Top-Tier Perception Starts From Basic Fist Techniques

Time passed slowly for the next few days. One day, two days, three days... Every day, Lu Changsheng spent time watching the true demon's flesh inside his own body.

"Eat," he told the moving lump. "Eat more, as much as you can. If it isn't enough, I can always grow more flesh for you."

He also went a step further and swallowed potent tonics. The Kao Clan had money to spare, which meant he could afford tonics of every kind on the market. With that in mind, he ate them daily the way another man would eat rice.

On top of that, his Extreme Martial Dao could draw every scrap of nourishment out of whatever tonic he consumed. Therefore, however much flesh he lost, he replaced it almost as fast.

As the days went on, the true demon's flesh and his own flesh settled into a deadlock. It was a rare spectacle, the kind of thing a man could go his whole life without seeing.

On the surface, Lu Changsheng was an ordinary martial artist and nothing more. He had let a true demon's flesh parasitize him, and it had still not drained him dry or killed him after days.

In fact, it was quite the opposite. He was thriving on it! He even looked bigger as a result of simply eating too many nourishing tonics. In short, he had gotten fat.

After days of a delicate stalemate, the true demon's flesh finally gave out. Lu Changsheng had been force-feeding it like a madman, and the piece he had cut out of Ah Hu was only a scrap to begin with.

Even if a true demon's flesh was of a better "quality" than human flesh, set against an endless supply of human flesh that Lu Changsheng kept feeding it, it was still bound to give up.

In the end, his own flesh won out over the true demon's flesh. Not by killing it, of course. Killing it was never possible, and the true demon's flesh hadn't vanished as well. What it had done instead was fuse completely with his own, until there was some of him in it, and some of it in him, with no line left between them. It had genuinely become his flesh.

From that moment on, his flesh carried something that only demons would have. Of course, it was only a trace of it. The majority of him was still his own flesh, and that small piece of true demon added almost nothing to his body's strength.

That demonic quality, though, had broken the chasm that separated men from demons, and it very likely gave Lu Changsheng the ability to kill one. Everyone knew the rule that only a demon could kill another demon. By fusing demon flesh into himself, Lu Changsheng now possessed that same quality.

Of course, all of this was still only his own hypothesis. Whether it held, he would have to test it in person. With that, he went straight to where Ah Hu was kept.

Bang!

One punch burst open Ah Hu's head.

Any other time, Ah Hu would have knitted himself back together in moments, but this time was different. Lu Changsheng swung with that one mass of flesh inside him, and throwing that punch felt like breaking some kind of shackle. It felt like he was crossing some kind of boundary.

One breath, two breaths, and three breaths passed, but nothing happened.

Ah Hu's corpse lay perfectly still. Then, in the next instant, the corpse disappeared, and it went fast. It came apart the way something decomposes, crumbling entirely to ash and vanishing from the earth.

Lu Changsheng instantly knew what that meant. Only a true demon that was genuinely dead left a corpse that scattered like that, dispersing completely without so much as a trace left behind.

His heart skipped a beat at the sight. It worked? I can finally kill a demon...

Ah Hu was dead! A true demon, actually dead! One punch from Lu Changsheng had finished him for good.

The iron rule stating that only a demon could kill another demon was broken that day. Lu Changsheng broke that law because he was not a demon. He only carried demon flesh in him. Instead, he was something entirely brand-new, formed from combining human flesh with demon flesh. He was a truly unique entity.

At that moment, he understood which direction his Extreme Martial Dao had to take. To put it another way, he understood the path that would lead to transcendence.

Flesh fusion... I have to take this special combination of flesh inside me, where my flesh and a true demon's have finished fusing, and use it as the foundation for rebuilding my entire body. Once I do that, crossing into transcendence would follow accordingly.

It was all perfectly clear to him now.

Just like that, he shut himself in the manor and gave his all to this newfound purpose. He swallowed potent tonics without restraint and slowly replaced the flesh of his entire body, piece by piece, with the special combination of flesh that could kill a demon. It was an arduous process.

Three full months later, something shook inside him. In that instant, Lu Changsheng was struck by inspiration. He had broken through! He had achieved Third Growth, and also cleanly crossed into transcendence along with it.

Crossing that line caused his body to transform completely. It was truly nothing like what it had been before. What he had now was flesh that stood somewhere between a man and a demon's flesh.

He called up the Status Panel.

[Status Panel]

Host: Lu Changsheng

Extreme Martial Dao: Third Growth (1%)

Just as he had thought, his body had already stepped into transcendence.

Achieving transcendence with the Extreme Martial Dao signifies that, in theory, I can spread it in this world and get the world itself to condense a Martial Dao out of it. Condensing one takes spreading it on a large scale, though. Can my Extreme Martial Dao actually be spread on that scale as it stands?

