Fiend Alchemy

The devilish spirit looked at Yaan deeply, then vanished without a word.

Yaan did not immediately return to Zue Yin, but continued to watch as the old woman appraised and organised all of his resources and treasures. As she went through everything, Yaan helped to quicken the process by labelling some of the things that she had already identified.

Whilst assisting the old lady, Yaan was transported back to the battlefield, facing the highest ranked warrior on the 3rd level. It was said that this burly man who stood at a towering eight feet tall, only remained on the 3rd level because he took pleasure in crushing those who were weaker than him.

Yaan examined the man carefully, and gradually, a faint smile appeared on his face. After studying the Fiend Transformation Technique more thoroughly, he could now see through certain things that he wouldn't have been able to notice before.

Originally, Yaan was led to believe that body tempering meant Vital Energy cultivation, but this was only half of the truth. True body tempering was the pursuit of Vital Energy cultivation and fleshly body cultivation side by side!

His opponent was a body temperer, but he wasn't merely a Vital Energy cultivator. This man had powerful bones, muscles, tendons, organs and even blood essence. As for his actual Vital Energy cultivation, he was merely a 1-Star Realm demon…clearly, his true strength lay within his sturdy fleshly form!

Facing such an opponent filled Yaan with anticipation.

Dong!

The fight began.

To begin with, Yaan took his time and tested his opponent with probing attacks. He moved in and out of range quickly, utilising his sword arts, but without giving away his full range of abilities.

His opponent was also not going all out from the beginning. Even so, his strength was really something, whilst his powerful flesh was seemingly immune to Yaan's more casual attacks.

As time passed by, Yaan's strength and speed grew explosively stronger, as did his sword arts. But even then, his opponent refused to go down.

The burly man's body was so tough that Yaan could barely cut deeper than an inch into his flesh. If he wanted to deal a fatal wound, then he needed to striker harder, with more power…

Realising that he needed to take this seriously, Yaan narrowed his eyes and started chaining multiple sword arts.

The burly man was stunned by this and stumbled due to being caught off guard, at which point, Yaan suddenly rushed forwards with a shocking burst of speed.

With his first step, he looked like he had fused with the wind as his Agile Sword Art stabilised his footing. At the exact same time, Yaan utilised the Flowing River Blade Art! The two arts fused, together, water a wind creating an eruption of pressurised water, propelling him forth!

Right as his speed reached its peak, Yaan chained the Synchronised Pierce Art.

Yaan forced his speed to its maximum limit. As the turbulent wind and water, Yaan struck out with Synchronised pierce. Three strikes, six strikes, nine strikes…before Yaan knew what he had done, he performed 12 strikes of with the Synchronised Pierce Art, going beyond his previous limit!

When Yaan stopped, gasping for breath, he saw the blood dripping down from his opponent's cleanly slit throat. There was no head connected to the man's neck. He was clearly dead, yet the strength within his body was so immense that even after death, he remained standing upright.

A certain scent wafted out from the headless corpse, causing Yaan's expression to change. He recognised this smell, it was the smell of powerful blood essence!

Without needing to think about it, Yaan rushed forwards and sank his teeth into the corpse's neck. He used his full strength to suck the blood essence directly from the wound, knowing that he had very little time before he was forced to leave the arena, and the corpse was taken to an unknown place.

And then, without a sound, Yaan found himself back within the 2nd pagoda. The old woman cast him a brief glance.

"You look terrible." She said after seeing his blood-soaked appearance.

Yaan smiled wryly, he really did look a bit monstrous right now, with blood all over his mouth and face.

But compared to the benefits of consuming another body temperer's blood essence, just looking like a monster was nothing much. By devouring blood essence, even if he didn't manage to form more of his own blood essence, he could still use it to refine more Vital Energy.

After sorting through Yaan's wealth for a while longer, they were finally done.

Yaan paid for the full, premium service; he had everything identified, named, organised and categorised. He was also provided with a description of each item's use, effects, and any potential dangers.

