Devil Suppression Tower

Hu Mang did not run around like a headless fly.

He found a half-collapsed attic that offered some cover, sat cross-legged on the ground, and began regulating his breathing.

As a cultivator from a time of peace, he had experiences and knowledge that most cultivators lacked.

So when he was suddenly "transmigrated," he did not really panic much. Rather, he went straight into the detached state he entered when "defending the ring."

Caught between life and death, he would fight his way free.

Hu Mang toyed with the "special fragment" from before, spinning it round and round in his hand.

After pulling him over, the thing had returned to its original state. It was neither metal nor jade, and it had not a trace of spirituality.

So, since it pulled me over by absorbing lightning power, if I reverse the process and give it enough lightning power, could it pull me back too?

At least this thing shouldn't be as "intelligent" as my dad, right? So was that an instinctive reaction from a fragment of a Law Treasure?

At this point, it would be far too stupid to keep treating the thing as a "fragment of a Law Artifact."

A Spirit Artifact, or even a treasure artifact, would not fit the bill.

After all, this involved "traveling through space." Even now, Heavenly Gate had yet to completely master the ancient cultivation world's "teleportation portal Dao techniques."

So, a Law Treasure fragment? Or even a fragment of an innate Law Treasure?

A Law Treasure belonging to one of the ten immortals of High Antiquity!

The ancient legends were true!

At least, at some point during High Antiquity, immortals really had descended upon Earth Star and, for some unknown reason, left this fragment behind?

And then this thing had brought him back to the immortals' home?

Hu Mang's thoughts flew in all directions, but he soon gathered up the jumble in his mind.

Right now, the most important thing was to get himself into shape and face this unknown, dangerous world.

Leaving everything else aside, just the thick, seemingly endless thunderclouds overhead would take an unknown number of major cultivation projects blowing up at once to produce an "accident" on this scale.

Besides, Hu Mang had never stolen Spiritual Qi of this caliber before.

At that thought, Hu Mang closed his eyes and entered a state of cultivation. The Heavenly Gate General Qi Refining Instruction began circulating on its own.

Unbelievably pure Spiritual Qi began to flow into his body. The surrounding air began to crackle, and electric sparks of every color danced through it.

It was as though great dragons of lightning were pouring into his body.

The Spiritual Qi in this world is so damn fierce!

Zhongshan Holy Land, Riverheart Isle Circuit, Demon Suppression Branch Bureau

"So there really is a freak like that!" Old Zhang exclaimed, staring at the big screen.

As the only superpower on Earth Star, a super organization that had successively opened up the Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, and Void Refinement realms, even a tiny Demon Suppression Branch Bureau had an astonishing intelligence network, not just at home but overseas as well.

Especially when they knew who they were looking for.

In fact, it was not just Little Xu; even Old Zhang had grown curious.

And when the information from Java Country came back, both men were left somewhat dazed.

The photograph showed a dark, crowded setting, with frenzied screams, roars, and blood.

The man in the ring was bare-chested, his body red all over with blood, a Bodhi Buddha mask on his face. The spear in his hand was lodged in the chest of the half-demon cultivator opposite him, pinning the corpse of the Demonized half-flood dragon to the ground.

There were many similar photographs, quite a few of them even bloodier. In one, he thrust a hand covered in bloody streaks into his opponent's chest and tore out a beating heart.

"Port Surumai's strongest underground ring defender, brought in on the recommendation of Zheng Qingbo, a gang boss among the descendants of Min people. His greatest record: defending twenty-seven life-and-death matches in a row and killing every Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator among the rival gang's forces!"

"The underground black market's combat powerhouse, Borneo Heavenly Blood Python!"

Old Zhang read it out word by word.

"He was a dispatched concrete worker from here? The kind who doesn't even have an official post?"

Old Zhang himself did not know what expression to make.

"Live long enough and you really do meet all kinds. I know quite a few cultivators who were sent overseas. Some got so bewitched by the local seductive demonesses that they lost their primordial yang every day. Some gambled until they couldn't tell day from night or east from west. Some modern cultivators spent every day glued to the internet. There were even some who were treated as easy marks and tricked into sweatshops."

"This is the first damn time I've seen someone go overseas to pour concrete and end up the strongest underground fighter in the area!"

"Doesn't Port Surumai have a whole range of underground services? This brother likes fighting instead of dual cultivation? Live long enough and you'll see anything, anything!"

Little Xu did not ask again why Old Zhang turned into a know-it-all whenever that sort of business came up. Instead, he silently studied a photograph.

"Bodhi Buddha" was a local form of worship that incorporated Buddhism. The Bodhi Buddha mask on the man's face bore both the compassion of a bodhisattva and the solemn majesty of a Buddha.

Behind the mask was a pair of murky yellow demon eyes.

He was like a giant python in human form, ready to choose someone to devour at any moment.

Little Xu was very familiar with that look in his eyes!

And judging by the presence the man displayed, he could not possibly be in the Qi Refining Realm.

Hu Mang had no idea that a good citizen's act of helping someone after seeing an injustice had led directly to people stripping away even his underwear.

At this moment, Hu Mang was exploring the "lightning-struck ancient city."

It was called an ancient city because it truly was old. Broken walls and ruins lay everywhere, giving off a scorched, smoky smell.

But old did not mean "backward." To Hu Mang's astonishment, nearly every building was a so-called "minor blessed land."

