Chapter 88 Conflict

"Who said you could leave?"

Faced with this threatening message, the old elder realized that this was not a good situation. Cold sweat trickled down his back against his will, and as much as his pride disallowed feeling so scared of a junior several dozen years younger than him, he knew his life was at risk here. There was no time to be thinking about pride.

'This isn't good… I have to get out of here!'

Turning around, the elder quickly fired off a blast of Qi in an attempt to buy some time, but Xuan simply snapped his fingers and the energy concentration dissipated into thin air. The elder's eyes widened.

"Impossible… how did you erase my Qi like that?!"

Of course, Xuan wasn't about to tell him anything. A dead man had no business knowing secrets.

"Heh. I would say 'good try', but… it really wasn't. Anything else? Show me what you have, praised 'elder' of the wealthy Yang Family."

This was a taunt. In reality, it was buying more time to Fu Mei—but time was running out. Yang Tze should know how long it usually took to execute this memory-erasing technique, given how comfortable he was with suggesting it. There wouldn't be much time left before he started to get suspicious of what was going on.

"You… you are not human," the elder growled, slowly backing away. "This is not something a human is capable of doing. Junior… just who are you?"

At this, Xuan smiled.

"Perhaps the god of death will tell you in hell—he's an acquaintance of mine."

With a wave of his hand, a black hole appeared behind the elder out of thin air, demonstrating the amount of mastery Xuan had over his knowledge sea. This was something only the Devil's Knowledge Sea could pull off, and required a monstrous amount of Soul Strength and experience to actually do—experience that should not have belonged to a man who looked to be in his twenties.

"T-Tch, bastard! If you kill me here, The Eight Great Families will never let you go!" The elder cried as one final plea of help. "You will be done for the moment you end me! Young Master Yang will behead you in a single moment, and even if you somehow manage to escape from this place, our collective force will relentlessly hunt you down across Asphodel—you will have no place to hide!"

In response, Xuan's expression didn't shift in the least. Instead, it almost seemed as if he was bored.

"Ohhh, them. Don't worry, elder. They'll join you soon."

Snapping his fingers again, the black hole activated, and sucked the poor old man into the abyss. There, his soul would be broken apart and disintegrated, turned into power for Xuan.

As the elder's dying screams faded away with no way to fight back, several notifications triggered before Xuan's eyes.

[Killmonger — Slay a cultivator of the Origin Emperor realm — Achievement Unlocked!]

[For your efforts, you have been granted a new Title: Kingslayer]

[Title Bonus Effect triggered: King's Gluttony]

[Any Devoured or Absorbed foes will now trigger both effects, regardless of whether it was done using the Devil's Knowledge Sea or Devouring Qi.]

At this, Xuan's eyes lit up. 'Hoh…? Now this is interesting.'

He'd been waiting for something like this to happen, truth to be told. If nothing ever did, he would eventually find a way to combine the two effects himself—they were too fitting for one another not to. The fact that Xuan could only gain one set of benefits depending on which method he chose to devour the soul of another cultivator was too disappointing, but with this, that was no longer the case.

<Devil's Knowledge Sea>

<Elder Yang Huo — Absorbed!>

<Strength +5,150>

<Defense +5,150>

<Soul Strength +10,000>

<Soul Defense +10,000>

This content upload first at

'10,000? That would mean his original Soul Strength was 20,000… not bad, for someone enslaved by the low-quality Qi of lower realms,' Xuan thought. 'These physical stats, though… I'll gladly take.'

But of course, with Xuan's new ability granted by the Kingslayer title, these stat increases were not the only rewards he obtained. It would have [Devouring Qi]'s effects too—the elder's techniques and memories would all be his.

<Elder Yang's Space Ring — Obtained!>

<Qi +70,000!>

<Congratulations, player Xuan! You have broken through to the Seventh-Layer of the Flowing Qi Stage!>

'A two layer skip. Not bad.'

But it wasn't over just yet—the most nervous part came now. Xuan braced himself for what's to come—he couldn't afford to faint here. This was the one thing he had been worried about when both of his devouring skills mixed into one. In the past, whenever he'd consumed another cultivator's memories to steal their techniques, their vengeful voices had came haunting his soul. He managed to suppress them for now with his powerful mental will, but like senior Pan Gu said, he could not hold many more within him before inevitable implosion.

But even as he furrowed his brows and waited for the pain to come… it did not.

Instead, a refreshing feeling washed over him, and he blinked open his eyes to find a new message staring back at him—a message that he had not seen successfully yet.

<Memories — Extracted!>

<Memory Seal — Technique Learned!>

"Heh… looks like it worked properly this time."

Whether this was just a stroke of luck was unknown, but Xuan could feel that it was not. His physique, which was usually quite chaotic and took calm tempering to restrain and keep within control, had been acting a lot more docile than usual ever since the trip to the Tower of Flames. Was it because he made love to Huo Fei, releasing some of the Yang energy in his body? Or was it because of something else that occurred on that trip…?

Either way, Xuan could not be sure—but with the elder dead, the countdown was over.

Smiling, he prepared for the onslaught that was about to occur, and returned his consciousness to the real world.