blue ring of spiritual light, akin to a tremendous ripple, turned the entire world cerulean! 

At this moment, the myriad sounds all went silent. 

All gazes fell on the dead volcano. Numerous  mortals stared with wide eyes and mouths ajar at the ripple-like diffusion of blue light in the sky. Below Old Black Mountain, they fiddled with their cameras, blankets draped on their bodies as they clutched at quilts… All of them looked at the sky, awestruck. 

A blue flowery design, like a snow lotus of the Tian Shan Mountains blooming at night, emerged at Old Black Mountain’s summit. Afterwards… like an enormous shock wave, it loudly spread outwards with a speed that eluded imagination!

[1]

“Oh…” A youth looked sluggishly at the mountain top, his mouth hanging open. The scenery in the sky was comparable to an immortal’s descent. Beyond his control, a terrified shriek came from his mouth, and his legs went somewhat weak. In his pupils, a cerulean ripple erupted in the blink of an eye!

“W-What is… this…?” A family of four, parents and children, held hands. The husband was already thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old. He began to recall a time of ten-odd years ago when he was in college, the day he’d watched his first movie. That time… was like now. Over a hundred people assembled at the top of a building and watched the brilliant blue that billowed out from the clouds in the darkness. 

“An immortal… A demon?” 

A pair of young lovers held each other’s hands. A man looked dumbly at the sky. Presently, the ground had already turned into a world of blue because of the tremendous blue ripple’s illumination. The woman responded without the slightest awareness, “Thanks…”

“Jesus Christ… Sweet Mother Mary!!!” The hands of two foreign tourists shivered. Their cameras shook fiercely in their hands as they took aim at the sky. “Is t-this a marvel of China? A natural scenery exclusive to this place?”

[2]

“It’s so magical…”

“I can’t believe it…”

Swish!

 In the sky, a formless soundwave seemed to flash by! A blue halo suddenly exploded! A youth looked at the field in front of him in shock, and the whole field rustled. Up above, this sound was accompanied by the swift outer proliferation of the sky’s curtain! It arrived before him in mere moments!

Swoooooosh!

 Below Old Black Mountain, countless people’s clothes all floated upwards, and the women’s hair flew back abruptly! It was like Old Black Mountain had now transformed into the eye of a hurricane! It launched a wind pressure towards the four reaches, far and near!

Boom!

 Similar to a giant, transparent storm hand, the wave directly rushed over in front of everyone!

“Oh! Heavens!” 

“What’s going on!” 

“Did the sky collapse?!”

One second… two seconds… three seconds, it wasn’t until they felt the wind subside did people lower their guarding hands that tightly covered their eyes. They looked around their surroundings, trepidation in their hearts. 

Night. It was still night. The mountain was still a mountain, and everything from moments ago seemed to have not occurred.

“The mountain…” A foreign tourist hanging onto his camera looked at the mountain in a daze. “What the heck happened… at the top?” 

It was already half past two in the early morning, but there wasn’t a single person sleeping at the Four Great Joint Pools.

One person started to run. Soon, there was a second… Everyone below began to run ahead! They only had one sole objective: the dead volcanic lake of Old Black Mountain! What had transpired there? Why had some spectacle taken that location as its nexus? What was there within?

Their burning hearts carried the thirst to solve this riddle, and they frantically rushed towards Old Black Mountain! They would forever be unaware that at this instant, the surrounding campers of Old Black Mountain’s volcanic lake didn’t have their suspicions, devoid of their seething passions. Instead… these campers were all silent!

They had witnessed everything! All of it! The several-hundred-meter fountain that had gushed high into the air! The people below simply wouldn’t see the corpse of the massive ‘alligator’ that was a few hundred meters in size! The immense thunder vortex!

Each person’s eyes erupted with flame. They were so nervous that they didn’t dare to breath, closely standing side-by-side together. However, this was because… someone was still present. A man raising a head! Although this man was drenched in blood from head to toe, and despite his faintly indiscernible face… no one dared to advance!

No one dared to question, and no one ventured to walk forward. No one risked causing a ruckus!

1. Tian Shan mountain range is located at the far west of China. It covers Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It is known in english as Heavenly Mountain or Mountain of Heaven. I left it untranslated as such, since it is weird to say “heavenly mountain mountains”.

2. I changed the dialogue here. The author here uses english literally in the raws: “ohgod… ohgod”. I felt I made it more “authentically” english. Nice contrast between all the “God” and “Heavens” I have to translate for the Chinese speakers in the book.

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