Born Evil

"How many dangers and horrors were still lurking in this city?

A dead person had blended into the crowd like this. I happened to know Liu Yan, so I recognized her, but there were many more people I didn't know. How many of them had something wrong with them?"

"That Liu Yan didn't seem to have her eyes on me. That was too dangerous just now. In my current state, if one of those bizarre things set its sights on me, I would definitely die."

With that bone-chilling thought in mind, Li Yi quickly headed home. He planned to hide there for a while and use the strange object in his hand to speed up his cultivation progress in the short term, gaining some power to protect himself.

As for whether cultivating too quickly would bring trouble, he could not care that much.

He shut the door and locked it immediately.

After replacing the Nutrient Solution in his parents' Medical Pods, Li Yi turned off his phone to avoid being disturbed. Then he went to the living room, sat down with his eyes closed, adjusted his breathing, and quickly entered meditation.

The moment he entered meditation.

Li Yi sensed the energy field emanating from the Knife Coin. He began guiding the pure Cosmic Energy within that field into his body and absorbing it.

He was still somewhat unpracticed at first, but as time passed, the speed at which he guided the energy grew faster and faster, while his absorption success rate steadily rose.

Just as Lin Yue had assessed, Li Yi still had untapped potential.

In merely half a day, his cultivation value had reached sixty percent.

This value meant that out of every ten portions of Cosmic Energy, he could successfully absorb six, with only four going to waste.

Such rapid improvement was thanks to the half Knife Coin in his hand. With this incomplete strange object, Li Yi did not need to spend time and effort capturing the Cosmic Energy leaking out of wormholes.

When he could focus on one thing without being distracted, he could naturally do it better.

"Grrrrumble!"

Li Yi was awakened by hunger again. He opened his eyes helplessly. "Sure enough, hunger affects cultivation too much. I was awakened by hunger three times in half a day. If I cultivated for an entire day, wouldn't I be awakened six times? I would also have to spend time cooking and eating in between. That would delay things too much."

"Right, this time I'll see how effective No. 2 Nutrient Solution is."

Li Yi took out the No. 2 Nutrient Solution and checked the instructions. He discovered that ordinary people were forbidden from consuming it, and even cultivators should not drink too much at once. Otherwise, it would burden the body's organs and produce side effects similar to food poisoning.

He carefully poured a cup with a measuring cup and drank it in one gulp as instructed.

"Sweet. It's apple-flavored too." Li Yi licked the cup clean. This stuff was not cheap, so he could not waste it.

Though he had only drunk a small cup, the hunger in his body rapidly faded.

It was unbelievable.

When Li Yi got hungry, he had to eat several packs of noodles, along with sugar water, milk, eggs, fruit, and other things before he could feel full.

"Sure enough, expensive things have their reasons for being expensive. Nutrient Solution is so convenient that I don't even want to cook or eat anymore. It wastes too much time and energy."

Li Yi thought to himself, then began cultivating again.

During his subsequent cultivation, he found that drinking Nutrient Solution staved off hunger even better than eating. Previously, he had needed a meal every four hours, but now he only felt hungry after cultivating for eight hours.

By that calculation, he only needed three cups of Nutrient Solution a day.

But one tube of No. 2 Nutrient Solution only contained ten cups' worth. It would be gone in three days, making Li Yi feel that cultivation truly burned money.

However, he was not considering such matters right now.

A day of cultivation soon came to an end.

Li Yi rested for a while, took a bath, and cleaned away the grime expelled through his pores after his body's evolution. Then he began another round of cultivation.

He could now clearly feel that his physical fitness had undergone a leap-like improvement.

Only, his ears had begun buzzing, as if he were experiencing auditory hallucinations.

Li Yi understood that this was not an auditory hallucination. His senses were transforming, and his hearing was growing stronger. His body simply needed time to adapt during the process.

Very soon.

His cultivation reached the third day.

During this time, Li Yi's cultivation value rose again. It directly went from sixty percent to seventy-five percent, and it was still slowly increasing, though not as noticeably as before. This showed that his potential had almost been fully tapped.

"My cultivation value will max out at around eighty-five percent. That's still under the condition that I don't need to divide my attention. Without the help of this incomplete strange object, my cultivation value would probably drop to around sixty-five percent. Lin Yue's assessment of me was very accurate."

Li Yi pondered, "But I'll already be satisfied if I can reach eighty percent. At the very least, that value counts as outstanding among cultivators. I won't be dragging everyone down too badly."

Slowly closing his eyes, he entered meditation once more.

"What's going on? The energy field of that incomplete Knife Coin is a little strange today."

Suddenly.

While cultivating, Li Yi noticed something unusual. The originally calm Cosmic Energy seemed to have rippled, then the disturbance grew greater and greater, as though a massive stormy sea had been stirred up.

