After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

The dark room was no more than three steps wide.

The walls were all rough stone surfaces, and there were no lights or altars.

An old booklet was suspended in mid-air.

Book of life and death.

The book cover was yellowed and the corners were curled up. At first glance, it looked much like an old family genealogy book kept at the bottom of a box in an ancestral hall.

The moment Zhou Ran stepped across the threshold, the Golden Core of the Mind in his dantian plummeted downwards.

The pages turn automatically.

Birth, death, lifespan, calamity, cause, effect.

The six types of handwriting rotate on the paper, with ink marks gathering and dispersing, forming rows of fine entries.

Every line of work is tied to a life.

Some names have just emerged, their strokes still fresh with ink.

Some names are fading from the paper, leaving only a trace of gray.

That means someone in the living world has died.

"Birth and death are common occurrences; who is different from those who have neither come nor go?"

Zhou Ran stopped in place and remarked unintentionally.

The gray line in his dantian shot from the top of the golden core to the bottom, then bounced back to its original position, jumping even faster than before.

When the aura of the Heavenly Corpse came into contact with the Book of Life and Death, the reaction was even greater than Zhou Ran had anticipated.

This booklet records the fates of all living beings in the world.

For the celestial corpse underground, these fates were not records, but nourishment, an account book that it could easily erase once it reopened its eyes.

Outside the stone wall, Emperor Song spoke up to remind him:

"The Book of Life and Death cannot be altered."

"Seventeen hundred years ago, there was a Ghost King in the Nascent Soul stage under the command of the Sixth Palace King Biancheng, who wanted to change a cause and effect."

"Heaven's will turned against him, and he was reduced to ashes on the spot."

"Not even a remnant soul remained."

Zhou Ran simply nodded after listening.

Transformation stage.

It turns to ash.

This is the price for touching the Book of Life and Death.

He never intended to use brute force to overturn the table from the beginning.

The Golden Elixir of the Mind made him realize one thing.

When it comes to rules, if you go head-to-head with them, you'll most likely end up with a bloody nose.

It can have regular gaps.

If there's a crack, you can squeeze through it.

You can also write your own things in the cracks.

"It's alright!"

After a long while, Zhou Ran raised his right hand.

When the fingertips were three inches away from the pages, a scorching power of the heavens rose from the book, drilling into the skin.

This power is different from the laws of the underworld, and also different from the laws of the void realm.

It originates from the most fundamental destiny of Earth's plane.

It is rejecting Zhou Ran; it is not qualified.

In the next instant, the power of the Heavenly Dao flowed into his meridians through his fingertips and rushed down his arm to his dantian.

With his internal organs pierced by the fire, Zhou Ran let out a low groan, and veins bulged on his forehead.

But his hand remained pressed on the pages of the book.

He closed his eyes and focused his consciousness into his dantian.

The Golden Elixir of the Mind hangs in the center, with black and gold patterns intertwined with gray patterns.

After the power of Heaven pressed in, fine golden marks were forced onto the outer edge of the golden core, and the core body trembled violently.

Zhou Ran activated the Dharma.

He did not draw upon the primordial energy or the power of the heavenly tribulation that the old dragon had swallowed when it underwent its tribulation beneath the Yangtze River.

This time, he mobilized Ye Futian's demonic energy.

Black demonic energy surged from the depths of the golden core, thick and domineering, carrying the residual pressure of the sixth heavenly emperor's throne in the demon realm.

The origin of the Demon Emperor.

It is not under the jurisdiction of Blue Star.

It is not under the jurisdiction of the underworld.

It comes from the demon realm, and is the authority of another world.

When the power of Heaven encountered the demonic energy, the backlash caused it to stall for a moment.

The Heavenly Dao of Blue Star could not contain this foreign origin, nor could it incorporate it into the destiny framework of this plane.

Zhou Ran had been waiting for this half-beat.

Regular stitching!

He used demonic energy as the pen core and the laws of idealism as ink, his fingertips brushing against the pages of the book.

The first page.

Page 2.

Page 3.

Countless names flashed by.

Each name is followed by its birth date, death date, cause and effect, and affiliation to the six realms of existence.

Zhou Ran flipped through the book quickly, his massive divine sense power enveloping the Book of Life and Death.

Until the name "Zhou Ran" jumped into his eyes.

The following entries are very short.

"Lifespan: Twenty-four years. Calamity: The Great Desolate Calamity."

Result: Undetermined. Return: Undetermined.

Twenty-four years.

