Chapter 173 – The Second Devil
Wang Lin didn’t want to face them all at once; he wanted to force them to separate. Sure enough, under the rain of swords, the little beasts separated once again. Wang Lin passed through the gaps left by the little beasts and arrived outside the tower. He stopped in front of the door and turned around to catch all the flying swords that flew back towards him.
At the same time, he summoned the devil back. The devil was too busy devouring the divine senses of the small creatures to completely ignore Wang Lin. Wang Lin let out a cold snort as his Ji Realm Divine Sense flew out.
When the snort reached the demon’s ears, it made him shiver in fear. He didn’t dare to devour the divine sense anymore, so he reshaped his body from the black smoke cloud and went to the tower with Wang Lin. As he hovered around Wang Lin, he felt like he had been wronged. He longingly stared at the beast’s divine sense one last time before returning to the dragon vein.
He didn’t understand what was wrong with this demon’s brain that it left all its enemies unkilled and told him to come back.
Wang Lin’s expression was solemn as he stared at the tiny creatures from within the black tower. There was a reason why he had stopped the devil from devouring them all. He thought about it and came to the conclusion that these tiny creatures had gathered together to form a large tornado. The one thing this place had in abundance was this black tornado.
This means the number of these tiny creatures is nearly limitless. Their primary means of attack are divine sense and sound waves. Although their attacks are quite powerful, their bodies are extremely weak.
As a result, destroying these small creatures became extremely easy, especially for someone like Hunchback Meng, who only needed to release a small amount of poison. However, Wang Lin couldn’t forget what he saw from the top of the last black tower, when countless black tornadoes gathered in one place.
Such movements have a purpose, meaning these tiny creatures have a way of calling each other. After many of them die, they call their friends. If he gets caught in such a cycle, he’ll surely die. There are too many tornadoes.
At the same time, if he killed too many people, they might summon the black tornado that would head towards Hunchback Meng. If that happened, it wouldn’t be Hunchback Meng clearing the way for him, but rather, he would be helping Hunchback Meng by diverting the black tornado.
In that final battle, around 200 of the tiny creatures were destroyed by Wang Lin and the demon. His eyes lit up as he stared at the tiny creatures outside. The creatures gathered again, forming a black tornado. After circling the tower a few times, they no longer cared about Wang Lin and continued forward.
After the black tornado disappeared, Wang Lin let out a sigh of relief. At the same time, his heart grew cold. This earth’s trial was extremely strange. The logic here was completely opposite to what was normal. When someone realized that the little creature specialized in divine sense and sound attacks but had a weak body, their first reaction was to kill it as quickly as possible to prevent attracting more.
But as a result, once a number of these little creatures are killed and they start asking for help, then unless your cultivation is heavenly, the only path left is death.
Wang Lin cultivated at the top of the black tower and stared into the distance, seeing where all the black tornadoes were gathering. After pondering for a moment, he decided not to rush and waited inside the black tower.
He then looked at the demon. The demon’s face was filled with greed as he watched the black tornado leave.
Wang Lin did not explain but said coldly, “I don’t care how many souls you have devoured; take out half of them for me.”
The devil struggled with his decision. If he fled now, would this devil chase him? He hesitated for a moment before looking at Wang Lin. When he saw Wang Lin’s gaze turn hostile, he quickly began to spit out a large number of the little beast souls.
After vomiting 20, he pretended to look weak. He secretly thought, “No matter how strong you are, you still have to eat what I spit out! If you have the ability, don’t eat it!”
Wang Lin didn’t know what the demon was thinking, but after seeing the arrogance on the demon’s face, he had a guess. However, Wang Lin didn’t want to bother with such things. All his attention was focused on the 20 little creatures’ souls.
After observing them carefully for a while, he grabbed the souls and walked up the tower. After finding a floor of the right size, his Ji Realm spread out and surrounded the area.
The devil followed behind Wang Lin. He wanted to see Wang Lin devour the souls covered in his saliva with his own eyes. While he was still feeling proud of himself, he suddenly realized that his surroundings were filled with Wang Lin’s divine sense. The divine sense that made him feel pain worse than death, the red lightning that gave him nightmares, was moving around the room. His entire body suddenly went soft. He silently thought, “It’s over! It’s over! It looks like this devil is going to finish me off…”
Frightened, he was about to beg for mercy when he realized that Wang Lin wasn’t even looking at him. Wang Lin was currently silently staring at the 20 little creatures’ souls. The devil swallowed the words he was about to say and considered himself lucky.
