D.I.O

“Oh, my. It’s amazing that you’ve made it up here even though I sent out so many of my underlings. Indeed, you truly are the Three Emperors and Five Gods… No, perhaps it’s more appropriate to state Two Emperors and Three Gods now?”

Among the corpses, a beautiful woman with white skin and shiny silver hair stood up. The silver tails that swayed behind her back indicated that she was not a human but a high-ranking fox monster.

“… Die.”

At that moment, there was a thick scent of plum blossoms as plum blossom leaves appeared and poured down on Heavenly Flower—an evil monster widely known as the worst monster in the history of the lower world, or the world beneath the heavens, and who was given the title as the Witch of Desolate Nation.

Ring!

The unfolding scene of the plum blossoms was too beautiful to be considered an attack. Anyone wouldn’t be able to avoid staring unguardedly. Yet, Heavenly Flower felt a sharp killing intent contained in the plum blossoms and swung a couple of her tails to disintegrate the petals rather than letting them touch her body.

Bam!!

With a roaring sound akin to that of a heavy hammer hitting an iron plate dozens of times, Heavenly Flower destroyed all the plum blossom leaves and frowned.

“Oh, my. You have no manners, young lady warrior. Swinging a sword before we even have a chance to talk…”

“There are no manners I need to keep in front of the likes of you, bitch.”

The attacker was a black-haired woman dressed in clothes that clung to her body. With her distinctive facial features, dark eyebrows, and red lips, the attacker possessed a beauty that was rarely seen in the lower worlds. Heavenly Flower felt that the woman’s short hair and extreme coldness in expression were her only shortfalls. The atmosphere the young woman exuded made it difficult for anyone to approach her.

At twenty-six years of age, she was the youngest in the group, but she was already an expert swordsman and possessed the title of Goddess of Plum Blossoms. She was also known as the Flower Mountain’s First Sword.

“I’ve always pointed out that your speech is a bit rough at the edges, but today, I have no choice but to agree with what you said, Goddess of Plum Blossoms.”

An old monk with a white beard made his way to the front. His name was Sovereign Fist. He currently held the title of the First Man in the Lower World and was the former leader of the Shaolin Temple. Standing beside him was the Sword Emperor, the current leader of the Demonic Cult.

“Oh, I don’t feel good about this. I don’t want to be a participant…”

“I also feel the same way… but we can’t help it. No matter how dumb Jooyoung was, we must avenge Jooyoung’s death.”

“Must kill… must avenge…”

Every one of the group’s members, who were currently exuding their fighting spirit, was a renowned existence in the lower worlds. Quite a few organizations and groups would be eliminated from existence even if only two or three of them mobilized.

Even so, Heavenly Flower stood before them and scoffed. “You all make an interesting combination, but… you’re too late in joining forces.”

“You evil woman! You bewitched my older brother and caused a great battle to occur, and after that, you followed him around everywhere he went. But now, you’re acting so high and mighty. How dare you show that dirty face in front of me and act so proud?!”

Growl!

Black strong qi blazed from the Sword Emperor’s sword along with the cry of a beast. The Sword Emperor was using Heavenly Demon’s Strong Qi. This was an ability that burned all energy, and it was also one of the three main abilities of the lower world!

“Oh, my. I’ve always thought this before…” Heavenly Flower said with a smile after seeing the Sword Emperor’s sword attack, “But I really want to eat you.”

Boom!

The Sword Emperor’s body trembled as his body was lightly shaken. What was reflected in his lowered eyes was a hole in the middle of his chest.

“…Oh, no.”

After those words, the Sword Emperor collapsed. Heavenly Flower was suddenly deliciously devouring a liver that was dripping with blood.

Of course, this wasn’t a normal situation.

The Sword Emperor had already reached a realm where it was hard to consider him a human being. He was a killing weapon capable of fighting for a while even if his heart, let alone his liver, were removed.

Yet, he surprisingly died instantly, even though there was no loss of blood loss other than that from having his liver removed.

This was because Heavenly Flower hadn’t simply pulled out his liver; she had pulled out the Sword Emperor’s true qi along with it.

Among the five primary organs, the liver was the organ in charge of tree energy, and it was widely thought that the liver was the first organ to awaken once a person woke up from their sleep. The liver stimulated the vitality of the entire body, and it was said to house a person’s consciousness while they were asleep at night.

Because of this… some monsters with special powers would pull out their opponent’s vitality—no, their opponent’s true qi by extracting the other’s liver. It was also for this reason that the evil fox monster plucked out and ate the liver of a living being.

“Oh, my god. She was able to kill the Sword Emperor in one blow?”

“It’s true that monster bitch was always strong, but it wasn’t to this extent!”

