Volume One: The Devil's Nature Never Changes
Arc: The Inheritance of the Immortal Shrine
The competitors were immediately transported to a vast desert arena filled with wooden ruins, resembling a battlefield constructed from dark timber.
The entire area was surrounded by an endless sea.
All the competitors were transported to separate locations, and behind each of them stood a stone statue shaped exactly like that competitor.
Hui Wa appeared above them and began explaining the trial.
"Alright, competitors. There will be waves of beasts divided into rounds. You must defend your own statues."
"Each round will grant you points for killing beasts, and you can use those points to upgrade your defenses and protect your statue."
"The person who remains until the end and obtains the highest number of points will be the winner."
"Also, the strength of the beasts will change according to the strength of the person facing them. All damage will be calculated according to the trial system. You will not truly die; instead, you will return to your original dimension."
Scarlet King smiled and thought:
(Well, this looks like a video game. That's probably because Xian Ling Hui spent time with the Writer, and the Writer told him about the real world where things like this exist. So he designed this trial to resemble a video game.)
(But there's a loophole… They never said I'm forbidden from attacking the other competitors' statues while leaving the Shadow and the Hybrid to defend mine.)
(But… if I kill the other competitors' beasts, will I get the points?)
While Scarlet King was thinking, Ikalat had arrived at almost the same idea, though from a slightly different angle.
(There's no rule preventing me from attacking the competitors themselves and killing them. That way, we can eliminate them without touching their statues, which might have some hidden rule protecting them…)
(But my idea isn't realistic. They possess overwhelming qualitative superiority over me. If I attack them, they could kill me with a single strike. I need another solution.)
Hui Wa announced loudly:
"The first round will begin in eleven seconds!"
The countdown began.
11, 10…
During that time, Scarlet King snapped his fingers, causing the Shadow and the Hybrid to emerge directly from his shadow.
At the same time, Scarlet King contacted the other three mentally.
(Try to defend together. A shared defense.)
(If an outsider attacks one of us, we all attack them using the Toad Tactic—the body remains still while the tongue attacks. I'll attack while you defend one another, and I'll deal with whoever attacks.)
(We won't be the only ones who think about attacking the other competitors, so we need to attack intelligently.)
He looked toward the Hybrid and the Shadow.
"Defend the statue and kill the beasts attacking it while I extract benefits from the intentional loopholes."
The countdown reached zero.
Suddenly, beasts began emerging from the sea.
They were Storm Hounds.
They immediately began running toward the competitors' positions.
Several approached Xu Ling.
She drew her sword, held it before her face, and murmured:
"By the power of the Sacred Tree King."
Pure green energy emerged from her sword and shot toward the beasts, entering their bodies and disrupting the functions of their power and vitality, slowly killing them.
But before she could finish them off, an energy shot struck and killed every hound on Xu Ling's side.
When she looked over, she saw Scarlet King flying through the sky using his jetpack.
A cannon had emerged from his right hand, and he had fired it to kill all the Storm Hounds.
Golden points emerged from the dead beasts and flew toward Scarlet King, who immediately flew away in Lin Hao's direction.
Xu Ling shouted:
"Hey! You're stealing my points!!"
Meanwhile, Liu Zai Hang began communicating spiritually with Lin Yuan and Ikalat.
(Let's make Scarlet King win. He knows more than we do, and he'll give us whatever benefits us.)
(It's true that he only cares about benefits, but increasing our strength also benefits him. So once we leave, he won't be too stingy with our share of the inheritance.)
(So let's blow ourselves up on the competitors. There's no true death here. Even if it feels real, we'll return to the First Dimension. It's only a simulation of death followed by expulsion into the void tunnel that will return us to our dimension.)
Lin Yuan and Ikalat immediately moved toward Xu Ling and attacked her with their swords.
Xu Ling blocked them with ease.
She raised her sword and gripped it from the middle, blocking Ikalat's blade with the sharpened edge while stopping Lin Yuan's sword with the hilt.
"Hah. Weaklings."
Suddenly, Ikalat threw away his sword, grabbed Xu Ling around the waist, and shouted at Lin Yuan:
"NOW!!!"
Nervousness appeared on Lin Yuan's face.
He was extremely afraid of death.
But the two immediately compressed the energy centers within their bodies.
Their bodies began glowing and cracking apart as light poured from their mouths and eyes.
A massive explosion erupted—
erasing half the map.
Under the trial's rules, the explosion carried enough damage value to eliminate them, even though outside the shrine it would not have been capable of erasing the existence of someone from the Fifth Dimension.
That was because the trial system measured a numerical amount of damage against a predetermined life value rather than the person's actual life force.
Meanwhile, on Scarlet King and Lin Hao's side, Lin Hao was killing beasts.
"Oh, it's you again! I'll kill you! You won't survive this time, and I'll obtain the inheritance!"
"Don't forget, I'm a powerful cultivator from the Fifth Dimension!"
Scarlet King began attacking Lin Hao from a distance using cannons, sound waves, and shoulder artillery.
But Liu Zai Hang suddenly appeared, sneaking closer under the Ghostly Lord's Cloak.
