As I slept, I dreamed. I knew that I was dreaming, but I found myself unable to move or speak or do anything. Instead, I was reduced to a mere spectator. Darkness surrounded me. No matter where I looked, I saw nothing but a black void.

  However, the darkness wasn’t emptiness or nothingness. There was something in it. Rather, the darkness itself was that something. I didn’t know how I knew this, I just did. It was intuition and instinct. The darkness was an entity in and of itself. Worst of all, it was aware.

  The darkness studied me and probed my being. Its gaze felt invasive as it weighed and measured me. What for? I didn’t know. However, I didn’t feel any hostility and malice from the darkness. It regarded me with cold dispassion.

  You will suffice, the darkness said.

  The darkness didn’t speak to me in words, or speak at all. Rather, that was the impression I received from the darkness, what little of it I could understand. It was far beyond my meager comprehension.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, somehow able to speak now. ‘Suffice for what?’

  A part of the darkness split apart to reveal a human eye. It stared at me, regarding me as if I were nothing more than an insect. There wasn’t any contempt or derision in that gaze. It was simply a statement of fact. I was far smaller and far weaker than the darkness. No more, no less. That thought did little to reassure me.

  This darkness could snuff out my life with little effort. I shivered in fear. And yet, despite all that, it paled in comparison to my mother, Nova. She revealed a glimpse of her true power to me, before I left the Dawn and Dusk Sect, and the darkness was weaker than her. Not by much, but enough to make a noticeable difference. I found some measure of comfort in that, though the knowledge did me little good. After all, I wasn’t my mother.

  Consume, the darkness answered.

  ‘Consume?’ I asked. ‘Consume what?’

  Another part of the darkness split apart to reveal a second eye. This one looked like it belonged to a beast of some kind, though I didn’t know what kind.

  Consume, the darkness repeated.

  More and more eyes appeared, each one belonging to a different kind of creature. Each time an eye opened, the darkness said the word “consume”.

  Consume

  Consume

  Consume

  The darkness repeated the word over and over again, growing more insistent with each repetition, battering against me. Soon, countless eyes surrounded me. When the last eye opened, I felt a strange sensation, as if something sank its fangs into my mind and injected me with its venom. It wasn’t painful, but uncomfortable and unpleasant. By the time the fangs retreated, my mind felt stuffed full of… something. I didn’t know what.

  Consume, the darkness said. Grow stronger. Inherit.

  I wanted to respond and ask what it meant by grow stronger and inherit, but I couldn’t. The venom(?) in my mind left me unable to speak further. The eyes started to close, one by one, until only one remained. It was the first eye that opened, the human one. It regarded me with something akin to interest, until it closed as well.

  When the last of the eyes disappeared, my consciousness faded away and I knew nothing.

  My body felt stiff when I woke up and came to. A part of me hoped that the dream with the darkness and the eyes had been nothing more than a product of my imagination. However, I knew deep down that it hadn’t been. It had been real. This knowledge unsettled me, and it took me a few minutes to calm my mind.

  What had been that thing, that darkness? Some kind of spirit? A demon? I didn’t know. The last time something similar happened to me was right after I joined the Dawn and Dusk Sect. I went through the Crucible of Flames, a hazing ritual that all new disciples of Flame Fiend Hall went through, and ended up falling unconscious after suffering several severe injuries. My mother, Nova, appeared in my dreams and took away my pain.

  The darkness from my dream last night(?) had been far less benevolent. It did… something to me. I wasn’t sure what. However, I doubted it was for my benefit. Even if it was, I assumed it came with a heavy price. Whether or not it was worth paying that price, that remained to be seen. For now, I would put the matter aside and focus on more immediate concerns.

  I sat up and took stock of my situation. The injury to my shoulder had healed already, thanks to the Healing Pills I took before, but I was still in poor condition. While I somewhat replenished my reserves of inner qi as I slept, they still remained low. More than that, my vitality continued to flow out of my internal injury. The stopgap measure I used helped, but it wasn’t a permanent solution.

  Still, I was alive. I had saved my fellow disciples from the Dawn and Dusk Sect, and lived to tell the tale. That was all that mattered. Of course, part of that was due to luck. If Cultivator Viviana hadn’t shown me mercy, I would have already died. However, luck was part of a cultivator’s strength, or so the saying went.

