Cui Pinyuan and his master had spent their entire lives being hunted down.
Cao Ming treated Cui Pinyuan as his own son. Any cultivation resources he possessed that Cui Pinyuan could use, he gave to him.
He constantly looked after him, patiently guiding him through every obstacle in his cultivation.
Whenever danger struck, Cao Ming stayed behind to hold off powerful enemies, fighting for the slimmest chance of survival for Cui Pinyuan.
They were hunted by the Demon Kingdom's Pursuit Army and the Demon Dao Great Sects throughout the Lingyao Realm. Whenever their identities as members of the Righteous Sun Sect were exposed, the pursuit became endless.
Their lives were extraordinarily difficult. Time and again, they suffered injuries so severe they nearly died, and hope was never in sight.
Hunted his entire life, Cao Ming hated the Demon Kingdom and the Demon Dao Great Sects to his very bones. Yet he still harbored the unrealistic hope that the Righteous Dao would one day rise again.
He hoped Cui Pinyuan would uphold the Righteous Dao's principles as he had. Even before his death, he solemnly entrusted him with this, hoping Cui Pinyuan would remain true to his original heart.
Cui Pinyuan had sworn a deadly oath to honor that wish, and he regarded the present Demon Kingdom and those Demon Dao Great Sects as mortal enemies. But after Cao Ming died, his life grew even harder.
Rogue cultivators already faced discrimination, let alone Righteous Dao practitioners like him.
Even rogue cultivators who practiced demonic cultivation arts would either join forces to kill him or report his identity to the Demon Kingdom's Search Teams and the various Demon Sects once they discovered he belonged to the Righteous Sun Sect.
After struggling to survive like this for several years, he finally could not endure any longer. He broke his oath and switched to a demonic cultivation art.
From then on, his Heart-Demon Obsession took deep root, never to be dispelled again.
"The Righteous Dao really is a difficult path."
Zhao Changfeng murmured to himself.
The original owner of his body had lived with Song Zejun and his wife for several years. He could appreciate the plight of master and disciple, and understood that under such terrifying pressure, a person's will would eventually collapse.
He could abandon the Lingxiao Sect without any burden because he was not the original owner, and Song Zejun and his wife had never treated the original owner the way Cao Ming treated Cui Pinyuan.
Cao Ming had been killed by the Demon Kingdom's search troops, sacrificing himself to save Cui Pinyuan. Before dying, he had earnestly implored Cui Pinyuan not to willingly fall into depravity.
Cui Pinyuan should have held fast to his identity as a member of the Righteous Sun Sect and avenged his master. Instead, unable to withstand one certain-death situation after another, he had ultimately become the very sort of demonic cultivator his master loathed.
His guilt had thus fermented into a Heart-Demon Obsession.
"Even before I experience it myself, it's already producing remarkable willpower, even more than Senior Sister Ruan's did."
Within the Second Cauldron, scenes from Cui Pinyuan and his master's lives kept shifting. Wisps of willpower readily condensed, becoming power Zhao Changfeng could draw upon at any moment.
"Why do the Demon Dao Great Sects insist on exterminating every last Righteous Dao practitioner?"
Zhao Changfeng frowned in thought.
Those who practiced orthodox cultivation methods had a much lower mortality rate. Before reaching the realm of the three calamities and six tribulations, they were less likely to suffer backlash from their methods, and theoretically could live safely for a very long time.
Their only drawback was a single word: slow.
"Slow..."
Zhao Changfeng narrowed his eyes. Drawing on what he had learned from Ruan Meizhen, he followed that line of thought deeper.
Understanding gradually dawned on him.
Slowness was the root of the problem!
Without the threat of the Unordered Zone, there would naturally have been no problem with Righteous Dao practitioners controlling the realms of the Three Great Ruins. They would not have needed to face invasions from alien beings beyond their borders.
Under those circumstances, Righteous Dao cultivators could have progressed step by step, spending centuries slowly building up their cultivation until they stood at the pinnacle.
But the truth was that the alien beings of the Unordered Zone were immensely powerful. They were constantly trying to corrupt the ordered zones where humanity lived, and brutal wars broke out at regular intervals.
If humanity lost, all living beings would be plunged into misery.
Kingdoms would fall, sects would perish, and entire realms would become new Unordered Zones.
In such harsh circumstances, the slow pace at which Righteous Dao practitioners produced powerful cultivators became a vastly magnified problem. After a war between races, their pinnacle experts would likely suffer devastating losses.
