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

Nightfall retreated thirty feet in a flash.

The artificial arm formed from demonic energy exploded, transforming into dozens of black arcs that collided head-on with the sweeping black iron halberd.

Another section of the underground palace collapsed.

The rubble pierced through the broken rock layers and crashed into the deeper underground river, where the dull sound of water only returned after a long time.

The power disparity is undeniable.

Transformation into a Divine Spirit versus Nascent Soul.

Even if Ye Futian were at his peak, he could manifest the Dharma of Heaven and Earth and destroy the world with a single thought.

At this moment, it is nothing more than a remnant soul, residing in someone else's body and struggling to survive.

However, combat experience has nothing to do with cultivation level.

It is etched in the deepest folds of the soul.

The memories of ruling a world are gone, but the instincts honed over 100,000 years of killing and conquest remain.

When to retreat, when to yield, and when to shrink yourself into a needle and squeeze through the crack in the iron plate.

This kind of thing can't be erased.

The night bears the burden of the heavens but does not stubbornly resist.

He transformed his remaining demonic energy into a dozen thin, dark snakes, which burrowed into the joints of the phantom armor.

Every tentative touch was measuring the upper limit of that remnant soul's potential.

"You won't last long."

Nightfall bared its teeth, a trickle of black blood hanging from the corner of its mouth.

"The same to you."

The phantom answered.

The voice was three degrees thinner than last time.

The halberd swept across.

Ye Futian was blasted away, his back slamming into the stone wall and leaving a human-shaped dent.

This attack even caused spiderweb-like cracks to appear in Zhou Ran's sea of ​​consciousness, shattering two pieces of floating memory ice.

But he held firm to control his physical body.

His ten fingers dug into the cracks in the stone wall, his nails split, and blood flowed down the back of his hand.

They won't let go, even if it means death.

He's gambling.

He bet that Li Chengfeng's remnant soul had a lower degree of cohesion than his own.

Betting that the other side will break up first.

A lose-lose situation?

That's okay too.

As long as this phantom shatters first, he will have enough time to completely weld this demonic body shut, ensuring that Zhou Ran, that traitorous disciple, will never be able to rise again.

The third collision.

Ye Futian used his demonic arm to block the halberd's edge, but half of his prosthetic arm broke off at the elbow joint.

After shattering into black mist, it took two breaths to reform, a full beat slower than before.

the fifth time.

Just before the halberd fell, he slid behind the phantom and transformed his demonic energy into a spike that pierced the spine seam of the armor.

With a sweeping, illusory halberd, he had already flashed to a distance of twenty feet.

But the halberd still grazed his chest, shaving off a layer of skin.

The seventh time.

The underground palace almost completely collapsed.

Rock layers kept falling from above, sending up plumes of dust that blotted out the sky.

Ye Futian knelt halfway in the ruins.

The demonic prosthetic arm shattered, reformed, reformed, and shattered again.

Four times in total.

By the fifth time it condensed, it could no longer maintain the shape of a finger, and looked like a lump of kneaded black mud hanging on its shoulder.

The outline of the phantom was also fading.

The heavily armored figure, three zhang tall, began to blur at the edges, like ink seeping into water.

The halberd was raised at a speed almost twice as slow as the first time.

"The final blow."

The phantom opened its mouth.

The sound no longer vibrated the air as before; it was more like the lingering echo of the wind passing through an empty valley.

Ye Futian propped himself up on his knees and stood up.

The remnants of demonic energy swirled wildly around him, stirring up a ring of rubble.

"Haha, come on."

……

The entire underground palace trembled three times during the final collision.

Like the heart of a dying beast, having completed its last three beats.

Then it quieted down.

Dust settles.

The gravel stopped falling.

Even the stench of decay and sulfur that permeated the air seemed to have been dissipated by the aftershocks of the battle, leaving only a dry, lifeless silence.

In this insane clash that will be recorded in the annals of cultivation history.

A shriveled mushroom rolled out from a crack in the pebbles.

Bai Xuan huddled behind the broken stone pillar.

He pressed his umbrella down to its flattest position, his whole body pressed against the ground.

It watched the whole time.

Without blinking.

It saw Zhou Ran's severed arm suppressing the dragon.

They saw the old demon's consciousness engulf those purple-gold eyes.

It saw a completely unfamiliar expression appear on that face it knew all too well.

Ten thousand years of arrogance, greed, and indifference towards all living things.

This is exactly the same expression as the remnant soul inside Zhou Ran's body.

He also saw two ancient monsters using Zhou Ran's physical body as a battlefield, shattering the entire underground palace into pieces.

The "boss" has been possessed.

The mind of this ancient spirit works incredibly fast.

Advantages and disadvantages.

It only considers the pros and cons.

Zhou Ran is ruthless and cruel, and she often threatens it with "stewed mushroom soup".

Every few days, it squeezes out its original essence until it shrinks by half, and if it makes the slightest move, it gets a beating.

But at least they follow the rules.

If we say we'll protect it, then we will protect it.

