Top-Tier Perception Starts From Basic Fist Techniques

Given the state of Drum Mountain City, was he to stand against the whole temple by himself? That was out of the question! Wiping it out was a matter for his superiors and had very little to do with him.

Just then, an unfamiliar voice reached the ears of both men.

"Oh? The scent of a true demon. I never expected to find one sitting in a yamen. You've killed a blood descendant of my Temple of Flesh and Blood, though, and I'm afraid it's too late to leave."

The faces of both men changed in an instant.

"Who's there?!"

The half-demon's eyes snapped to the doorway. A great crowd of people gathered at the door in a rush; every last one of them was a blood descendant.

"Guards! Somebody, quickly!" Zhang Qing's voice rose sharply. "Who are you people, forcing your way into a yamen?"

"Save your breath. There is nobody left in your yamen. Have a look at who these men are." Chen Ping said it with a smile.

Several people in yamen attire stepped forward.

Seeing this, Zhang Qing was shaking from head to foot. "You... are all my own people!"

Every one of them was from the yamen. Clerks, scribes, and officials all stood at the door. They were the people who handled nearly every part of the county yamen's business while the magistrate himself amounted to little more than a seal in human shape. These were the same people who could easily strip him of any real power and leave him holding nothing.

Zhang Qing had known there were converted blood descendants in the yamen, but he had never imagined there were that many of them. Looking around the room, he guessed that apart from himself and the envoy, every man there was one.

Zhang Qing fixed his eyes on Chen Ping. "You're the one behind the Temple of Flesh and Blood?"

"No, Lord Zhang, you've misunderstood. I am Chen Ping, guardian of the Temple of Flesh and Blood." He stepped to one side and made room. "This is the Flesh and Blood Progenitor of our Temple."

Lu Changsheng walked slowly out from behind him.

Zhang Qing blinked at the sight of him, and then his whole expression changed. "You... Kao Wen? You're the progenitor of the Temple of Flesh and Blood? You cooked this entire thing up with your own hands?"

Plainly speaking, he knew Kao Wen. The Kao residence belonged to a wealthy merchant house, and a house like that never failed to send silver to the county magistrate, so he had met the young man before and knew him as the only son of the Kao Clan.

What he had never dreamed was that the man who had once seen a demon and been frightened half to death by it had cooked up the Temple of Flesh and Blood himself.

Unless Kao Wen was a true demon all along? Was everything before this just an act?

The more he turned it over, the more possible it seemed.

"Run!"

The half-demon was not thinking anything so complicated. His only thought was to escape. With that many blood descendants in the room, how many could he fight?

Whoosh!

He turned into a shadow instantly and fled outside. Set on nothing but running with strength that came close to a greater demon's, he ought to have gotten clear.

But that was only by his own estimate. Reduced to a streaking phantom, he lifted his head and found a figure standing in his path. It was Lu Changsheng!

Lu Changsheng was smiling at him. "At long last, I've found a true demon, and you want to leave?"

"Die!"

The envoy knew how much danger he was in, and his demon body manifested in an instant. What stood there was a true demon shaped much like a fox, with murderous intent pouring off it.

Bang!

The two of them met head-on, and Lu Changsheng's hand closed firmly around the half-demon's claws. Then, he twisted lightly.

Crack!

The arm snapped.

Lu Changsheng hauled on it hard and cleanly tore the arm off.

The half-demon screamed. Both arms were wrenched off him by force, and it hurt. Regardless, he would not die from it, and the arms grew back soon enough.

Lu Changsheng drew a deep breath and let his own body swell. With the immense strength of Third Growth, he took hold of the half-demon and broke both arms and both legs until the thing folded into something close to a giant ball.

"Mm. That will do. Nothing has been torn off, you see. I've only snapped your arms and legs, so you'll have to keep growing and mending them. You mend, and I keep breaking."

It amounted to trapping the half-demon where he lay. Naturally, the process was painful past what he could bear. In the state he was in, he could not even manage to kill himself. All that was left to him was to go on howling.

