The suffocating killing intent at the Listening Rain Pavilion spread silently among the Seven Mysteries Sect's upper ranks like a plague. Han Li did not return to his courtyard. Instead, he headed straight into the deepest reaches of the mountains behind the sect, to an abandoned mineral vein where the spiritual energy was at its most violent and chaotic-the Soulbreak Abyss. Excessive mining in earlier years had disrupted its spiritual veins, and earth fiend energy erupted there from time to time. Ordinary disciples could not avoid it quickly enough, but for Han Li as he was now, it was the perfect place for secluded cultivation.
He needed power-absolute power sufficient to uproot the Black Fiend Cult and leave not even a chicken or dog alive! The Qi Refining ninth layer was nowhere near enough!
Deep inside the mine, Han Li sat cross-legged on a cold boulder. Gray earth fiend energy filled his surroundings, scraping against the rock walls with a sound like sobbing. In his hand, he held the Foundation Establishment Pill the sect had awarded him. The pill gave off a gentle halo, the hope of a breakthrough countless Qi Refining cultivators dreamed of.
But Han Li merely glanced at it before casually tossing it aside. An ordinary Foundation Establishment Pill used the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to gently establish a foundation, producing nothing more than a mundane Dao foundation with limited potential. What he wanted was to transcend his limits, to prove his Dao through slaughter, to forge a supreme demonic foundation capable of bearing his towering hatred and ambition!
In his mind, the Foundation Establishment section of the Profound Fiend Asura Art slowly unfolded. This cultivation method blazed a different trail, relying on neither external aids nor spiritual pills. Instead, it drew fiend energy into the body and used one's own killing intent and obsession as fire to temper spiritual power, compress it, and condense it into a core, forming a "Profound Fiend True Core"! The process was perilous beyond measure, offering only one chance of survival in ten. But once successful, the depth of one's foundation and the domineering strength of one's spiritual power would far surpass others of the same stage. One could even condense a trace of Pseudo Core Flame ahead of time, granting boundless might!
"Fiend energy... killing intent... obsession..." Han Li murmured, a flash of bloody light passing through his eyes. What he lacked least now was this towering fiend energy and the fire of hatred scorching his heart!
System, assist me in circulating the Foundation Establishment section of the Profound Fiend Asura Art. Maximize efficiency, regardless of the cost! Han Li commanded silently.
[Ding! Command received. Analyzing the Foundation Establishment section of the Profound Fiend Asura Art... calculating the optimal circulation route... activating maximum energy absorption mode... host's killing intent concentration meets requirements. Beginning to guide the fusion of earth fiend energy with the host's own fiend energy...]
The Slaughter System's icy voice rang out in his mind, as though a precision instrument had begun operating at full power. Han Li hesitated no longer. His hands formed one strange, intricate seal after another as the Profound Fiend Asura Art circulated furiously within him!
Boom-!
The already chaotic earth fiend energy inside the mine seemed to be drawn by an immense, invisible force. It rushed madly toward Han Li, forming a vast gray vortex! At the same time, the killing intent, hatred, and obsession with destroying everything that he had suppressed for so long, all seething from his family's massacre, surged out like floodwaters bursting through a dam. They crashed violently into the earth fiend energy pouring in from outside and fused with it!
"Aaargh-!"
Even with Han Li's unyielding will, he could not suppress a low, strained roar as those two extreme forces ravaged, scoured, and tempered his body with agonizing pain. His skin instantly turned crimson, his veins bulged, and tiny beads of blood seeped from his pores. It was as though his entire body had been thrown into a furnace!
[Warning! Host's physical strain is approaching the critical threshold! Meridians are sustaining damage! Reducing the energy absorption rate is recommended!]
"No! Continue! Faster!" Han Li's eyes were bloodshot, his gaze both crazed and resolute. Images of his family's slaughter and his parents' faces, their eyes still open in death, flashed endlessly through his mind! What did this little pain amount to?! He wanted power! The power to destroy his enemies!
More earth fiend energy was forcibly drawn in, fusing and compressing with his hatred and fiend energy even more violently! Within his dantian's sea of qi, his originally liquid spiritual power began spinning and gathering furiously, transforming toward a solid "core"! The process was like a war of destruction and reconstruction raging inside his body!
Time slipped by. Outside the mine, daylight and darkness alternated. Three days had already passed.
Over those three days, the strange phenomena at the Soulbreak Abyss drew close attention from the Seven Mysteries Sect's upper ranks. The chaotic column of fiend energy soaring into the sky, and the heart-stopping will to destroy contained within it, left the sect master, Elder Li, and the others trembling with dread. They could sense that Han Li was attempting Foundation Establishment through an extraordinarily dangerous method they had never heard of!