He ended up paying a 3-Star Astral Crystal for this service. It was quite a large sum, but since nobody else in the entire 4th Trial Realm would be able to identify every single item in his possession, Yaan considered the cost to be worth it.

Finally, Yaan returned home. He found Zue Yin waiting for him, still holding the Fiend Alchemy guide in her hand.

"So?" Yaan asked as he calmly sipped his tea. Zue Yin glanced at him with an uncomfortable gaze.

"I already know the truth, I just want to hear it from you."

Yaan looked out of the window as he spoke. The view from his temple was quite blissful, it was overlooking a lake, and the gardens were actually maintained by the trial realm itself.

He turned to face Zue Yin, who nodded with a sigh, understanding that he already knew the truth…he just wanted to hear it from someone else.

"Fine then. This book is titled 'Fiend Alchemy', not because it contains alchemy that can be carried out by fiends…but because it is an entire guide and recipe list, wherein fiends are used as the core medicinal ingredients. This guide contains 378 recipes, which use fiends to refine medicines."

Zue Yin's voice wavered slightly. After studying this guide thoroughly, she felt extremely uneasy, just thinking about what the person behind this book must have done in order to discover these recipes. She also felt uncomfortable speaking about this with Yaan, who was actually a fiend.

Yaan closed his eyes, then let out a deep sigh.

After a long while, he opened his eyes drearily.

"Zue Yin…read chapter 6…"

"What am I, your slave?" She tutted, but upon seeing his complex gaze, she became silent, finding that she was unable to refuse him.

"Chapter 6 - Vital Origin Rebirth Pill. One of the nine supreme fiend medicines, this pill possess the ability to bring a near dead soul back to peak condition, whilst also forming an optimal physical vessel around the rejuvenated soul. The reborn entity will possess high talents in all regards, a phenomena stemming from the lingering power of Nirvana that pervades the reborn body and soul."

Zue Yin paused, swallowing slightly as she glanced at Yaan. However, his expression was completely unreadable. With a sigh, she continued reading.

"Raising the fiend: The key is to raise the fiend into the perfect vital origin rebirth vessel, or else the refinement will result in failure. The fiend must focus on the Qi refining path, but must also cultivate Vital Energy alongside Innate Qi until the Peak 3-Star Realm. The fiend must not cultivate the fleshly body to a tangible realm. In terms of Qi refining, the Qi Palace must possess a minimum of 7 layers…"

As Zue Yin continued to read this chapter, Yaan's thoughts drifted away, lingering over those first portions of information. The latter descriptions of this refinement didn't mean much to him, as he didn't understand the later realms - the Origin Soul Realm and Nirvana Realm - all that well.

However, just the first half was enough.

Despite having read through this already, as well as many other similarly horrifying 'alchemy recipes', Zue Yin still felt disturbed when she read this. Looking at Yaan, she could only imagine why this precise recipe had such a big impact on him.

"Rui…was this your plan all along…?" Yaan muttered to himself dazedly.

He had always known that Rui was a demon. In fact, she was, without a doubt, the most self-serving person whom he had ever met.

And yet despite knowing this, he had always held onto the belief that Rui wanted him to become powerful, so that he could help her to revive herself.

But now…

Yaan smiled bitterly. He didn't even need to think about it twice – using him as a medicinal ingredient to facilitate her revival was definitely something that Rui would do.

He knew that Rui was a demon, a self-serving being whom could probably be called 'evil', but even so…she had practically raised him during his first steps into the world of cultivation. She had saved his life. Accepting that she had been planning to kill him this whole time, was more than a bit difficult.

'But maybe she didn't know about this recipe book! Maybe she-'

"Rui Bloodstar, what a strange name. Fitting of a demon deplorable enough to write a book such as this, I suppose. Even so, she-"

"Zue Yin." Yaan sharply turned towards the girl by his side.

Just now, when he heard Zue Yin utter that name, his heart started pounding like a raging war drum. He stared at her with a severe gaze, causing Zue Yin to pale slightly.

"Y-yes?"

"What did you just say? Just now, that name, what was it you said?"

