Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“This… this is…”

Li Yao felt as if his soul was mired in a swamp and that countless invisible leeches were slithering into his soul in the swamp, injecting acid and venom into his head. He could not have been more alarmed.

The red giant seemed to have been bound by invisible shackles. It struggled hard but could not stop the black spots from expanding and joining each other. The body of the giant was blackened, and the stain was even dropping like melted mud.

“Don’t struggle anymore. It’s futile,” Lu Qingchen said casually. “A human’s body can be infected by viruses, and the Spiritual Nexus and the crystal processors can be infected by viruses, too. Naturally, the souls of human beings can also contract a certain fatal virus.

“My antecedent, the extraterrestrial devil, lurked for ten thousand years in the Flying Star Sector. It evolved from a certain virus that could corrupt crystal processors in the first place. Is it strange at all that the virus has gained the ability to invade and corrupt a human’s soul?

“Did you know? Regardless of whether you are an ordinary person, a Cultivator, or an Immortal Cultivator, and no matter whether you are in the Refinement Stage, the Building Foundation Stage, the Nascent Soul Stage, or the Divinity Transformation Stage, and despite the toughness of your soul, the souls of all human beings are shockingly similar in their fundamental architecture!

“Nobody can escape from the virus attack targeting the deepest structure of the soul as long as you are a human being!

“I’ve focused all the tenebrum energy and poured it into your soul in the form of a virus. All your struggles are in vain. Give up, accept my path, and embark on… a brand-new journey!”

Hardly had he concluded his sentence when the black star crushed over overwhelmingly. Its body size expanded again and occupied almost half of the universe or the entirety of Li Yao’s sight!

Gravity! The black star was so enormous that the gravity it generated absorbed all the starships and debris on the space battlefield into its body as part of itself, which made the tenebrum energy reactions on its surface even more chaotic and violent.

In front of Li Yao’s eyes, countless black flames congregated into enormous swirls, and the enormous swirls further congregated into an even more enormous ocean. The furious ocean was pouring right above his head!

“Ahhh!”

All the joints of the red giant were spurting out crimson particles similar to bloody mist. The black spots continued invading Li Yao’s shining soul that was residing at the chest of the red giant. Black bugs appeared on his soul and crawled everywhere randomly, riddling his soul with holes!

The red giant fell to one knee again, but its arms were raised high stubbornly and struggled to hold back the monolithic black star!

“I… will not let things go your way!” Li Yao’s angry voice echoed from the red giant’s head that was almost crushed. “However glorious you make your purpose and your destiny sound, you are not entitled to play with the feelings, will, and soul of any human being, no matter how insignificant and ordinary they are!”

“Idiot! Human beings are supposed to boast the most magnificent force in the entire universe, and yet most people are addicted to the mundane, tranquil life, wasting the precious resources and their even more precious lives away!” Lu Qingchen declared. “I’m trying to help them awaken their real strength so that they can be truly alive!”

“We are already really alive. Everything you see is the future that we have chosen. No one other than ourselves, not even all the gods and devils in the universe, will make a choice in our stead!”

Amid Li Yao’s roars, the red giant stood straight again while holding the black star on the shoulder, as if it were about to throw away the enemy toward the edge of the universe.

But the black spots that had contaminated the joints of the giant significantly affected the hardness of Li Yao’s soul. The red giant could not withstand the enormous gravity of the black star anymore, and its four limbs broke apart at the same time!

It happened faster than could be described. Hundreds of black pillars darted out of the black star in an instant, piercing through the red giant’s limbs, torso, and skull and confining its whole body!

“Ahhh!” Li Yao cried miserably.

The surface of the red giant had been entirely covered in black spots, exactly like Heiye Ming a while back when he was swallowed by the black jellyfish in the Spiriters’ Realm.

“Hehehe. Do you feel the virus running deep inside your soul? I didn’t lie to you. As long as you are a human, you won’t be able to resist such a virus.”

A gap millions of kilometers long suddenly opened on the black star like a bloody mouth that was going to swallow the whole universe. The arms of flames spurting out of the mouth extended like tentacles and tore apart the chest of the red giant unhurriedly, revealing the core of the soul that was glittering like a diamond.

Li Yao’s soul was completely drowned by the black spots. His struggles grew weaker until he was not even able to cut off one pillar of light that pierced through his body. His screams became moans, and the moans turned into murmurs. In the end, there was nothing but obscure, meaningless gasps.

