Devil's Shadow, Heaven's Bane

Zhang Yan sat cross-legged in the dim confines of his hut, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and decaying wood. The faint glow of a single oil lamp flickered against the walls, casting long, wavering shadows that seemed to dance in time with his breathing. He was in the Flesh Tempering stage, his body honed and hardened, but the awakening of his Demon Seed had changed everything. It thrummed within him now, a dark, insatiable presence that hungered for more.

The corrupted qi of the world no longer needed to be painstakingly refined. His Demon Seed absorbed it greedily, bypassing the slow, grueling process that other cultivators endured. It was as if the seed had a will of its own, a primal instinct to consume and grow. And now, with the Devouring Nine Shadows manual resting in his lap, Zhang Yan felt the stirrings of something far greater—a path that would allow him to harness this hunger and turn it into power.

His fingers brushed over the weathered pages of the manual, the parchment rough and brittle beneath his touch. The first passage stood out in stark, inked characters:

"To step into the darkness, one must first understand it. Your shadow is your second life. The shadows of the fallen are the steps upon which you ascend."

A slow smirk spread across Zhang Yan's face, sharp and predatory. This technique was not for the weak-willed or the righteous. It was a method for those who dared to seize power by any means necessary. Unlike the brute-force cultivation methods that relied on endurance and discipline, Devouring Nine Shadows was a art of cunning and ruthlessness. It required patience, yes, but also a willingness to tread a path paved with death.

The technique was simple in its cruelty: by devouring the shadows of the fallen, he could absorb the remnants of their qi, their essence, their very strength. Each shadow consumed would fuel his growth, propelling him toward the Shadow Assimilation Layer at a pace that traditional cultivation could never match. It was a method that thrived in the aftermath of battle, in the silence that followed slaughter.