Way of the Devil

Ansha watched the spot where Lu Sheng disappeared, her smile fading.

“Are you ready?” she asked softly.

“Everything is ready, your majesty. The Gate of Pain has already opened a sliver, and the Thirteen Tribes’ plan is more than halfway finished. Devil Lord Sky King can descend any time. Devil Lord Nine Ghosts and Devil Lord Blessing are also planning to respond to the calls and offerings in Ju Rong Nation and the Wetlands, respectively,” an old voice replied respectfully, his voice ringing across the square.

“Just a bunch of dumb people, yet they still managed to accomplish it… Is the human world, after a thousand years, really this weak?” Ansha closed her eyes. “Let’s begin.”

“Yes.”

Ansha lifted her palm, and a creepy, complicated, triangle-shaped symbol appeared on her palm, with thick black smoke coming out of it.

“I, Ansha Jederman Ludswigandi, the great Demon Emperor of all Origin power, one of the four pillars of the Demon World, hereby declare.

“In my name.”

Large amounts of black smoke spread out from her palm, quickly forming a huge triangle-shaped symbol in the sky above her.

“Descend!!”

Ansha suddenly opened her eyes, and innumerous tiny red needles were spinning in them.

“Buzz…”

The ground started shaking.

If someone looked down on the entire Golden Square right then, they would see an indeterminable amount of frightening black monsters making their way out of the ground. At first, they only escaped as threads of black smoke, but then they started tearing apart the golden stones and moving around leisurely.

All sorts of huge weirdly shaped monsters filled with dangerous, poisonous gas started gathering around Ansha.

Among them was an enormous centipede thousands of meters long, with five human faces etched on it and in pain.

The centipede slowly positioned itself around Ansha.

Around the Golden Square, four golden giants—each over a hundred meters tall—walked out slowly.

“Go… go devour, go kill, go… destroy…!” Ansha ordered in a deep voice.

She raised her hand and pointed into the distance.

Instantly, all the monsters flooded toward the distance like a thundering black sea.

But, not a single monster dared venture within twenty meters of her, as if the area around her was a death zone.

***

Lu Sheng felt something move underneath his feet as if there were vibrations, but they quickly weakened and disappeared. Whatever it was, it must have either stopped or went in the other direction.

Lu Sheng paused for a bit, but soon resumed his previous speed. Since it wasn’t headed toward the Prime Devil Sect, he didn’t need to worry.

He kept feeling that something was weird about that little girl, Ansha. That Golden Square was neither an interesting nor a safe place to be in. If she was able to survive there without a scratch, then she could not be ordinary.

“But so what? I’m not going to come back here, anyways.” There was no sign of the ancient demon Carfe, and Lu Sheng figured he wasn’t coming back anymore. Without any devil aura to absorb, he might as well leave, so this place would be left completely empty. When that happened, no matter whether that mysterious little girl was dangerous or friendly, it wouldn’t have anything to do with him anymore.

He quickly returned to the Prime Devil Sect, and flew out of the tiny Devil Qi lake, returning back to the main area of the sect. Most of the disciples had already packed their belongings; as for the small number who didn’t want to leave, Liu Shanzi already compensated them for their lodging arrangements.

Shangyang Jun from the Shangyang Family even came to try to persuade Lu Sheng, but got flat-out rejected.

Many days later.

Everyone finished packing. After days of cleaning, every single thing that might have been worth something in the Prime Devil Sect was packed and ready to go. Lu Sheng even dug out the Divine Weapon Pool and secured it with Devil Aura, then placed it in a carriage pulled by four four-horned bulls.

The only thing they couldn’t take away was the cemetery and ghosts like Miss Mi and Senior Apprentice Sister White Face. They couldn’t die, so even if the Devil Army came, in the worst-case scenario, they would just disappear for a while.

So, in the future, when the Devil Disaster was over and the Prime Devil Sect moved back, they would see each other again.

Wagon after wagon stretched for miles. The Yin Devils Lu Sheng let out prowled the perimeter and killed off all the devils and dangers that might have approached.

The only reason people said that Yin Devils were uncontrollable was because they couldn’t control them.

For instance, when the other ancestors of the Prime Devil Sect cultivated the Phantom Listening Devil Body, their Yin Devils were way stronger than themselves. If it weren’t for the devils, they were just a really weak Realm of the Snake cultivator. That was why they couldn’t order the Yin Devils around, and had to let them be.

But Lu Sheng was different. Without the Phantom Listening Devil Body, he was still stronger than Yin Devils, and with one smack, every Yin Devil would be shattered and have to reform and listen to him.

Master Liu Shanzi was in charge of the road they took. The whole group headed towards the Great Yin Dynasty slowly yet steadily.

The Great Yin was north of the Northern Territories, and to get there, they had to cross the Icy Ocean and pass by it. Then, they would enter into large woodlands. The road was long, and even if Lu Sheng found over a hundred mutated four-horned bulls in such a short time, it would still take them a really long time before they arrived.

And right now, the Great Song was falling into an even bigger battle.

Compared to the human battles Lu Sheng had experienced, similar-scale ones started erupting all over the Great Song. Within a few months—the time the Prime Devil Sect used to leave—wars bigger than the Battle of the Nine Cities happened more than once, and smaller ones with casualties of over ten thousand were even more frequent.