Wang Lin carefully observed the souls of these tiny creatures. They possessed roughly the same strength as an early stage Core Formation cultivator. They weren’t strong, but they weren’t weak either. If it weren’t for the fact that he had forcibly nurtured the devil into becoming like the wandering souls, the devil wouldn’t have been able to so easily devour all the souls that resembled it.
Thanks to the demon’s success, he came up with the idea of creating another demon. He knew that his main weakness was his lack of magical treasures. Even now, the only thing he could use to fight was a flying sword. As for the others, they were too low-quality to be of any use.
Besides the flying sword, there was a demon. This demon had proven quite useful earlier. If he hadn’t used the demon to counter the divine sense sword, he would have been in much greater trouble.
The only other treasures he had were the dragon vein and the scroll. However, the aura within the scroll was too strange. Wang Lin decided that until he truly understood what the scroll contained, he wouldn’t use it.
The key to raising a demon was the special nature of its soul. The first demon soul possessed the potential of a Nascent Soul cultivator. This allowed Wang Lin to raise it to such an extent that it successfully acquired some of the attributes of a wandering soul. However, compared to the wandering souls in the decaying world, there were still many differences.
If it were a true wandering soul, then no matter what cultivation level the enemy was at, once it attacked them, it would be able to devour their souls and suck out all their flesh and blood essence. Unless they encountered an extremely powerful cultivator who could destroy them, their only natural enemies were the soul devourers.
However, the demon Xu Liguo could only devour souls of those at the same cultivation level as him. If he tried to devour the soul of a Nascent Soul cultivator, there was a chance he would be rejected.
What caught Wang Lin’s attention was the ability of those small creatures to merge. This was the first time he had seen divine senses able to merge to form a new divine sense.
This special ability made Wang Lin want to use it to create demons.
Wang Lin pondered for a moment before patting his storage bag, causing several soul flags to fly out and float around him. The souls inside the flags were mostly demonic cultivators from the Sea of Devils, as well as some creatures from the Sea of Devils.
He waved his right hand, trapping 19 souls in a spiritual energy cage and leaving only one of them alone.
Wang Lin’s eyes lit up as he took a soul from one of the flags. He threw the soul away after leaving a mark on it.
Unfortunately, just like Xu Liguo back then, the little beast soul didn’t know how to devour at all, so it just stared blankly around. However, Wang Lin wasn’t in a rush. Having experienced raising demons, he knew that it would take time to cultivate a soul with abilities similar to a wandering soul.
However, this first step required him to be a bit more forceful. A red flash appeared in Wang Lin’s eyes as his Ji Realm formed a net around the small creature and slowly approached it.
Under the pressure of the net, the tiny creature’s soul began to move. Seeing nowhere to go, it began to move towards the other souls.
Wang Lin was completely focused on observing the little creature’s soul, but saw the little creature suddenly speed up and crash into another soul. Instead of devouring the other soul, it fused with it. Wang Lin could sense that the little creature’s soul had become slightly stronger.
He was shocked. He had originally thought it would take a lot of energy to forcefully devour it. After all, the demon Xu Liguo had also put in a lot of effort back then. He hadn’t expected that with just a little push, the soul would merge with the other soul. Even though it wasn’t devouring, the effect was the same.
Without a word, Wang Lin withdrew the red net, took out another soul, and threw it in after leaving his mark on it. This time, the small creature stepped forward and fused with it without any input from Wang Lin.
As a result, Wang Lin was now very interested. His eyes lit up and he pointed the soul flag a few times. Over a dozen souls flew out. After leaving his imprint on them, he threw them away.
At this moment, the little creature’s soul suddenly began to move, colliding with the souls one by one. Each time it collided with one, it would merge with it and become stronger before moving on to the next.
In less than an hour, the little creature had finished fusing with more than a dozen souls. It looked like it was about to break through from the early Core Formation stage to the middle stage.
Wang Lin was even more intrigued now as he took one of the soul flags and waved it. Over a hundred souls flew out. After leaving their imprints on all of them, they flew toward the small creature.
The little creature’s soul let out a piercing cry. This was the first time the creature had made a sound inside the tower. As it howled, sound waves began to spread. When Wang Lin saw this, he was overjoyed. His eyes lit up; his attention was completely focused on the little creature.