Skillful.

He is exactly twenty-four years old this year.

Zhou Ran stared at "twenty-four" for a couple of breaths, a hint of mockery appearing on his lips.

Heaven sentenced him to a life of twenty-four years.

He didn't touch that number.

Changing lifespan is the stupidest thing to do.

If you change 24 to 10,000, the Heavenly Dao will immediately readjust the accounts.

Numbers are just the surface.

What truly determines whether he can live or die is the calamity, the consequence, and how the Book of Life and Death judges his fate.

What Zhou Ran needs to do is make a judgment.

The demonic energy condensed into a pen at his fingertips.

The pen hovers over the blank space of the entry for "Zhou Ran".

Then, he carefully wrote down six characters.

"This fate is not determined by heaven."

The six characters were completed, and the backlash surged.

Golden flames rose from the pages of the Book of Life and Death.

That fire doesn't burn the paper, it burns the rules.

It wants to erase this annotation that doesn't belong to the Blue Star destiny system.

Zhou Ran's fingertips cracked.

From the fingernail to the second knuckle, the skin and flesh rolled back, and blood dripped into the pages of the book.

Blood is originally red.

After falling onto the paper, it turns into a black and gold color.

That's the color left behind by the blood and qi of the primordial wilderness.

A long whistle came from the dark room.

That wasn't thunder; it was the vibration of rules grinding against each other in the narrow stone chamber.

Cracks appeared on the wall, and rubble fell down.

The sound of pressure being applied to the stone base could be heard from outside the door.

The words of Emperor Song were interrupted by the vibrations of the rules.

"Hold on..."

Yan San knelt on one knee outside the door, using his severed arm to brace himself against the ground and forcefully stabilize the structure of the dark room.

A crack appeared in the bowl in Meng Po's hand.

Half a bowl of soup spilled onto the ground, burning several black spots.

She ignored the ground and held the remaining half bowl of soup protectively in her arms.

The center of the darkroom.

Zhou Ran's right hand was already a bloody mess.

However, not a single stroke was reversed from those six characters.

He didn't rely on sheer willpower.

The Demon Emperor's Demonic Essence is responsible for disrupting the Heavenly Dao's lock.

The gray patterns in the void drew away the erasing power from the golden fire.

His idealistic will pressed down on the Book of Life and Death, forcing it to leave his annotations.

"I am the rule."

This was never something I said to anyone else.

This is the foundation he established when he formed his core.

The essence of the idealistic elixir is to establish rules based on one's own will.

Three forces alternately washed over the fingertips.

The fire was suppressed.

It was torn open again.

The dark room shook for a full fifteen minutes.

Sweat beaded on the forehead of the Song emperor.

Black blood dripped down the strip of cloth from Yan San's severed arm.

Qiao Kun and his five underworld messengers lay prostrate outside the hall, not daring to raise their heads.

King Qin Guang's projection shattered three times and then reformed three times.

Finally, the fire was extinguished.

The golden flames in the Book of Life and Death have all been extinguished.

Those six words remained on the page.

"This fate is not determined by heaven."

The ink is not ordinary black ink.

Instead, it's black and gold.

The primordial energy and blood mixed together with the demonic essence of the Demon Emperor, pressing down next to Zhou Ran's entry.

There is no other line with such words in the entire Book of Life and Death.

Heaven did not approve of it.

But even Heaven couldn't erase it.

Zhou Ran withdrew his right hand.

All five fingers were split open, with the knuckles exposed, and blood dripping down the wrist bones.

He glanced down, the sneer on his lips deepening.

The consequences are already clear.

The Golden Elixir of the Mind consumed 30% of its true essence.

At the same time, the Book of Life and Death also etched an extremely fine golden line into his golden core.

This is the way of Heaven, a punishment for being forcibly left behind.

From this day forward, every time he defies fate, he will have to consume additional Golden Core True Essence.

This is the tax levied by Heaven.

But the next instant, deep within his dantian, the Golden Core of the Heart trembled slightly.

In addition to the black and gold patterns on the surface of the Golden Elixir, there is an extra layer of golden radiance.

That is not a blessing.

It's more like a mark left by the Heavenly Dao after it was forced into a corner.

It still rejects Zhou Ran.

But it could no longer judge Zhou Ran's life in the original way.

Zhou Ran moved his bloodied and mangled right hand, the knuckles rubbing together and making a soft sound.

Three-tenths of one's true essence is exchanged for a punishment.

This deal is a good one.