He seemed to have been bent by the power of the virus. His soul was corrupted so crazily that the flames of his spirit and will were weakened to the minimum and could die out at any point!

“Come on and meld with me. It doesn’t matter if we continue using the identity of ‘Vulture’ Li Yao. We will find the mysteries of the origins of mankind. We will see the future and destiny of our civilization. We will be… truly alive!”

From the bloody mouth, the arms of flames wriggled and split apart, allowing what appeared to be a black serpent to slither out slowly.

Some of Lu Qingchen’s features could be found on the surface of the serpent. The beast carried both animalistic brutality and godly reverence. Boundless ambition, lust, and curiosity beamed out of its eyes.

The black serpent slid toward the chest of the red giant and appreciated Li Yao’s soul greedily.

The limbs of the red giant were broken, and its body was riddled with holes because of the corruption of the virus. Li Yao was only able to trigger the feeblest soul waves that were nothing more than a gentle breeze. He could not stop the ‘integration’ at all.

The black serpent crawled into the red giant’s chest while grinning hideously. Li Yao’s soul was about to become part of the enemy’s, when—

The black spots that invaded the red giant, the black pillars that nailed through the limbs and torso, and even the thousands of squirming arms of flames and the black star itself all emitted a weird hue.

No words could describe the brilliance of the hue. Even the number of all the stars in the universe would be enough to measure the colors contained in the brightness.

“Not good!” Lu Qingchen’s long, narrow snake eyes immediately turned into two holes. “What—what are you exactly? How can you resist the corruption of my virus and even counterattack?”

When he realized that he had been fooled, it was already too late.

From the chest of the red giant that was wide open, the sharpest redness darted out like a crimson flying sword, piercing Lu Qingchen’s head and stabbing into the core of the black star that was not closed yet!

A shockingly big hole appeared at the center of Lu Qingchen’s snake head. He finally screamed miserably, but no matter how he tried to fill it with devilish fire, it was impossible for him to fix it any time soon.

The black star was like a balloon whose air had been released. It collapsed at a visible rate, with explosions echoing nonstop from inside. The surging swirls and arms of flames on its surface were all consolidated under the glow of the glamorous brightness, as if they had all become solid rocks. But very soon, the rocks were blown into smithereens by another blood red force from inside!

Blood red springs ran out from the surface of the dying black star and turned into a raging bloody devil that was even more hideous and evil than Lu Qingchen.

“Hahaha. When the snipe and the clam grapple, it’s the fisherman who stands to benefit. I am the final winner after all, you two dumbasses!”

The mental devil opened the broad wings made of blood and skeletons and enveloped Lu Qingchen, whose soul had almost been dried, and Li Yao himself, who was dying, laughing in the most arrogant way.

Flapping its wings, it lunged at the black star that bordered on destruction again. Even the black serpent that was the core of Li Yao’s soul was snatched without any mercy and twisted brutally as if it were a towel.

Lu Qingchen and the mental devil, two extraterrestrial devils that could both be called ‘devil lords’, mauled each other, showing no compassion or hesitation to beings of the same kind. Instead, they tried their best to swallow each other and prevent the swallowing of themselves, like tigers and wolves who were competing for prey.

Lu Qingchen’s soul had been exhausted in the competition against Li Yao just now. More critically, he had devoted almost all the tenebrum energy into the depths of Li Yao’s soul in the form of a virus.

However, the virus that was supposedly effective against all human beings somehow did not work well on Li Yao. It was even countered by a certain mysterious force deep at the core of Li Yao’s soul.

Never had he dreamed that Li Yao’s soul would be so weird. At the last moment, in order to completely swallow the core of Li Yao’s soul, he had needed to expose the core of his own soul. As a result, the mental devil’s ambush had succeeded!

Although the mental devil had used up a lot of strength in the battle against Extraterrestrial Devil Mo Xuan, it had reserved part of its strength back then and had merely been acting before Li Yao. Besides, it had lurked in secret and rested well for a long time. Since its ambush had worked out, how could it leave any chance for Lu Qingchen to make a comeback?

The two devil lords swallowed each other, like two behemothic beasts that had bitten each other’s throats. It was a pure collision of souls that was devoid of any fancy tricks. All the mattered was whose soul power was drained first!

Finally, Lu Qingchen tore off the two bloody wings of the mental devil and even dug a shockingly huge hole in its abdomen.

But his head was twisted and blown away by the sharp claws of the mental devil!

The black star became a completely lifeless planet of rocks before it was completely blown up by the redness that the mental devil shot out with the last bit of its strength!