Lu Changsheng sank into thought over it.

If an ordinary man were to train all the way to the ceiling of Second Growth, would that let him survive against a true demon's flesh? It would not, and there was no way around it. A true demon's flesh carried a mad, ravenous will inside it, and that will was enough to corrode anyone. Anyone except Lu Changsheng, of course.

After all, his consciousness was that of an Earthly Saint; a mere true demon could not possibly corrode something like that.

If the path of his Extreme Martial Dao led nowhere and he alone reached transcendence, what was the point? An art that could not be spread and that the multitude could not practice would never condense a Martial Dao.

A true demon's flesh carries a true demon's will and an ordinary man can't bear it... What about my flesh, then? My flesh is a whole new thing. All it carries is a trace of my own will, and my own will is something I can control. If I fuse my flesh into an ordinary man, perhaps an ordinary man could break his limits too?

His eyes lit up. It could work, but it needed testing on somebody first.

"Kao Ping!"

Lu Changsheng called for the boy. Kao Ping was his personal manservant, a man whose life and death were his to dispose of as he pleased, and his most trusted person among everyone around him.

"Kao Ping, your young master is granting you a great fortune."

Hearing Lu Changsheng's words left a bitter taste in Kao Ping's mouth.

His face fell into something close to mourning. "Young Master, I know what you've been doing. You've been studying that true demon, and asking me to partake in that kind of thing will really kill me. Still, I belong to you, so whatever you want to do, you do it. I'd only ask that you do it gently since I'm afraid of pain..."

Kao Ping did not refuse. He knew that refusing was not among the things available to him. A manservant's life always belonged to their master.

"Don't worry, it won't hurt much, and it'll be over quickly..."

Having thought it over, Lu Changsheng decided to be gentle about it after all. He had no interest in killing Kao Ping, so he had to be more careful than careful.

He was so careful that he did not even dare to use his flesh. Instead, what he used was the smallest amount of his blood. Yes, it was simply normal blood. It was not even essence blood. It was the ordinary blood that ran in a man's veins, and it did not carry much destructive force.

However, it carried the properties of his flesh, and in essence, that was pretty much the same thing as his flesh, only far less destructive, which made it much safer.

"Open your mouth," he said, dripping a single drop of his blood onto Kao Ping's tongue.

"Ahh!" Kao Ping screamed as his whole body started shaking violently.

"It hurts! It hurts so much! Young master, I'm in agony. Am I going to die?" He went straight down onto the floor and convulsed violently. From the look on his face, the agony was definitely real.

Lu Changsheng frowned. Was one drop of his blood really that potent? At least Kao Ping was not dead. He was only in a great deal of pain. Lu Changsheng let his consciousness settle over the boy and examined the situation inside his body carefully.

Oh? My one drop of blood is devouring Kao Ping's flesh, and it isn't stopping.

It did not take long before Kao Ping was eaten down to skin and bones. However, he was still alive.

Before long, Lu Changsheng saw that the drop—having devoured a great deal of Kao Ping's flesh—was dividing itself. One drop, two drops, three... completely new blood was appearing inside Kao Ping, and the new blood was identical to the drop Lu Changsheng had bestowed on him, only a bit diluted. In essence, it was the same thing.

One drop of my blood is converting all of Kao Ping's blood. No, it's not just his blood... even his flesh is converting as well. His whole constitution is slowly changing.

Lu Changsheng simply observed.

One day, two days, three days... a full three days later, Kao Ping, who had long since passed out, abruptly came around. His eyes flew open, greeted by the sight of Lu Changsheng, and he blinked blankly at him. "Young Master, I'm not dead?"

Lu Changsheng looked at him as if he were strange. "How do you feel?"

"I... feel like my strength is limitless." Kao Ping said, driving a fist into the ground.

Bang!

A large crater opened in the floor where he had hit it.

"So this is the effect of someone who has been reconstructed..."

Lu Changsheng went over Kao Ping carefully a second time. As things stood, the boy's physical strength put him in the advanced stages of First Growth. More than that, his flesh was the same in essence as Lu Changsheng's own.

Since that was the case, Lu Changsheng could even suppress him. It was a suppression that worked at the level of the soul, and it left Kao Ping unable to form so much as the thought of resisting.

Besides physical strength, Kao Ping had also gained a slight enhancement in his recovery ability. However, he could still be wounded and killed, which left him a very long way short of a true demon's abilities.

What Kao Ping possessed was the same ability that Lu Changsheng had, which was the ability to kill a demon.

In addition, Kao Ping only stood at First Growth. He could still train in the Extreme Martial Dao and raise himself up to Second Growth or even as far as Third Growth and transcendence. Kao Ping could also use his own blood to convert animals. Anything that could convert a person could also convert an animal.