276 Destined Destruction 7

The sky was filled with heavy clouds.

More and more clouds were herded together by the wind, continuously gathering then dissipating, gathering then dissipating.

Outside of The City of a Thousand Sails, on the expansive desolate plain.

Roxim, the Commanding General of the demon army, stood in the middle of a large pile of wood burning in a bonfire.

The large bonfire piled up to form a giant "元" character.

"Speaking of which, this is the exact place where I first arrived in this world," Roxim said, taking a look up at the dark cloud with a slightly stunned expression.

Li Shunxi's face was expressionless as he asked carefully, "It must have been a long time since Master Commanding General's arrival?"

"About right. Though it's been only four or five years, humans have become way more happy and prosperous in that period." Roxim sighed. "You humans live a very delicate and detailed life. If I didn't have to, I wouldn't want to destroy such a delicate and comfortable lifestyle, either."

"But you…" Li Shunxi felt disturbed. He was about to say something when Silver pulled him back.

He tilted his head and followed Silver's gaze, and the moment he saw what she was looking at, his face darkened drastically.

"How… how is it this fast!!?" His voice sound twisted; he did not believe it would have advanced this much.

"The Jade of Secret can only see into the future. Though it wouldn't be much, deviations still exist," Commanding General Roxim explained in a mild manner.

"And my only job as the Commanding General is to make sure that these said deviations will benefit my side as much as possible." He stared at the bonfires.

"Whoosh!!"

The bonfire suddenly lit up and the fire violently surged, like scarlet lines streaked towards the sky. They met in the sky, forming a giant whirlpool of flame.

The whirlpool of flame spun madly, and three golden dots started to appear at its edge.

"By my name, Roxim, arrive, arrive, arrive! Bravery of the Gray Light!" Roxim exclaimed fiercely. His robes were filled with wind, flowing to his back. But only his eye, under the dark clouds, still emitted a faint golden glow.

"Boom!!!"

From inside the whirlpool of flame emerged a giant horse with three heads.

Its whole body was snowy white, a golden mane streaking across its back. Its four hooves seemed to be forged from gold, shining brilliantly. The eight meter tall body fell down like a meteorite, and made a massive pit as it hit the ground with a "boom".

Li Shunxi and his companions were forced to retreat tens of steps, and only then were they able to bear the searing shock wave.

From far away, he could see Roxim standing in front of the three-headed horse, talking in a loud voice.

"Finally… finally it starts…" Li Shunxi sniffed at the dry wind and felt his nose itch. His tears and snot were instantly dried by the hot wind.

He stared at the scene with a conflicted expression. The Three Headed Horse of the Sun symbolized the start of the main invasion of the demon army.

This was the start of everything, this was the horn of war!

Roxim's body floated upwards and landed on the middle head of the sun horse, and he pointed forwards with his finger.

Amidst the rumble, the earth was trembling. The ground of the plain bulged, and archways made of white bones rose one after another.

Inside of the archway, there was a clear ripple.

"Boom!!"

Countless demons surged out of the archway. From far away, it looked like pure black mud.

The mud gathered tightly and progressively moved deeper into the plain, contaminating everything to a shade of pure black.

***

"Boom!!"

Lu Sheng's body was surrounded by purple flame. The wall of the giant cave was melting like lava.

He let out a low roar and half-knelt on the ground, his thick tail behind his back continually hammering against the ground.

After leaving the golden plaza, he didn't even have time to reach the Prime Devil Sect before the foundations of his body were affected by the greatly strengthened Prime Devil Qi, which was caused by the evolved Three Yin Flame.

The change in his body activated all of his Devil Bodies together. Lu Sheng was nearly forced back into his basic form. Luckily, he stabilized his Qi. Otherwise, with the instability of his powers, he would have exploded on the spot.

'Luckily, this happened quite soon. If it happened after Yin Flame was strengthened even more, my Aquarius Qi would perhaps not even be enough to bear it.' Lu Sheng was was sweating profusely, but his sweat was vaporized by the purple flames as soon as the drops appeared on his body.

"Can't walk on any longer… must find a way to solve this problem." Lu Sheng felt the tearing pain inside his body and realized the severity of the situation.

He summoned the Shadow of Insanity beside him with a thought. As a Yin Devil made out of shadows, it was best suited for delivering messages.

Lu Sheng quickly cut out a slate with his claw and wrote some message on it with his finger, along the lines of "will be cultivating in seclusion for a long time" and "don't worry".

"Go, send this to He Xiangzi, don't let anyone else find out!" Lu Sheng shoved the slate towards the Shadow of Insanity.

"Hisss... hissss..."

The Shadow of Insanity didn't have any organ that would give it the ability to speak, and could only make an empty airy sound. It wrapped itself around the slate and disappeared quickly into the tunnel, towards the Prime Devil Sect.

"Here… using an estimated position, is probably underneath the Prime Devil Sect library tower. Hidden well enough."

Lu Sheng sat down with his legs crossed, the rest of the Yin Devils circled around him as guards.

