A Day Trip to the Heavenly Demon Sect

Jiang Chen would rather die than become the demoness's cultivation vessel.

But if it was only for one day, he thought he could give it a try. He would treat it as a day trip to the Demon Sect—and an experiment.

He had wanted to experience the joy of four hands ever since he played Elden Ring...

Right now, though, he was experiencing a different kind of joy.

What was it like inside the belly of a Demonic Beast?

This was a common means of transport for the Devil Race:

A Demon Kun.

Generally speaking, demons could not turn demonic.

So this was probably a Demonic Beast that happened to grow into the shape of a kun.

In the center of its belly stood a huge round stone disc, engraved with navigation and sensory arrays. With it, one could steer the Demonic Beast like a ship.

The origins of Demonic Beasts had always been a mystery.

According to the most widely told account, demons first began taking human form with the "Beast Tamer's Gratitude" thirty thousand years ago, while Demonic Beasts first appeared with the "Demonic Barrier Mutation" over three thousand years ago.

A demonic barrier had originally been a kind of inner demon, but it had later mutated into a plague that spread from person to person.

Fortunately, the plague only infected talented cultivators with deep obsessions.

Someone like Jiang Chen was not even qualified to become a devil.

Of course, Tian Mingye might have some special way to turn him into one...

After cultivators turned demonic, they became bloodthirsty and rapidly lost their human form and reason, becoming mindless Demonic Beasts.

But some Demonic Beasts held such deep obsessions that they regained their minds and human forms, becoming members of the Devil Race with free will.

Generally speaking, the Devil Race could not reproduce.

But in extremely rare cases, they had offspring known as Heaven-Bestowed Demons. That was where the Heavenly Demons came from.

Because demonic qi corroded spiritual energy and demonic energy to different degrees, members of the Devil Race were the strongest fighters at the same stage.

By "same stage," he meant the same minor realm.

Heavenly Demons were especially ferocious in battle and were practically invincible throughout an entire major realm.

That was why Tian Mingye could take on the Azure Mist Sect alone and cow Chen Gongxing with a single strike of the Crimson Flame Demon Sword.

Right now, Jiang Chen was inside the belly of a low-level Demonic Beast. Corrosive demonic qi was steadily digesting his flesh, skin, hair, and soul.

It forced Jiang Chen to release demonic qi from deep within his qi sea to resist the corrosion.

That felt much better!

The demon girl stared at him in astonishment.

"You're a mere mortal, yet you can release demonic qi?"

Jiang Chen gave a cold laugh, took the opportunity to wrap an arm around Tian Mingye's voluptuous, alluring figure, and smiled.

"You should trust my wife's judgment."

The next moment, the demon girl threw him out of the Demonic Beast's belly.

"That'll teach you to lay hands on our master!"

The vast Abyss stretched beyond sight, with no way to tell east from west.

This was Jiang Chen's first time entering the Abyssal Space.

His field of vision was dark and tinged red, and visibility was poor.

He could smell blood, but there was no stench of rot.

Great clouds of blood mist drifted through it, along with scraps of animal flesh and bits of plants...

There was even more of the diffuse substance known as Nether Qi, probably a byproduct of the Devil Race's cultivation.

Jiang Chen had once read the texts describing the Abyssal Space closely, but he still had not quite understood what they meant.

In short, if the Ascending Dragon Continent was the surface of a balloon, the Abyssal Space was something like its interior.

Apart from the Devil Race, no living creature could survive in the Abyss for long.

Whether living or inorganic, anything that entered the Abyss would be dismembered and digested by Nether Qi, in a process akin to the annihilation of yin and yang.

In the Abyss, Nether Qi did not dissolve spiritual energy instantly. The process took time.

If you had enough spiritual energy, you could expend it to slow the digestion of your body.

You could also build a large, sealed flying vessel to carry passengers across the Abyss... Of course, such ships consumed enormous amounts of spiritual energy. Only the Daqian Dynasty or Gray Castle had the resources to build them.

Besides, technologies such as Storage Rings, storage pouches, spatial spells, spirit-drawing arrays, and teleportation arrays... all made use of the Abyssal Space.

Jiang Chen could endure demonic qi inside a Demonic Beast's belly without being dissolved, so entering the Abyss was no problem. With his current physique, he could be called one-third a member of the Devil Race.