He knew he had found a treasure. For some reason, this little creature’s soul was very strange. It seemed like it was created to be a demon. Without any power, it would begin to fuse with other souls on its own. Furthermore, what surprised Wang Lin the most was its sound wave attack. He had originally thought the creature would need a body to use this attack, but it could be used with just a soul.
When Wang Lin took a closer look, he realized that these sound waves were designed to attack souls. After the sound waves spread, all the souls charging toward him slowed down and appeared to be dying.
Just at this moment, the little creature’s soul rushed out. In less than half an hour, it devoured over 100 of these souls. Shortly after, the soul exploded into a red mist about 10 feet wide and slowly fell.
Wang Lin’s eyes lit up as he waved the soul flag. The remaining 19 souls of the little creatures were sucked into the flag before being placed back into his storage bag. He then turned around and stared at the red mist. He could feel the fragments of divine sense he had imprinted on the souls slowly merging with the little creatures’ souls.
The devil stood to the side and stared dumbfoundedly at everything that was happening. He secretly thought, “Cruel! This little brother is too cruel! Looks like I have to start working harder, or this devil might feed me to this little brother!” The devil’s body trembled as he retreated. He floated in the air and began to rapidly digest the souls he had devoured.
This wait lasted for three days. During those days, there was no change at all in the red mist. Besides observing the red mist, he saw countless black tornadoes passing by. One of the black tornadoes was over 10,000 feet tall. It seemed as if the king of the black tornadoes had passed through the black tower.
As the largest tornado passed by, it paused for a moment as numerous divine senses appeared. Their target wasn’t Wang Lin, but the red mist.
However, when those divine senses hit the black tower, they were reflected back. The black, king-like tornado lingered around the black tower for a moment before disappearing.
Wang Lin could clearly sense that when the divine sense from the black tornado arrived, there was an abnormal fluctuation within the red fog. This shocked Wang Lin and caused him to observe the red fog even more closely.
Gradually, more and more black tornadoes appeared. They were all heading in one direction. Wang Lin sneered; there was no need to guess whether that direction was where Hunchback Meng was.
Hunchback Meng’s face was grim. In fact, when he killed the first wave of small creatures and was immediately surrounded by a second wave that was ten times the size of the first, he realized that he had messed up.
His actions were based on his experience in the ice world. In that experiment, a type of creature lived there and appeared in large groups. Someone had to kill them as quickly as possible, or they would attract more creatures.
However, this damned earth’s trial was the exact opposite. This thought made Hunchback Meng smile bitterly. However, since he had reached this point, even if he stopped attacking them, those little beasts would continue to attack him with sound waves and divine sense attacks.
Finally, Hunchback Meng’s evil side began to show. He gave up restraint and released a large amount of poison. As a result, the little creatures began to call for help in increasing numbers, to the point that even though he was inside the black tower, the number of little creatures gathered reached a point that even his mind went blank.
He currently stood inside the black tower, gazing at the endless black tornado. At the same time, the number of small creatures continued to grow, calling for help. He had tried to use the tower as a base and remove the poison from within, but the tower possessed a powerful barrier. While it prevented the small creatures from attacking, it also prevented those inside from attacking those outside.
Hunchback Meng wasn’t sure what would happen if he left the tower. He was certain that he would receive a combined attack from the divine senses and sound waves of 100 million, or even 1 billion, of those tiny creatures once he left.
Even though he was a Soul Formation cultivator who could make 10 million cultivators tremble with just a single stomp of his foot, it was impossible for him to withstand the combined divine sense and sound wave attacks of over 1 billion tiny creatures.
After a moment of contemplation, he touched the frog on his shoulder, revealing a cruel expression. Without a word, he pointed at the frog. The frog then jumped down from his shoulder and began to croak.
Hunchback Meng’s heart ached at the sight of the frog. He sighed and put it away. After a moment of contemplation, he took out a 100-foot-long python. A single horn appeared on its head. As it emerged, the air around it became hot.
“If I use the toad, I won’t be injured, but the toad will definitely die. Ah, this one-horned python is a mid-grade spirit beast. Even if I can still use this, I’ll take some damage,” Hunchback Meng muttered to himself as his index finger sliced open his middle finger to draw a drop of blood. He chanted some strange words, and the drop of blood rapidly lightened until it became a milky white. The white drop of blood landed on the python’s head.
