Demonic Method

After walking through the door, Shui found himself in a dark space that even he couldn't see anything in. In this dark space, an enigmatic voice entered his ears.

"You come across two people fighting, one, a heinous male criminal and the other a desperate female bounty hunter. If you help the criminal, the two of you will share whatever wealth the bounty hunter has as well as her body and he will promise to give you a portion of his wealth. If you help the bounty hunter, then she will promise to treat you as her benefactor and the two of you will split the bounty, which is less than the portion you would receive from the criminal.

Which do you choose to help?"

After those words, a scene suudenly appeared in front of Shui. He found himself in an alleyway lit by moonlight. Before his eyes, was a shady-looking man in dirty clothes fighting against a fierce woman with long red hair and a sexy figure that couldn't be concealed by her leather armour. The two of them were locked in a stalemate with their swords locked together. He now seemed to be in his late teens and when he looked at his unfamiliar right hand, he found a green dagger.

This was surely the second test but though he already had his answer, Shui hesitated for a moment. Should he take the seemingly evil choice or the seemingly good choice. The evil spirit was disguising itself as the progenitor so it should want someone who was virtuous. However, it was still an evil spirit so maybe a more selfish answer would amuse it more.

'Hmm, wait a minute.'

After thinking over the prompt he was given, Shui saw the truth of the situation he was in. He realised that he didn't need to be confused since there was only one right answer. Shui used his dagger and stabbed the back of the criminal, easily killing him in one strike.

"Thank you, I will remember this debt. We can share the bounty. Please search his body while I pick up the loot he dropped."

After thanking him, the woman walked towards Shui and passed by him. Shui should have been focusing on the corpse in front of him, but since he had seen through this plot he wasn't interested in that.

The moment she was two steps behind him, the woman turned around and aimed her sword at his head. It was a perfectly executed sneak attack, unless he was prepared for it he wouldn't be able to react in time. But not only did he see it coming, his senses were accurate and sharp enough for him to detect the moment she swung and he evaded the sword. After swinging and missing, the woman hastily tried to lift the sword to attack once more but a wound had already appeared on her neck.

Shui watched indifferently as the woman grabbed her neck and died with her eyes wide open. If he walked into this situation without the prompt, he might have gotten wounded by the woman. She wouldn't be able to kill him but he doubted he would be able to escape unharmed. However, the prompt allowed Shui to guess what would happen if he went with either side.

If he helped the criminal then he would probably let him do what he wanted with the woman first, assuming his actual age was casually ignored by the one who set up this trial or it was irrelevant to his actual desire. And while he was having his fun, the criminal would kill him. After all, he was a heinous criminal so why would he uphold his promises?

As for the woman, Shui knew she would try to kill him since she was desperate. Though this could be translated differently, he believed his interpretation was right. If she was a desperate bounty hunter then she wouldn't want to share the bounty with anyone else.

After the woman died, the space he was in melted away and he found himself on a stone platform. The platform was lit by shiny crystals in the ceiling, and on the opposite side of the platform, Shui saw a familiar figure. It was Nathan who also looked at him with a cold glare.

"Fight. The winner shall meet me."

After the same voice which Shui heard in the dark space announced that, Nathan took out a special-rank sword artifact.

"It looks like it's just us left."

"..."

Even if they were from the same clan, Shui knew that Nathan wouldn't act friendly with him. He could tell from his eyes that he was determined to defeat him, kill him even. Though he wasn't sure what would happen if someone was killed in the second test, he was confident that wounds sustained in this third test wouldn't disappear.

Since he obviously wanted to kill him, Shui considered doing the same, but honestly Nathan was so weak to him that just the thought made him lose his motivation.

Shui stood without a weapon but Nathan didn't attack.

"Take out your weapon."

When Nathan asked him to arm himself with such a serious face, Shui shook his head. He put Cin in his satchel, but he was sure it would laugh if it heard him. After a few seconds of contemplating, Shui spoke.

"I appreciate that you want this to be fair but, you're not my match."

That was enough of a taunt for Nathan to pounce at Shui with his full strength. As his sword approached Shui, Shui knocked aside the blade with the back of his left hand and then sent him flying with a finger flick to his forehead. Killing would have been easy in this instant, but he spared him since Nathan asked to fight him on equal terms. However, this 'kind' act of Shui only irritated Nathan even further. He had been forced to practice an evil method to gain his current strength but Shui still had absolute superiority despite them being of the same cultivation and him being older.

"Damn you Shuiii!!!"

Out of nowhere, Nathan's aura grew explosively into a sinister reddish black.

'This!'

Even Shui had to be shocked when he saw the sinister colour Nathan's aura had turned into. He knew this colour could only come from cultivating a demonic method of increasing one's cultivation. However, this didn't change Shui's impression of Nathan. Though he was an arrogant brat, he knew that there was no way he had chosen to practice this method of his own volition, not would he have the means to do so.

'Who would force a kid to practice something like this?!'

Just from what he could see, he deduced that Nathan must have increased his cultivation by absorbing the residual energy left in the bodies of recently deceased cultivators, as if treating corpses like spirit gems. This would make him very susceptible to heart demons and mental collapse. In his current enraged state, Shui knew that it wouldn't be long until he completely transformed into a mindless beast. Of course, even in this berserk state Nathan was no match for him, but the difficulty of defeating him without killing him had surpassed the difficulty of simply finishing him off. Saving or killing him was a matter of preference, and in this case Shui chose an option that was a bit of both. He chose to cripple his cultivation.

It wasn't out of hate that he decided this. In Nathan's state, the only way to completely prevent him from eventually transforming into a mindless beast would be to cripple him. Frankly, considering that he would probably take revenge for this act, it would be much simpler to kill him, but Shui didn't want to do that. And even such a threat wasn't enough to force him to do something he was reluctant to do.

"Grrr!!!"

Shui watched Nathan and the sinister aura that cloaked his body. His red eyes clearly showed that reason had left him, but Shui still said it.

"Sorry about this."