The reason why the Oni Mask was chosen is because Shendu himself had absorbed the energy of the mask of Nika, the Ninja Corps general. The ninja soldiers that Shendu summoned before also originated from the power of this mask.
In order not to be looked down upon by the other two demons, Shendu felt that he had to strengthen his own power. Since he could not regain his demonic power, Shendu prepared to form a shadow legion.
The Shendu believed that once he had assembled a complete Shadow Legion, he could use it to directly control all aspects of the United States. After all, the different legions within the complete Shadow Legion possessed different abilities, and the power they could display when cooperating with each other was several times greater than when they were alone.
Furthermore, since Shendu's essence is that of a demon, the embodiment of evil, he will not be blinded by the power of the masks like others. Once Shendu finds all the masks, he can freely absorb and use their power.
However, there is now a problem: there are two masks that are within the country. One is the mask that the Shendu once obtained, the mask of Nija.
The mask can only summon the most ordinary Shadowkhan Army. While they don't have any obvious strengths, they also don't have any fatal weaknesses, making them arguably the most practical.
However, since Shendu has already absorbed the power of this mask, even if he can't take it away within the country, it's not a big deal for Shendu, or perhaps Shendu even thinks it's better this way.
After all, once all the masks are gathered together, they will unleash evil powerful enough to pollute the entire world. While this evil will help the Shendu and his allies rule the world, the balance between good and evil will inevitably give rise to an unimaginably powerful sorcerer.
This is definitely not what Shendu and the others wanted to see, so Shendu never intended to collect all the masks in the first place. In fact, Shendu never planned to search for Nija's mask.
What truly troubled Shendu was another mask, the mask of Razo, which was originally stored in Japan. The locations of these two masks were arguably the only two that Shendu knew.
This mask of Razo can summon the Blade Legion from the Shadow Legion. This legion consists of spiked blade soldiers with incredibly Talons and blades, possessing immense cutting power, and slender, pointed bodies.
Not only are their claws exceptionally sharp, capable of slicing through iron like mud and easily cutting through any metal, but they can also use their claws to crawl, move, and attack on vertical floors, making them excellent rock climbers.
The mask of Razo has now been salvaged from the ruins in China and spotted by the bored Shendu on a television program. With this, two masks have now been removed from Shendu's list of targets.
Left with no other choice, the Shendu had to start the search from his own country, the United States. There was no other way; after all, the masters of these Shadowkhan Army were discovered by a group of mages in Japan after they came to rule, and they were never given a chance to realize their ambitions.
Not only did they kill these generals and commanders, but after discovering the peculiar properties of their masks, the group of mages also used them as a dumping ground, specifically storing negative emotions and evil thoughts in these masks.
Later, the group of mages discovered that these masks were incredibly capable of holding back any amount of evil, as if they were directly connected to another world.
Until one day, the evil accumulated within the mask reached a certain limit, and suddenly broke through the seal of the group of mage subordinates.
The mask was originally possessed by the younger generation of the original group of mages. They simply used it as a useful tool and didn't even know much about its origins.
At that time, a large amount of evil that had been poured into the mask erupted out all at once, directly contaminating a large number of people who came into contact with the mask. Apart from a few mages who escaped, most of these people were assimilated by the evil and turned into shadow soldiers, which are the soldiers that the mask now summons.
Seeing the surging evil, everyone knew the situation was serious. In the end, a great mage stepped forward and sacrificed himself to seal the evil back into the mask. He then ordered the mages present to scatter the masks around the world to prevent them from releasing the evil again after they reassembled.
It can be said that this set of Oni Mask is no longer the legion True Magic created by the Mahoutokoro, but a magical artifact created by the combined effects of hundreds of years of evil focused on by mages.
On the one hand, they felt the matter had been resolved, and on the other hand, they wanted to avoid mentioning the mistakes made by the immortals. Therefore, this matter did not circulate even within the cultivation circles in China. As a result, even though they saw the mask of Razo, no one in China recognized it.
To be honest, there were some records of these nine generals in the original Japanese folklore, but now the entire area has been cleansed by the tsunami, and those who knew the legends have completely disappeared.
The Shendu waited for a long time, but the United States special agents still couldn't find the masks. There was nothing he could do; the Shendu Shendu didn't actually know what the remaining masks looked like. He had only collected relevant information and learned about some vague rumors when he collected Nija's masks back then.
Now that his own magic encyclopedia has been destroyed by his father, the Shendu doesn't know what those masks actually look like, and can only give those United States politicians a very vague description.
So the special agents collected a large number of ancient masks for Shendu. Although some of them possessed magical True Magic, none of them were what Shendu wanted.
Ultimately, with no other choice, Shendu once again approached Valmont and his Dark Hand, Valmont them with the task, since Shendu believed that Valmont and his team were the professionals for this kind of work.
However, unlike in the past when he simply relied on empty words to deceive people, Shendu now has a certain degree of control over the United States, so he directly gave Valmont a large amount of money as a reward to spur them to work harder.
" Valmont, as the Shendu, I naturally keep my word. I initially said I would give you the Golden Rooster King's treasure as a reward, but that treasure is located in Hong Kong, which is no longer accessible to us. Therefore, I have decided to give you money directly as a reward, since you will need to convert that treasure into money after you obtain it."
