Black Lotus Begins to Bloom, Evil Technique Undergoes a Shocking Change

The brief clamor caused by the Blazing Academy siblings' bedraggled departure was quickly swallowed by the deeper silence of Nuoding Academy. Yet the invisible pressure was like a tightening noose, choking everyone breathless.

Inside the dormitory building, behind tightly shut doors, entirely different kinds of madness and transformation were unfolding.

Ning Rongrong's room now resembled a combination of a cold laboratory and a conspiracy planning chamber. The lavish decorations had been removed, replaced by complex diagrams plastered across the walls—maps of the Seven Treasures Glazed Tile Pagoda's Soul Power circulation pathways, structural analyses of various Soul Tools, an internal relationship network of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, and even several blurry, hastily scribbled notes labeled "Sword Douluo's Daily Patrol Route" and "Analysis of Bone Douluo's Soul Skill Weaknesses."

The air was thick with the scent of ink and old paper, along with a cold, almost obsessive focus.

Ning Rongrong sat at her desk. Her once lively sapphire eyes were now deeply sunken, with heavy dark circles beneath them, yet her gaze shone frighteningly bright, filled with morbid excitement and cold calculation. One hand rapidly marked something on a huge map of the sect's layout, while the other absentmindedly rolled a plain gray button she had torn from her school uniform between her fingers.

A thread of extremely weak yet unusually condensed Seven Treasures Glazed Tile Pagoda Soul Power wound around her fingertips as she carefully attempted to inscribe an exceedingly crude resonance rune inside the ordinary button, one meant to receive weak one-way Soul Power signals. It was a mad experiment based on an idea she had seen in a miscellaneous book containing fragments about ancient Soul Tools, combined with the Seven Treasures Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul's precise perception of Soul Power fluctuations.

She had failed countless times, and the button's surface was already covered in scorched black marks.

Yet she never tired of it.

Every failure deepened her microscopic control over Soul Power and brought her one step closer to her goals of "revenge" and "proof."

"Power... isn't just about fighting and killing..." she murmured, her voice hoarse and cold. "Yang Yu... you'll see... controlling hearts and commanding information are true power..."

A cold, twisted smile utterly unsuited to her age curved across her lips. The darkened rose was madly drawing nourishment from the darkness, cultivating poisonous buds.

Next door, Zhu Zhuqing's training was even more direct and dangerous.

She continuously unleashed her Third Soul Skill, Netherworld Soul Devouring Slash. Silver-black lightning flashed throughout the room, and every swing left deep, corroded marks wrapped in an evil aura upon specially made iron dummies. She was constantly probing the limits of this Soul Skill, exploring how to more perfectly combine that trace of the Dark Demon Evil Tiger's Evil God's Power with her own Netherworld attribute, pursuing even greater speed and more terrifying soul damage.

Occasionally, she stopped and watched the lightning dancing at her fingertips, her cold eyes flickering slightly. This power was strong and evil. It intoxicated her, but also gave her a faint sense of unease. Yet she swiftly suppressed it. Power was power. So long as she could control it, take revenge, and break free from fate, what did it matter if it was evil?

She was indifferent to everything outside her door. Neither Ning Rongrong's madness nor Xiao Wu's suffering could shake her resolve to grow stronger. Like a cold whetstone, she focused only on sharpening the blade that was herself.

Meanwhile, Shui Bing'er was still suffering amid a living hell.

The Immortal Herb energy inside Xiao Wu seemed to have grown increasingly restless after Zhu Zhuqing's brutal "guidance" last time and the stimulation of Blazing Academy's attack. Its outbursts became more frequent and more intense.

Shui Bing'er had nearly exhausted all her Soul Power. Her face was pale as paper, and her body trembled faintly from overexertion, yet she still desperately maintained the ice-attribute seal without daring to relax in the slightest. She felt as though she were holding a red-hot branding iron. Letting go meant death, but refusing to let go meant being slowly roasted dry.

Her gaze toward Xiao Wu was filled with exhaustion, anxiety, and a trace of undisguised fear. This "human-shaped great medicine" had become an enormous burden and trouble. She began to doubt whether her original decision to keep her for the Immortal Herb had been right. Could that mysterious His Highness the Holy Son truly keep the situation under control?

Despair and pressure swallowed her like a swamp.

Yet none of them noticed that the true danger and transformation did not originate among them, but underground—from that utterly forgotten Obsidian Secret Chamber.

Inside the chamber, it was bone-chillingly cold. The stench of blood and herbs mixed into a nauseatingly strange odor.

Tang San was bound to the wall by thick Soul Locking Chains. The steel nails in his shoulder blades had long since been forced out by some sinister method. His wounds were rotten and black, yet no longer bled. His head hung low, his messy hair covering his face. He had grown so thin that he was little more than a skeleton draped in human skin.

Yet his aura was no longer weak. Instead, it had become incredibly bizarre. A Soul Power fluctuation that was cold, deathly still, yet contained a certain mad explosive force flowed slowly through his body like a sleeping volcano. Twisted purple-black veins, like earthworms, faintly emerged across his skin and pulsed softly.

He was cultivating an incomparably vicious and strange secret art—not the Mysterious Heaven Skill, but an evil cultivation method he had independently deduced and altered from scattered fragments of forbidden passages in the Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record, combined with the Tang Sect's many poison techniques and the Soul Power characteristics of this world. At the cost of burning his life essence and soul, it forcibly devoured all external energy—including the "life-preserving soup" Yue Guan delivered daily, mixed with special medicine—reversed his meridians, and refined an evil Soul Power filled with destructive and corrosive properties.

The process was agonizing beyond measure. Every circulation felt like being cut by a thousand blades, like having his soul scorched. Yet he embraced it willingly. Pain made him feel alive, and hatred gave him endless motivation.