Why would the alien beings of the Unordered Zone give them ages to rest and recover?
If a realm that had just survived a war could not quickly produce large numbers of pinnacle experts capable of fighting again, it would fall.
Demonic cultivation arts and demonic cultivators might well have been the only answer.
Those who practiced demonic cultivation arts risked tremendous backlash, plundering cultivation resources from all of heaven and earth, sparing not even the flesh and blood of their own kind. They traded a horrifying mortality rate for the fastest possible realm breakthroughs.
The Demon Kingdom supplied an endless stream of talent, and demonic cultivators died batch after batch, yet this rapidly produced truly powerful experts capable of standing against the alien beings of the Unordered Zone.
There were tales of Demonic Dao Prodigies who shattered the barriers between realms one after another in a mere century, ascending straight to the peak of the creation realm.
Demonic Dao Prodigies who took only a few decades to reach the lower heaven-opening realm from the moment they began cultivating were even more commonplace.
By contrast, Righteous Dao factions such as the Lingxiao Sect and the Righteous Sun Sect needed almost seven or eight hundred years to produce a single creation realm expert.
Throughout the Three Great Ruins and humanity's various realms, all outstanding Demonic Dao Supremes shouldered the responsibility of resisting the alien beings of the Unordered Zone.
Even if they fell, demonic cultivation arts and the Demon Dao Great Sects could quickly forge new Demonic Dao Magnates through this bloody, brutal law of competition and its enormous death toll.
That was precisely what Righteous Dao sects could not do.
"The Demonic Dao forced the Righteous Dao into a dead end. Cui Pinyuan chose to fall into the Demonic Dao to survive. Then Song Zejun and his wife..."
Zhao Changfeng grew thoughtful.
He very much wanted to draw the couple's Heart-Demon Obsessions into the cauldrons and see just what they had experienced that ultimately led them down another, even more extreme path of no return.
Just then, Zhao Changfeng's expression shifted. He keenly sensed the temperature in the cave plummeting.
Because of the earth yin cold spring, this small domain was already bitterly cold. Now that the temperature had dropped further, his gaze naturally turned toward the well billowing deathly white mist.
The Yin Ghost clinging to the well wall suddenly grew restless, as though it had sensed something amiss.
A strange aura of hatred for all things and all living beings rapidly intensified from faint to overwhelming!
"A Demon Spirit!"
Zhao Changfeng's face drained of color.
He instantly understood what was happening. Snatching up the Blood God Saber within arm's reach, he slashed toward the spot where the aura was strongest.
Willpower poured into it in an instant. A black-and-red blood shadow shot out, lunging into empty space along with the saber's demonic radiance.
Bang!
An explosive sound came from the unseen entity.
The demonic saber, imbued with all his strength, struck out a shower of black light. The Demon Spirit that had appeared from nowhere actually possessed a semimaterial body.
Yet Zhao Changfeng could not see it at all!
The next instant, its hatred for all living beings intensified further, and Zhao Changfeng's head hurt as though it were about to split open.
A Demon Spirit shaped like a Flood Dragon Python appeared inside Zhao Changfeng's body in an instant, thrashing its head and tail as it tried to strangle the vitality from his flesh and blood.
"Fuck!"
Zhao Changfeng could spare no thought for anything else.
Knowing the Demon Spirit had invaded his body, he immediately condensed another black-and-red blood shadow imbued with willpower inside himself and sent it into battle against the Flood Dragon Python-shaped Demon Spirit.
At the same time, his head throbbed as if it would burst, and he felt as though he had fallen into a realm of death where all things withered.
"Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding!"
As he directed the blood shadow to pursue the Demon Spirit with his will, he also divided his attention to circulate his demonic cultivation art, attempting to refine the soul-slaying Demon Spirit's consciousness into the two cauldrons.
Within his sea of spiritual qi, the two Little Bronze Cauldrons turned gently, and a powerful suction abruptly arose.
Intricate, indistinct patterns appeared across their walls. Controlled by Zhao Changfeng's mind and will, the two Small Cauldrons also used Heavenly Heart Demon-Seeding to resist the Demon Spirit's evil thoughts, which threatened to shatter his willpower.
The pull of the two Small Cauldrons, combined with Zhao Changfeng's own resistance, managed to hold off the first wave of attack.
At Zhao Changfeng's mental command, all the willpower in the cauldrons poured into the black-and-red blood shadow. It tightly enveloped the Flood Dragon Python Demon Spirit, preventing it from shattering his vital organs.
"It's definitely not second-rank!"
