With a clean slide, Luo Shu braked neatly at the great hall’s threshold and peered ahead with caution.
Dust billowed in waves; nothing inside was visible.
Yet Luo Shu could clearly sense a power of terrifying magnitude within.
A faint violet radiance kindled.
Luo Shu lowered his stance, nerves taut as a drawn bow.
“Here it comes.”
A figure strode out of the roiling smoke.
His entire skin was veiled in violet demonic sigils, like an ancient demon god descended.
Each step he took made the entire God Alliance shudder.
It was none other than Ye Yu.
The instant he saw him, Luo Shu’s eyes flew wide. He asked in disbelief, “How—how is it you?”
Ye Yu looked a bit embarrassed. “Sorry. I just finished cultivating a body-tempering method, and I’m not quite used to the strength in my body yet.”
“I accidentally crushed the entire floor of the hall.”
“But it shouldn’t be a big problem.”
“The restoration array will gradually fix it—just needs time.”
Luo Shu turned a deaf ear to the explanation, as if he hadn’t heard a word.
His gaze roamed over the sigils covering Ye Yu.
“Undying Dragon Chant, overlooking the Nine Heavens, ringing through the Eight Desolations...”
“No. This is wrong—far too wrong.”
“So many ancient demon body-tempering methods... fully fused together?”
“And most importantly—you, a Yokai—how can you cultivate Demon Race arts?”
“Speak. Who are you really?”
Luo Shu was nearly growling.
He couldn’t help it; everything before his eyes overturned his understanding.
He simply couldn’t accept it.
Seeing how serious Luo Shu was, Ye Yu spread his hands and let out a long breath.
“I was planning to get along with you like an ordinary god-clan member, but that wasn’t going to work. Fine, I’ll drop the act and lay my cards on the table: I’m the one-in-ten-thousand kind of prodigy from the legends.”
Ye Yu delivered it like a joke—exactly the cover story he had prepared.
He knew that once he fully fused and improved those arts, a massive surge of divine power was inevitable.
There was no hiding it from Luo Shu.
So he had thought everything through in advance—backups included.
Hence his unruffled calm.
However, Luo Shu had survived tens of millions of years; he wasn’t so easily fooled.
“What prodigy or not?” he snapped coldly. “I’ve lived long ages and seen geniuses as countless as the stars. No matter how gifted, a Yokai cannot cultivate Demon Race arts.”
“The difference between a yokai body and a demon body is enormous.”
“Don’t think you can brush me off so easily.”
Ye Yu nodded. “You’re right—Yokai can’t cultivate Demon Race arts. But what if I told you what I’m cultivating isn’t Demon Race at all?”
“You’re still spouting non—”
Halfway through, Luo Shu trailed off.
Ye Yu snapped his fingers. The sigils across his body reversed their flow, and at his wrist, phantom serpent-dragons of the Yokai emerged and drifted lazily.
Look closely and those serpent-dragons bore sigils as well—
—but there was no trace of any demon-god power.
It was like writing a literature exam where every question came from mathematics.
Completely illogical.
Luo Shu looked up at Ye Yu, voice trembling. “What... what is this?”
“A new Yokai art I just created. I’m thinking of calling it Demon °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° Arrival Heaven 2.0. I won’t deny it—I did combine the sigils on the walls to create it. So your mistaking it for Demon Race art is perfectly reasonable.”
Ye Yu explained patiently.
With that, the closed-door work came full circle—and his “peerless prodigy” persona was set in stone.
Luo Shu stood there, stunned for a very long time.
Then he switched to a warm smile and asked earnestly, “Lord of the God Alliance, what are your plans next?”
Hearing that, Ye Yu’s smile grew even brighter.
In the days that followed,
Ye Yu shut himself in Tongtian Pavilion’s library.
Although anything of monetary value in the God Alliance had been carted off, the ancient demon cultivation arts were largely still here.
This was Luo Shu’s last red line.
They had been preserved with great care.
Which, of course, meant Ye Yu got them all for free.
For half a month straight, he didn’t set a single foot outside.
He finished reading every art within.
He also grasped the differences between the ancient demons and the modern Demon Race.
Those ancient demon clans of the God Realm practiced almost exclusively body-tempering arts.
Perhaps it was simply the spirit of their era.
They revered breaking ten thousand arts with sheer force.
Because of that, the body-tempering manuals had a lot of overlap, which left Ye Yu somewhat disappointed.
Modern demons were the opposite—myriad demonic arts flourishing, with pure body-tempering now rare.
Times had changed.
Even so, amid the body-tempering focus of the library, Ye Yu found two intriguing arts.
He improved and fused them into a method he himself could cultivate.
He named it Conversion of the Demon.
It could convert a fallen god-clan member into a demon-god body and revive him for ten days.
During that time, he would possess over ninety percent of his original strength and obey the caster completely.
To Ye Yu, it was essentially a high-tier skeleton-summoning spell—
—only with extended duration and power.
Used well, it might yield unexpected results.
Of course, during that half-month, aside from studying this divine art, Ye Yu was not idle; he also explored how to convert his original Yokai Immortal Arts and Immortal Arts into Divine Arts.
The idea was excellent, but every attempt failed.
After dozens of trials,
Ye Yu finally gave up and accepted that Immortal Arts are Immortal Arts, and Divine Arts are Divine Arts.
Sure enough, a forced melon isn’t sweet, right?
With all that done, Ye Yu advanced from early New God Realm to mid New God Realm.
He opened the library door and walked straight out.
He was just about to call for Luo Shu, that lapdog—
—when a gray blur hurtled in.
“Hidden weapon?”
Ye Yu tilted his head slightly and let it pass.
The blur slammed into the library.
The impact was so great that the entire building collapsed into rubble.
Ye Yu looked up. In the wash of moonlight, a lithe silhouette hovered in the sky.