Hunchback Meng quickly formed a seal with a solemn expression on his face. He slowly pointed at his own forehead and pulled something out. A crystal-like, silky thread was pulled out from his forehead. The thread was then slowly pressed against the milky white spot on the python’s forehead.
After a very long time, Hunchback Meng took a deep breath, stood up, and then casually threw the python to the ground. When the python landed, it coiled up and remained still.
Hunchback Meng’s gaze became sharp as he walked out of the tower without hesitation. As he walked out, the howling of the black tornado increased many times over. All the little creatures united their divine senses and unleashed a barrage of attacks on Hunchback Meng.
At this moment, even the sky changed color, and the restrictions placed on the peak of the earth trial began to tremble.
Wang Lin wasn’t very close to the place, but even he felt the pressure. He opened his eyes and looked toward where Hunchback Meng was.
At the same time, an abnormal fluctuation occurred in the red mist. This distracted him from what was happening to Hunchback Meng. He stretched out his hand and a blue flame appeared.
If the demon emerging from the red mist wasn’t under his control, he would use the Ji Realm and the blue flames to destroy it completely. If he could control it, then even better.
When the powerful divine sense attack came, Hunchback Meng didn’t dodge but waved his sleeve. A large amount of black smoke poured out from it.
Black smoke gathered and turned into a cloud. This cloud began to spread. Any small creature that touched the black cloud immediately fell from the sky and began to twitch. Its body then turned into black smoke, which soon merged with the black cloud.
Just as he finished exhaling the smoke, a series of powerful divine sense attacks descended. Hunchback Meng let out a miserable groan. His body then became increasingly illusory until it was replaced by a 100-foot-long python with horns on its head. The python coiled around for a while before being completely destroyed by the divine sense attacks. Even its core was reduced to dust.
At the same time, the python within the tower blurred and immediately transformed into Hunchback Meng. His face was pale and he coughed up a mouthful of blood. He revealed a bloodthirsty smile as he muttered, “My Heaven Destroying Poison is considered the number one poison in the Devil Sea, and I’ve used it all. I don’t believe that I can’t kill all of you!”
A black cloud covers the area around the tower. As soon as the tornado touches it, it collapses into countless tiny creatures. Soon, those tiny creatures will turn into black smoke and become part of the black cloud.
As a result, the black cloud became larger and its speed of expansion increased rapidly.
As for Wang Lin, his expression was extremely serious as he stared at the red mist. The fluctuations in the red mist became more frequent until it began to slowly condense again. Wang Lin didn’t even blink. The sound of burning fire could be heard from the blue flame in his hand.
At this moment, red lightning flashed in his eyes, and the restrictions he had set up using his Ji Realm became even stronger. Even the demon Xu Liguo regained his senses. After looking around for a while, he became overjoyed and secretly thought, “Looks like this little brother won’t be so easy to control. You two better injure each other so I can devour you both. Haha, that’s a great idea!”
The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. His eyes sparkled endlessly. Although the demon Xu Liguo had recovered some of his memories, it was only a small portion. The remaining memories vanished when he became a demon. He didn’t consider himself a cultivator at all; he only considered himself a demon.
Time passed slowly. The red mist grew smaller and smaller until finally, all the remaining mist suddenly condensed into a fiery red ball. After a few crackling sounds, the ball shattered, releasing dark red gas. The gas quickly transformed into the shape of a small creature’s head, its sharp beak emitting a chilling aura.
As it appeared, it disappeared. Although Wang Lin was secretly shocked, his face remained calm as he turned to the right and fired his Ji Realm.
The red creature appeared in the direction Wang Lin was heading. The creature was startled and immediately disappeared again. This was the first time Wang Lin’s Realm Ji had escaped.
This showed how fast the new demon was. Wang Lin remained calm. Not only did he not panic, but he became even calmer. His gaze turned cold as his Ji Realm shot out from behind him.
A heart-rending scream rang out from behind him. The moment the demon appeared, it collided with Wang Lin’s Ji Realm. He couldn’t dodge in time, and the Ji Realm filled his body.
His body involuntarily floated into the air and moved in front of Wang Lin. He stared at Wang Lin with a terrified expression as he let out a heart-rending scream.
The demon Xu Liguo took a deep breath and immediately discarded any thoughts of rebellion. He hadn’t expected the demon to defeat his younger brother so easily. After a moment of contemplation, he realized what had happened and silently cursed, “Demon!”