Lin Hao failed to notice him because he was focused entirely on blocking Scarlet King's attacks.
But when the explosion occurred, Scarlet King turned around and sensed Lin Yuan's and Ikalat's auras disappear.
(Did they die!?)
Lin Hao immediately took advantage of Scarlet King's distraction.
He rushed toward him at tremendous speed.
Scarlet King turned and thought:
(Damn it. Too late. He's going to pierce me.)
The sword was only a hair's breadth away from Scarlet King's body.
But Liu Zai Hang suddenly appeared.
He grabbed Lin Hao and shoved him backward before compressing his own energy center.
The same thing that had happened with Lin Yuan and Ikalat occurred again—
only on a much greater scale, because Liu was stronger than Lin Yuan and Ikalat combined.
Scarlet King was violently blown backward.
He crashed into one of the mountains and fell to the ground with his spine shattered.
He slowly began crawling and picked up the Ghostly Lord's Cloak while thinking:
(What the hell are those idiots doing!? We never planned this.)
Then Hui Wa announced:
"Well… that is certainly a unique way to win the trial."
"Enjoy the inheritance!"
Scarlet King was suddenly transported away.
But this time, he appeared inside a black void.
He slowly turned and looked around while wondering:
(Where the hell am I? This doesn't look like the shrine. The room I was in with Ling Hui was actually the inheritance chamber.)
Scarlet King turned around.
He noticed something—
then turned away.
In the same instant, he immediately looked back at it.
It was only a woman's head.
But her beauty was so overwhelming that it began affecting Scarlet King's consciousness.
There was no body in sight.
Her hair was dark purple, becoming lighter around her forehead and temples.
It was absurdly long, stretching nearly six or seven meters as it floated through the void.
Her skin was pale and light.
And for the first time in an unimaginably long period—one that could not even be measured according to the current era—Scarlet King felt the hair across his body stand on end.
It was not conscious fear.
It was instinctive tension.
The woman opened her eyes.
They were blood-red with black pupils.
She stared at him for several seconds.
Scarlet King's instincts began screaming:
(Run and save your eternal life!)
It was like a tiny beast encountering a Heavenly Dragon.
The smaller creature's instincts would scream at it to flee for its life.
Scarlet King began sweating as chills ran across his body.
(Damn it. I can't measure her strength. That means… her power exceeds the entire Primordial Origin World!)
(I can measure the strength of anything within the structure of the Primordial Origin, but I can't even come close to measuring hers!!)
Scarlet King immediately retreated.
But the woman's hair began moving, slowly wrapping around him.
Scarlet King thought:
(Damn it. My only option is to use the Return to Origin Technique.)
(This technique is one of the strongest techniques I've ever possessed across all my lives, but it is incredibly destructive to my body because of how weak my current physical structure is.)
(But I have no other choice. This woman can completely erase me for good.)
(Even the law of the Rebirth Wheel, the seventh-strongest law in the entire Primordial Origin World, wouldn't save me, because her power surpasses the Primordial Origin itself and the background of reality that carries the entire Primordial Origin World.)
(And I still haven't reached Eternal Rest! I won't allow this.)
(But the damage caused by using the Return to Origin Technique will be overwhelming.)
Scarlet King closed his eyes.
He clenched his fist and said:
"To be… or… not to be!"
He suddenly opened his eyes and spread his arms, lifting one foot slightly as he shouted:
"Return to Origin Technique — Emotion Severing Style — Heartless!!!"
An overwhelming aura erupted from Scarlet King.
It destroyed the void and nothingness surrounding his body.
Yet the most it managed to do to the woman…
was push her hair slightly.
It had no real effect on her whatsoever.
Scarlet King disappeared.
The woman raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Return to Origin Technique? Is that him?… My little darling?"
She remained silent for several seconds, closed her eyes, then opened them again.
Her head began moving through the darkness.
Eventually, it reached her body, which had only seemed absent because it was unimaginably far away.
Her body was just as overwhelmingly beautiful as her face.
She was completely naked.
Her head merged seamlessly with her body, as though the separation between them had never existed in the first place.
Her hair fell over her breasts.
She took a strand of it in her hand and smiled faintly.
"Why did he look so afraid?"
"I wasn't planning to hurt him."
[Scarlet King — Inside the Real Shrine]
Scarlet King collapsed onto the shrine floor.
He immediately tried to stand, but fell again and spat out an enormous amount of blood.
His body began exploding.
His left eyeball burst from its socket.
Every blood vessel in his body ruptured.
His jaw began melting and falling apart.
His beautiful hair started falling out.
One of his arms was reduced to a skeleton.
(Bad… At least I didn't die.)
Ling Hui's spirit appeared.
"Damn it! What happened to you!? I didn't expect that person's explosion to do this much damage to your body, but it seems you won."
Scarlet King thought:
(Just as I expected. He knows nothing about what happened a moment ago.)
(Perhaps I was somewhere above the Primordial Origin… but it was a strange place that couldn't even be called a void or nothingness.)
(It was above both.)