Inside a small courtyard at the Demon Suppression Bureau!
The wooden door slammed shut behind him.
The bolt dropped into its slot with a crisp click, shutting out the bloodshed and clamor outside.
Su Yu brought his black-and-gold saber around and laid it across his knees, sitting cross-legged on the cold hardwood bed frame.
Outside the door, Tang Shan stood with his back straight, like an iron tower.
Su Yu closed his eyes, his presence falling still as his consciousness poured like quicksilver into that boundless sea of consciousness.
The system panel unfolded silently.
[Host: Su Yu] [Cultivation: Mortal Realm Ninth Layer] [Cultivation method: Suppressing Prison and Subduing Demons (Mortal), perfection] [Martial arts: Vajra Fist (Mortal), subtle mastery; ultimate killing move, Vajra Demon-Subduing Fist; Gale Saber Technique (Mortal), subtle mastery; ultimate killing move, Wind Falls Silent, Leaving No Trace; Wandering Dragon Steps (Mortal), perfection] [Low-grade spirit-refining cultivation method: Spirit-Seizing Art (Spirit) (not yet initiated)] [Slaughter Points: 820]
Killing Liu Ang and slaughtering those dozens of Liu Family elites had swollen his Slaughter Points to an astonishing figure.
Su Yu's gaze fixed firmly on the Spirit-Seizing Art entry.
A Spirit Realm spirit-refining cultivation method.
Mortal Realm martial artists cultivated their sinews, bones, skin, and membranes-the vessel that was their physical body.
Spirit refinement, however, cultivated the person steering that vessel.
His cultivation had already reached the Mortal Realm Ninth Layer. Originally, he had planned to find the Spirit Realm section of Suppressing Prisons and Subduing Demons and use it to break through to the Qi-refining Spirit Realm.
But the Liu Family was pressing him too hard. He could only choose to cultivate the Spirit-Seizing Art first and break through in spirit refinement.
"Deduce the Spirit-Seizing Art."
[Consuming 500 Slaughter Points. Beginning deduction of the low-grade Spirit Realm cultivation method, Spirit-Seizing Art]
Boom!
Without warning, an invisible thunderclap exploded inside Su Yu's head.
His body abruptly tensed, his spine like a fully drawn bow. The nails of all ten fingers even pierced his palms.
A cold, impossibly sharp force erupted from the ancestral aperture between his brows.
It was not pain, but a stripping away on a higher plane.
It felt as though hundreds of millions of invisible ants were gnawing at his consciousness, trying to drag his soul bodily out of his flesh.
The veins at his temples throbbed wildly, as though about to burst through his skin.
Su Yu clenched his teeth fiercely. Coppery blood seeped between them, but he remained utterly unaware.
The world before him began to crumble, twisting into grotesque patches of color.
The Slaughter Points on the panel burned away rapidly. Every change in the number came with the agony of his soul being torn apart.
Cold sweat mingled with blood and seeped from every pore of his skin, giving off the pungent smell of rust.
[Spirit-Seizing Art deduction in progress...10%...40%...80%]
Su Yu felt his consciousness floating upward, leaving his heavy shell of flesh.
He seemed to hear his own heartbeat, slow and heavy, like war drums. Every beat sent his Qi and blood surging.
Under the brutal battering of his Slaughter Points, the impregnable barrier deep between his brows finally gave a crisp crack, opening an almost imperceptible fissure.
A cool sensation flowed through that fissure.
In an instant, it swept through his entire body.
[Spirit-Seizing Art deduction complete. Current level: initiation] [Remaining Slaughter Points: 320]
Su Yu abruptly opened his eyes.
The world was different.
His eyes still looked ahead, but an entirely new "perspective" enveloped his surroundings.
He seemed able to see the spiderweb cracks in the wall behind him.
He could "sense" a black beetle beneath the bed frame carefully moving its six legs.
He could even "hear" Tang Shan's steady, deliberately subdued heartbeat outside the door.
Divine sense.
Within this domain, three meters in radius, every stir of wind and grass lay within his grasp.
[Cultivation: Spirit Realm First Level (spirit refinement)]
Su Yu rose, his feet touching the ground soundlessly, as light as a cat.
He could clearly feel that the violent spiritual power within him, brought by Suppressing Prisons and Subduing Demons, had now become as docile as a sheep.
Not only that, after breaking through to the Spirit Realm through spirit refinement, Su Yu felt his comprehension had also improved to a certain degree.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Just then, fierce knocking broke the room's silence.
