Heaven Devouring Demon Art

"What's the plan now? Are we going to keep watching him?"

Lao Bai, seeing Zhou Yi's expression flickering, scratched his head and urged him.

"Once that guy finds the Azure Sky King's manual, we can join forces and ambush him. Wouldn't that be easy? Or, you could just poison him beforehand, making sure he's half-dead for extra security!"

Becoming an Innate Grandmaster was the ultimate dream for any Jianghu practitioner, and Lao Bai, who usually didn't care about anything, was no exception.

The Jianghu had long been filled with stories of the Azure Sky King's rise to prominence. Before the age of thirty, he was unknown, but after obtaining the divine skill, he reached the Innate realm in just ten years.

A Martial Grandmaster, the Jiangnan Alliance Lord, with unparalleled power and influence. Women and riches were just byproducts.

"Are you an idiot?"

Zhou Yi pointed at his uniform. "I'm a prison guard. I don't need to follow him around."

"Oh, right!"

Lao Bai suddenly realized, watching Zhou Yi head towards Cell One. He really wanted to ask what the name of the divine skill was, but he was afraid of losing one of his few friends.

Cell One.

Empty and deserted, every corner was spotless.

After the ambush of the jailbreak thieves that night, the Brocade Guard thoroughly searched the cell, scraping off three layers of plaster from the walls.

"The Brocade Guard couldn't find anything. Is that person just getting lucky, or does he really know something?"

Zhou Yi had seen the Azure Sky King's miserable state. Most of his bones were broken, and he even needed someone to feed him, which was why he couldn't leave the fine steel rack.

Every part of the rack had been tested with internal energy, including the shackles and chains, all made of solid fine steel.

There were plenty of internal energy experts in the Brocade Guard, and they must have checked it as well. The Azure Sky King wouldn't hide his inheritance so simply.

"It must be a method that outsiders can't detect..."

A flash of inspiration suddenly struck Zhou Yi's mind. He placed his palm on the rack and used the secret technique of sound transmission, channeling his internal energy into it.

"Heaven Devouring Demon Art!"

The Azure Sky King's voice suddenly rang in his ears, followed by a manual of over three thousand words, teaching how to devour the internal energy of others and refine it for one's own use.

It included a method for breaking through to the Innate realm, which was extremely simple and crude, without any profound mysteries.

With five hundred years of internal energy, one could forcibly trigger the heaven and earth's vital energy and naturally advance to the Innate level!

The Azure Sky King earnestly instructed at the end: "The foreign internal energy refined by the Heaven Devouring Demon Art is extremely strange, reducing one's lifespan by one-fifth. If the clan has top experts in every generation, the inheritance can be extended, and wealth will never end. Azure family disciples must not be greedy for the Innate realm..."

"No wonder the Azure Sky King is only in his fifties, and an Innate Grandmaster, yet he looks like an old man on the verge of death!"

After listening to the entire manual, Zhou Yi used the sound transmission secret technique again, and the Azure Sky King's voice indeed rang again.

Upon closer inspection, the subsequent voice seemed a little quieter.

"That guy must be a descendant of the Azure Sky King. If he can't find the demon art, he'll definitely cause trouble."

Zhou Yi pondered for a moment. It was always best to be cautious. Since the man was risking his life to retrieve his clan's inheritance, he might as well go along with it.

Harmony brings wealth!

Back in Cell Six, he found Lao Bai squatting in the corner, sighing.

"Which girl are you thinking about again?"

Zhou Yi had heard Lao Bai bragging about his Jianghu romances the most during this time, such as the sixth on the Jianghu Beauty List, the ethereal female sword immortal, the daughter of a Jiangnan aristocratic family...

After hearing so much, he realized that Lao Bai wasn't suffering in the Heavenly Prison, but rather hiding from his love debts!

"I'm reminiscing about old friends."

Lao Bai raised his hand in a pretentious manner, his eyes filled with deep affection, singing a strange song he had heard from Zhou Yi: "Friends, oh friends..."

Zhou Yi interrupted Lao Bai's nonsensical antics. "Do you want to know the Azure Sky King's technique?"

"Old Zhou can tell me?"

Lao Bai's figure flashed, leaving several afterimages in the air, and instantly landed in front of the cell door.

Zhou Yi said, "This technique is called the Heaven Devouring Demon Art. It can devour and refine the internal energy of others. The specific refining method..."

