The Tiger Demon Was Born from the Plague [Please Read On] [Please Vote for This Chapter]

The Tiger Demon's Memory Bead began in a very distant past.

The scenes were blurry, as though covered in a thick layer of dust.

The sounds came in fits and starts, too indistinct to make out.

Back then, it had been an ordinary old tiger, not a demon.

Lu Jing'an sank his consciousness into the Memory Bead, as if plunging into a murky lake.

He filtered out the useless fragments.

Day after day of hunting, sleeping, and staring into space... time raced forward in his awareness.

Where did demon beasts come from, exactly?

He had always been curious.

The academy's records were vague. They only said that when "plague energy from heaven and earth" entered an ordinary animal's body, it turned into a demon.

But what exactly was "plague energy"?

No one had ever explained it.

Now, perhaps he could see for himself.

Thirty years passed in a flash within the memory.

The tiger in the memory had grown old.

Its fur had lost its luster, and bald patches exposed the pink skin beneath.

Its ribs stood out, and its hind legs trembled a little as it walked.

It could no longer catch nimble prey.

It was so hungry its eyes had turned green.

It began eating the rotting carcasses of animals.

The stench was sharp, laced with the cloying reek of death.

But it couldn't afford to care. Hunger burned in its stomach.

That day, it staggered up a dirt slope.

The wind blew up from below, carrying an indescribable smell.

A thick stench of blood and heavily rotted corpses.

And something deeper, something more unsettling.

As though countless people were wailing in its ears.

The tiger instinctively wanted to back away.

But a sharp cramp seized its belly.

Panting hard, it made its way down the slope, one step at a time.

There was a village.

Or rather, there had once been a village.

The earthen walls had collapsed, and the thatched cottages had burned down to charred frames.

Broken household items lay scattered across the ground.

A child's tiger-head shoe, its red pompom so dirty its color was unrecognizable.

Then came the dead.

Many dead—men, women, old people, children—

all sprawled across the ground in twisted positions.

The blood had long since seeped into the blackened earth.

But the corpses were still rotting.

In the mild weather, they swelled, turned livid, and oozed yellow fluid.

White maggots crawled in and out of them.

Flies buzzed in a deafening swarm.

There was no living thing around. Not even the crows would land.

The tiger paced at the village entrance, an uneasy rumble rising from its throat.

Instinct told it that this place was extremely dangerous. It had to leave.

But hunger was like a hand clamped around its guts, dragging it into the village.

It went in.

Its paws stepped into a dried pool of black blood with a faint "crack."

The rotten stench of resentment and plague was so thick it made its head spin.

It stopped beside the corpse of a middle-aged man.

The man's chest had been ripped open, his organs were gone, and half his face had been gnawed away.

The tiger lowered its head and bit into a piece of flesh that had turned gray-green.

It chewed and swallowed.

Sour, putrid, poisonous juices burst in its mouth.

It forced itself to swallow despite the nausea, and its stomach churned violently.

It moved on to the next corpse, then the next.

It ate for an entire day.

By sunset, it was so stuffed it could barely move.

It lay sprawled in the village's central threshing ground, its belly swollen like a broken gong.

It knew it was going to die.

Poison burned through its body. Its muscles began to twitch, and darkness flickered across its vision.

Fine. Better to die with a full belly than starve to death.

It closed its eyes and waited to die.

But a little over an hour later, unimaginable pain tore it awake.

It wasn't an ordinary stomachache.

It was fire burning in its veins, its bones being smashed and put back together.

It was countless needles stabbing and twisting beneath its skin!

The tiger rolled across the ground in agony, letting out a bloodcurdling howl.

Its claws gouged deep furrows into the hard earth.

Just as it was about to lose consciousness from the pain, it glimpsed half a child's corpse nearby.

Eat!

I'm going to die anyway. I might as well have one more bite before I go!

It crawled over and gnawed frantically.

The moment the rotting flesh went down, the searing pain—

actually eased, just a little.

It froze. Its murky tiger eyes stared at the bloody flesh beneath its paws.

Then, as if it had found a lifeline, it kept eating like mad!

One corpse, then another.

The invisible resentment and plague energy mixed in with the corpses—

slipped into its body along with the rotting flesh.

They didn't destroy it. Instead, they began to twist its body into something new.

The blood in its veins took on a faint, dark-gold hue, and its bones grew with a brittle crackle.

Beneath its shriveled skin, new, tougher muscles swelled.

When it swallowed the last piece of rotten flesh in the village,

it stood beneath the pale moonlight and threw back its head in a long howl.

The sound pierced through the mountains and forests, carrying a fearsome demonic aura that sent countless birds into flight.

It lowered its head and looked at its reflection in a puddle.

Deep in its amber eyes, two ghostly green flames burned faintly.

And beside it, several hazy, transparent human shapes with tortured faces

knelt toward it in silent worship.

Chang Ghosts.

The tiger had become a demon.

After that, it began to feed entirely on humans.

"So the books weren't wrong. It really was [plague energy] entering the body that gave birth to a demon."

"The saying that demons emerge in chaotic times really is true."

"Looks like the whole 'animals aren't allowed to become spirits after the founding of the nation' thing is getting more and more convincing."

After witnessing the Tiger Demon's birth,

Lu Jing'an made the memory race forward.

At last, it reached the part involving the Li Family.

