288: The ancient emperor of the Immortal Qin Dynasty is feeding you online, and your level has skyrocketed by five levels in a row!

Darkness.

Absolute darkness.

The light here wasn't merely blocked; rather, the very concept of light was forcibly erased by some overbearing rule of this place.

The ground beneath Lu Sheng's feet collapsed, and the originally narrow crack suddenly gaped open, turning into a giant maw leading to Hell.

A thick, suffocating stench of decay gushed out—the smell of a mountain of corpses fermenting for ten thousand years, mixed with a sickly sweet fragrance that made one's stomach churn.

Wherever this wind swept, a layer of long black fur quickly grew on the surface of the hard basalt, which then turned into bubbling pools of black water.

"Where... where did this thing come from?!"

Luo Tianfei pressed herself tightly against the corner, her voice losing its tone.

The Divine Phoenix inside her body didn't react at all; it directly cut off its mental connection with her, shrinking back into the depths of her consciousness to play dead.

To be able to terrify a God-Tier Sequence to this extent, the status of the thing below was ridiculously high.

The darkness writhed.

A palm so massive it inspired despair slowly reached out.

The palm was a hundred meters wide, pitch black all over, with no lines on the skin, but instead densely packed with countless eyes.

All the eyes were rolling, reflecting greed, gluttony, lust, and slaughter.

In the center of the back of the hand, a fragmented purple-black crown mark was branded.

Lu Sheng stood in the black wind, his greyish-white eyes staring at that mark.

abyssal royal clan.

He didn't retreat; instead, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

"Flesh... fresh and tender divine flesh..."

A harsh sound, like nails scratching a blackboard, drilled directly into both of their minds.

The giant hand turned, and the largest single eye in the center of the palm locked onto Luo Tianfei in the corner.

"An appetizer first."

Boom!

The giant hand lunged violently.

Space was torn apart by brute force.

Thousands of tentacles condensed from black Qi sealed off all of Luo Tianfei's retreats like a pack of hunting pythons.

"Get lost!!"

Luo Tianfei screamed, her survival instinct forcing her to overdraw all her spirit source.

Nine purple flame fire phoenixes rushed out with mournful cries, attempting to construct a defensive line.

Puff, puff, puff!

Before power of this level, so-called divine fire was laughably fragile. The tentacles instantly pierced through the fire net, binding Luo Tianfei's ankles, waist, and neck.

Barbs stabbed into her flesh.

"Ugh!!"

Luo Tianfei was hoisted high, those tentacles greedily sucking the precious Phoenix True Blood from her body.

Life force drained away frantically, and her originally smooth skin became grey and shriveled at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Just as she thought she was about to become a dried corpse,

An indifferent, impatient voice exploded in her ear.

"Hey."

"Touching my companion—did you ask me first?"

Swish.

A grey-white afterimage tore through the darkness.

Lu Sheng appeared out of thin air beside Luo Tianfei.

He raised his right leg, which was covered in hideous bone spurs, and aimed at Luo Tianfei's lower abdomen without any hesitation—

Bang!!!

A dull sound of impact rang out.

Over four hundred tons of brute force erupted.

Luo Tianfei, along with the tentacles that hadn't reacted yet, was directly kicked apart by this blow. She flew horizontally for several hundred meters and slammed hard into the depths of the wall.

The wall cracked, and rubble half-buried her.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

Luo Tianfei spat out large mouthfuls of stale blood mixed with organ fragments. Although several ribs were broken, she had at least escaped the sucking range of those tentacles.

She lay on the ground, looking at the back of the figure in the distance, not even knowing whether she should curse him or thank him.

What kind of rescue was this?

"Roar?!"

The duck in its mouth had flown away; the Abyssal Demon Hand was furious.

The single eye in its palm became bloodshot, staring fixedly at the tiny human before it.

"Good... very good..."

The harsh voice rang out again, carrying an even thicker greed.

"Your body... is even more perfect."

"A Physical Body of this strength... is simply a vessel tailor-made for this King!"