"Just got the 400 units of Mental Energy I needed. Let me see how strong my Yin Flame have evolved!" He was determined to improve his foundations as much as possible in one go.

"Deep Blue!"

The cheating device's window appeared in front of his face.

Lu Sheng skimmed through page after page of information and quickly locked his gaze on the tab of Three Yin Technique.

'Unknown Secret Technique: 6th tier. Special Affect: Three Yin Flame, Fire Strengthening Level 3."

"Whoosh!"

A swirl the of pure purple Yin Flame appeared on his hand.

"This time, I'll find out the upper limit of Yin Flame's strength, then alter my Devil Body; I will not stop until I am done! Otherwise, there will be bigger problems." He just learned of it this trip, when the change in the foundations of his body caused drastic changes in his Devil Body, and nearly exploded from the collapse of secret art.

He sat quietly in the cave, waiting for his body to self regenerate. Then, he could start a new round of strengthening Yin Flame.

Yin Crane Net and Aquarius Qi, strengthened by a vast amount of Prime Devil Qi, worked very effectively and fixed Lu Sheng's damage in half an hour, pulling him back to his normal state.

The purple flame that surrounded his body dimmed until it completely extinguished.

"Let's start… what a great harvest of Mental Energy this was."

Lu Sheng raised his right hand, the purple flame in the palm of his hand slowly burning. In the middle of it, a drop of mysterious liquid appeared, but it could only be vaguely seen, without any observable details.

Unless Lu Sheng could alter his Devil Body completely, his unstable foundations were like countless bombs inside of his body that could blow up at any moment.

Hence Lu Sheng immediately decided to start cultivating in seclusion to adjust his body. Fortunately, the whole process was not complicated, only consisting of changing his Devil Body to a new source of energy. The rest would be altered automatically by his Aquarius Qi and Devil Body.

"This time I have experience, I need to take this slowly." Lu Sheng mentally pressed the button on the Cheating Device.

Deep Blue shook in response, and went into alteration mode.

He focused his mind again and pressed a button in the Three Yin Technique box as well.

"Puff!"

There was a light sound, and the window become blurry.

The flame in Lu Sheng's hand started changing as well, its color gradually deepened from the pure purple color before to a darker shade of purple. Amidst the flame appeared a purple-black whirlpool that was spinning slowly.

Immense heat radiated out of Lu Sheng's hand, hot to the point the ground around him started melting.

The ground was made out of various materials that were able to stand the temperature from before. The purple black flame, however, instantly caused the ground to start melting at an astonishing rate, showcasing its formidable temperature.

The tab soon became clear.

'Unknown technique: 7th tier. Special Effect: Three Yin Flame, Fire Strengthening Level 4.'

Even Lu Sheng was astonished by the destructiveness of the new purple-black flame. More surprisingly, this flame didn't seem to affect his body at all, and only targeted materials outside of his body.

"Used up 50 units of Mental Energy… about right." Lu Sheng started carefully studying the purple-black flame in his hand.

He started to test the limits of his new flame with various heat resistant materials that he found.

Some of them included various trinkets given to him by his teacher Liu Shanzi. Since the Prime Devil Sect processed various secret arts for controlling poison flame, it also had various tools for measuring their strength. The only problem was that before Lu Sheng came around, the sect was too poor to collect a whole set of them.

But now it was different. The sect became famous, and even earned a higher ranking in the sect alliance. The Prime Devil Sect was no longer the declining sect that could be kicked out of the Hundred Lineages at any time. Though it still couldn't be considered very powerful, it could at least afford a whole set of testing gadgets.

Lu Sheng checked the various items on his body. Aside from various heat resistant gadgets, everything else was destroyed by the intense heat.

Even his clothes were gone; his body was now covered in black scales, already out of his human form for quite a while.

His four meter tall body, even sitting with crossed legs, was more than two meters high.

"The most heat resistant thing is the Accumulated Ice Pearl of the Southern Mountains, which is rumored to be able to withstand the highest level of poison flame." Lu Sheng opened his leather bag that had already been burned to charcoal and took out a jade-white pearl. Though it was only the size of a nail, it still emitted an aura of coldness, and showed no sign of melting even when the rocks around the cave had already melted.

Lu Sheng squeezed the pearl and put it near the Yin Flame in his other hand.

"Hissss!"

The moment the pearl came in contact with the purple black flame, it turned black, melted, and vaporized.

"This power seem to far exceed any other poison fire of the Prime Devil Sect, but it's still unknown whether it can reach the level of the Origin Power."

He waited a while to get used to the new Yin Flame, and quickly gathered Aquarius Qi to alter his Devil Body.

The process took way longer than evolving Yin Flame. In about two hours, Lu Sheng finally fixed the changes to his body that were caused by the change in his Yin Flame.

"So, next one." He stared at the purple-black flame in his hand.

He clicked the evolve button again, and soon, 60 more units of Mental Energy were consumed.

The purple-black flame started compressing. There was a vague shape of a pearl with the color of black ink at its core. On the surface of that pearl was the picture of a white griffin with eight heads.

And of course, the heat of Yin Flame was improved once again. The temperature drastically increased from the previous version.