After flying across the courtyard, the demon’s body fell heavily to the ground creating a loud rumble.
“Boom!”
Ye Wei tasted a slight sweetness in his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood as his face turned as pale as paper.
“Ahem! Ahem!” After a moment of quietness, he coughed violently with both his arms crossed in front of his chest. He could feel his organs throbbing in pain. Meanwhile blood was dripping from his stomach, and soon his lower body was dyed in red while his breathing weakened.
At this point Ye Wei has used up all of his Qi and he felt as if his life was quickly being drained.
Defending himself against a strike that would have been lethal was not without its costs, and Ye Wei’s body was anything but in a good condition.
Farther away, the demon didn’t have it great either. Half of his right arm became mush and his needle like fur was soaked in blood.
“d.a.m.n it!” The demon swore as he looked at what was left of his arm with his bloodshot eyes. His body trembled in agony and his face became twisted.
“What did you do!?” He felt a fearsome growing presence in front of him while he was checking his wound. His eyes were wide with shock as he looked towards Ye Wei.
Although heavily injured, Ye Wei was calm. He sat himself down in the lotus position with his eyes tightly shut as a mysterious energy spun around him.
The Selenic Ironbark Seal drained all of Ye Wei’s energy, and his dantian was even showing signs of fracturing but instead of panicking, he started using the Falling Star form to recover his energy. While doing so he tried to repair his injured body by mimicking the energy flow he saw when the demon had transformed. After a few moments, his meridians were suddenly absorbing primal energy at five times their normal speed, and the surge of energy then became his own.
“Zoom! Zoom!”
As the energy circulated, it empowered Ye Wei. His body started levitating as energy around and inside him shone brilliantly. This energy was absorbed into his dantian and compressed into a silver energy ball.
A ma.s.sive amount of Qi and will-force was acc.u.mulated inside Ye Wei’s system from the three years of intense training under Master Yi, and now he had found a way to expand his body’s limits; something that he failed to do ever since he became a peak ten-star Warrior.
“This is…”
The demon was startled, and his jaw fell to the floor. There was undisguised shock in his widened eyes.
“Condensed prime Warrior?”
‘How could he breakthrough now!?’ The shock made him forget about the pain he felt in his arm, and he was quickly consumed by fear.
‘He had the strength of a five… No, a six-star condensed prime Warrior under the effect of his amplifying stance, and I could just barely keep up with him in my true form! Now he’s a condensed prime Warrior!?’
The demon refused to stand still and be scared, and a glow of determination grew on his hairy face.
“Ever heard of inner demons kid? They will buy me the time I need to shred you to pieces!” The demon’s eyes were cold as he ignored his injuries and stomp the ground hard. He launched his enormous body forward to crush Ye We, ‘You’re defenseless!’
The demon approached with the momentum of a landslide, and he rose his fist right as Ye Wei came in reach. Just when he was ready to deliver the killing blow he heard a playful voice.
“Tell me more about these inner demon,” Ye Wei said suddenly as he opened his eyes; his lips were curled into a smile.
“How is this possible!?” The demon was startled as it usually takes hours for a cultivator to fight off a mid-level inner demon. He had no way to know Ye Wei had already overcame mid-level inner demon three years ago at the Karma Tower in the secret realm. He forcefully pulled back his fist and leaped backwards knowing that he was looking at someone extremely dangerous.
All Ye Wei had been waiting for was a chance to push himself to his limit and only by fighting on the edge between life and death could he find out what was limiting him. Now that the demon had shown him how, it was only a matter of actually taking the time to sit down and reroute his energy in order for him to become a condensed prime Warrior.
‘Run!’
The demon’s survival instinct told him to get away as soon as possible.
“I thought you wanted to eat me? Why are you running away?” Ye Wei stared at the escaping demon and rose his hand as hundreds of runes immediately appeared in the air.
‘Selenic Descend!”
The floating runes shone as Ye Wei poured in his Qi and will-force, then they intertwined and turned into the shape of a large selenic beast.
Ye Wei grunted and the beast opened its eyes casting two beams of ghostly light.
“Swoosh!”
The beams of green light seemed to have frozen the sealed off dimension. The demon was held still when he was attempting to fade into mist and disappear into the dark night. Ye Wei took the chance to use his Root Prison stance before the Supernova’s effect ran out.
