Several months later…
“Swish, swish, swish…”
After lightly sweeping up the dust on the ground, Lu Sheng lowered his head, and looked up to the sky. It was late afternoon already.
The grape vine in the courtyard was full of grapes that looked like jade orbs, crystalline and clear, showing off a mysterious beauty under the light of dusk.
Inside the house, the spirited voice of an elderly man shouted, “Lu Sheng, the meal is ready, come eat.”
Lu Sheng put the broom in one corner of the wall, dumped the trash in the dustpan into the trash can, and then slowly walked inside the room.
It was a little dim inside the room, but the oil lamp emitting a yellow glow was sufficient to light the simple room.
An old man whose face was full of wrinkles and looked so ancient he could drop dead at any moment was putting the vegetable congee on the rectangular table with his shaky hand, then proceeded to arrange the rest of the dishes.
Lu Sheng sat down quietly, grabbed his chopsticks, and picked up some carrot stir-fried pork.
The crispy carrots tasted sweet and refreshing, and also had the fragrance of soft meat without their usual funkiness. Combined with the finely diced onion and its mild heat that came straight from the stove, Lu Sheng felt his appetite stir the moment he took a bite.
“We went to the quadruple Daoist temple already. Though the scenery was nice, the structure looks too artificial in its make. We’ll go to Mount Yellow Essence today.”
“Mount Yellow Essence?”
“Quite a nice place. I have heard the natural spring up there has a nice sweet taste.” The old man smiled. “I’ve always wanted to climb the mountain and taste the water from the spring, but, unfortunately… I haven’t had the chance after all these years. Always busy with one thing or another, and decades passed in the blink of an eye.”
Lu Sheng nodded. “Sometimes life doesn’t give you a choice…”
The two soon picked the dishes on the table clean. Lu Sheng’s originally enormous appetite was somehow satisfied by the table of food.
He calmly stood up, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and started to wash them.
He had done this for several months now.
At first, he was very anxious and impatient, but as time passed, he slowly became calmer and more tranquil.
He didn’t know exactly what caused the change and what effect it might have, but he enjoyed it very much.
After the meal, the two took a break before leaving. They found a carriage, and went straight for Mount Yellow Essence.
After arriving, they bought some more food and water in bamboo tubes before hiking up the mountain.
Despite his age, the old man was still fit. He kept up with Lu Sheng all the way as they climbed to the top. The sky was almost dark at that point.
The mountain top had a few plateaus, complete with fences for safety.
The old man stood next to the fence and admired the scenery, while Lu Sheng carefully took out a bamboo tube with water, made an opening, and took a big swig.
“Lu Sheng, do you understand?” the old man suddenly asked in a soft voice with his back turned.
“Huh?”
“Do you understand what you truly want.”
“Me? What I truly want…” Lu Sheng suddenly felt like he lost something, something that was really important in his mind, but couldn’t remember.
He held his head, closed his eyes, and started to search carefully. But, no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t remember what he wanted.
“After you accompanied me to so many places for so long, this old man is content.” The old man turned around with a smile. “In return, I will leave everything you wanted. As to how much you can get from them, that is up to you.”
“Leave for me?” Lu Sheng closed his eyes, and when he reopened them, he had a vague understanding.
“Your heart is too anxious…” the old man said wearily. “You have achieved the fastest rate of improvement of your level already. At that point, no one could take the next step so easily. You haven’t even understood your own Core Law yet.”
Lu Sheng was shaken, then his memories came rushing back like a monstrous torrent.
To achieve his next step in cultivation, he agreed to a request from Divine Lord Tong Sheng—he lived with him naturally and normally for a few months.
And now that he had fulfilled his part, it was time for Divine Lord Tong Sheng to keep his end of the deal.
Lu Sheng’s heart sank. He was completely unaware of how he’d left Autumn Moon County with Divine Lord Tong Sheng. The memories in his brain became fuzzy way back in the Thousand Sun Palace, where Divine Lord Tong Sheng started to demonstrate his Origin Power.
‘This… is the power of Origin Power?’ Lu Sheng felt a chill through his body. He was somehow controlled by someone else for so long, and couldn’t even remember it clearly.
The old man smiled. He was the true body of Divine Lord Tong Sheng.
“This is my Origin Power. Even Origin Powers of the same type might have different effects if they are different. And it happens that you have a big weakness in your spirit, to the point where simply seeing the fundamentals of Origin Power caused your memory to become fuzzy.”
“Big weakness?” Lu Sheng was surprised. “If Senior could be so kind as to tell me what it is?”
“I haven’t even mastered the changes of Core Law. And your spirit, which isn’t integrated with your Core Law yet… Your Core Law is very strange, and despite being very weak and something I have never seen before, there is an obvious scent of a Divine Lord about it. That I can sense at least.” The old man frowned.
