Chapter 105
The Heavenly Dao Demonic Form handled devouring, the Human Path handled healing.
Neither was a combat ability, the Beast Path had its own niche, forcing beast tribes up or down their bloodline evolution and mutation paths.
The real weapons sat in the Hell Path, the Asura Path and the Hungry Ghost Path.
Of those, only the Hell Path was activated and converted so far, illusion and psychological torture, built to collapse a Dao heart and wreck a mind.
So which came next, Hungry Ghost or Asura?
The Asura Path governed charm and bewitchment, a puppet-refining technique.
Soren could use it to convert opponents into puppets bound to his will.
A runic curse mark would surface on the puppet’s forehead, whatever sentience or intellect the target had would be wiped out.
Useful puppets kept and reused.
Useless ones burned once and thrown away.
He weighed it briefly and set the Asura Path aside, Hungry Ghost first.
The Hungry Ghost Path’s core ability was summoning.
Hold the blood of the dead and he could call up their departed souls, then either build them an energy vessel out of his demonic energy or slot them into existing corpses for long-term use.
Why that one first? Because it was sowing beans and reaping soldiers.
Picture the scenario, a sweeping crusade of cultivators comes to besiege him, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions.
Soren could kill them all, but a Lower-Tier Demon Ancestor personally cutting down an ocean of small fry who couldn’t threaten him is tedious work.
Ignoring them wasn’t an option either, a cloud of flies is still disgusting.
He had backing already, fifty thousand Spirit elites at Black Dragon Mountain, tens of millions of demon troops in the Endless Demonic Domain, all a word away, dragging an empire’s armies around everywhere was another matter.
With the Hungry Ghost Path, none of that mattered.
Wave a hand, throw out a fistful of blood essence, or just harvest the corpses already on the field.
Summon the souls, pump them full of demonic energy, let them take physical form.
Then send them to flatten a stronghold, or swat the flies for him.
An ability that suited his position.
...
A land of biting cold, snow drifting across the sky.
Everything in that desolate stretch looked cut from solid ice.
Two black-robed figures walked the void side by side under the blinding white.
Their eyes moved over the frozen ground, sharp and calculating, one pointed at a spot.
The other nodded, both dropped at once, and their landing whipped a spatial gale over the snow.
The snow blew clear and stripped the ground bare, uncovering an ancient altar.
The thing was in ruins, the runic carving on the stone slabs had weathered past reading, without looking deliberately, you’d never find it.
The two traded a glance and took off their black felt hats.
The Heaven Demon Ancestor and the Earth Demon Ancestor of the Heavenly Demon Alliance.
"Cross-check the intelligence against our spatial probing and this is the place." The Heaven Demon Ancestor looked over the ground with open excitement.
The Earth Demon Ancestor moved to the left side of the altar, directly opposite him.
Both faces went solemn, with a low hum they wove hand seals.
They fed demonic energy into the space above the altar.
Two glowing seals took shape, converged and fused into one thing that pulsed like a hole in the world.
They poured demonic energy in without a break.
It went on three full hours, burning reserves that hard with no chance to top up drove their exhaustion up fast.
The Earth Demon Ancestor’s eyes narrowed. "Damn it, why is it still eating our demonic energy?"
"By any reasonable measure this should have been plenty!" The Heaven Demon Ancestor’s outstretched arm shook under strain, his whole frame rigid, face red.
"This is a seal left by an Upper-Tier Ancestor Realm expert."
"It was never going to break easily."
"Be thankful it’s stood for two hundred thousand years, its structure has degraded sixty to seventy percent."
"Freshly cast, our combined demonic energy wouldn’t have qualified to scratch it."
"Hold on a bit longer!"
"If it doesn’t give, we pull out and wait for another opening." The Earth Demon Ancestor ground his teeth and nodded hard.
Their faces twisted, veins standing out across their foreheads.
They alternated between roaring and sucking in cold air, and at last the grind paid off.
Dead center in the fused seal, a speck of white light no bigger than a sesame seed lit up.
Inside a few seconds it blew outward, from a pinpoint to a vortex ten meters across, behind that curtain of white light lay an independent space.
The white was a spatial rift, torn open by force.
From somewhere deep inside that blinding expanse came the heavy grind of chains dragging over each other.
Then it surfaced, a coffin cut from glacial jade, bound by exactly eighty-one white iron chains.
The far ends ran off into the void, whatever they were anchored to wasn’t visible.
Every one gave off a flat, absolute suppression.
The Heaven Demon Ancestor’s eyes blazed. "Heh heh, first layer’s down."
"The jade coffin and the eighty-one white chains are the second."
"Shatter them..."
"...and whatever’s sealed inside walks free."
"Earth Demon Ancestor, take your pills and recover, quickly, if that portal closes before we finish, today was for nothing."
The Earth Demon Ancestor nodded.
Both swallowed a specialized pill at the same time.
Inside a single incense stick their drained demonic energy and stamina were back at full.
The Earth Demon Ancestor spread his hands, delighted, feeling the power move through him.
"What an extraordinary treasure."
"One drop of blood essence from an Ancient Evil God powerhouse in the mix, and our recovery speed goes up dozens of times over."
A cold, thrilled sneer touched the Heaven Demon Ancestor’s mouth.
"Heh heh, naturally."
"In the immemorial era the Ancient Evil God tribe ruled the whole Azure Spirit World, and all four major races were cattle to them."
"We got a single drop out of one dormant powerhouse and it refined into several of these."
"And if we wake them fully..."
"Hahaha."
The Earth Demon Ancestor laughed with him, eyes burning.
"You’re right. When that day comes..."
"...we’ll be the architects of their resurrection, they’ll hand us power we can’t even picture, maybe the secret to eternal life."