Top-Tier Perception Starts From Basic Fist Techniques

The demon god came walking toward them across the air, one step at a time. Few people had ever laid eyes on Li Zong, even inside the Demon God Ministry. The demonic power pouring off him into the sky was enough proof of who he was.

A demon god was an ancient demon, and the word "ancient" described a great deal on its own. Every ancient demon carried a terrifying bloodline from the primordial era inside its body and lived for at least ten thousand years. Even a hundred thousand years or a million years was not out of the question.

However, Li Zong was an exception. Li Zong was a half-demon, and the human nature in him had won out over the demon nature.

For a half-demon to rise to a demon god was very hard. Li Zong was also very old. He was already around before the Jing Dynasty was founded, and it was Li Zong who had served the dynasty's founding ancestor and put the Jing Dynasty on its feet. In the dynasty, he was considered an ancient relic of a man and the pillar that truly held everything steady. So long as Li Zong stood, the Jing Dynasty stood.

Li Zong looked at Lu Changsheng with something like astonishment in his eyes.

"The Flesh and Blood Progenitor from the Temple of Flesh and Blood, there is not a trace of demon aura on you. You are not a demon, yet you hold the means to kill one. You are truly an anomaly. What is it you have come to the capital for and into my ministry, and with all this fury behind you?"

He had never seen an existence like Lu Changsheng. He was nothing at all like a demon. Could he be a man then? But how could a man hold such power? Could a man kill demons? The Flesh and Blood Progenitor standing in front of him was strange from every angle.

Lu Changsheng smiled slightly. "I came to the capital and talked the matter over with the emperor. He has accepted the Temple of Flesh and Blood as the state religion of the Jing Dynasty, and he will have every subject in it converted into a blood descendant.

"Converting is the only way humanity will ever stand against the demon race. The emperor told me that you, Li Zong the demon god, are the pillar holding the dynasty steady. Without your consent, the temple would run into trouble, so I have had to come to your door in person. What are your thoughts on it?"

He hid nothing and plainly stated what he had come for. Li Zong's expression shifted slightly at his words.

"You have the ambition of a wolf cub! Do you mean to turn every person in the Jing Dynasty into a blood descendant? Will they still be human when you have finished? I will not consent to it under any circumstances. Flesh and Blood Progenitor, you have brought disorder wherever you go, and today, I am going to put you down."

With that, Li Zong drew a deep breath.

Boom!

He let loose his demon body and turned into an enormous flood dragon in one motion. Yes, he was a flood dragon.

As an ancient demon, Li Zong carried the dragon bloodline of ancient times in his body, which made him a dragon descendant of a sort. He had formidable strength, and he stood out even among ancient demons. With him guarding it, the Jing Dynasty sat as steady as a mountain.

"A fine flood dragon!" Lu Changsheng did not make the mistake of taking him lightly. "Flesh and Blood true body!"

His flesh divided and quickly spread over his entire frame.

He was no longer at Fourth Growth. This time, he was at Fifth Growth, and a Fifth Growth Flesh and Blood true body was a very different thing. Immense flesh piled on, and his true body swelled fast with it. From three meters to ten, then seventeen, thirty-three, and before long, he stood past thirty-three meters, but he was still swelling with no sign of reaching a limit anytime soon.

As his true body grew, the power emitting from him climbed just as fast.

In the end, the Flesh and Blood true body reached over a full sixty-seven meters. It was a terrible thing to stand beneath, and the aura off it alone was enough to hold down any demon king alive. Even Li Zong appeared to feel the weight of it.

"I'll kill you!" There was no road back for Li Zong now. "Summon wind and rain!"

His huge claws formed a seal in the empty air, bringing out demon sorcery.

Anything at demon king and above could use demon sorcery, but in the hands of an ancient demon, it was far more terrifying. Moving mountains or filling seas would cost them nothing at all. A flood dragon could summon wind and rain by its own will.

At once, a gale rose, and rain came pouring down. The reach of it was small, and all of it fell in the space around Lu Changsheng. The wind seemed strong enough to be able to strip a man's flesh away from him, and the rain seemed able to dissolve that flesh where it fell. This was demon sorcery, and it was imbued with a trace of this world's "rules."

However, Lu Changsheng simply stood there to let the gale sweep over him and the rain pour down. His flesh occasionally scattered and dissolved, but it soon grew back again. The rate at which it came apart would never match the rate at which it grew.

"If this is the entirety of a demon god's techniques, I have to say that I'm badly disappointed." Lu Changsheng shook his head, and his figure blurred slightly.

Whoosh! Whoosh Whoosh!

Mass after mass of flesh flew out of him. It coagulated into nine enormous masses of flesh in the blink of an eye.

The nine took shape fast and came out as nine men identical to Lu Changsheng. Every one of them stood at sixty-seven meters or more. They were enormous to look at, with auras that matched his exactly.

Counting Lu Changsheng himself, there were ten figures. Ten giants of that height standing in a ring around Li Zong put a pressure on him that hardly needed describing.

These were Lu Changsheng's clones, but they were nothing like ordinary clones. Every one of them was real, matching him almost entirely in strength. All of them had been divided out of Lu Changsheng's own flesh, so a clone was as strong as the flesh he had put into it. A clone's power rested entirely on the flesh he divided off.

For a long time, he had been storing up flesh and had more of it than he could spend. What he let loose was exactly that stored flesh, which let each of the clones reach sixty or seventy percent of his own strength.

The nine clones and Lu Changsheng's own body all put out a hand together.

"Heaven!"

"Turning!"

"Seal!"

It was the Heaven Turning Seal again.

The sky wheeled, and the ground turned under Li Zong. The empty air seemed sealed shut as heaven and earth hung upside down. Terrible force pressed in on Li Zong from every direction at once until he felt himself suffocating. He tried to throw everything he had into one last struggle, but when he saw ten enormous palms coming down, he discovered how laughable his struggle was.

Bam!

The ten palms came down and Li Zong's demon body, that enormous flood dragon, burst apart at the sound of them. It was crushed completely and turned into a smear of pulp.

Li Zong felt no fear at that, naturally, as true demons did not die. Besides, he was a demon god, and killing him was difficult even for another ancient demon. Regardless, he had underestimated the Flesh and Blood Progenitor.

The moment his flood dragon body was flattened into pulp, Lu Changsheng's nine flesh and blood clones collapsed and turned into a wash of blood, settling over the pulp Li Zong had been reduced to.

"Aaargh!"Li Zong yelled out in pain.

It was pain past anything he could measure against. He could feel what was happening clearly as the mass of Lu Changsheng's flesh settled over him. That flesh was devouring his own like a mad dog, and whatever it devoured was lost to him permanently. He could feel himself weakening by degrees.

That feeling sobered him in a moment. Something in him had begun to faintly sense death. He understood that if this went on, he would die. There was no exaggeration anywhere in that thought.

He thought back to the rumors about the Temple of Flesh and Blood and how ordinary blood descendants could kill true demons. How much difficulty, then, would the Flesh and Blood Progenitor have in killing him?

The thought that he could one day be killed by another had never once occurred to Li Zong, but there he stood in exactly that danger, genuinely about to die.

Before long, a tenth of his demon body's flesh was gone. At first, it was just one tenth. Then two... Three.. Four... Five... With half of his flesh gone, panic took hold of him completely.