"Hiss! It really is a demon art. No wonder the Azure Sky King became a Grandmaster in ten years!"

Lao Bai gasped, waving his hand. "It's enough to know the name. I can use it to brag to others in the future. Don't tell me the contents of the technique, lest I can't help but practice it."

"You mean brag to women, right?"

Zhou Yi's gaze was disdainful, but he couldn't help but envy him. The Longevity Dao Fruit didn't have a beauty effect, and his appearance was still ordinary.

"This technique also has flaws. Absorbing five years of internal energy reduces one's lifespan by one year, causing premature aging. Even the Azure Sky King's Grandmaster realm can't reverse it."

"Then I definitely can't practice it! Being strong is temporary, but being handsome is for life!"

Lao Bai pointed to his face. "I don't rely on fighting in the Jianghu. I rely on this face to get through many crises. That day in the Prince's mansion, hundreds of swords were pointed at me, but in the end, the Princess personally resolved the situation..."

"..."

Zhou Yi couldn't stand his smugness and ran away with his bucket.

Another month passed in the blink of an eye.

After obtaining the Heaven Devouring Demon Art, Zhou Yi wasn't in a rush to cultivate it. He continued to observe that person's movements in secret.

Early this morning.

Zhou Yi arrived at the Heavenly Prison to clock in, and he discovered that there were Imperial Guards stationed outside and Brocade Guards searching inside.

"Lao Zhou, someone escaped from the prison last night. It's said that someone killed a prisoner and impersonated him using disguise."

Feng Qiao said in a low voice, "Colonel Lu accepted Clerk Xiao from the Ministry of Justice's silver and interrogated that prisoner in the middle of the night. He originally wanted to cripple him, but who would have thought he was an expert!"

Colonel Lu had his neck broken on the spot, and the prisoner killed his way out of the prison cell and escaped.

"This..."

Zhou Yi didn't know what to say for a moment. From a colleague's point of view, he should sympathize, but arbitrarily torturing prisoners didn't seem right.

Unspoken rules are just unspoken rules. If you really think they're right, it can only be said that this person's heart is rotten!

"When we offer condolences later, let's send more funeral money."

Zhou Yi entered the prison without being checked. The Brocade Guards didn't care about a mere food deliverer, especially one who had been delivering food for fifteen or sixteen years.

The matter eventually came to an end. The thief used disguise, and even his original appearance and age were unknown, so there was no way to issue an arrest warrant.

Jianghu strongmen committing crimes have always been a major problem for the Fengyang Kingdom.

Shenjing and its surrounding areas are considered stable, but in the prefectures and counties, there are many martial arts experts entrenched. The strong ones, like the Azure Sky King, have wreaked havoc in Jiangnan for more than ten years, while the weak ones run rampant in villages and towns, bullying the market and acting tyrannically in the countryside.

Cultivating martial arts requires a lot of money and time. Ordinary people can hardly even get started, so they are exploited and oppressed, and they don't even have the qualifications to be angry.

The gap between martial artists and ordinary people is not as big as the difference between immortals and mortals, but it is not something that three or five people can resist!

"The extraordinary world, on the contrary, makes the class more solidified. People can only see the scenery above, and they don't pay attention to the misery at the bottom."

Zhou Yi wasn't a saint with the world in his heart, he just sighed a bit, and then went to Cell A-1 and used a secret technique to investigate the torture pillar. As expected, the Azure Sky King's voice had completely disappeared.

"The last karma in the prison is settled, and it should return to its former tranquility."

Zhou Yi had been secretly inquiring about the prisoners in the prison these days, which ones had strong inner Qi, which ones were going to the execution ground, and which ones had no sect background outside.

Others who obtained the Heaven Devouring Demon Art would either cultivate people's inner Qi in a low-key manner, or recklessly devour Jianghu experts. The former progressed slowly, while the latter was hunted down.

Whether cautious or reckless, according to Jianghu law, those who cultivate demonic arts will never have a good end.

Zhou Yi was different. There were many Jianghu experts in the Heavenly Prison, and all he needed to do was choose a good target to devour!

After careful selection, he chose a first-rate expert named Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng could be called a Jianghu legend who started from scratch. He was brave and ruthless when he was young, and he robbed houses when he became an adult. The money he got was not used for gambling or prostitution, but all for martial arts cultivation.