"Brother Su! Something's happened!"
Tang Shan's voice carried unmistakable panic.
Su Yu's gaze sharpened. He withdrew his divine sense, strode forward, and yanked the door open.
Tang Shan was bracing himself against the doorframe, his face as pale as paper. Still-warm scraps of flesh and organs smeared the leather armor over his chest.
"The training grounds... there's a monster at the training grounds!"
He pointed toward the Demon Suppression Bureau's training grounds, his breathing ragged.
"Chief Lin took most of our men to surround and wipe out the Liu Family. The brothers left guarding the bureau... can't hold it off at all!"
Su Yu looked past Tang Shan into the distance.
A thick stench of rot mixed with blood drifted toward them on the wind.
Piercing screams mingled with the dull crashes of something heavy smashing through walls.
"Go."
He uttered a single word.
Su Yu had already become a black afterimage, tearing through the air straight toward the training grounds.
Severed limbs and broken remains littered the way.
Most of those left guarding the Demon Suppression Bureau were trainee Demon Suppression Guards at the third or fourth layer of the Mortal Realm. Some terrifying, immense force had torn their bodies apart, smearing their innards across the entire courtyard.
At the center of the training grounds.
A hulking creature two and a half meters tall held a Demon Suppression Guard by the neck with one hand.
The thing was covered in long, dark-green hair. Its skin was the grayish white of a corpse, and its arms were as thick as old tree roots.
Crack!
It easily twisted the guard's neck apart.
The green-haired monster tossed the corpse aside and whipped its head around. Its emotionless, dark-purple eyes locked onto the rapidly approaching Su Yu.
"A demon puppet!"
Su Yu did not slow, his right hand already settling on his saber's hilt.
The thing's presence surpassed the bounds of the Mortal Realm. It was already at the Half-Step Spirit Realm.
An inhuman roar rose from the monster's throat. The bluestone slabs beneath its feet exploded, and its whole body hurtled forward like an enormous siege crossbow gone out of control, charging violently amid a foul, blood-reeking wind.
In that lightning-flash instant, Su Yu's divine sense burst outward.
Within the domain of his divine sense, the monster's movements slowed infinitely.
Every twitch of its muscles, every fraction of its force's movement, appeared clearly in Su Yu's mind.
Its left shoulder has an old injury. There's a hitch of one-tenth of a breath when it exerts force.
Su Yu turned slightly, driving Wandering Dragon Steps to its peak. His toes touched the ground and sprang away, his body sliding like a phantom past the monster's swinging claws.
His black-and-gold saber slid half an inch from its sheath.
Riiip!
The blade drew a long shower of glaring sparks across the monster's waist.
Such tough skin!
Roar!
Enraged after missing its strike, the monster swept its thick, heavily muscled tail around behind it with an air-rending sonic boom, smashing an entire row of weapon racks into flying splinters.
Su Yu landed, his brows drawing slightly together.
Ordinary saber techniques could hardly breach its defenses.
He drew a deep breath. The spiritual power within him instantly circulated, roaring wildly.
Dark-gold Qi and blood flowed like magma along his meridians, pouring entirely into his right arm.
Su Yu sheathed his saber and abruptly clenched his five fingers.
Golden light flickered over his knuckles.
Vajra Demon-Subduing Fist!
The monster roared and charged again, opening its blood-filled maw and spewing a vast cloud of purple-black, lethally poisonous mist.
Su Yu neither dodged nor retreated.
His divine sense had already locked firmly onto the slightly protruding piece of skull between the monster's brows.
That was its core.
"Die."
The ground beneath Su Yu's feet collapsed with a thunderous crash.
His entire body became a brilliant streak of golden light. Ignoring the corrosive poison mist, he slammed straight into it!
His fist met the monster's forehead in a brutal, unadorned collision.
Thud-!
A dull shock wave spread in a ring like ripples, instantly sweeping the loose stones from the ground.
The immense force drove the monster's head high backward, its neck bones giving a teeth-grating creak.
Su Yu's fist had already sunk deep into its face.
Violent dark-gold Qi and blood flooded through his fist into the monster's skull like water bursting through a dam.
Boom!
The monster's head exploded like a smashed watermelon.
Green, foul-smelling slime splattered across the ground.
[Killed a Half Spirit Realm demon puppet. Slaughter Points gained: 100]
Su Yu shook the filth from his fist and looked coldly toward the east of the city.
Toward the Liu Family mansion.