Half-Demon Core Seed

Chapter 2: Half-Demon Core Seed

Cultivate into a demon!

He Yu had this goal in mind, but he wasn't sure whether it was possible. They said demons were formed when beasts, flowers, and plants gained life through cultivation, but in the books he'd read in his previous life, they almost always absorbed the essence of the sun and moon. Now, there weren't even any sun, moon, or stars in the sky. Where was he supposed to find the sun and moon's essence?

Setting aside those thoughts, He Yu focused on eating the Vermilion Fruits before him. Before long, all three had gone into his belly. It was hard to imagine how his tiny body could hold all that fruit.

Full! Satisfied! After eating, those were the only two feelings He Yu had. Though he couldn't look inside himself, he could clearly feel a powerful, pale-green gas filling his body. It gave him a sense of vitality, natural harmony—as if it were the energy of creation, nourishing all things.

"Could this be spiritual energy from heaven and earth?" He Yu wondered. Heavenly and earthly spirit fruits were formed by absorbing spiritual energy from the world, and they possessed astonishing effects. Take the Ginseng Fruit Tree belonging to the Ancestor of Earth Immortals, Zhenyuanzi, in the Journey to the West he'd read in his previous life. It was said to have grown from a chaotic Ginseng Fruit seed that absorbed countless strands of innate spiritual energy at the dawn of creation, making it one of the Primordial World's Ten Great Spiritual Roots.

The Ginseng Fruit Tree bloomed once every three thousand years, bore fruit once every three thousand years, and required another three thousand years for the fruit to ripen. In the span of a full ten thousand years, it produced only thirty fruits. Those fortunate enough to smell one lived for three hundred and sixty years; eating one granted a lifespan of forty-seven thousand years. Its fruit fell when struck by metal, withered when it encountered wood, dissolved in water, charred in fire, and sank into earth. To knock one down, one had to use a metal implement.

Though the Vermilion Fruit was also a spirit fruit, it was worlds apart from the Ginseng Fruit—there was simply no comparison. Still, both were born from absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. The only difference was that the Vermilion Fruit's innate roots were inferior to those of the Ginseng Fruit Tree.

He Yu could almost be certain that what filled his body was spiritual energy from heaven and earth. This was the good stuff! Immortal cultivators cultivated by absorbing spiritual energy, but he'd skipped countless hours of hard work. Just the spiritual energy contained in those three Vermilion Fruits would take cultivators years to absorb from the world, even in a place where spiritual energy was abundant.

As soon as the spiritual energy entered him, it began strengthening and evolving He Yu's body from the inside out. Unfortunately, his constitution was too weak. After absorbing only a little, his body could no longer continue to strengthen and evolve. The remaining ninety-nine percent of the spiritual energy filled him to the brim. Fortunately, the energy in the Vermilion Fruit was gentle, so despite its power, it didn't harm him.

He raised his two enormous pincers in front of him and was stunned. They were more than three times larger than before, and he could feel that his strength had surged.

After examining himself, He Yu realized that it wasn't just his pincers that had grown more than threefold—his entire body had grown by that much. His strength, speed, defense, agility, and stamina had all surged.

Just one percent of the spiritual energy had completely transformed him. What would happen once he absorbed all of it?

At the height of his excitement, an enormous change stirred within him. He Yu felt invisible energy welling up from every part of his body and rushing toward his center. The spiritual energy surging through him seemed to sense something; it all gathered at his center and fused with that invisible energy, compressing the pale-green spiritual energy again and again.

As the spiritual energy compressed, the feeling of fullness in He Yu's body rapidly faded. A tiny green speck appeared at his center. As the spiritual energy continued to pour into it, the speck grew brighter and larger, its color deepening all the while. It had started out green, but after all the spiritual energy flowed into it, it had turned dark green and doubled in size.

As soon as the dark-green speck took shape, all the invisible energy surging from He Yu's body fused into it. The speck trembled, its light flickering bright and dim. Only after a long while did it settle down, its color returning from dark green to green.