Due to his superior talent, he quickly gained a reputation in the Jianghu and was known as the Blood Sabre.

As the saying goes, those who walk by the river often get their shoes wet. He finally fell into a trap set by the Brocade Guard and was thrown into the Heavenly Prison to await execution in the autumn.

"It's the same whether you die early or late. Instead of being executed in the execution ground, it's better to exchange a meal of wine and meat for your inner Qi. That's very reasonable, right?"

Zhou Yi placed his palm on the prisoner's dantian, and the other party's inner Qi flowed out like a flood, flowing into Zhou Yi's body along the meridians.

The prisoner was in extreme pain, his whole body convulsing but unable to make a sound, until his dantian was shattered and his meridians were cut off, and he died.

"It's about seven or eight years of inner Qi, and the loss in the middle is a bit serious, but the Heavenly Prison is full of Jianghu experts!"

Zhou Yi felt the inner Qi in his dantian, which was more than 50% thicker.

No wonder so many people like to cultivate demonic arts. The feeling of getting something for nothing is really comfortable!

"Two years of lifespan lost..."

Zhou Yi carefully sensed that there were subtle changes in his internal organs, which could be said to be mature or aging.

The Longevity Dao Fruit, which hadn't moved for more than ten years, vibrated slightly for a moment, and the aging organs returned to their original appearance.

"So, this is the correct way to open the Longevity Dao Fruit, cultivating demonic arts and evil techniques that shorten lifespan but progress rapidly!"

Zhou Yi muttered to himself, ignoring the prisoner who was curled up in the corner and died, and slowly went to the next prison cell.

Few prisoners in the Heavenly Prison can live to the day of execution. After death, their identities are verified, and no one investigates the cause of death. This kind of thing is not easy to investigate and cannot be investigated. Maybe tracing back to the source is related to the current Emperor.

Devouring inner Qi is only the first step of the demonic art, and it will take some time to refine and integrate it.

Zhou Yi wasn't in a hurry. No matter how slow the integration of inner Qi was, it was a hundred times faster than cultivating the Guiyuan Art.

The Heaven Devouring Demon Art has another characteristic that Zhou Yi was very satisfied with. There were basically no bottlenecks before the Innate Grandmaster realm. He only needed to find enough sources of inner Qi and spend time and energy to refine and integrate it.

Five hundred years of inner Qi, and the Innate realm will be formed naturally!

The Guiyuan Art and Five Tiger Strength Fist that he had cultivated before, one internal and one external, were both orthodox cultivation methods. Leaving aside the speed of progress, the various large and small bottlenecks made Zhou Yi very headache.

For example, from external forging of bones to internal refining of internal organs, Zhou Yi pondered and researched alone for a full five years before he barely got started.

Martial arts cultivation requires cultivation methods, talent, resources, and guidance from famous teachers. After all, people's lifespan is limited, and they cannot simply rely on time to break through bottlenecks.

"Five hundred years of inner Qi, it will probably take eighty or ninety people..."

Zhou Yi looked at the prisoners in the A-level prison, like fat pigs waiting to be slaughtered.

"From now on, treat them better. No more swill. Their bodies are weak, and their inner energy is scattered. Wouldn't that be a loss!"

From then on.

The prisoners in Cell Block A started getting thick porridge, and you could even see bits of meat in it. They were all endlessly grateful to Zhou Yi.

Autumn, year seven of Hongchang.

Zhou Yi went to the kitchen to pick up the food buckets and saw Chef Liu had prepared a lunchbox, instructing someone to deliver it to Cell Block C, number nine.

"Which young master has come in this time?"

Zhou Yi was used to this. Over the past dozen years, he'd seen plenty of playboys who came to the Heavenly Prison as if it were a vacation. Some even took pride in it.

In Shenjing, if a young master hadn't been to Cell Block C, number nine, to enjoy the Heavenly Prison's special treatment, he couldn't be called a top-tier nobleman.

Chef Liu whispered, "Heard it's from a branch of the Li family. We didn't dare ask what he did exactly!"

There were countless people named Li in Shenjing, and many of them were wealthy. However, since Emperor Hongchang ascended the throne, the only family in the capital that could truly be called the Li family was the Grand General's mansion.

A member of Li Wu's clan!