"This boy... is far too reckless!" Elder Li stood on a distant mountaintop, watching the column of fiend energy, his face filled with concern.
Nangong Wan stood quietly beside him, her white robes fluttering in the wind, her eyes deep beneath her veil. She could sense the hatred and determination within that column of fiend energy, enough to chill anyone's heart. "Hatred has become his inner demon, but it is also his greatest driving force. Success or failure will be decided in this single attempt."
Noon on the fourth day.
The fiend energy vortex above the Soulbreak Abyss suddenly contracted, as though something had swallowed it in an instant! Immediately afterward, a terrifying pressure, far more concentrated and domineering than before and brimming with destruction, erupted from deep within the mine like a savage beast awakening after an eternity of slumber!
Rumble-!
The entire Soulbreak Abyss shook violently, sending rocks tumbling down! A pillar of pitch-black light shot skyward, piercing straight into the clouds! Within it, countless resentful souls seemed to howl, while phantom mountains of corpses and seas of blood rose and fell! The sky darkened in an instant. Black clouds gathered, lightning flashed, and thunder roared, as though heaven and earth themselves were enraged by this demon born in defiance of heaven!
"This... this is a Foundation Establishment phenomenon?! How could it be so terrifying?!" Every Seven Mysteries Sect cultivator who sensed that aura paled in horror! How was this Foundation Establishment? It was plainly a demon king descending into the world!
Inside the mine.
Han Li slowly opened his eyes. Black fiend energy so dense it seemed tangible coiled around him. His left eye was pitch-black as eternal night, his right scarlet as a sea of blood! An immense spiritual pressure, far exceeding the ordinary Foundation Establishment early stage and even rivaling the Foundation Establishment middle stage, poured out without restraint!
He had successfully reached Foundation Establishment!
His was no ordinary Dao foundation, but one forged through the Profound Fiend Asura Art, containing endless fiend energy and killing intent-the Profound Fiend Demonic Foundation!
He opened his hand. With a thought, a flickering wisp of dark red flame appeared at his fingertip. The flame gave off no heat. Instead, it radiated an utmost, sinister cold, and even the space around it warped slightly-the Profound Fiend Pseudo-Core Flame!
Feeling his new spiritual power surge through him like a mighty river, filled with terrifying destructive force, Han Li revealed a cold, sinister smile.
Power! This was the power he needed for revenge!
He turned his spiritual sense inward. Within his dantian, a pitch-black Profound Fiend True Core the size of a longan fruit, its surface traced with strange dark red patterns, rotated slowly. With every rotation, it drew in and released vast quantities of spiritual energy from heaven and earth.
[Ding! Host has successfully reached Foundation Establishment! Hidden achievement "Fiend Core Foundation Establishment" completed! Rewards: Slaughter Points +10,000, special title "Demon Slayer" (slightly increases damage against evil entities and yin souls), improved Profound Fiend True Flame control. Current cultivation: Foundation Establishment early stage (Profound Fiend Demonic Foundation).]
The system notification sounded at just the right moment.
Han Li rose and stretched his limbs, a series of sharp cracks ringing out through his body. He glanced at the Foundation Establishment Pill discarded on the ground and flicked a finger. A wisp of Profound Fiend True Flame swept over it, instantly reducing the pill to nothing.
"Black Fiend Cult..." he murmured the name. The temperature inside the mine plummeted, and a layer of frost instantly coated the rock walls.
"Your doom has come."
His figure flickered, and he vanished from the depths of the mine. A moment later, he appeared in the sky above the Soulbreak Abyss.
He stood upon empty air, his black robes snapping in the wind (his formerly blue robes had been corroded black by the fiend energy). Fiend energy wreathed him as his lightning-sharp gaze swept over the Seven Mysteries Sect members who had rushed over after hearing the news. It lingered briefly on Nangong Wan's face before turning toward the distant horizon, in the direction of the Black Fiend Cult's headquarters.
There were no words, no farewells.
The next moment, he became a streak of black light that tore through the sky, carrying towering killing intent and fiend energy as he shot straight beyond the sect's gates! His speed far surpassed that of an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator!
He was going to kill! He was going to exterminate a sect!
The Seven Mysteries Sect's master opened his mouth, but in the end, all that emerged was a long sigh. Elder Li's gaze was complicated. Nangong Wan watched that resolutely departing streak of black light, her delicate hand tightening slightly within her sleeve.
Everyone knew that the skies over the Southern Heaven Cultivation World were about to change.
A demonic star forged from blood and fire had descended! And his first target was the Black Fiend Cult, which had earned his hatred as deep as a sea of blood!
The road to vengeance began today! A demon had descended upon the Heavenly South-who could stop him?
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