That meant they were built entirely of "immortal materials and spiritwood," and could spontaneously absorb Spiritual Qi and produce a superior cultivation environment without the need for a "Spiritual Qi formation."

It was as though every part of each building was a "cultivation room."

Heavenly Gate, meanwhile, had only managed to complete its massive public welfare project, "a Spiritual Qi grid and a cultivation room for every household," a few years ago.

In the experience of a construction worker like Hu Mang, spiritwood of this "heavenly treasure" grade was not something an ordinary residential complex could afford.

A top-tier Nascent Soul residential complex would be about this good, wouldn't it?

Only in certain major cultivation projects would materials like these be used on a large scale.

But now, an "ancient city" was made entirely of such materials.

This genuinely shocked Hu Mang, a former construction worker.

"What a waste!"

Hu Mang had lost count of how many times he had said that.

The spirit materials that could have been used to refine Spirit Artifacts had all lost their spirituality.

He could not help thinking of the ordinary antiques from before.

The two cases were somewhat similar, except that one had been contaminated by turbid Qi and lost all its spirituality, while the other had been struck by lightning.

Looking up as enormous peals of thunder continually rang out in the sky, and at the enormous spirit explosion vortex forming in one direction within the city,

Hu Mang felt as though he were inside a spiritual power station where a major safety accident could happen at any moment. His scalp tingled, and his skin instinctively broke out in goosebumps.

Turning a corner, Hu Mang narrowed his eyes.

It was a huge corpse, its flesh loose and rotting, bone spurs growing in clusters and limbs twisted out of joint. Dead Qi, a mixture of gray-black and dark red, radiated from its entire body. Whenever a piece of its charred flesh crumbled away, it turned into thousands upon thousands of tiny black insects.

An almost instinctive feeling of discomfort rose from the bottom of his heart.

He had never seen a creature like it. Even back when he had "defended the ring" against all kinds of overseas Demonized cultivators, he had never felt such revulsion.

And-

"The corpse still has the pressure of the Foundation Establishment Realm after being struck dead by lightning. So was this thing a Golden Core when it was alive?"

Hu Mang carefully skirted the corpse and took another path. In that direction, there seemed to be a "tall landmark building."

Soon, Hu Mang saw the "landmark," and the corner of his eye twitched again.

It was an enormous tower reaching to the heavens, formed from the remains of countless "monsters" of all sizes, piled atop one another, their bones and flesh intertwined and locked together.

The tower's base was formed from thousand-zhang giant corpses lying coiled together. Jagged black bones formed the foundation, and decaying, sunken flesh served as soil. Broken monster horns and splayed claws crossed and locked the foundation in place, buried deep within the earth.

The tower's outer walls were covered in densely packed, lightning-shaped scorch marks, crisscrossing like Dao seals of heavenly punishment.

The sight gave Hu Mang a powerful sense of déjà vu.

An artificial lightning tribulation tower!

It was several times the size of a lightning tribulation tower, and an enormous tower made entirely of "monster corpses"!

More frightening still, Hu Mang recognized what these "monsters" were.

"Devil Creatures, Demonic Qi!"

"No wonder they looked a little familiar!"

Under Heavenly Gate's Law Artifact control regulations, lethal Law Artifacts ranked first. Above them were large-scale lethal Law Artifacts and lethal Law Artifacts intended to affect groups.

But above those, there was actually another category: Devil Artifacts!

Or rather, devil-path Law Artifacts!

The kind that were destroyed outright rather than recovered.

Hu Mang had faced life-and-death crises several times overseas. On one occasion, someone had blocked his path with a devil-path Law Artifact.

He had come within a hair's breadth of dying on the spot.

That was why, within Heavenly Gate's armed organizations, the Devil Subjugation Bureau stood above the Demon Suppression Bureau in prestige.

"Fuck, are those the legendary Extraterrestrial Heavenly Devils?"

Hu Mang muttered to himself.

They were called legendary because no Extraterrestrial Heavenly Devil had ever been seen in Earth Star's recorded history.

They had not even been seen during the exploration of other planets.

So most accounts of "Extraterrestrial Heavenly Devils" were an "invasive species" imagined on the basis of devil-path cultivators, much like aliens.

But now, a "Devil Suppression Tower" made of Extraterrestrial Heavenly Devils had appeared so abruptly before Hu Mang's eyes.

The next moment, however, murky yellow flashed in Hu Mang's eyes. Moving like a wolf or a badger, he vanished within a few breaths.

At the same time, three streaks of black light and gray mist shot through the air. One streak of gray mist was as thick as a column of beacon smoke. It crashed down above the "Devil Suppression Tower" like a falling comet, and within the mist, an old face with a hawk's eyes appeared. Its mouth opened and swallowed the tower's tip whole. The next moment, wisps of Devil Qi were drawn out of the "Extraterrestrial Heavenly Devils'" corpses and fell into the black cloud formed from the other party's essence, Qi, and spirit.

A trace of black light visibly emerged from the old face's hawkish eyes—or rather, devilish light!

The remaining two streaks of black light flew over as well. One revealed itself in midair, taking human form, and immediately exclaimed in praise:

"Congratulations, Ancestor, congratulations! With the pure Devil Qi tempered by the Thunder Method in the Devil Suppression Tower as a catalyst, your Mystic Yin Devil Cultivation Method will surely reach great completion!"

"Then, once you open up the Yin Corpse Devil Kingdom, the position of the devil path's sixth sect may well be yours to take, Ancestor Xuanyin!"