"Huh…? I, I said Rui Bloodstar…I didn't see it before, since it's hidden on the last page, but it says the author's name right here, see?" As Zue Yin pointed towards the small italic name at the bottom of the last page, Yaan grabbed the book, pulled it close to his face and stared with a blank expression.

There was no mistaking it, Zue Yin was right. On the last page, it clearly stated…

Author: Rui Bloodstar

For a long while, Yaan just stared at the name with a stupid expression on his face. His mind went blank, as it was just such a shock!

But when he thought about it…no, the more he thought about it, the more insane this seemed to be! Just what was Rui's connection to the original Fiend Transformation Technique exactly, if she wrote an entire guide on using fiends as medicinal ingredients?!

More importantly, how was it that Rui's book ended up as a reward in the North Ghu Inheritance…?

Did Rui…create the Fiend Transformation technique?

Was this…her inheritance?!

'No, that can't be right. Rui wasn't a body temperer and she definitely comprehended dao, unlike the creator of this inheritance.' Yaan calmed down and shook his head slowly. He knew that he was jumping to conclusions here. Whilst this was extremely bizarre, he couldn't confirm anything just yet.

"Hah…" Yaan sighed deeply, leaning back in his chair and gazing out of the window once again.

To this day, Yaan was still uncertain about the best way to awaken Rui. However, he had some ideas. He believed that she was in such a deep slumber, and her energy was so depleted, that simply devouring any external energy was too much for her - doing so would use up the last of her reserves. She wouldn't waste her efforts unless she was presented with something that could awaken her in one go.

For now though, Yaan was not going to wake Rui up.

He wasn't the same naive child that he had been back in the Heavenly Path Sect. If he was going to bring Rui back, first, he would need to have some certainty that he could defend himself against her. He needed to become stronger, but he also needed to expand his understanding of the soul so that he could control or subdue her if necessary.

There were of course plenty of benefits to having Rui around. She was wise and experienced, she was an excellent teacher and could assist Yaan in countless ways. She knew techniques, she knew spells, she probably knew the locations of treasures and other inheritance sites! And most importantly, Rui understood cultivation better than anyone Yaan knew.

For now though, Yaan would need to make his way through the world alone.

Right now, Yaan decided to continue fighting in the 4th Trial Realm's death matches. There were simply too many benefits to fighting in this place…

Battling against increasingly powerful and varied opponents was helping to hone his own skills. Defeating these cultivators also earned him massive amounts of wealth. By defeating higher ranked opponents, he could move up to a higher level, where he would benefit from the increased Spiritual Pressure and the wondrous resources that were supposedly abundant from the 4th level and up.

Besides, he needed to accumulate some 'time off'.

Whenever he defeated an opponent in an official match, Yaan accumulated an additional day of 'immunity', which he could stare up and use at any time. Once he used a day of immunity, nobody would be able to challenge him for 24 hours. If he stacked up a 100 days of immunity, he could use them all back to back, giving him 100 days of peace…

There were many resources that Yaan wanted to use, but more than anything else, he wanted to use the Rank 3 Organ Hardening Pill. This pill's effect lasted for 99 days, and he obviously wouldn't use this medicine when others could challenge him at any time.

Yaan planned to continue stacking up immunity days, then to use those days whilst visiting the 4th level pagoda. Supposedly, the 4th level pagoda contained a temporal acceleration chamber, meaning that time flowed at a faster rate within the chamber compared to the outside world!

Yaan would be able to confirm whether or not this rumour was true quite soon.

He had already defeated the strongest person on the upper 3rd level, meaning that he could challenge anyone on the 4th level whenever he so pleased.

However, Yaan still had one more battle before then; the second highest ranked person on the upper 3rd level. Supposedly, this person was even stronger than the person who had been ranked one place above him, but he had been in seclusion and had not fought for some time. Surprisingly, this person actually came out from seclusion just because he wanted to fight Yaan!

As he progressed from the lower to upper 3rd levels, Yaan found that the strength of his opponents was getting closer to his own level. Not only that, but he was finding a higher number of body temperers, as well as those who practiced strange cultivation techniques and abilities.

His next fight should be quite interesting.