“Perhaps…”

The heroes looked at Heavenly Flower with expressions of disbelief. Of course, the eight-tailed Heavenly Flower was a strong and dangerous being, but her power didn’t originate from her fighting prowess but her powerful Magic Eye, which could be used to bewitch her opponents. So how did she manage to eliminate the Sword Emperor with just one blow?

Nevertheless… the reason soon became clear to the group members.

“N-nine-tailed! This witch! She’s evolved!”

“Oh, my god! How could she have already evolved…”

“Amitabha. This… This is the wrong path. If one completes a thousand years’ worth of achievements, the way to heaven will open itself, but to choose an unnatural path towards the transcendence realm…!”

When a fox monster gained its ninth tail and became a nine-tailed fox, its level of power would be drastically different from when it was an eight-tailed fox monster.

The fact that Heavenly Flower, a member of the fox species, had obtained her ninth tail… meant that she had reached the realm of transcendence and thus was no longer restrained by anything in the lower world.

Having risen to the point of transcendence by robbing others of their true qi rather than through legitimate training and achievement, Heavenly Flower growled disapprovingly at the heroes standing in front of her. This was especially the case for Sovereign Fist, who was called the most powerful being beneath the heavens.

“What, a thousand years’ worth of achievements? You really are something… You’re an existence that can barely live a hundred years, yet you’re talking about a thousand years like it’s such a simple concept!!”

Heavenly Flower trained by stealing the true qi of others, but it had taken hundreds of years for her to reach transcendence, so even this [shortcut] wasn’t something easy.

Sovereign Fist had the appearance of an old man… but to Heavenly Flower, it seemed like she was being disparaged by a spring chicken upstart that was essentially just a lump of blood and bones.

Of course, Sovereign Fist’s words were not wrong. Spirit monsters and creatures, including fox monsters, could shed their mortal frame and step into transcendence if they completed their original spirit body by accumulating a thousand years’ worth of achievements.

However, that was something easier said than done, of course.

“So, you’re saying that it was too difficult for you to gain karma and achievements over a thousand years?”

“Of course! A thousand years’ worth of achievements doesn’t mean I can just exist for a thousand years and focus on training throughout that time. I need to constantly build a solid soul foundation for a thousand years to become a transcendent being. You’d probably go crazy just doing that for your measly hundred or so years of life!”

The process of gathering achievements was not made difficult because of any sense of pain or boredom. Rather, it was because one had to face a small ordeal once a year, a difficult ordeal once every ten years, and an immensely difficult ordeal that was difficult enough to destroy all of one’s gathered achievements up to that point once every hundred years.

The ordeals were given by the world that one belonged to, not by some being, and it was mainly conducted in a way that hindered one from achieving success. They usually appeared in the form of self-doubt in one’s development, personal concerns about one’s training and developmental path, and questioning one’s bondage to one’s fate. The ordeals would also show up as natural disasters, the sudden appearance of enemies, and so forth, so it was possible to be confronted with a very diverse array of ordeals and trials.

In particular, the ordeals and trials given at the thousand-year mark were so vicious and terrible that even practitioners who had nearly completed their millennium’s worth of achievements would famously fall apart and fail in the final ordeal and thus fail to reach the transcendence realm.

This was why many monsters at the cusp of reaching the transcendence realm, after accumulating the necessary karma and achievements through painstaking efforts for a thousand years, would often face an unassuming opponent. That opponent would come by and snatch away the monster’s core, seizing all the achievements that the monster had achieved over the past thousand years.

At that moment, the Goddess of Plum Blossoms laughed at Heavenly Flower.

“So, in the end, you didn’t want to gather the necessary karma and achievements, so you went around and took people’s lives, right?”

The Sword God and Sovereign Fist soon followed up with similar remarks.

“All I hear are excuses.”

“Did you think we’d sympathize with you?”

Obviously, the heroes didn’t listen to her explanation and say something like, ‘Ah yes, I understand your pain and why you took that route.’

As Heavenly Flower said, these heroes only lived for around a hundred years, so they couldn’t really sympathize with a being that could live a thousand years. Above all, Heavenly Flower was an enemy who had harmed their families and relatives. Even if she were to spit up blood and die an excruciating death, they’d readily clap their hands with joyful hearts, so why would they ever acknowledge or try to understand her predicament?

Boom!

At that moment, the air around Heavenly Flower burst out. A member of the group had launched a surprise attack with enough energy to destroy an entire mountain range, but Heavenly Flower didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

“Oh, my. You all are truly dumb assholes. Don’t you know what it means that I’ve got my ninth tail now? Well, since the last transcendent before me appeared 300 years ago, you probably don’t realize or understand the magnitude of my position.”

Heavenly Flower easily deflected the Divine Hundred Steps attack, one of the most powerful attacks in Shaolin martial arts.

Her nine tails floated in the air and swayed as if unaffected by gravity.