The Devil Army and humans both gathered as much power as they could, and fought the other to the death. All nine Divine Weapon Masters from the nine families attacked, claiming battle points from all around the country. For a time, the entire Central Plains were a mess.

Yet Lu Sheng’s group already picked up the Lu Family in the Northern Territories, along with the Crimson Sun Sect, and was heading toward the direction of the Great Yin.

Lu Sheng left all his Yin Devils. After lecturing them in great detail, he made sure all the Yin Devils knew they were servants of their master and had to obey him. Only after this did he let them go with the group to protect and guard them.

And the Crimson Sun Sect wasn’t weak. Just the aura from them, as well as Liu Zhanzi, umbrella girl, He Xiangzi, and the devil in stone and King Shadow—whom they packed up and took with them—made all the dangerous creatures avoid them carefully.

So, the trip was relatively safe. Unlike the large group moving forward slowly, Lu Sheng ran ahead, getting rid of every single thing that might pose a threat to them.

***

Northern Territories, Good Fortune Lake.

The ice was cracked on top of the snowy white lake. A few grayish-white bears were huddled together, rubbing their heads together and howling deeply.

On the road beside the lake, a strong figure in a black cape stood quietly as he watched the sunset with his hands in his pockets. It was Lu Sheng, who had just flown here from the Central Plains.

“Ring, ring, ring!”

In the distance, an icebreaker ship was headed toward here. Someone was hitting the brass drums loudly as if passing a signal. A lot of dense, sharp nets were hung on the sides of the ship, with differently sized hooks on each.

“This should be the border of the Great Song, right?” Lu Sheng wasn’t too sure. He pulled out a simple, copied version of the map.

After looking at the map for quite a long time, he still couldn’t figure out which direction he flew in. When he was flying, he ran into a thunderstorm, and after going above the stratosphere, he lost all sense of direction. So, after reaching the edge of the Northern Territories, he landed beside the icy lake.

But, he didn’t know where he was anymore.

“I guess I’ll have to ask.” Lu Sheng’s gaze fixed onto the icebreaker in the distance.

He jumped up lightly and glided towards the icebreaker. Every time he stepped on the ice, he could fly out at least ten meters.

After a few dozen steps, he got close to the icebreaker.

The reason this took so long was because he wanted to hide his identity and frightening power. If he was too cocky, it would be bad for hiding his tracks. Otherwise, he could definitely reach the icebreaker by flying a hundred meters in each step.

After he got closer, he could clearly hear the noise from the people banging from the drum and the cracking from the ice.

As soon as he neared, sailors from the ship looked over.

“I’m a traveler passing by. May I ask what place this is? I will pay for the information.” He sent his voice across the ice.

The icebreaker was silent for a bit as they talked among themselves. Then, a strong and young man walked out.

“Hello? May I ask… you are… woman??” he shouted in a broken Great Song (language) with a very strong and hard to understand accent.

Lu Sheng’s mouth twitched. “Passerby… not woman!”

He made some signs with his hands.

“Passing by, asking directions.” Now it was simple and to the point.

The man also nodded in understanding.

After some complicated signaling, the ship invited Lu Sheng onboard. There were twenty sailors. The captain was a man with a big beard and a knife wound across his chest. He was very generous, and after downing a few jugs of beer with Lu Sheng, he immediately accepted him.

The captain’s eleven year-old granddaughter was also on board. She was called Ice Flower, a cute and outgoing little girl with a ponytail.

When looking at Lu Sheng, the little girl’s gaze was like alcohol paste, full of burning curiosity.

Although it was hard to communicate, the captain still gave Lu Sheng a bag of ice shrimp. After drying in the sun, these shrimp could be eaten raw, but because they would go bad easily, it was hard to transport them, which caused them to be really expensive in the cities in the mainland. But, on the sea, many sailors would eat them fairly often.

After finding out his location, Lu Sheng took his bag of dried ice shrimp, and said goodbye to the old captain and Ice Flower, then hurried toward the Great Yin.

Flying low in the sky, Lu Sheng traveled quickly, moving more than half a kilometer in a few breaths. In the middle, he met a number of other icebreakers and a few whale-hunting ships going for big fish in the sea.

This place seemed way tamer than the mainland. There were no zombies and no ghosts, just pure nature and horrible weather.

Flying into the night, Lu Sheng was about to retire for the night when a huge lighthouse appeared to the left.

An icy wind was blowing, and the sky was full of dark clouds. The area past this Ice Lake was the Icy Ocean.

The lighthouse was set on one of the black cliffs on the edge of the Icy Ocean.

A little mountain village sat right beside the lighthouse, looking like they were in charge of the lighthouse.

Under the cover of night, Lu Sheng gently landed on the black cliff, stopping a few hundred meters away from the little mountain village.

He organized his robes, then walked toward the village quickly, planning to spend a few coins and spend the night here. Of course he wouldn’t want to sleep in the wild if he could have a nice and warm place to stay.

Soft, warm light lit up the village, and two big lanterns made of thick and durable wax paper swayed gently in the wind.