Zhan Damian

It was true that demonic beasts were vicious by nature and consumed the flesh of humans and other demonic beasts. However, even among them, the beasts didn't eat someone from their own species.

One of the defining features of life was that it wanted to spread itself. No matter what species, it would want to give birth to more of its kind. It seemed as if spreading itself was the ultimate goal of life.

Some devils often used this case to prove that the way of cannibalism was flawed. It went against the rule of life.

However, if looked past the gory nature of the practice and looked at the bigger picture, they could argue that it was a minor path from the grand path of gluttony. Instead of moving towards life, it bought the practitioner closer to death.

Old Zhan had his own thoughts regarding the matter but nevertheless believed this argument. Naturally, his master also believed this.

As such, he saw the death of other's and his own as a rather trivial matter.

In his forty years of life, he had come face to face with death only thrice.

The first time was when the righteous sect elder had destroyed his and his master's cultivation and left them on their last breath. However, he didn't feel any grievance towards the elder. They had committed the crime first and this was just karma.

His second time coming close to death was when he faced Qin Houzi. It wasn't much of a fight as he couldn't resist the other party's strength. But even though he was defeated and made to join the bandits, he never felt respect towards Qin Houzi.

Today was the third time he was so close to death. Unlike the previous two times when his opponents were higher than him in cultivation, this opponent of his was two minor realms lower than him in cultivation. The other man had defeated him fair and square.

Currently, he was feeling numbness all over his body and quickly losing control over his spiritual energy. It was obvious that those grey pills were the cause.

Most likely, they were thrown in the water when he was trying to escape. It would also explain the man's next action of throwing him in the spirit water which should've healed him instead.

Now even though he had already understood that the spirit water around him was affecting him, it was too late to act.

It wasn't that his body was getting weak, rather it was healing rapidly. The injuries of his body had triggered the body's self-defence mechanism and combined with the pure spiritual energy around it, it was absorbing everything around rapidly. But the more it was absorbing the energy, the more his body felt heavy, the spiritual energy getting out of control. He felt an intense desire to lay down his worries and just peacefully sleep.

Spirit Soothing pill!

Connecting the effect of the pills to their looks, he guessed the identity of the pill.

He bit his tongue, trying to keep himself awake. The pill was a peak first revolution pill and cost around two hundred spirit stones. From its name, it sounded like some kind of medicine used for relaxation. This was true considering that physicians used this pill to put their patients in a state of paralysis where they were numb to all sensations and couldn't use spiritual energy. Also considering how this pill could put anyone below Yin Yang cleansing in a state of bliss, a single pill could cost around two hundred to three hundred spirit stones.

With the number of pills the cloaked figure had thrown in the water, it would easily pile up around a thousand spirit stones …which is an impossible amount for someone of his cultivation.

Now he wanted to know the identity of his opponent all the more. Even if he died, he would at least know the face of his killer.

With his last bit of consciousness, he converged all of his body's internal qi and grabbed towards the man.

Fortunately, the man didn't dodge … most likely he didn't care. The invisible force reached him and violently tore apart the cloak.

As he looked at the face of the man, countless thunderbolts seemed to go inside old Zhan's mind. At once he understood why the person looked so familiar to him.

It was because the man had the exact same face as himself!

How could he not feel familiar while looking at himself?

The same face, white beard, hairstyle …even the facial expressions were almost similar!

Meanwhile, the other "Zhan Damian" bit his thumbs and dropped sixteen drops of his blood in the pond. However, unlike normal blood, his blood glowed with a silver radiance.

As soon as the blood dripped on the pond, it shined intensely. Sending his spiritual sense inside the pond, the other man sat down on a lotus position and directed the blood to create a formation.

Soon the surface of the pond started to churn. It was as if the blood had formed a huge cauldron and was refining old Zhan alive.

The last bit of his resistance broke apart and all the medicinal energy rushed inside of him. After a minute of refining, Old Zhan was completely paralysed.

As he looked at his look-alike, he slightly chuckled.

It felt as if he was looking at his reflection on the pond …except that he was the reflection.

Shortly after that, he put his palms on the water and extracted all the blood.

Taking out the paralysed body of Old Zhan, he put it on the ground.

"Fu~ looks like Qingxue's medicine worked just fine. Well, I had tested it on some of the demonic beasts so it's not surprising." He sighed in relief.

The man who disguised himself as Old Zhan was of course none other than Tianlong.

He had opened up all of his liver and gallbladder acupoints and was currently opening his triple burner's acupoints. It increased his Qi refining cultivation base to the third level of Qi condensation.

Over the past two months, he collected information on various members of the Qin bandits. In the end, he set his sights on the infamous Man-eater Damian or as they called him now "Old Zhan".

First of all, the man was incapable of speech so he never needed to talk to anyone. Second and most importantly, he had an extremely bad reputation and even the bandits avoided him like plague.

So even if someone else replaced him the very next day, no one would notice.

"Now comes the most important part." Tianlong's eyes shone with a serious light as he condensed his spiritual energy on his fingers and touched the forehead of old Zhan.

He was going to use the soul scouring technique to see the memories of old Zhan.

It was an extremely vicious technique that forcefully saw through the memories of an individual. After their memories were scoured, the person would lose their sanity and become a fool!

As soon as his fingers touched the forehead of old Zhan, his spiritual sense went inside the latter's spiritual consciousness and invaded it.

Immediately a series of images appeared in his head.

…

In the forty-two years that Zhan Damian had lived, there wasn't a day where he didn't need to hide from others.

When he was still an infant, his master had fed him spiritual energy. The moment he was able to taste solid food, his master had fed him human flesh.

Being a cannibal from birth, his life was destined to be bloody.

He had killed his first human at the age of six. It was a cultivator who had tried to kill them.

Having seen his master do it innumerable times, he was already numb to the scene of death.

However, the moment he drove his knife in the man's neck, he felt as if his entire body was trembling. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't move his hand further.

With a pleading voice, he called his master.

The old man was over two metres tall with a long flowing beard that moved along the wind. His eyes were extremely cold and an evil air surrounded him.

"Damian… you must always be prepared for the consequences when you decided to kill someone.

"Once you have decided, you must be ruthless and decisive. Use everything you have in your arsenal to finish him. Be it using your own strength or someone else's it doesn't matter. Even trickery and backstabbing is fine!

"However, remember that once you start something, be sure to finish it too …otherwise someone else will.

As he spoke, the cultivator kept convulsing. The knife had sliced his windpipe which made him unable to breathe. However, the strong life force of a cultivator kept him alive.

A small puddle of blood formed under his neck as he looked at them with fear and hatred.

With his last remaining energy inside his body, the man conjured a fireball and hurled it at the dazed Damian.

Puff!

Before it could reach him, his master took action and extinguished most of it. However, he intentionally let a little bit of it go. The flame charred his palm which he had hastily raised to defend himself.

"Let this injury be your reminder…