As the transparent Jiao Dragon body of the Shendu soared and tumbled through the air, Valmont was already drooling over the mountain of US dollars piled up in front of him. After all, this was arguably the first return on his investment he had seen in all the time he had worked for the Shendu.
Valmont immediately bowed to the spirit of Shendu: " Shendu, please rest assured, I will continue to serve you as my ancestors did. We will definitely complete your mission, please put your mind at ease..."
Before Valmont could continue to pledge his loyalty, Shendu interrupted him, "No matter what you say now, as long as I see those masks, as long as you can find the masks I need, I will give you endless wealth. But if you fail to complete the mission, you will be United States's number one wanted criminals. I think you should understand whether I can do it, right?"
Finally, Valmont received a large sum of money from the Shendu, as well as the right to mobilize United States. Secret Service agents.
With the help of Valmont and others, Shendu quickly obtained his new mask— the Bat mask.
This mask can summon bat soldiers from the Ghost Legion, who have huge bat wings, fly at high speeds, and can fire beam attacks from their hands.
The beam can not only attack others directly, but it can also be transformed into a light rope to tightly bind enemies, and can maintain continuity or continuously attack enemies.
With this new Bat mask, Shendu's Shadowkhan Army immediately gained the ability to fly, significantly increasing the Shadowkhan Army's operational range.
Shendu instructed Valmont and the others to place the mask on a table, after which Shendu, in his spirit form, plunged into the mask.
Once inside the mask, Shendu was surrounded by all sorts of evil. However, this evil was nothing to Shendu, who was a demon. It did not affect Shendu's mind and even enhanced Shendu power to some extent.
However, the Shendu is now only a soul, so he can't absorb much of this evil; he mainly extracts the power to summon troops from it.
About half an hour later, Shendu flew out of the mask again. He had now successfully acquired the ability to summon the Night Bat Clan.
With the activation of this ability, a large number of bat soldiers were summoned by the Shendu. To be honest, these bat soldiers looked somewhat like the grown-up Heavenly Demon Xiao Fung.
At least these bat soldiers looked taller and more mature.
Seeing that Shendu had become stronger because of the mask's power, Valmont and the others quickly bowed down. Whatever they thought in their hearts, at least on the surface they chose to submit.
After accepting his subordinates' flattery, Shendu was clearly very pleased, so he ordered the United States to prepare a large amount of funds for Valmont and his team for the subsequent mask collection.
It can only be said that professional matters require professional people to do them. Don't be fooled by the seemingly idle and useless Razo, Finn, and Zhou. In fact, they are all the kind of talents who don't show off their abilities. For example, Razo studied theoretical physics in university before joining the Dark Hand.
Thanks to the efforts of Valmont and his team, a new mask was found for Shendu in less than half a month.
This mask is the Sumo mask. It was discovered by Valmont and others near a waterfall on the northwest coast of the Atlantic Ocean. When it was found, the mask was tied to a totem pole.
Shendu also entered the mask and absorbed the ability to summon the Troll Clan.
The summoned soldiers of the Troll Clan are giant soldiers from the Shadowkhan Army. These soldiers are tall and burly, with great strength and defense, and are exceptionally heavy. However, this also reduces their movement speed. Although these giant soldiers can travel quickly by entering the shadows, they are generally a high-defense, low-agility unit.
While the Shendu was holding a banquet in the White House due to his increased power, Shendu was unaware that the activation of two masks in succession had attracted the attention of the Shadowkhan Army's commander.
Although this commander could not appear in the human world like other shadow generals because his mask was left in the shadow dimension by the archmage of that time, he still held supreme control over all soldiers as the highest-ranking officer of all Shadowkhan Army.
For example, right now, because the Shendu only obtained authority from the mask, rather than summoning the Shadowkhan Army with the power of the mask, it's as if these soldiers weren't mobilized by those generals. This immediately alarmed the highest controller of the entire legion.
Through the shadow soldiers summoned to the mortal realm, Commander Tarak saw the state of the world and learned who was usurping their power: the demons who had once ruled the world.
Tarak was initially pleased to see that it was demons collecting masks, because in his view, the demons' intention must be to destroy or rule the world, so their goals were the same: as long as all the masks were collected, they could summon the evil that would pollute the whole world.
However, through the eyes of those Shadowkhan, Tarak witnessed this scene: the Shendu had specifically instructed the shadow soldiers to send the newly acquired mask far away. Along with the previously acquired Bat mask, one was sent to the North Pole and the other to the South Pole, clearly indicating that he did not want the masks to be together.
Therefore, Tarak did not directly seize control of these Shadowkhan Army. After all, if she attracted the attention of the opposing demons, they might seal away all the masks behind them. So Tarak lay low and waited for the right opportunity.
Then Tarak indeed made a discovery: he found that the masks of Shendu were all found by Valmont and others. So Tarak set his sights on Valmont and his group.
While Valmont and his companions obtained Ika's mask from a fisherman, Tarak, using her supreme authority, secretly controlled a shadow ninja who pretended to accidentally slap the mask onto Finn's face.
Because the business had informed them about the mask beforehand, Finn and the others were hiding to avoid being controlled by it.
As a result, the mask landed on Finn's butt while everyone was dodging it.
Although the location wasn't ideal, Tarak didn't have time to wait. After all, if she missed this opportunity, who knew when the next one would come along?
Under Tarak's control, the mask seemed to come alive and immediately merged with Finn's buttocks, allowing Ika's consciousness to be revived through the mask.