Lu Changsheng did not kill the demon. A demon was hard to come by, and this one needed to be studied properly. He had killed the last half-demon he got hold of, so this time, he meant to be careful and not lose another one the same way.

He was the Flesh and Blood Progenitor, after all, and he could kill a true demon. Any true demon he killed was dead in earnest.

He carried the half-demon over and set him down in front of Zhang Qing, who was trembling all over. However, Lu Changsheng didn't have the slightest interest in converting Zhang Qing.

"Chen Ping, Zhang Qing is yours to convert."

Chen Ping turned around with a small smile. "Understood. Lord Zhang, this may hurt a little, but it will be over quickly..."

"You... stay back..." Zhang Qing slowly backed away. He was merely a civil official, not some superhuman half-demon. He was terrified, and there was nothing he could do in the current situation.

He was the last man in the entire county who had not been converted. What was he supposed to do? The Flesh and Blood Progenitor had beaten a half-demon envoy into a ball of meat! What could he even do?

Lu Changsheng paid Chen Ping no further attention and proceeded to pick up the half-demon and carried him back to the Temple of Flesh and Blood.

Thud.

He dropped the half-demon on the ground, and the body started knitting itself back together.

Crackle, pop, snap!

After regenerating, the half-demon didn't do anything rash. He only stared hard at Lu Changsheng and asked with a trembling voice, "You're not a demon, but you're certainly not a human. What kind of monster are you?"

The half-demon had never met anyone like Lu Changsheng before, especially when the latter could make him feel the threat of death.

"What's your name?" Lu Changsheng asked.

The half-demon thought it over but answered him anyway. "I'm Ji Quan, from the Demon God Department of the Jing Dynasty."

Lu Changsheng nodded. In the Jing Dynasty, the office that managed half-demons and any true demon dealings was called the Demon God Department, but it merely sounded grand.

Whether it was a demon god or a true demon, the backbone of the department was the demons. The difference was that in the Demon God Department, the human nature of a half-demon held the upper hand.

"Ji Quan, you'll be cooperating with my research for a while."

Truthfully, Lu Changsheng could not be bothered to care whether Ji Quan agreed. Ji Quan called him a monster, yet what were Ji Quan and his kind in the eyes of ordinary people, if not monsters themselves?

With that, he put his experiments into motion. The first thing he wanted to test was whether a true demon's flesh could do his Flesh and Blood Martial Dao any good, so he outright swallowed some of it.

What he found was that the true demon's flesh and his own fought each other fiercely, and that it always ended with the two sides fusing wholly into each other. Winning the "fight" also brought him no great benefit. His own flesh would be greatly devoured in the fighting, and the scrap of demon flesh he ate was not even enough to make those losses back.

As it turned out, eating a true demon's flesh to raise his Flesh and Blood Martial Dao progress was not effective.

If it were working, he would keep a stock of true demons and cut flesh off them for his training whenever he pleased. With a few hundred or thousands of them, he would have an endless supply of a true demon's flesh with no need to even go searching for tonics.

However, the plan paid off nothing.

Lu Changsheng experimented for several days until there was only one thing left to test. He wanted to know whether his flesh could convert a true demon into a blood descendant, and if it could, what a converted true demon would turn into. That prospect had him eager, so he put everything he had into it.

"Come, Ji Quan. I'm going to convert you into a blood descendant of mine. Take refuge in the great Flesh and Blood Martial Dao, leave the sea of bitterness behind, and enjoy bliss forever!" Lu Changsheng said as he flicked his hand.

A large mass of flesh peeled off from his body and flew straight at Ji Quan, spreading over him quickly and digging into his eyes, mouth, ears, and even the pores of his skin.

"Ahh!" Ji Quan let out a shrill, tearing scream and collapsed, rolling and convulsing on the ground. "Crazy bastard! You crazy..."

"Not enough flesh? Then have more!" Lu Changsheng flung out another large mass of sticky flesh and laid it over Ji Quan. Ji Quan was going to become a blood descendant no matter what!