He started counting.

One, two, three, four...

He had only reached seven when the demon girl hauled him back in, looking displeased.

Clearly, Tian Mingye had scolded her.

"What's a little cultivation vessel so smug about? Just wait until we get back to the sect!"

It seemed the demoness treated him fairly well. She had recognized what fine material he was and did not mind him laying hands on her.

In less than an hour, the kun-shaped Demonic Beast had carried the three of them to the Heavenly Demon Sect.

Evidently, the Heavenly Demon Sect was within Fireburn Kingdom.

Yet this place was neither the Abyss nor the Ascending Dragon Continent.

It was a man-made gap opened between the two.

Above lay the Ascending Dragon Continent.

Below lay the endless Abyss.

In the membrane of space between them was a huge, teardrop-shaped bubble, held open by roiling demonic qi.

Inside the bubble, amid black mist, stood the towering Ninefold Mountains in a ring, anchored to the Ascending Dragon Continent and the Abyss by five chains above and five below.

This was the Heavenly Demon Sect.

After disembarking, they came to the center of the Heavenly Demon Sect.

The basin enclosed by the Ninefold Mountains was a round mass of stone roughly ten li across.

There was no spiritual energy around them, but the air was fresh, the temperature pleasant, and irregular breezes blew in from every direction.

The light was too dim for day yet too bright for night. Suspended between the two, with neither stars nor moon, the place made it hard to tell dream from reality.

What met Jiang Chen's eyes was an enormous black tree that rose higher than the Ninefold Mountains.

It towered into the clouds, its crown spreading like a canopy. Its trunk was like a wall, its branches forked without end, and its dense foliage blotted out the sky, giving it a tranquil, sacred air.

Its leaves were round and dark green, and red fruits crowded among its branches.

Looking closely, the fruits were shaped like date pits, each over half a zhang long and two feet wide, wrapped in a hard red shell.

And the reason those shells looked red was that their black surfaces were covered in...

Blood vessels.

—Human blood vessels!

"Don't tell me there are humans lying inside those fruits?"

Jiang Chen asked in astonishment.

The demon girl looked at him with disdain.

"Of course there are humans. They've been bred for generations specifically to supply blood to the Devil Race. To be precise, they're slaves."

"Are they asleep?"

"No. Their souls are imprisoned in a beautiful illusory world. That's why they never resist."

For a moment, Jiang Chen did not know what to say. For some reason, he thought of the nipple pacifiers from a certain lighthouse nation...

"If you can produce human blood yourselves, why do you still massacre cities and kill innocent people?"

The demon girl said calmly,

"The Devil Race can't reproduce. We can only select talented humans and raise them to become devils. The younger, the better... As for the rest, they're all used as bait to hunt Demonic Beasts in the Abyss."

"Between races, there's no right or wrong, only where you stand. Demons or devils... One day, you'll understand that we're merely tools created by human greed. And the weak will always be lambs."

Jiang Chen's scalp prickled at her words, and his whole worldview shook.

Fortunately, he was not native to the Ascending Dragon Continent. He came from Blue Star, with its modern civilization and reverence for freedom and democracy. Something like this could never happen there.

At the same time, as someone from beyond this world, he did not have to side with humans, demons, or devils. He could pursue absolute power and live for his own immortality!

Born into chaotic times, morality had no foothold before the laws of survival.

It was not just the cultivation world. In Blue Star's history, when a dynasty fell into chaos, when had people not eaten people?

When disaster struck, famine followed, and people ate one another.

When war came as well, they were turned straight into army rations.

Put simply, the population had exceeded what the available resources could support.

As someone from beyond this world, the one thing Jiang Chen could do was refuse to eat people himself or help demons and devils eat them.

But letting demons and devils help him cultivate? That was a good deed.

With that thought, Jiang Chen was taken to Tian Mingye's residence, Heavenly Nether Palace.

Before he could formally become the demoness's cultivation vessel, he was forced to undergo test after test at the hands of various demonesses to make sure his constitution was harmless...

The demon girl who disliked him was among them, and she humiliated him with a vengeance.

As a result, Jiang Chen did not see Tian Mingye again before the plot ended.

Although those demonesses did get him to the fourth level of Qi Refining, still...

It hurt!

It hurt so damn much.