This abnormality even prevented Li Yi from smoothly guiding Cosmic Energy into his body.

He wanted to wake from meditation.

However, Li Yi was shocked to discover that his consciousness seemed to be drawn in by the incomplete Knife Coin, trapped and unable to break free. He could not wake up at all.

It was the first time he had encountered such a change. An inexplicable panic rose within him.

"There's something wrong with this incomplete Knife Coin." Only then did Li Yi remember Lin Yue's words.

Since a strange object was incomplete, it was bound to have some flaw or problem.

At that moment, his consciousness was trapped in the energy field of the incomplete Knife Coin. He had no ability to resist and could only watch helplessly as all kinds of changes unfolded around him.

Very soon.

As the energy fluctuations grew increasingly violent, Li Yi sensed that something seemed to surge forth from the depths of that pure Cosmic Energy field. Then the surrounding energy madly converged toward one point, and before long, it formed an incomplete humanoid creature.

That humanoid creature gradually condensed within the energy field, gaining a vague body and facial features. Yet its lower half remained missing, as though, like the Knife Coin, it had been broken into two sections.

"What the hell is that?" Li Yi felt an inexplicable terror.

Merely sensing it with his consciousness made him feel a stabbing pain.

It was as though his soul were about to be torn apart.

That incomplete person seemed to possess consciousness. It immediately noticed Li Yi's consciousness, opened its mouth, roared, and pounced on him, as if it wanted to devour and extinguish his consciousness.

"Earth Prisoner born wicked by nature, even if this old man has only a wisp of remnant soul left, I will still kill you."

Li Yi had no power to resist. Then a violent wave of dizziness overwhelmed him. His consciousness seemed to have suffered a heavy blow and was swiftly swallowed by darkness.

"Pain... it hurts so much."

He fainted on the spot.

Just as Li Yi lost consciousness, the bedroom door behind him, where his parents were, suddenly creaked open.

A figure was cast out of the room under the lamplight, and that figure stretched rapidly in an unimaginable manner until it finally covered Li Yi's body.

The incomplete Knife Coin beside Li Yi bent strangely, as though affected by some enormous unknown force. Then, accompanied by a faint, terrified scream, it was blasted away and buried deeply in the nearby wall, falling completely silent.

Afterward, the black human shadow cast from the bedroom swiftly withdrew.

Bang!

The door shut. The living room lights flickered with a hissing sound before going out completely.

Everything in the old house sank into deathly silence.

As time passed, Li Yi's breathing gradually steadied, though blood slowly flowed from his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.

Second by second, time passed.

The night outside the window turned into daylight, then fell into the depths of night again.

Li Yi remained unconscious for two whole days.

It was not until noon on the third day that he slowly woke up.

"Pain... hiss..." Li Yi clutched his head. The intense pain made him suck in a sharp breath.

What had happened? He had been cultivating perfectly well, so how had he fainted?

Right, he remembered now.

That incomplete Knife Coin.

He jolted awake and looked around, finally finding that half of the Knife Coin embedded in the wall of his home.

Li Yi did not immediately touch the thing. Lingering fear filled his heart. He clearly remembered how his consciousness had been trapped by the Knife Coin's energy field, after which another immensely powerful and terrifying consciousness had emerged from the coin and tried to kill him.

"An Earth Prisoner born wicked by nature? I'm a fine young man who works painstakingly to support his family. How am I born wicked by nature?"

Having suffered such a loss for no reason, he was immediately both angry and annoyed.

But after this incident, Li Yi understood that the incomplete Knife Coin seemed to contain the resentment of some dead person. In that person's words, it was a wisp of remnant soul.

"Sure enough, burial objects from a grave are no good things." Li Yi stood up, swaying as a wave of dizziness washed over him.

"But why was nothing wrong when I cultivated with the Knife Coin before, while this time I was targeted by the resentful remnant soul stored inside it? Could it be because I cultivated for too long this time?"

His expression shifted constantly as he looked at the Knife Coin embedded in the wall, not knowing how to deal with it for the moment.

If this happened again during his next cultivation session, Li Yi truly had no confidence that he would survive. He did not want to experience that feeling a second time.

But this incomplete strange object was the key to his cultivation. If he stopped using it, it would be difficult for him to continue improving.

"This is probably the advantage and disadvantage of incomplete strange objects. On one hand, it can speed up my cultivation. On the other, it conceals enormous danger. If I want to use it, I have to find a relatively safe method first." After thinking for a moment, Li Yi still could not bear to give it up. He decided to linger at the edge of danger and find a way to use this incomplete strange object.

Cultivating on his own was too slow.

During the days he had possessed the strange object, Li Yi could clearly feel that he was making astonishing progress every day.

After experiencing the taste of being a genius, he naturally was unwilling to return to mediocrity.