Volume One: The Devil's Nature Never Changes
End of Arc: The Great Guerrilla War
Scarlet King sat beside the Financial Elder and began drinking tea.
"We want fifteen percent of the sect's annual share… and some gifts for the senior elders of our sect as well."
The Financial Elder immediately thought:
(Hah… Clever. He wants me to give them certain benefits, and in return, he will put in a good word for us with the senior elders of the Food Sect. A small immediate loss in exchange for an enormous long-term gain.)
The elder looked at him with a fabricated smile.
"Of course. Give me ten minutes, and all the Primordial Stones will be ready."
Scarlet King continued:
"And I also want an aura-isolated training room, preferably a dark one. I want to train for a while."
He thought:
(I want to refine the dragon scale and practice the Universe Creator Refinement Technique. That will allow me to increase my strength even further within a short period of time. With the dragon scale, my strength will double, and I will be able to face Long Wei directly on equal footing.)
[Inside the Training Room]
The room was extremely dark.
The only thing visible was Scarlet King's aura surrounding him and faintly revealing his position.
The first thing he did was tear off his shirt with one hand.
He took out the dragon scale and held it between his hands.
The scale began floating.
"Now the dragon refinement begins. If I can obtain a dragon bloodline, I will become almost completely dragon while still remaining both darkness and human."
He began refining it.
Qi gathered around his body as the scale started rotating clockwise.
Then, suddenly, its direction reversed.
It began rotating counterclockwise, slowly approaching Scarlet King's chest.
[After Two Hours of Refinement]
The scale reached Scarlet King's bare chest and attached itself to him.
Scarlet King immediately felt horrific pain, as though something scorching hot were melting through his skin and flesh.
Yet his expression did not change.
This kind of pain was something he had experienced countless times before.
Scarlet King's nervous system caused him to experience pain at several times the intensity of other beings, but his mind and soul had adapted to pain to such an extent that sometimes he felt nothing at all, even from a fatal injury.
The dragon scale fused with Scarlet King's body and disappeared beneath his skin and flesh, which regenerated over it.
An intense golden aura immediately erupted from Scarlet King's body, illuminating the dark room as he felt as though his entire body were burning.
After a short while, however, the light faded, and everything returned to normal.
Scarlet King's body was drenched in sweat.
But he had broken through to the seventh level of Qi Condensation.
He had advanced four entire levels because of the scale.
In the future, rapid automatic breakthroughs would begin to occur as well.
The energy contained within the scale was theoretically enough to push him through the equivalent of an entire cultivation realm—or even more—but the laws of the dimension restricted how great an instantaneous leap in cultivation could be.
On top of that, his body itself would not have been able to withstand all that energy entering it at once.
It would have vaporized within seconds.
That made Scarlet King want to ascend to the Second Dimension as quickly as possible—
but not before completing his plans.
"Now, the Universe Creator Refinement Manual. I need to become stronger if I am going to rise above the throne."
Scarlet King immediately began refining the book.
Someone might ask:
Why does the Devil of Rebirth not simply use the abilities from his previous lives if he already knows so many techniques?
The answer was that after his death, his cultivation had been destroyed.
It was similar to having an entire library of learned abilities completely erased, forcing him to write everything again by relearning each technique through a book, scroll, or some other foundation belonging to that technique.
He knew everything about the technique.
But he no longer possessed its foundation, which had been erased.
That meant he only needed to reacquire the foundation before he could use the technique again.
Mystical Cultivation Arts, however, were different.
They were not techniques, but cultivation arts used to refine cultivation itself.
There was one exception.
Abilities that Scarlet King had created or invented entirely on his own could be used whenever he wished, because their foundations originated from him.
He already knew those foundations from the beginning.
The refinement process began.
Qi flowed into the book, and its information emerged in the form of inscriptions and talismans before entering Scarlet King's mind.
The process was horribly exhausting because the information entered at tremendous speed.
Even storing information inside the Infinite Library required some time, forcing Scarlet King to push himself to accelerate the process of creating the corresponding book within it.
[Four Hours Later]
Inside Scarlet King's body, the Core Aperture suddenly shifted toward the right side.
Then an extremely small explosion occurred compared to the size of the void within him.
From that explosion, a sphere suddenly formed.
Externally, it was the same size as the Core Aperture.
But it was completely empty.
This was the Primordial World.
It would eventually evolve into an ordinary world, then a Great World, then a universe, followed by even further stages of development.
Normally, once someone reached the Dao Fusion Realm, a crack would form in the Core Aperture.
Upon ascending to the next realm—the Saint Realm—that crack would become complete, causing the Core Aperture to rupture and divide.
The first portion would become a smaller and denser Core Aperture.
Its reduced size would allow Qi to circulate through it more quickly.
The larger portion would then divide further and form the cultivator's internal Primordial World.
But what had happened inside Scarlet King's body was strange enough to surprise even him.
A tiny portion of his Core Aperture should have split away to form an extremely small internal world.
Instead—
the world that appeared had literally emerged from nothing.
Externally, it was the same size as his Core Aperture.
Internally, however, it spanned a full one million kilometers.
Even so, its size would increase once the six internal evolutions began, followed by the overwhelming primordial evolutions, then the external evolutions, and finally the Eternal Existential Evolutions.
Scarlet King did not care about any of that for now.
First, he needed to stabilize the internal Primordial World.
[Several Hours Later]
Scarlet King walked out of the room, still thinking:
(This does not make sense. How did that happen? The Universe Creator Refinement Technique is a shortcut to forming a universe, but its benefits are weaker than those of someone who forms a cosmic world when they naturally reach the realm where they are supposed to obtain one.)
