Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

In another corner of the battlefield, far from the golden radiance of Shen Haoran and the cold, clinical strikes of the other Crowns, the atmosphere was thick with a different kind of terror—one that was primal, visceral, and smelled of iron and ancient hunger.

Shangguan Mu’er stood amidst a heap of fallen titans, her breathing steady but her eyes glowing with a dark, predatory light.

Before her lay a massive Fire Giant, his chest heaving as he struggled to rise.

She stared at him, and smirked. ”I wonder how giants tastes like.”

Without another word, she reached down and shoved her hand into the giant’s chest, her fingers bypassing bone and muscle as if they were water.

The giant twitched uncontrollably, and with a violent, twisting motion, she ripped his glowing soul, a flickering, terrified orb of crimson energy, straight out of his body.

The giant couldn’t even let out a scream before he went limp.

Shangguan Mu’er didn’t bother with the corpse and instead just stared at the soul for a moment, the light reflecting in her bluish-silver eyes.

”How... delicious.” She then casually sucking it into her mouth and swallowed the essence whole.

She licked her lips, a look of sublime satisfaction crossing her face, and at that moment, a dark, demonic power erupted from her body in a violent pillar of shadow.

The air around her vibrated with a frequency that made the ground turn to dust.

She had broken through to the 6th Stage of Spirit Ascension Realm!

The bottleneck that had held her for months was simply consumed and digested.

”Aaahh~!” She moaned in ecstacy, ”So this is the soul of a giant. How delicious~!”

Seeing that, the other giants who were charging toward her suddenly skidded to a halt.

They fell down on their butts and knees, their massive frames trembling as they stared at that small, slender figure standing atop their comrade’s chest.

”Y-Y-You! You are a Gula Demon!?” one of the giants stammered, his voice cracking with a fear that transcended the fear of death.

”Why is someone like you in a human empire!?” Another roared in fear.

”Oh?” Shangguan Mu’er stared at them, tilting her head with a chilling curiosity. ”You know what I am? I didn’t think that even the lowly barbarians of the Wilderness would know the names of their superiors.”

As she took a step forward, the giants, warriors who stood fifteen feet tall, immediately cowered back in fear, dragging their bodies through the dirt to get away from her.

Gula Demons.

In the Vast Wilderness, and indeed across the ancient annals of the world, they are a name feared even by the strongest tribes.

They are part of the Seven Sin Demon Clans, the apex predators of the demonic realms.

The Gula are known for their insatiable hunger and their terrifying ability to gain strength from devouring the heaven and earth.

And unlike the other demons, their history was not one of mere conquest, but of consumption, leaving nothing but barren wasteland in their wake.

They were said to have already established a massive kingdom spanning entire star systems beyond the void, enslaving weaker races and raising them as cattle to be devoured and eaten at leisure.

Amongst the Seven Sin Demon Clans, the Gula Demons are the ones anyone doesn’t want to fight against.

This is because to fight against the other Demon tribes would just leave you to die, but to fight against a Gula Demon is to die and be erased, your very soul serving as a snack to fuel their next breakthrough.

”Well then, since you know what I am,” Shangguan Mu’er smirked, her figure undergoing terrifying, monstrous changes. ”Then kindly lay down and let me devour your soul. It’s better than letting it go to waste in the dirt, right?”

The transformation was horrific and beautiful.

Her skin turned an ash-pale, a very deathly color, and her sclera turned pitch black, with her pupils turning into an evil glowing orbs.

Then, a pair of sharp black demonic horn erupted from above her ear, pointing sharply upwards toward the heavens, and a pair of bat-like wings, spanning over ten meters and dripping with dark energy, appeared on her back, casting a long shadow over the cowering giants.

Most terrifyingly, a dark, swirling hole, the mark of the Void Gluttony—signifying the hunger of her lineage, appeared on her stomach, pulsing with a gravity that pulled at the surrounding light.

Once her transformation was complete, her aura suddenly rose to the peak of the Spirit Ascension Realm!

Then, she took out her pitch-black, demonic greatsword, the Abyssal Maw, a weapon that looked like it was forged from the solidified blood of gods.

She grinned, revealing sharpened fangs, and lunged herself towards the giants.

The giants immediately dropped their weapons in sheer, unadulterated fear and fled.

However, they couldn’t even retreat further when Shangguan Mu’er slashed her sword, splitting several giants in half.