It no longer paid attention to the half-dead woman.

The giant hand disintegrated.

It turned into countless streams of viscous, scalding black liquid.

This was no longer a physical attack, but a mental net that blotted out the sky, instantly enveloping Lu Sheng within.

"If you don't want to die, then become a part of this King!"

Sizzle, sizzle—

The black liquid followed Lu Sheng's pores and seven orifices, forcibly drilling inside.

A cold, evil, and chaotic will frantically bombarded Lu Sheng's Sea of Consciousness.

This was the method the Abyss was best at—Possession.

Lu Sheng stood in place, not dodging.

He allowed that nauseating black liquid to pour into his body.

An extremely cruel smile appeared on his face.

"Want to take over my body?"

"Sure."

"As long as you're not afraid... that there's no coming back."

...Mental World.

This was a grey, deathly silent wasteland.

The sky was torn open.

Endless black water poured down, converging on the wasteland into that Abyssal Demon Hand covered in eyes.

It hovered in mid-air, looking down at the empty Sea of Consciousness below, letting out a triumphant, wild laugh.

"Hahaha! Such a vast Sea of Consciousness! And it's actually undefended?"

"Heaven is helping me!"

"From today on, this body will be the divine vessel for this King's return to the mortal realm. I will let this True Sea be stained once again with the Abyss's..."

Its voice stopped abruptly.

It felt a gaze.

It wasn't a human gaze.

It was a look reserved for trash.

The demonic hand turned its single eye toward the end of the wasteland.

Mist surged.

A head slowly emerged.

It was a dragon head so large it was beyond description.

Just one dragon eye was several times larger than this thousand-meter demonic hand.

Grey-white dragon scales rose and fell like mountains, each scale etched with the desolation of ages.

It didn't breathe.

It was death itself.

The Primordial Desolate Heaven Dragon—original body.

Before this behemoth, the abyssal royal clan's severed limb, which had been so arrogant just now, was pitifully small.

"You..."

"What kind of thing is this?!"

The demonic hand screamed, its thousands of eyes bursting and bleeding from extreme terror.

This was an absolute crushing of status.

The Abyss represented chaos and corruption.

While Desolation represented nothingness and the end.

Before the end, chaos was a joke.

Lu Sheng's consciousness stood on top of the giant dragon's head, hands in his pockets, looking down at the shivering intruder.

"abyssal royal clan?"

Lu Sheng had a look of disgust.

"If your main body had come, maybe you could have let me warm up a bit."

"Relying on a rotten hand chopped off by someone else, you dare to act like a big shot in my head?"

"ROAR——————!!!"

The Primordial Desolate Heaven Dragon beneath his feet opened its massive mouth.

There was no fire, no lightning.

There was only a giant grey vortex.

Suction erupted.

A devourment targeted at the Soul Origin.

"No!! Let me out!!"

The demonic hand screamed, trying to flee this terrifying mental world.

"Since you're here, don't leave."

Lu Sheng pressed down on the void.

A giant Dragon Claw crashed down, directly pinning that demonic hand onto the wasteland and crushing it to pieces... Real World.

Inside the treasury.

The black liquid that had been frantically eroding Lu Sheng's body suddenly flowed backward, desperately trying to escape this shell.

"AAAAAH!! Let me go!! What kind of monster are you!!"

The demonic hand's consciousness was screaming.

It wanted to run.

Lu Sheng's deathly grey eyes snapped open.

"Want to run?"

His hands reached out, his ten fingers covered in bone spurs stabbing deep into the black liquid gushing from his chest, gripping it tightly.

"Since you've come in, then you're my meat!"

"Five Elements Life-Extinction Wheel—Dinner time!!"

Boom!!!

The five-colored light wheel hovering behind Lu Sheng's head reversed.

Golden Dragon, Wood Dragon, Water Dragon, Fire Dragon, Earth Dragon.

The five Dragons of Rules let out excited roars simultaneously.

Their master's will was singular—eat it all!