Zhao Changfeng roared inwardly. Concentrating all his strength on resisting the Demon Spirit, he dropped onto the ground, his body trembling.
Without the cauldrons' willpower granting the blood shadow explosive strength, and without the pull of the two Small Cauldrons, he likely would not have survived the Demon Spirit's first attack. His soul would already have collapsed and become its soul food.
"Chen Jian!"
"Cui Pinyuan!"
"Where the hell have you two gone?"
Gritting his teeth, Zhao Changfeng shouted upward with all his might, hoping the two primordial spirit realm cultivators would hurry over.
Boom!
An irresistible, unknown force suddenly erupted from his mind, dragging his mind and will, together with the Demon Spirit, into some strange, eerie place in an instant.
Before the Primal Demon Temple's mountain gate.
Zhao Changfeng had become Xu Lang. Holding the demonic saber, he was about to kill Ruan Meizhen, while Zhan Jingsi stood silently nearby.
She said nothing to prevent the tragedy. She merely watched Zhao Changfeng in Xu Lang's guise, seemingly waiting for him to kill Ruan Meizhen with the demonic saber.
Ruan Meizhen seemed to have lost her soul. She stared blankly as Zhao Changfeng approached step by step, feeling his almost tangible killing intent.
Her severed arm lay in her own pool of blood, seemingly mocking her in silence-mocking her cluelessness, her one-sided affection, her foolish dreams.
My Heart-Demon Obsession is backfiring at a time like this?
Why now?!
Zhao Changfeng was aghast, but suddenly realized that he seemed able to control his will and body, no longer constrained by the fixed scene.
He had experienced this identical scene many times. Each time, he could only passively act it out, experiencing it through a state of mind he could not tell was his own or Xu Lang's.
This time, it had finally changed!
A tangible restraint imposed by rules pressed upon everyone like a cage, making escape difficult.
Within the illusory scene, Zhan Jingsi controlled everything. A single word from her could decide his life and Ruan Meizhen's.
Zhan Jingsi said nothing at that moment, but her presence was everywhere, as though she had become one with this world.
"Zhan, Zhan, Zhan Jingsi!"
Zhao Changfeng spoke within the illusion. A fierce stabbing pain shot through his soul, yet he forcibly broke the eternally unchanging scene!
An even stronger restraint pressed down on his body and mind. His entire body shook, and he nearly lost his grip on the demonic saber.
He abruptly looked toward Zhan Jingsi and saw that her eyes seemed devoid of the emotions a human should possess.
"No! That's not Zhan Jingsi. It's the Demon Spirit!"
Zhao Changfeng understood with a jolt.
Now that he knew what had happened, he gripped the saber in both hands. With a mind hardened by countless trials of Heart-Demon Obsession, he shouted fiercely, "Ruan Meizhen! Help me kill this bitch!"
At the Primal Demon Temple's mountain gate, Zhao Changfeng suddenly pointed his demonic saber at Zhan Jingsi and charged after her without hesitation, slashing.
"You like hiding, do you?"
"Let's see where you can hide now!"
Within the Eerie Secret Realm, he had no power to draw upon. Neither did Ruan Meizhen, nor did "Zhan Jingsi."
Everyone trapped within this place seemed constrained by some great dao of rules. None could draw on external power, and all had been reduced to ordinary bodies, no different from mortals.
But Zhao Changfeng had a saber in his hand!
Having lived through Shi Yue's century of hardship and weathered suffering, and having felt the deepest pain in Ruan Meizhen's heart, he withstood the suppression and restraint the Demon Spirit directed at him.
If the heart was tough enough, even a Demon Spirit's evil thoughts could not imprison it!
Surprise appeared in "Zhan Jingsi's" eyes.
It had controlled everything all along.
Xu Lang should have revered and feared it. Ruan Meizhen should not have dared defy it. Their inner demons should have been filled with terror toward it.
Even it had not anticipated this.
It had never imagined Zhao Changfeng could withstand the Mental Suppression it excelled at, dare to raise his saber and cleave through fate, and thereby break the terrifying inner-demon obsessions born of those two people.
And so, "Zhan Jingsi" took to its heels.
Ruan Meizhen stared blankly at the sight.
She watched the faithless man who had cut off her arm suddenly raise his saber against "Zhan Jingsi," chasing and hacking at it until he had reduced it to a bloody ruin.
At that very moment, the cruelest scene shattered into fragments, and Ruan Meizhen seized the momentum to open her upper dantian.
She had reached the primordial spirit realm!