”NOOO! SPARE ME! SPARE ME!”

”AAAHHHHH!!”

”CHIEF! CHIEF! SAVE US!”

”Hahahahaha!” Shangguan Mu’er laughed, the sound echoing like the tolling of a funeral bell.

She once again swung her greatsword in a wide arc, the blade whistling through the air before it cut off the head of another giant.

She didn’t stop there and directly reached into the falling corpse, devouring his brain, his heart, and his soul with a practiced, demonic efficiency.

Her entire body was soon covered in the thick, purple-red blood of her enemies.

Everywhere she appeared, giants were getting chopped into pieces as if they were food about to be served at a banquet.

She was like a whirlwind of shadow and gore, moving through the Fire Giant vanguard like a reaper through a wheat field.

All the while she was absorbing their life force, their soul, and their qi, causing the energy to flowed into her in visible streams of dark light, which not only replenished her own reserves but also steadily increased her own cultivation with every kill.

This is what makes the Gula Demons so terrifying on a large-scale battlefield.

Although they aren’t always the strongest individually at the start of a conflict, they are a group of lunatics that thrives in war.

By devouring the essence of their enemies, they can effectively fight for eternity, growing stronger and more refreshed as their opponents grow tired and weak.

In the history of the Central Region, if it wasn’t for several Supreme Emperors leading the charge against the Gula Demon invasion thousands of years ago, the Empire wouldn’t have been able to drive them out.

Behind her, the army of the Spirit Hall and some of the sect disciples who were following the charge couldn’t help but shiver in fear as they stared at her back.

They kept a wide berth, terrified of being mistaken for a snack.

”That woman... She’s a demonic cultivator, isn’t she?” one disciple whispered, his hand shaking on his sword hilt. ”Why is she with Shen Haoran? How can the Shen Clan allow such an abomination in their ranks?”

”You fool,” an older disciple hissed back, though his own face was pale. ”A demonic cultivator has that nasty, corrupted feel in their qi. Can’t you feel her aura? Although it’s definitely evil and dark, it’s not impure or chaotic. This isn’t a forbidden technique; this is her innate racial talent.”

”Could she be a demon? Weren’t those guys driven out of the empire thousands of years ago by the ancestors?”

”Apparently, not all of them.”

Further back in the formation, Xu Xiansu had just killed another weaker giant with a precise strike to the neck when she spotted Shangguan Mu’er’s transformed state.

She stopped for a moment, the cold wind of the battlefield whipping her hair, and couldn’t help but shiver.

’Damn, that demoness is really scary,’ Xu Xiansu thought, her mind flashing back to the fragments of her previous life. ’If I didn’t have my Sun Moon Physique in that other timeline, I probably wouldn’t have been able to beat her and would’ve been devoured instead. She was always the one following Shen Haoran like a loyal hound...’

However, she quickly shook her head, forcing the memories away, and stared up at the sun which was beginning to dip toward the horizon.

This battle... is about to end.

The Fire Giant Tribe’s vanguard was in tatters, their Generals were falling, and the Spirit Hall was pushing forward.

And yet, Xu Xiansu realized with a bitter sinking feeling that she had failed to achieve even one of her goals.

The Golden Crow probably wouldn’t die here, and it wouldn’t have been able to leave its essence blood for her to absorb.

She sighed, a long, weary sound. ’Well, if I can’t have that blood, I guess I just have to take the long way.’

The Three-Legged Golden Crow blood was just the fastest way for her to awaken her physique to its full potential, but it wasn’t the only way.

She would have to find other treasures, other legacies.

She looked back at the carnage. Ahead, the golden flame of Shen Haoran was still incinerating the horizon, a constant reminder of the gap between her and the man she intended to surpass.

She tightened her grip on her blade. ’I just need to find the Flame Empress and ask her to make the Sun Moon Rising Pill for me.’

It is a pill she had researched and developed in her previous life, however, it requires three Heavenly Flames to be successfully refined.

And in this world, only the Flame Empress possessed the ability to absorb more than one Heavenly Flames.

As Shangguan Mu’er let out another blood-curdling laugh and dived into the next group of giants, Xu Xiansu moved forward too.

She wouldn’t let the demoness take all the kills.

If she couldn’t have the blood of a Golden Crow, she would at least sharpen her own skills in the blood of the giants.