A Day Trip to the Heavenly Demon Sect

Jiang Chen would never become a witch's cultivation furnace, not even if it killed him.

But if it was only for one day, he figured he could give it a try—treat it as a one-day tour of the Demon Sect, an experiment.

The joy of having four hands—he had wanted to experience it ever since playing Elden Ring back then...

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

What did it feel like to be inside a demonic creature's stomach?

This was a common means of transportation used by the demon race:

A Demon Kun.

Generally speaking, demonic beasts could not become demons.

So this was likely a demonic creature that had happened to grow into the shape of a kun.

At the center of its belly was an enormous circular stone disc engraved with navigation and sensory formations, allowing one to pilot the creature like a ship.

The origin of demonic creatures had always been a mystery.

According to the most widespread account, demonic beasts first took human form thirty thousand years ago during "Beast Tamer's Gratitude," while demonic creatures first appeared over three thousand years ago during the "Demonic Barrier Mutation."

Demonic barriers had originally been a type of inner demon, yet they later mutated into an infectious plague poison that could spread from person to person.

Fortunately, the plague poison only infected talented cultivators with exceptional gifts and deep obsessions.

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

Of course, it was possible that Tian Mingye had some special method to turn him into one...

After cultivators became demons, they turned bloodthirsty, rapidly lost their human forms and reason, and became mindless demonic creatures.

Yet some demonic creatures possessed obsessions so deep that they regained their minds and human forms, becoming demon race members with free will.

Generally speaking, the demon race had no reproductive ability.

But in a very small number of cases, they produced descendants. These were called Heaven-Bestowed Demons, which was how Heavenly Demons came to be.

Thanks to demonic qi's varying degrees of corrosiveness toward spiritual power and demonic beast qi, the demon race possessed the strongest combat strength among those at the same rank.

The same rank referred to the same minor realm.

Heavenly Demons were especially ferocious, essentially invincible within an entire major realm.

That was why Tian Mingye had been able to solo the Azure Mist Sect and suppress Chen Gongxing with a single strike of the Crimson Flame Demon Sword.

Right now, Jiang Chen was inside the stomach of a low-rank demonic creature, where corrosive demonic qi was constantly digesting his flesh, skin, hair, and divine soul.

He had no choice but to release demonic qi from the depths of his qi sea to resist the corrosion.

This felt much better!

The young demon girl stared at him in astonishment.

"A mere mortal like you can actually release demonic qi?"

Jiang Chen gave a cold smile, seized the chance to wrap an arm around Tian Mingye's voluptuous, alluring waist, and said with a grin:

"You should trust my wife's judgment."

The next moment, the young demon girl threw him out of the demon's stomach.

"I'll teach you to molest the Sect Master!"

The boundless Abyss stretched as far as the eye could see, with no sense of east or west.

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

His surroundings were dark, tinged with red, and visibility was extremely poor.

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

The area was filled with vast amounts of bloody mist, chunks of animal flesh, scraps of vegetation...

And even more of the diffuse substance known as Nether Qi, likely metabolic waste produced through demon race cultivation.

Jiang Chen had carefully consulted texts introducing Abyssal Space before, yet he had never quite understood what it truly was.

In short, if Ascending Dragon Continent were the surface of a balloon, Abyssal Space would be like the inside of that balloon.

Other than the demon race, no other living being could survive in the Abyss for long.

Whether living organisms or inorganic objects, anything entering the Abyss would be dismembered and digested by Nether Qi, much like the process of yin and yang annihilation.

Within the Abyss, Nether Qi did not dissolve spiritual power instantly; it took time.

If one possessed enough spiritual power, one could slow the rate at which the physical body was digested by expending spiritual power.

One could also construct sealed, massive flying ships to carry people across the Abyss... Of course, such vessels consumed an enormous amount of spiritual power. Only the Daqian Dynasty or Gray Castle could afford to build them.

Beyond that, Storage Rings, storage pouches, all kinds of spatial arts, spirit-absorbing formations, teleportation formations, and so on... all these techniques had to make use of Abyssal Space.

Jiang Chen could endure demonic qi inside a demonic creature's stomach without being dissolved. Entering the Abyss was even less of a problem. With his current constitution, he could be considered one-third demon race.

He started counting.

One, two, three, four...