"Power... I need power..." A hoarse, dry voice rasped from the depths of his throat like sandpaper scraping. Beneath his tangled hair, his eyes occasionally lifted. They were no longer human eyes, but empty ash-gray voids, within which two sickly green glimmers burned, filled with the purest malice and desire for destruction.

He could feel his power growing madly at an abnormal speed. He had already broken through the level-thirty barrier and was charging fiercely toward a higher realm. The price was the rapid loss of his vitality and the constant distortion of his soul.

But he did not care. So long as he could gain power. So long as he could take revenge on that man. So long as he could destroy everything.

Today, he seemed to have reached a critical point. The evil Soul Power within him was like boiling magma, madly battering every part of his body. The purple-black veins grew brighter and brighter, even emitting a faint hum.

"Not enough... still not enough!" Tang San let out a suppressed growl and suddenly raised his head, his ash-gray eyes fixed on the chamber's only ventilation opening. He sensed it. Right above him. There was a pure and immense life energy, as well as another strange immortal aura that made his martial soul stir restlessly. (What he sensed was the mixed aura of Xiao Wu and the Immortal Herb.)

Devour it! Devouring it would let him break through! It would give him the power for revenge!

An overwhelming devouring urge born from the instinct of his cultivation method burned through his reason like poisonous fire.

He suddenly struggled! The thick Soul Locking Chains clattered violently, and tiny cracks appeared across the obsidian walls. The purple-black evil Soul Power surged from his body like a living creature, corroding the chains and walls with hissing sounds.

"Release me! Power! Give me power!" Like a mad beast trapped in a cage, he let out a hoarse roar. Nothing remained in his ash-gray eyes but greed and destruction.

The disturbance within the secret chamber and that sudden eruption of an extremely concealed yet incomparably evil aura were weakened layer by layer by the obsidian, but a trace still escaped.

In a first-floor room.

Shui Bing'er's delicate body suddenly shuddered as she poured all her strength into suppressing the energy within Xiao Wu. An inexplicable palpitation and chill instantly swept through her body, as though something unimaginably evil and terrifying had locked onto her. Even the ice-attribute Soul Power she was channeling faltered for an instant.

"Urgh!" Xiao Wu immediately let out a pained groan, and the seven-colored light around her body stirred once more.

Shui Bing'er hurriedly steadied her mind and forcibly suppressed the strange sensation, cold sweat streaming down her forehead. What was that just now?

Next door, Zhu Zhuqing also abruptly stopped cultivating. Her cold eyes swept sharply toward the floor, while the energy of Netherworld Soul Devouring Slash at her fingertips stirred faintly. She too had sensed an extremely weak evil fluctuation that made her martial soul instinctively reject it and remain on guard.

Even Ning Rongrong, immersed in carving runes, paused subconsciously and felt a burst of inexplicable irritation.

Yang Yu, standing by the window, turned around almost the instant the disturbance occurred. His perception far surpassed the others', and he clearly caught the evil aura seeping from underground, filled with destruction and devouring desire.

For the first time, a hint of genuine surprise and... amusement flashed through his eyes.

"So... he walked down this path himself?" he muttered, the cold curve of his lips deepening. "A corrupted variation of the Mysterious Heaven Skill? Interesting. It seems that bowl of 'Soul Nurturing Soup' worked even better than expected."

He had originally only instructed Yue Guan to add something to Tang San's food—something that would preserve his life while subtly magnifying his negative emotions and obsession, making him easier to control. Yet he had not expected this man's ruthlessness and "talent" to exceed expectations so greatly that he would actually develop such an almost demonic cultivation method on his own.

This had deviated from the path Yang Yu had anticipated, but it had also brought an unexpected surprise.

A Tang San who had completely fallen into darkness and was full of unpredictable variables seemed more valuable than a mere prisoner.

"Yue Guan," Yang Yu said calmly.

"I am here," Yue Guan's figure appeared.

"That fellow down there seems to be starving," Yang Yu said with a trace of mockery. "Go 'help' him. Keep him quiet, but do not kill him. This chess piece... may make even more interesting moves."

Understanding flashed through Yue Guan's eyes, followed by a cruel smile. "Understood. I will properly 'comfort' him."

His figure vanished.

A moment later, an extremely brief muffled groan filled with utmost pain and unwillingness faintly rose from underground. Then the evil fluctuation abruptly disappeared as though its throat had been cut, and the chamber returned to deathly silence.

The palpitations and irritation upstairs vanished as well.

Shui Bing'er let out a long breath. Although she did not know what had happened, that dreadful feeling was gone. She continued suppressing Xiao Wu with all her strength.

Zhu Zhuqing withdrew her gaze and resumed cultivating, though her eyes had become even colder.

Ning Rongrong shook her head, tossing aside that momentary unease, and returned her focus to the button in her hand.

It was as if everything that had just happened had been an illusion.

But something had already quietly changed.

Yang Yu looked out the window again, his gaze deep and unfathomable.

Tang San's transformation was a signal. It proved that the seed he had planted had begun taking root and sprouting in the darkness. It had even... grown unexpected poisonous thorns.

These waters were more interesting than he had expected.

He glanced toward Ning Rongrong's room, then sensed the deathly silence underground.

The darkened daughter of a sect master.

The chosen son of fate who had fallen onto the evil path.

The Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast devouring an Immortal Herb.

The ultimate ice forced into an alliance.

And the various factions watching from the shadows...

All the threads were beginning to tighten.

The storm was about to escalate.

He lightly tapped the window frame, as though beating a silent war drum.

"Come."

"Let me see how many more... surprises you can bring."