I said I'd find it a book...

Well, none of those extraordinary books like *Jin Ping Mei* have been delivered yet.

fraud.

But at least, if they have any use, we won't kill them.

This is the bottom line.

Bai Xuan has lived for a thousand years and has seen far too many things that have no bottom line.

Those who have principles are worth following.

The night is different from the sky.

From their first encounter inside Zhou Ran's body, Bai Xuan knew what kind of creature this was.

Ancient God of Slaughter.

There is only one attitude towards all things.

Eat what you can eat, and crush what you can't eat to use as fertilizer.

What is Bai Xuan?

A rare and precious medicine.

The ultimate tonic.

Moreover, the feud had already begun long ago.

In the chaotic dog-eat-dog battle in the Qi Sea.

It ambushed the old devil, took advantage of him, and even insulted him to his face, saying he was "not even worth a fart."

In Ye Futian's eyes, it was a perfect medicinal ingredient, plus an enemy that had to be crushed.

Once the old devil has completely stabilized the situation.

There wasn't even a crumb left.

run?

Where did they run off to?

Once that old demon successfully possesses a body, it will be no use running to the ends of the earth.

Bai Xuan's umbrella trembled.

It is doing an arithmetic problem.

A math problem that it was never good at in its life.

Intelligence.

That's the only thing it has that's valuable.

A thousand years have passed.

The books I've read, the people I've criticized.

The knowledge I gained was from eavesdropping on passing monks bragging in the muddy puddles.

Those few traces of the Great Dao that were secretly glimpsed at the edge of the Void Realm at the risk of their souls being scattered.

Every stolen meal, every late night spent talking to myself over the long years.

It's all thanks to that little bit of intelligence that I'm holding on.

Once you overdraw, it's gone.

It's not that it's getting weaker.

It's completely gone.

Turn back into a mushroom.

They can't think, can't speak, can't swear, and can't read.

They can never come back.

Bai Xuan gritted his teeth.

It doesn't want to do this question.

It wanted to run away.

He wanted to hide in a crack in the rocks and pretend to be dead.

Once the two old monsters outside have finished fighting, regardless of who wins, it can find a way to survive.

Being able to survive is what it does best.

It has survived for a thousand years by mere survival.

But its thieving eyes, unable to resist, looked towards the center of the ruins.

Ye Futian was controlling Zhou Ran's body, engaging in a final battle with the illusory figure.

That young face was etched with a madness that didn't belong to its owner.

On the ground, the broken bone that had detached from the left arm lay alone in the pile of rubble.

Bai Xuan's mycelium sensed it.

Deep within the gaps between the bones, there was a faint, almost non-existent aura.

Pathetically weak.

It's so weak that a gust of wind can blow it away.

That was the last fragment of Zhou Ran's soul that he hid inside.

Bai Xuan remembered something else.

Southern Xinjiang Valley of Ten Thousand Medicines

Deep within that dead land, where even cultivators dared not set foot.

Despite his exhaustion, the old monk Lingxu erected a golden mudra in front of it, blocking the formless and intangible "Yi".

It scolded the old monk for meddling in other people's business.

The insults were very harsh.

But the "barbarians" still broke through the seal of law.

The feeling of death is not as intense as one might imagine.

There was no pain.

It's just that its very existence is being erased little by little by an eraser.

First the periphery, then the core.

It felt like a book being torn page by page.

A thousand years of memories vanish in the rewind.

It remembers its last thought.

That's it, we'll never see that illustrated version of Jin Ping Mei again.

Then a blood-soaked hand reached in from the void and gripped its umbrella handle.

They forcibly pulled it back from the mouth of the "barbarian".

That person was covered in blood.

The left arm had just been erased by the rules, and the flesh at the cut was still turning outwards.

But the force he used was ridiculously strong.

The hand holding it didn't tremble even once.

Bai Xuan didn't have a chance to say thank you at the time.

It's not that I forgot.

It's something I can't bring myself to say.

It has lived for a thousand years.

I have never uttered those two words to any living creature.

Later, that person stuffed it into their collar.

The first thing he said was...

"Jin Ping Mei, right?"

"Come with me, I'll find you the best rare book in the world."

Bai Xuan lay prone in the cracks between the rubble.

The pair of shifty little eyes under the umbrella were fixed on the broken bone on the ground.

I've been watching it for a long time.

"damn it."

It muttered a curse under its breath.

The sound was so quiet that only the speaker could hear it.

The person being insulted wasn't Zhou Ran.

He was criticizing himself.

Having lived for a thousand years, how could I have fallen for a liar who doesn't keep his word?

Beneath the umbrella-shaped canopy, a thin, white mycelium peeked out.

Close to the ground.

Along the cracks in the gravel.

It spread silently to that broken bone.

The mycelium stopped spreading when it was halfway through.

Bai Xuan hesitated again.

It was genuinely afraid.

A thousand years of wisdom.

Once it's given away, all that's left for it in this world is sunlight, rain, and humus.