Though its color had faded, He Yu could feel that its very essence had grown stronger. It had already surpassed the realm of spiritual energy; no amount of compression or consolidation could make spiritual energy comparable to it.

"Could this be a Demon Core?" He Yu thought, his face paling. It was actually a Half-Demon Core Seed, but an incomplete one. A true Demon Core was formed from the essence of the sun and moon, spiritual energy from heaven and earth, and a demon's innate power. He Yu's Demon Core Seed lacked the essence of the sun and moon, so at most it could be called a Half-Demon Core.

Once the Half-Demon Core Seed formed, a feeling of effortless control arose in He Yu's heart. He focused his thoughts, then swept his two large pincers forward. At once, he felt the green speck inside him stir. A surge of green energy gushed out, then split into two streams that shot from his pincers. Each stream connected to a pincer, stretching out like a long, thin whip about a meter in length.

Whoosh! Crack!

The two slender whips lashed forward. Bark and wood chips flew as two deep gashes appeared in the trunk of a tree several meters tall.

Staring at the damage he'd caused, He Yu gaped in shock. At the same time, he was astonished by the speck inside him. Just splitting off two streams of energy made them this sharp. How powerful would it be if he attacked with the speck itself?

That single strike had also consumed a great deal of the two streams of "demon energy"—nearly a quarter of them.

He Yu was thrilled. He couldn't be sure what the energy inside him was, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was knowing it was powerful. He also understood that spiritual energy could strengthen and expand the speck inside him.

The thought of using spiritual energy to enlarge the speck inside him until it was enormous, so that with a mere thought countless streams of "demon energy" would pour from his body and lash wildly, filled He Yu with a surge of motivation.

Looking into the busy forest, He Yu continued farther in, hoping to find more spirit fruits. Even if they weren't as good as Vermilion Fruits, all that mattered was that they contained spiritual energy.

With his body bigger and his strength greater, He Yu moved through the forest more than a hundred times faster than before.

In his previous life, He Yu had watched plenty of nature documentaries on television. He knew all too well how dangerous and brutal the forest was: pure survival of the fittest, laid bare. Without intelligence and strength, there was no way to survive. But he had some confidence in himself. His human consciousness alone was an advantage, and even the "Demon Core" inside him was enough to help him deal with plenty of animals.

After making his way along and just rounding a few large trees, He Yu froze in disbelief. Before him stood several Vermilion Fruit trees and an enormous Lingzhi mushroom, at least a hundred years old. He was speechless. In his previous life, these rare treasures were hard to find even once in a lifetime, but here they grew like cabbages by the roadside.

"What kind of mad world is this?" He Yu stared up at the sky, speechless. There were no sun, moon, or stars, yet rare treasures grew everywhere.

Suddenly, a thought struck him, leaving him horrified!

The dawn of the Primordial World!

Could this be the dawn of the Primordial World? The world not long after Pangu had created heaven and earth?

But then again, it didn't seem quite right. According to the myths from his previous life, Pangu had created heaven and earth from chaos, then died in the process! The ancient gods, the Three Pure Ones, the Ancestral Witches, and the hundred clans of the Primordial World had all been formed from Pangu. And the sun, moon, and stars had come from his eyes and hair. There were clearly no sun, moon, or stars here!

"Maybe the legends aren't true. In my previous life, the East and the West each had their own versions of creation, each claiming to be right. Maybe none of them were true." He Yu mused to himself. The possibility that he'd traveled to the dawn of the Primordial World excited him and filled him with fear in equal measure. If this really was the Primordial World, then even if he did poorly, transforming into human form and attaining immortality shouldn't be difficult. That was the dream of countless cultivators in his previous life!

But the danger terrified him, too. He Yu had read plenty of novels about the Primordial World and knew how perilous it was. According to those stories, Golden Immortals were everywhere, and Heavenly Immortals were as common as dogs! With his tiny body, one careless moment and he'd be reduced to dust.

"I need to figure out where I am as soon as possible. If this really is the Primordial World, I'll have to make some plans." As He Yu pondered, he temporarily ignored the many heavenly and earthly spirit treasures right in front of him.