Slaughter City.
Deep within that eerie, gloomy palace.
Upon the scarlet throne.
The King of Slaughter leaned languidly against the broad back of his chair.
He enjoyed the attentions of his Beautiful Messenger.
The messenger wore an extremely revealing robe of sheer black gauze.
Large expanses of fair, alluring skin flickered in and out of view beneath the dim red light.
She nestled against the King of Slaughter like a supple water snake, her breath fragrant as orchids.
"Great king." The Beautiful Messenger's slender fingers lightly traced the King of Slaughter's chest as she whispered soft, warm words into his ear.
"That Mechanical Pioneer has already won seventy matches. He's still young, and his Soul Power isn't low either. He has great potential for cultivation! Should we recruit him?"
"No, absolutely not!"
At the mere mention of that title, the King of Slaughter's half-closed eyes snapped open.
Clearly, he had been somewhat triggered.
Recruit him? He couldn't get away from that brat fast enough!
A memory that could only be called humiliating rose unbidden in the King of Slaughter's mind.
Back then, the Asura God Sword had left him.
He had intended to retrieve that supreme treasure that belonged to him.
Yet he had discovered that the lofty Super Divine Artifact was actually clinging to that child named Lu Xuan like a little shadow!
At the time, Lu Xuan had not even made a name for himself as the "Mechanical Pioneer."
He had planned to retrieve the divine sword and casually crush the little brat who dared to lure away his personal sword.
But who could have imagined it?
The Asura God Sword had acted as though it had taken the wrong medicine.
Not only had it fiercely protected Lu Xuan, it had turned its blade on him, the King of Slaughter, and unleashed a frenzy of slashes!
That was the Asura God Sword!
A genuine Super Divine Artifact!
Even without a master controlling it, the power it contained was far beyond anything he could easily lay his hands on.
At the time, he had refused to believe it and tried to activate the Divine Trial Mark within his body to forcibly regain control of the divine sword.
To his despair, his control had failed completely!
Not only that, his forceful interference had thoroughly enraged the divine sword instead.
A blood-red sword wave capable of destroying heaven and earth had slashed down, nearly cleaving him in two on the spot.
An enormous wound still remained at his waist, deep enough to expose bone and impossible to heal because of the lingering Asura Divine Power.
That battle had thoroughly beaten him awake.
He had understood.
It didn't matter if he couldn't get the Asura God Sword back.
As long as he retained his position as the King of Slaughter, that was enough.
His current goal was to send that demanding ancestor Lu Xuan on his way!
"Hurry up and arrange his next matches. Let him finish his victories and leave at once! Oh, and pick stronger opponents for him."
Opening a few back doors and pulling a few strings was his final act of stubbornness!
Perhaps because of the King of Slaughter's special instructions.
The next stretch of Lu Xuan's journey through hell became extraordinarily difficult.
The time needed to match contestants grew shorter, but the opponents he encountered were all considerably stronger.
Under such intense slaughter.
The damage to Lu Xuan's Soul Tools grew increasingly severe, and to repair the damaged Soul Tools.
The reserve metal in his Storage Bracelet also dwindled at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Amid endless blood and slaughter, time crawled painfully through another eleven months.
Only one final match remained before he could withdraw with a hundred victories.
Finally, in the suffocatingly brutal slaughter of the hundredth match.
Lu Xuan trod over severed limbs scattered across the ground and successfully fought his way out of the encirclement.
Now, Lu Xuan was drenched in blood, some belonging to his nine opponents and some his own.
Standing in the center of the arena, Lu Xuan clutched a blade wound on his chest that exposed bone and couldn't help bursting into curses:
"Fuck, that was downright hellish! She could even spit a sword out of her mouth. Did she really think she was Orochimaru? And it was fucking poisoned!"
If he hadn't been immune to all poisons, even if he had successfully reached a hundred matches and could leave through Hell Road.
With that poison in him, his chances of making it through Hell Road would have been zero.
"Congratulations, young Mechanical Pioneer." A deep, shrill voice suddenly came from every direction.
In midair, in midair, a suffocatingly terrifying pressure descended with a crash.
A blood-red figure was descending from the sky.
It was a tall man, his entire body wrapped in an enormous scarlet cloak.
With his arrival.
The atmosphere within the Hell Slaughter Arena instantly reached its peak.
"King of Slaughter! King of Slaughter! King of Slaughter..."
The fallen shouted themselves hoarse, yet showed no intention of stopping.
"Next, I shall open Hell Road for you. I look forward to you becoming the ninth Asura of my Slaughter City!"
A strange smile curled the corners of the King of Slaughter's mouth.
No sooner had he finished speaking than dense red mist abruptly poured out of him.
Evil, icy red ripples slowly spread, covering the entire arena in little more than a few blinks.
The fallen, who had been cheering wildly, gradually quieted as the red light descended upon the spectator stands.
The entire spectator stands fell into a deathly silence.
Every fallen spectator's eyes began to turn vacant, and then that vacancy became a bloodshot scarlet!
When the red light condensed above the entire Hell Slaughter Arena into a massive, sealed barrier.
Bloodcurdling screams finally erupted from the crowd that had first come into contact with the red light.
Under the red light's influence, those fallen seemed to have gone mad, desperately clawing at their own faces and bodies...
Riiip-
Skin peeled back and blood sprayed everywhere. They even tore their own internal organs out of their bodies.
The entire frenzy would stop only when their lives ended.
Blood splashed onto the ground and began to gather, great quantities of it forming little streams.
It flowed along inconspicuous, narrow channels beneath the spectator seats toward the central floor of the arena.
Countless winding streams of red liquid could clearly be seen flowing into the arena like little snakes.
The blood did not spread aimlessly over the platform.
At some unknown point, grooves had appeared in the ground beneath Lu Xuan's feet.
Blood flowed into them, gradually gathering into an enormous blood-red bird pattern on the ground.
Lu Xuan stood quietly alone at the very center of that enormous Blood Formation.
Suddenly, a vast red light shot into the sky, instantly engulfing Lu Xuan's body.
All perception of his surroundings was stripped away within that tremendous energy, becoming indistinct.
Between heaven and earth, only the King of Slaughter's deep, shrill voice, carrying a trace of relief as though a great burden had been lifted, echoed in Lu Xuan's ears:
"Good luck on Hell Road."
Before you continue