After examining it carefully,

Lu Jing'an found that the story was even more outrageous than he'd expected.

The Tiger Demon had indeed set its sights on the Li Family because of that cartload of corpses.

But what had really driven it to risk attacking the Li Family

was that it had a child.

Those corpses were food it had prepared for its child.

As for why the Tiger Demon had targeted the Lu Family,

it was because Li Zhaolin, who had come back from the dead, had killed its child.

Then he had pretended to be a member of the Lu Family.

Up to that point, none of it was all that outrageous.

What was truly outrageous was this:

After the Tiger Demon ate Li Zhaolin, it had also gained access to his memories.

So the Tiger Demon knew Li Zhaolin wasn't a member of the Lu Family.

It also knew what kind of relationship Li Zhaolin had with the Lu Family.

Yet, in the Tiger Demon's mind, its child had died

because the Lu Family hadn't killed Li Zhaolin, which was what had led to everything that followed.

So it still blamed the Lu Family for the whole thing.

Lu Jing'an couldn't make sense of the Tiger Demon's absurd train of thought.

But the Tiger Demon's memories had still brought him some unexpected surprises.

Li Zhaolin's memories.

The Tiger Demon's ability to read memories was surely nowhere near as outrageous as the Striving Furnace's.

But from those scattered memories,

Lu Jing'an had still learned a lot of useful information.

For example, it had been Li Zhaolin who suggested bringing in Nine-Fingered Yama.

The reason was that the two of them worshipped Western gods from the same faction.

Besides that, he'd learned one very important thing.

It was the Li Family's three-step plan to eliminate the Lu Family.

The first step was to assassinate him and crush the Lu Family's morale.

That would strip the Lu Family of any chance to compete, after which they could deal with them at their leisure.

The second step was that, if the first failed, they would use a marriage alliance to break the Lu Family's backbone.

The third step was that if neither of the first two worked, they would switch to currying favor with the Lu Family and present them with a gift grand enough to destroy them.

As for what that gift was,

the information was incomplete, so Lu Jing'an hadn't been able to find out.

After looking through the Tiger Demon's Memory Bead,

Lu Jing'an only felt a little tired.

He didn't experience the intense discomfort he'd felt the first time he examined Nine-Fingered Yama's.

Clearly, this was one of the benefits of increased spiritual power.

He leaned against the bedpost for a while and drank half a cup of cold tea.

Then he continued examining the remaining four Memory Beads belonging to the Li Family cultivators.

Lu Jing'an began probing the Memory Beads of the four remaining members of the Li Family.

After examining them,

he still couldn't find out what grand gift the Li Family had prepared.

That wasn't surprising. Those four cultivators weren't core members of the Li Family.

Unfortunately, the Li Family's mastermind, Li Jinglin, wasn't a cultivator.

He hadn't left behind a soul.

If he had left one behind too,

Lu Jing'an would have uncovered all of the Li Family's secrets.

Though he still hadn't found out what kind of trap the Li Family had prepared for the Lu Family.

But he had made some other discoveries as well.

He had found some traces of the Li Family's powerful backer in the provincial capital.

The Li Family's backer there had always been shrouded in mystery.

Even Secretary Hu hadn't known who it was.

This time, however, Lu Jing'an had uncovered some clues.

He hadn't planned to keep what he'd found to himself.

Tomorrow, he would tell his father and the others directly.

He'd already thought of a reason, too.

The lingering consciousness left behind by the Tiger Demon's spiritual attack.

It was the best and most plausible excuse.

Lu Jing'an finished looking through all the Memory Beads.

Four hours had passed.

The Affix he'd upgraded earlier also displayed a notification:

[Upgrade Complete]

Seeing the notification, Lu Jing'an looked toward the Striving Furnace.

A brand-new Affix was floating inside it.

[Vajra Tiger Aspect] (Orange)

[Note]: After fusing with the Affix gained from the Tiger Demon, your physique's foundation has greatly improved.

The attributes gained from training in any body-tempering technique will be increased by 300% in your body.

Body-tempering speed increased by 150%. Body-tempering success rate: 100%.

With your solid foundation, your body can adaptively adjust itself according to the body-tempering technique.

After reading the Affix's notes, Lu Jing'an was quite satisfied with its effects.

Especially the last note.

It gave Lu Jing'an an idea.

An idea about the Six Harmonies Fist.

The real difficulty of the Six Harmonies Fist was the conflict between the streams of true qi.

The body had to adapt to that conflict on its own.

The Affix's final note, however, said that his body could adapt.

In other words, Lu Jing'an wouldn't have to find a way to adapt himself. His body would make the necessary adjustments and changes on its own.

That would not only greatly reduce the pain of training, but also significantly increase its speed.

As for whether things would work the way Lu Jing'an imagined, he'd have to wait until he tried training in the Six Harmonies Fist.

He used his mind to take the Affix out of the Striving Furnace and equip it.

At once, Lu Jing'an clearly felt a change in his body.

He could feel that his body had grown denser.

He was still the same person, but his bones and flesh had noticeably become heavier.

"So this must be what they mean by a solid foundation."

Since he didn't feel anything unusual, Lu Jing'an simply lay down and went to sleep.

The next morning.

Lu Jing'an got up early.

He stretched and loosened his limbs.

As he stretched, his joints gave off faint pops, like a bowstring being slowly drawn taut.

He could clearly feel the changes brought on by the stronger foundation within his body.