Chapter 275.2: Lu Changsheng Cuts Down a Demon King! Upheaval in the Jing Dynasty as the Old Emperor Is Converted into a Blood Descendant! (II)

His three heads and six arms seemed to multiply into countless shadows of fists at once, filling the sky as they came down at Lu Changsheng. Standing at seventeen meters tall, Lu Changsheng answered with the smallest of smiles.

"Heaven! Overturning! Seal!"

It was the Heaven Overturning Seal again, but this time, his palm genuinely seemed to blot out the sky. Endless flesh had massed into a hand that shut out the heavens, and it came down hard.

Boom!

The ground shook as the palm landed. All the power Gu Luo had let loose looked tiny in front of that palm that grounded it to nothing. It carried on through and flattened all ten meters of his demon body into a smear of pulp.

Gu Luo tried to revive, but a great mass of flesh separated fast from Lu Changsheng's enormous body and wrapped him up. Then, Lu Changsheng's flesh and the demon king's body went straight at each other, devouring like mad.

In a contest of flesh and of what each side could afford to spend, Lu Changsheng feared no demon king. Mass after mass of flesh went over Gu Luo continuously. Gu Luo tried to pull one demon body together after another, but it did him no good as every one of them was devoured.

In about as long as it would take a stick of incense to burn, Gu Luo stopped moving entirely. Even his demon king's aura was gone.

Dead! A demon king in his full power was dead just like that.

A pity that demons can't be converted. If not, I could have gained a demon king blood descendant...

Lu Changsheng shook his head. It was a genuine pity that demons were beyond converting.

"Progenitor, is the demon king dead?"

Chen Ping came running and was shaken to the core by the sight in front of him. That was a real demon king they were dealing with! Beings of that order were hard to even lay eyes on, and wiping out a large city was an easy morning's task for one, yet there was one dead in the progenitor's hands.

Lu Changsheng nodded. "Yeah, he's dead. As it happens, Gu Luo was an interesting demon. It's only a pity that he was a demon."

He said nothing further about it.

Gu Luo had been a half-demon who took himself for a man, but the truth of his existence had never changed. Gu Luo was a demon. Calling this world a contest between the human race and the demon race was putting it poorly.

It was closer to a contest between demons and demons who had turned traitor to their own. If the half-demons were taken out of the equation, the human race would be pitifully fragile. In this world, humanity could not have survived on its own strength at all.

Regardless, the ministry had already sent a demon king like Gu Luo, and Lu Changsheng had no way of knowing whether they would send something stronger next. For instance, an ancient demon. At his current stage, his strength was still not enough. He would have to raise it as quickly as he could.

"Chen Ping, continue the expansion. Work outward into the neighboring prefectures and find demon plants, whatever it costs."

"Yes, Progenitor."

Chen Ping delightedly went off to arrange it at once. The Temple of Flesh and Blood was expanding again at last, and Lu Changsheng needed those demon plants to carry him to Fifth Growth, and to Sixth Growth after that.

***

The demon nation was made up of several demon king territories, large and small. Each demon king ruled a broad stretch of country, and great numbers of humans lived inside every one of them.

Inside those territories, every rule and every order was made and kept by the demon king who held it. Some of them observed their own rules well enough, and the humans under them lived tolerably. Others were brutal, and under those there was hardly any hope in an ordinary person's life. Their lot was wretched, and they went on living numb to it.

The demons were not stupid, naturally. They understood that a thin stream runs longest, and they would not hunt the human race to extinction. There was always a little hope left to ordinary people, enough to keep the demons supplied with feed. That was what the human race was in the demon nation, mere feed.

In an ordinary village of the Savage Demon King's territory in the demon nation, every household was weeping. The quota levied on the village that year had straight-up doubled.

It called for fifty people under the age of thirty, and there were only two or three hundred people in the whole village. A fifth of it gone with one stroke was very nearly a killing blow to the village.

The village was drawing lots. Most of those drawn were women and children, since the strong laborers were needed to work and feed their families, and the Savage Demon King would not take the old. That left the women and the children.

"Mama, don't go..."

"I want Mama to stay..."

"Child, your father has failed you..."

The same wretched scene was playing out all over the village. Given any other way, who would send his own family off to die?

However, nobody dared make a run for it. If one of them ran, the whole village suffered. One runner would cause every person in the village to die.

Tap, tap, tap.

Footsteps sounded as a stranger arrived in the village. The villagers all lifted their heads and looked at him in confusion. Strangers were a rare sight in the demon nation. Ordinary people were essentially forbidden to move about, and anyone caught at it was eaten.

"Has it ever occurred to you to fight back?"

The outsider said it without preamble, and the words changed every face in the village, as though they had just seen the most frightening thing in the world.

"Leave, leave, outsider, get out now."

"Don't stay in this village for another moment."

"You wicked man! Do you know what would happen if the demon king heard what you just said? His rage would come down on this whole village."

"That's right! Get out!"

The villagers would not let him get another word out and moved to drive him off. Whoever he was made no difference to them, as any topic like that was dangerous in itself.

"I'll be on the mountain behind the village for three days. If any of you has a mind to fight, come and find me up there inside those three days. I can teach you a way to stand against the demons. If you've no fight in you or you're afraid of bringing ruin down on the village, then stay. After three days, I will leave."

With that, the outsider walked out of the village on his own and started up the mountain behind it. The villagers looked at one another.

With the outsider gone, the village head ground out his warning through his teeth. "Do not let that outsider bewitch any of you. Nobody goes up that mountain to find him. Act as though he doesn't exist, and he'll be gone in three days on his own. Otherwise, this village will be ruined."

He had no intention of informing the demon king either. Once a thing like that reached the demon king's ears, who had informed made no difference. The likelier outcome was that the village would be eaten down to the last person so that trouble could never come back.

In a dry cave on the mountain behind the village, the outsider sat cross-legged without moving, apparently waiting for something. Time went by and night fell, but nothing stirred outside the cave at all.

He waited through the dark and into the middle of the night. Then, a figure came rustling up the mountain and into the cave. It was a young man of around seventeen who was as thin as a reed.

"Outsider, do you really have a way to deal with demons?" The young man forced his words out through his teeth.

The outsider opened his eyes slowly, looked at him, and smiled.

"Of course. I have most likely killed more demons than you have ever laid eyes on," he said calmly.

"Killing demons..." The young man went straight down on his knees. "Teach me how to kill demons, sir."

"Why do you want to kill demons?"

"My mother. My father, my little brother, my little sister... the demons ate all of them! I hate demons down to my bones!" he said, gnashing his teeth.

"Be clear with yourself about this. Once I teach you, killing demons is the only road left to you. There is no going back to any accommodation with them. They may even take it out on this village, and the whole village could be wiped out."

The young man's face went through several changes. He was plainly struggling with the choices. After a long time, he finally decided. "I'm not afraid of demons. Give me a way to kill them, and I will leave this village at once, wander wherever the road goes, and hunt demons down to cut their throats.

"Either that or I will do what you do, sir. I'll find people who are willing to fight and teach them how to kill. One day, every demon under heaven will be killed."