(The technique cuts away an extremely small piece of the Core Aperture to form the Primordial World, unlike what happens when someone reaches the Saint Realm, where the larger portion of the Core Aperture separates and forms a massive Primordial World.)
(But my internal world appeared from nothing. It did not need anything in order to form. It simply appeared when I practiced the technique…)
(Wait. Does that not mean that when I reach the Saint Realm, I will possess two cosmic worlds?)
Scarlet King suddenly noticed something that left him astonished.
A three-way connection had formed between his dantian, Core Aperture, and Primordial World.
This shocked him deeply.
Each of the three was vastly different from the others, and linking them together should have created extreme repulsion powerful enough to erase Scarlet King's body.
Yet instead, the three forces existed in harmony.
They were like three musical notes moving together in the same rhythm, layered over one another without ever touching.
Suddenly, Scarlet King received a spiritual transmission from Liu Zai Hang.
(Scarlet King, quickly! Long Wei is attacking your faction headquarters!)
Scarlet King did not wait another second.
He immediately cut off his thoughts about what had happened and decided to study the matter later.
Not now.
"Vaporization. Long Wei, you bastard, I am going to beat the hell out of you."
[At the Food Sect]
The Dragon Gang's soldiers were viciously attacking anything belonging to the Ink Rebirth Darkness Faction.
Long Wei stood above, watching the destruction and chaos, with Wei Xia Mo beside him.
"Burn the Earth Tree to the ground and incinerate all that divides and distinguishes. Let chaos and destruction devour the world. Let the world be purified through chaos and destruction!"
Suddenly, an enormous cloud of mist appeared.
Long Wei immediately recognized who it belonged to.
Titan King's enormous sword emerged from within the mist and descended with overwhelming force upon a large number of soldiers, crushing them with ease.
Then Titan King's entire body emerged from the mist.
He said nothing.
He immediately attacked Long Wei with his fist, sending him flying with tremendous force and smashing him through dozens of buildings.
Long Wei thought:
(Damn it. He has become much stronger. But I also broke through to the fifth level of the Path Initiation Realm! He will not be my match.)
Long Wei flew out of the rubble and brushed the dust from his clothes.
Then he smiled madly and released his golden aura in the form of an enormous dragon.
Mist appeared around Scarlet King, and he returned to his normal human form.
"You are not the only one who possesses a part of the Dragon Clan."
Scarlet King released his own aura.
It was equal in level to Long Wei's.
The two auras collided—
causing an overwhelming explosion.
From a distance, Liu Zai Hang, the First Elder, and Da Fu watched.
Liu Zai Hang spoke:
"We will not interfere. We should let the younger generation settle their own conflicts. After all, the sect encourages gang warfare."
"Now we will see who wins—Gu Yue or Long Wei."
"Well, shall we start betting?"
Long Wei, meanwhile, was enjoying the fight.
"Yes! This is exactly what I wanted! Someone who can confront me and force me to unleash my tyranny!"
Before he even noticed it, a laser beam appeared and sliced across his cheek.
"..."
Long Wei wiped away the blood and licked it from his fingers.
"Very good. You have become stronger than I expected!"
Long Wei moved.
He suddenly appeared in front of Scarlet King and threw a powerful punch at him.
Scarlet King responded:
"Dragon Scale Armor!"
Armor formed from aura and blasted Long Wei backward, burning his arm.
Scarlet King thought:
(After the dragon scale fused with my body, I gained several useful abilities.)
Scarlet King's armor disappeared.
He then drew the pistol and hurled it toward Wei Xia Mo.
It struck him and sent him flying, destroying several buildings along the way.
Long Wei's wings emerged.
Scarlet King drew his weapons—
the Imperial Scales Daggers.
Their clash began.
The two charged toward each other.
Long Wei blocked both daggers and squeezed Scarlet King's arm, attempting to crush it.
But Scarlet King's physical strength was far from insignificant.
Scarlet King immediately fired a laser beam from his eye.
Long Wei dodged it and punched Scarlet King in the face, forcing him backward.
Scarlet King indifferently wiped the blood flowing from his nose.
But Long Wei appeared behind him and delivered another punch to his back, launching him forward and slamming him into the ground.
Scarlet King thought:
(Damn it. My entire spine is shattered.)
Long Wei descended behind him.
Wei Xia Mo also landed, standing behind Long Wei while fanning his face with his bamboo fan.
Long Wei stepped forward and raised his fist.
"Gu Yue, this is your end."
Suddenly—
a beam pierced Long Wei's chest from behind.
Blood erupted from his chest like a fountain, and he began coughing up blood.
When Long Wei looked back, he saw Wei Xia Mo aiming Scarlet King's pistol at him.
"Sorry, but my interests matter more than you."
Long Wei did not hesitate.
He immediately unleashed his aura, blasting Wei Xia Mo backward, then deployed the Wings of the Mighty Eagle King and fled.
He knew about Scarlet King's regeneration.
If Scarlet King managed to stand again, he would literally crush him, especially with the wound in Long Wei's chest.
Wei Xia Mo approached Scarlet King and extended his hand.
"Come on, get up. Do not forget your promise."
Scarlet King grabbed Wei Xia Mo's hand and stood.
"Now we need to eliminate the remaining ones."
He looked toward the Dragon Gang soldiers with an evil grin as he took the pistol back from Wei Xia Mo.
Wei Xia Mo thought:
(This weapon is extremely strange… but overwhelmingly powerful.)
[Two Months Later]
During those two months, the Dragon Gang was dismantled after its strongest member fled.
Most of its members joined the Ink Rebirth Darkness Faction.
The faction's total membership reached 1.2 million people.
The remaining members became independent cultivators, while others joined different gangs.
However, there was one thing occupying Scarlet King's mind.
"The aptitude test is approaching."