Descending Into Madness

Kill…

This was the only thought on Yaan's mind. This word echoed endlessly through his mind, time and time again. It enveloped his soul, it dug its way into his very blood, it completely crushed his former self, becoming his new state of being.

He was simply a vessel of slaughter.

His entire body had turned grey, as had his blood. His psyche power had always been grey, but now, it had turned a shade darker…even his psyche power and blood had taken on the attribute of slaughter…

Originally, the power of slaughter only existed within Yaan's soul and his dual layered core, but now, it had pervaded each and every aspect of his cultivation!

In fact, this state that Yaan had unwillingly attained, was the very same state that Rui suggested he pursue back then, when he was trying to find a way to continue cultivating his slaughter soul. If Yaan really had attempted to seek this state, perhaps he would have descended into madness much sooner…but of course, Yaan rejected Rui's idea back then exactly because he was afraid that this might happen.

In the end though, he could not contain the slaughter. The moment his soul ascended into a Royal Spirit, the power of slaughter became stronger than he could restrain. It exploded outwards, propelled by his harmful comprehension over the dao of slaughter, completely taking over every fibre of his being, turning Yaan into a puppet of slaughter.

The only part of his being not afflicted by this maddening slaughter, was his dao soul. The dao soul was not so easily infected, even this strange power of slaughter could not reach it. That said, the slaughter did affect his dao soul indirectly…

As Yaan lost himself, he began seeking out any and all living beings to kill. The more he killed madly, without care for their affiliation towards him, enemy or ally, the cracks across his dao soul grew deeper. Deep, black cracks, like those showing a gateway into the abyss, spread across his dao soul, causing it to look like it was falling apart. And in fact, fragments of his dao soul did begin to break away…only to be reabsorbed into those black cracks, before those broken fragments grew back anew.

The current state of Yaan's dao soul would shock any being in this world who was familiar with dao souls. Perhaps, there were only a few beings in this world who would understand how and why such a thing could exist in this world.

Unfortunately, Yaan was not one of those beings.

In his current state, Yaan did not even possess the ability to look over his own condition. All he could do was kill. All he could see was a sea of red.

All he could do to quench the unspeakable pain ravaging his body…was to slaughter.

When he slaughtered, that terrible craving to draw blood was somewhat subdued. But of course, whenever he finished killing every being around him, the feeling returned in full force, even greater and more terrible than before.

As time passed by, more and more warriors from the ten empires swarmed into this place. They all had their own circumstances, their own stories. They all had their own goals, their own loved ones. They were all the most capable warriors from their respective kingdoms…

And when they all arrived in the centre of the Kingdom of Reptil, they were all, without fail, shocked senseless.

They expected to reconvene with their comrades who came before them, but what greeted them was only an endless sea of blood and corpses. They all investigated the cause of this brutal massacre to the best of their abilities, but they only grew increasingly terrified as they entered deeper into the lands, only to find that this world of death grew thicker and thicker.

The originally grey and ash ridden land, was now filled with a faint red mist. The ground was littered with a layer of corpses, stacking up deeper and deeper as they approached closer to the centre…

The fate that befell all those who overcame their fear, choosing to continue exploring rather than following their intuition and retreating, was simple – death.

Death at the hands of the very same monster responsible for the creation of this bloody landscape.

Some who escaped learned of the cause of all this. They returned to their kingdoms, filled with lingering fear, and spoke of a monster called the 'Red Demon'.

It didn't take long for word of this monster to spread. Eventually, the immortals in the Kingdom of Lunar Song also heard these rumours. Naturally, they quickly realised what had happened…

"So he lost his mind…" The First Immortal King muttered to himself, staring over the border absent-mindedly.

"Ancestor! I know you valued his person previously, but it's clear now that he can no longer be relied on! Let me enter the Kingdom of Reptil, I will kill the Red Demon and bring glory to our tribe!"

Beside the First Immortal King, a youth spoke aggressively, without the usual reverence a mortal would typically feel when facing an immortal.

The old immortal shook his head and sighed.

"No…he is not someone you can hope to defeat. Wait until this competition is over, the immortals will deal with this matter."

The boy snorted unwillingly, folding his arms and staring over the border with a frown. The Red Demon's reputation had long since irritated him, but…since his ancestor instructed him to stay back, he did as he was told.

Two and a half years passed by…

Originally, Yaan's talent in soul cultivation was monstrous, but his shocking self-created dual layered core took the principals of slaughter behind the Fiend Foundation technique, and turned it into an even more astonishing method for his soul. Because of this, Yaan was able to overcome the restriction of talent…to a degree.

Usually, even if a person could overcome the restrictions that talent held over their progression through a cultivation realm, it should still be quite difficult to ascend to each new realm without possessing sufficient talent. The Fiend Transformation technique overcame this limitation somewhat by connecting the body tempering portion of the fiend's cultivation to their Qi refining cultivation, making use of the forceful body tempering break throughs to drag the Qi refining realm up along with it.

As for Yaan, he was far less hindered, simply because he was not a pure soul cultivator. Even though he was ascending his soul from a Spirit Soul, to an Arch Spirit, to a Noble Spirit and then to a Royal Spirit, he was not truly progressing through these stages as soul cultivation realms – he was merely progressing through the minor stages of the Vital Qi Spirit realm. The fact that his cultivation was already at Rank 5 made it such that his soul did not encounter many issues along the course of its progression.

Of course, Yaan noticed that with each ascension of his slaughter soul, the slaughter aura requirement to progress became multiple times greater. Naturally, after he attained the Royal Spirit, his cultivation required an insane amount of slaughter aura to reach the boundary for the final stage, the Imperial Spirit.

It took Yaan two and a half years to reach that boundary. If he had not been delivered an endless supply of powerful warriors, crazily fighting for the chance to obtain the major scroll, it would have taken him many more years to reach this stage.

Well, truthfully, were it not for this competition which disallowed the interference of immortals, it was likely that Yaan would have got himself killed due to his madness. Even if the war flower law banned immortals from targeting mortals directly, did that apply to a person like Yaan, who had lost himself to insanity, resulting in him descending into a demon of pure slaughter? At the very least, the punishment would certainly be less severe for killing such a 'person'.

When Yaan finally reached the boundary for the Imperial Spirit, he became completely unable to progress any further. His poor soul cultivation talent finally obstructed him, because the Imperial Spirit realm was soul cultivation's Rank 5 realm!

Yaan's Rank 5 cultivation had allowed him to ignore the boundaries between the different spirit soul realms up until now, but to form a soul with a realm equal to his own cultivation…he could not do it!

After confirming this fact, the Primordial Sage finally made her move.