He had only counted to seven when the displeased young demon girl fished him back out.

Clearly, Tian Mingye had scolded her.

"What are you so smug about, little cultivation furnace? Just wait until we return to the sect. You'll suffer then!"

It seemed the female demon was treating him fairly well. She had taken a liking to his excellent potential and did not mind being molested.

Before even an hour had passed, the kun-shaped demonic creature carried the three of them to the Heavenly Demon Sect.

Clearly, the Heavenly Demon Sect was within Fireburn Kingdom.

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

It was a rift artificially opened between the two.

Above was Ascending Dragon Continent.

Below was the endless Abyss.

Within the spatial membrane between them was a gigantic teardrop-shaped bubble propped up by surging demonic qi.

Within the black mist filling the bubble, the majestic Ninefold Mountains stood clustered together, anchored above and below by five chains each to Ascending Dragon Continent and the Abyss.

This was the Heavenly Demon Sect.

After disembarking, they arrived at the center of the Heavenly Demon Sect.

The basin enclosed by the Ninefold Mountains was a circular slab of giant stone roughly ten li wide.

There was no spiritual qi around them, yet the air was fresh and the temperature pleasant. Irregular breezes blew in from every direction.

The dim light was unlike daytime, yet bright enough that it was unlike night. It lay somewhere between day and night, with neither stars nor moon, making it impossible to tell dream from reality.

Yet what entered Jiang Chen's sight was an enormous black tree, taller than the Ninefold Mountains.

It pierced the clouds, its canopy spreading like a pavilion roof. Its trunk was like a wall, its branches split endlessly, and its foliage was luxuriant enough to blot out the sky, imparting a tranquil and sacred feeling.

Its leaves were round and dark green, while dense clusters of red fruit hung amid its branches.

On closer inspection, the fruits were shaped like date pits, each more than half a zhang long and two chi wide, wrapped in a layer of hard red shell.

The reason the shell appeared red was because the black hard shell was densely covered in...

Blood vessels.

—Human blood vessels!

"Could the things lying inside these fruits possibly be humans?"

Jiang Chen asked in stunned disbelief.

The young demon girl looked disdainful.

"Of course they're humans. And they are humans bred generation after generation specifically to supply blood to the demon race. More precisely, they are slaves."

"They're asleep?"

"No. Their divine souls are imprisoned within a beautiful world of illusions. That is why they do not resist at all."

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

"Since you can produce human blood yourselves, why do you still slaughter cities and kill innocent humans?"

The young demon girl replied calmly:

"The demon race has no reproductive ability. We can only select talented humans and cultivate them into demon race members—the younger, the better... As for the rest of the humans, they are all used as bait to hunt Abyssal demonic creatures."

"Between races, there is no right or wrong, only the position you stand in. Whether demons or demonic beasts... one day, you will understand that we are merely tools created by human greed, while the weak will forever be lambs."

Jiang Chen's scalp went numb as his worldview shook violently.

Fortunately, he was not a native of Ascending Dragon Continent. He came from Blue Star, a place with modern civilization that revered freedom and democracy. Such things could absolutely never happen there.

At the same time, as someone from beyond this realm, he did not need to stand with humans, demonic beasts, or demons. He only needed to pursue absolute power and live for his own immortality!

Born into troubled times, morality had no footing before the laws of survival.

Not only in the cultivation world—even in every chaotic era at the end of a dynasty in Blue Star's history, when had people not eaten people?

When natural disasters struck, there would be great famine, and people ate one another.

If war followed, they would simply be turned into military rations.

Put simply, the population had exceeded the maximum that resources could sustain.

As someone from beyond this realm, the only thing Jiang Chen could do was refrain from eating people himself and not help demons or demonic beasts eat people.

But allowing demons and demonic beasts to help his cultivation was a good deed.

With that thought in mind, Jiang Chen was taken to Tian Mingye's sleeping palace, the Heavenly Nether Palace.

Before officially becoming the female demon's cultivation furnace, he was forced to undergo repeated physical trials by various demon women to ensure his constitution was harmless...

That included the young demon girl who disliked him, who humiliated him with particular vindictiveness.

As a result, Jiang Chen did not see Tian Mingye again until the story ended.

Although those demon women still pushed him to the fourth level of Qi Refining, there was just one problem...

Pain!

It hurt far too much.