Whoosh.

The five dragons instantly pounced, frantically biting at that mass of black abyssal energy.

"Fire Dragon, sear the skin!"

Red Lotus Karmic Fire surged, making the black evil Qi sizzle as it burned.

"Golden Dragon, strip the bones!"

Great White Metal Qi acted like a blade, shredding the rule runes inside the demonic hand.

"Water Dragon, liquefy the blood!"

Weak Water poison permeated, corroding the abyssal will.

"Earth Dragon, suppress!"

"Wood Dragon, devour!"

Lu Sheng had now transformed into a precise and brutal meat grinder.

That abyssal royal clan's limb, which had once made countless ancient Cultivators tremble with fear, had now become a piece of pork belly inside a shredder.

Screams echoed through the treasury.

The demonic hand was forcibly dismembered, refined, and purified.

Ultimately, it turned into streams of pitch-black yet extremely pure high-energy liquid. Following the Five Elements rotation, it was continuously injected into Lu Sheng's parched Dantian.

[Ding! High-dimensional Abyssal Origin detected!]

[myriad things furnace is overclocking!]

[Conversion successful!]

[spirit source skyrocketing!]

Boom!

The aura on Lu Sheng's body began to climb frantically.

Rank 21 Peak... broken.

Rank 22!

Rank 22 Middle Stage... Late Stage... Peak... broken.

Rank 23!

This wasn't cultivation.

This was an empowerment.

"Refreshing!!!"

Lu Sheng roared to the sky, his joints popping throughout his body.

This pleasure of skyrocketing power was addictive.

The energy contained in that demonic hand was too vast; even if it was just a limb, it was an existence beyond the Spirit Emperor level.

For the current Lu Sheng, this was a super experience pill.

Rank 24!

Rank 25!

It wasn't until Lu Sheng's Physical Body began to show fine cracks, reaching its load limit, that the frantic climbing momentum finally came to a stop.

[Ding!]

[Devourment complete!]

[Current Rank: Rank 26 (Middle Stage Spirit Master)!]

[Physical Body strength increased! Primordial Desolate Body (Tier II), new trait unlocked—Abyssal Resistance (deals 200% True Damage to darkness-type creatures)!]

*Burp.*

Lu Sheng let go.

The last wisp of black Qi was sucked into his nostrils.

The originally hideous and terrifying Abyssal Demon Hand had completely disappeared from this world, without even a scrap left.

Dead silence returned to the treasury.

Only Lu Sheng stood there, his skin glowing with a faint layer of dark-gold light.

His aura was restrained and unfathomable.

Suddenly,

A faint ghostly light lit up from the spot where the demonic hand had disappeared.

It was a memory fragment the size of a fingernail.

Lu Sheng reached out and grabbed it.

Buzz.

A scene unfolded in his mind.

It was an ancient battlefield of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

In the sky, nine dragons pulled a coffin. A towering man dressed in a black-gold imperial robe, his back to all living beings, held the Tai'e Sword and chopped off that giant demonic hand reaching out from the void with a single strike.

Demonic blood spilled, turning into a black sea.

The man didn't look back; he just said a sentence to the void behind him.

The voice crossed ten thousand years of time, sounding clearly in Lu Sheng's ear.

"This beast's arm—I have left it here."

"Since you want to walk that path, how can you do without some decent rations?"

"Eat it, and for me... guard this sea well."

The image shattered.

Lu Sheng stood in place, his heart shaken as he suddenly understood.

Was that the Immortal Qin Ancient Emperor?

So that man had seen the future long ago?

From his ascent to the Sanqing Hall, to his teleportation to the True Sea, and then to his entry into Dengxian Island!

Everything had been predicted with crystal clarity by this legendary figure.

He even calculated that Lu Sheng would possess the Primordial Desolate Heaven Dragon sequence that could devour everything?

"Interesting."

Lu Sheng bared his teeth, revealing white fangs.

Although this feeling of being arranged was unpleasant, this meal... really tasted delicious.