“What you need right now is to cultivate in seclusion and stabilize your power, not blindly try to take the next step.
“That’s that, you can decide what to do yourself. I will recommend a place that’s good for you. It is up to you whether you decide to go. There, you might be able to be able to find what you want after you stabilize everything and fix your weaknesses.”
He waved his hand. A piece of white paper slowly floated into the space between the two, then landed in Lu Sheng’s hand.
“That is all. I must thank you for keeping this old man company for so long. Don’t forget to come visit me at Gray Goose Residence when you enter the main branch of the sect.” The old man smiled, and abruptly took a step forward. With a swish, his whole body turned into smoke and disappeared.
Lu Sheng looked down at the paper.
“Golden Blood Villa.”
A detailed address followed, but it didn’t seem to be in the Great Yin.
He put away the paper carefully.
“That was the power of Origin Power?” Lu Sheng closed his eyes, and carefully thought back to the time he spent the past several months.
“Crack…. bam!!”
Instantly, the scenery all around him shattered like glass.
As the illusion shattered, the barren landscape of a cold, dark mountain appeared.
The sky was dark. Lu Sheng looked left and right, and realized there was no such thing as Mount Yellow Essence, as it was only an ordinary hill. Nor was there anyone around him at all.
As he looked forward, the swath of rising hills and mountains looked like a crouching beast, unmoving under the darkening sky.
“Was that Origin Power? If Xiao Zizhu used this level of power that day, I might be…” Lu Sheng sighed in his heart. He didn’t even realized he was trapped inside the Origin Power for so long.
The memories of the past several months rapidly flashed across his mind. Tong Sheng didn’t do anything special with him, and only lived a normal life. He brought him to sightsee many places and ease his mind, like an elderly grandfather taking care of his grandson. Nothing about cultivation was mentioned, and the calm life lasted until now.
Lu Sheng looked at the paper again, but its contents had changed.
It seemed like a description of mind techniques.
He read out the name word by word.
“Essence Cultivating Technique.”
It was a simple technique that incorporated the mind into the circulation of True Essence. Lu Sheng tried it, but found, to his shock, that a clear freshness had appeared in the depth of his mind.
Clearly, the technique wasn’t simple, and was a great gift from Divine Lord Tong Sheng.
“I will worry about this when I get back.” Lu Sheng felt the connection between him and the Divine Weapon Wei River Sword in Autumn Moon County, then jumped up and flew into the distance, soon disappearing into the night.
***
After the Devil Calamity.
Under the leadership of Lu Sheng, the Prime Devil Sect of Autumn Moon County started to widely recruit new disciples and establish a connection with Yuanguang Yuan in the Great Yin Capital, providing her with a substantial amount of much needed outside resources.
The Prime Devil Sect also expanded rapidly because of it, and achieved great results in the fight against the Devil Army.
In the next several years that followed, the Prime Devil Sect combined with the Crimson Sun Sect, and was able to swallow many mid-tier sects. Everyone with some amount of talent was recruited into the sect and sent to the front line against the Devil Army after a short period of training.
The Prime Devil Sect’s expansion harmed the interests of many families and sects, and even made the local three major sects unhappy.
But no one dared to question them because of Lu Sheng’s position and power, and they could only keep their criticism to themselves.
The Prime Devil Sect charged to the forefront of recruiting independent talents from the Jianghu, and even accepted normal mortals who hadn’t reached Bind level yet. Such a desperate appearance made them a laughingstock among many other powers.
Everyone thought throwing new recruits into the killing field that was the battle against the Devil Army was bound to go wrong.
But to everyone’s surprise, not only did the Prime Devil Sect force not fail, they even slaughtered a good number of the Devil Army.
The Devil World even sent in Devil Generals and Devil Kings, but all lost badly, and were forced to retreat.
Under the curiosity of the public, the three major figures within the Prime Devil Sect finally showed themselves.
King of Shadows, Elder Stone, and District Master Ying.
They were the strongest three people within the Prime Devil Sect, and somehow every single one of them possessed the horrifying power of a Devil King.
Devil Masters weren’t cabbage, and numbered few even in a world filled with powerful Devils like the Devil World, which meant that a Devil Master wouldn’t be sent to assist a mere county capital.
There was one Devil Master that came by chance, and none others came after he was slain in place instantly by Lu Sheng. Whether the County Capital fell or not wasn’t really important for the Devil World.
Combined with Shizi Xing’s secret support with her disguised as Xiao Zizhu, the power of the Prime Devil Sect started to snowball and spread further with each victory they achieved on the battlefield.