The combination of sealing effect of Root Prison and a devastating strike had always been Ye Wei’s prefered way to win as it was a much safer option in comparison to just trading blows with his opponent.
“Go back to h.e.l.l where you belong!” Ye Wei shouted as he gained complete dominance. He yelled this while glaring viciously at the black figure.
The demon could not move or dodge, he only managed a grunt and turned the mist around him into a layer of black armor covering his whole body.
The spirit beast kept striking the demon’s armor and the st.u.r.dy-looking back layer quickly began to erode away under the force of the relentless strikes. With a loud bang, the black armor shattered, and the beast’s sharp claws shredded his flesh.
“You cannot kill me! I am a direct descendant of the Black Mist Progenitor! If you do, your short life will consist of being constantly chased by my clan until they find you, capture you, and give you a death more painful than you can imagine!” The demon screamed. Being a demon General he had the power to toy with cultivators at the five-star condensed prime Warrior level which was more than enough for him to kill any of the young contestants at this tournament. Though, he never guessed Ye Wei would have caused him so much trouble to the point that he could actually threaten his life.
“I don’t care whose son you are!” Ye Wei threw a punch at the demon’s chest.
With a cracking sound, the demon’s body was penetrated. Although it was the first time Ye Wei fought against a demon, he had been taught well enough to know not to leave anything to chance. He channeled his Qi to his fist when he felt the demon’s beating heart and made sure it was destroyed; if the demon with the power of a condensed prime Warrior went free tonight, n.o.body would know how many youngsters with potential would die in the demon’s hands.
Ye Wei then paused a second as he took a good look at the demon’s corpse. He decided to wrap it with runes and clenched his fist to shrink it then he placed it in his interspatial bag. Normal interspatial bags could only fit a few weapons, scrolls, and pills, but the one Lin Zi Yan gave him could hold much more.
Demon Generals’ blood was rare, and it was very sought after as it was used to make mystic scrolls. Ye Wei was obviously not going to waste such resources.
“Eh? What is that?” Ye Wei said when he noticed a palm-sized black scale on the ground where the demon fell. On top of it was a web of strange patterns that shone with a mysterious dark glow.
He then stooped to pick up the scale, and the moment he touched it, he felt a surge of immense energy rush into his body.
Ye Wei’s muscles tightened and his body began to twitch. His face changed when facing this immense amount of energy; he felt minuscule confronting this ocean-like vast energy.
“No wonder the demon was so strong, despite him having only just evolved to become a demon General… If he knew how to use this scale properly, I probably would have died…”
Ye Wei mumbled to himself as a large cloud of black mist bursted out of the scale, enveloping, engulfing him entirely.
A tall, dark blurry figure appeared in the mist and entered Ye Wei through his mouth and invaded his consciousness.
A cold voice echoed in Ye Wei’s head. ‘Useless! How could he possibly be killed by a kid like you!? He has brought shame to our clan!’ The voice had a deep, bone-chilling vibration that resounded in Ye Wei’s mind. ‘Kid! Return this scale to our clan or else!’
‘What’s this?’ Ye Wei felt as if his brain was being stung by a thousand needles. He wrapped his arms around his head and curled up on the ground like a shrimp.
‘What… what are you?’ Ye Wei trembled in fear.
‘Haha! I am one of six original demon Sages, the Black Scale Progenitor! The scale you held was shed by me before I became a demon Sage and it holds enough power to end your life!’
The demon Sage continued. ‘If you take this scale back to our clan and save me the trouble then maybe I will spare your life!’
‘Deliver it back to your clan? I will certainly die if I do that!’ Although suffering extreme pain, Ye Wei held his ground. ‘I just killed a demon who claimed to be your kin! What do you mean sparing my life you stupid demon!’
‘You bug! You leave me no choice! You shall become my puppet!’ The demonic energy exploded and began to invade Ye Wei’s Sentient.
Ye Wei kept rolling on the ground in pain as he could not resist the demon Sage’s overwhelming power.
Ye Wei’s consciousness began to fade as his Sentient darkened and suddenly, just before he was completely consumed by darkness, the Mystic Mount’s presence in his Sentient awakened and the darkness was evaporated by the golden light.