  My stomach grumbled in complaint. I let out a wry chuckle. Even in a situation like this, I still had an appetite. Well, I was a demon of hunger and desire. It was in my nature. I reached over to pull food out of my storage ring.

  However, the moment I thought about eating, the unpleasant sensation from my dream returned. I felt something slithering and sliding into my mind, seeping into it like poison. It didn’t hurt, but it felt foul. I couldn’t move or speak or do anything. I couldn’t even breathe. All I could do was endure and hope it ended soon.

  After what felt like hours, though it could’ve been minutes, the sensation faded away. When it did, I fell onto my back and stared up at the ceiling of my small cave. I took deep shuddering breaths. At the forefront of my mind was a technique, as if it had been injected there.

  It was the Devouring Demon technique, according to the knowledge in my mind. As the name suggested, the technique allowed one to consume the flesh and blood of living beings to gain power. It had three layers. For the first layer, one regained lost vitality. For the second layer, one consumed in order to increase one’s cultivation. For the third layer, one could shapeshift and take on the physical forms of the living beings one consumed.

  At first, the thought of using this technique filled me with revulsion. My stomach heaved and bile rose in my throat. I covered my mouth to keep from vomiting. However, once I managed to calm myself down and think it through, I realized that the Devouring Demon technique wasn’t as heinous as I first thought.

  Consuming living beings to increase one’s power wasn’t unusual in the world of cultivation. In fact, it was rather common. I had done so already by hunting spirit beasts and demon beasts. This wasn’t just limited to beasts either. After all, plants were living beings as well. The Devouring Demon technique merely made use of this and increased the effectiveness. However, from what I gathered it only worked with the flesh and blood of living beings; food, in other words. It had no effect on consuming pills.

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  Once I thought of it like that, it was much easier to accept using the Devouring Demon technique. I would continue what I was already doing. The problem was that the Devouring Demon technique also applied to people.

  To a devouring demon, anything and everything was food. Nothing was taboo. That was the impression I received. Consume everything and grow strong.

  It wasn’t difficult to figure out where this technique came from: the darkness from my dream. It was a demon, one of hunger. That much was clear to me. The question was, why did the darkness give me this technique? And where had it come from?

  From what I knew, the biggest threat to oneself in the Violet Desert hidden realm were other cultivators. Where had this demon of hunger come from? Had it entered with the rest of us? I had so many questions, and few answers.

  I sat up again. When I did so, I felt something cold and metallic in my hand. I frowned and held it up to take a closer look. In the palm of my hand sat a copper ring. It took me a moment to realize that this was the copper ring that I bought from Senior Brother Fenton, a disciple of Flame Fiend Hall, back when I first joined the Dawn and Dusk Sect.

  According to Senior Brother Fenton, he found the copper ring in a hidden realm that he explored while adventuring. However, he hadn’t noticed anything strange about it and thought it was mundane. I also recalled Senior Brother Fenton mentioning that he had an elder from Myriad Treasures Pavilion examine the copper ring, yet they found nothing either.

  Over the years, I examined the copper ring myself several times and came to the same conclusion. No matter what I did, no matter what tests I conducted, it appeared mundane. I even asked Sidra to take a look at it once, since she had expertise in magic treasures, and she hadn’t noticed anything either.

  After a while, I gave up and forgot about it. For all intents and purposes, it was just a plain copper ring. There was nothing special about it at all. At least, that had been the case before.

  The copper ring now had the characters for “Devouring Demon” etched into it. It also emitted a faint demonic aura. A part of me felt exhilarated by this discovery. The secrets of the copper ring must be profound, if they evaded the detection of a Nascent Soul expert. However, the rest of me was worried.

  Whoever created this ring was a demonic cultivator, one more powerful than Sidra. If the impression from my dream was accurate, they were almost as powerful as my mother, Nova. Rather, they had been when they created this ring. If they were still alive, then maybe they were even more powerful now.

  Powerful beings like that didn’t create magic treasures for no reason. The question was, why did this…“Devouring Demon” create this copper ring? To pass on the Devouring Demon technique? If so, then perhaps the copper ring was a legacy. If not, then perhaps Devouring Demon had a more nefarious purpose in mind.

  Demonic cultivators were, by and large, not good people. There were exceptions, of course. They weren’t necessarily evil. However, for the most part, demonic cultivators were ambitious and willing to fulfill their ambitions by any means necessary. I acknowledged this as a demonic cultivator myself.

  If this copper ring was a legacy passed down by a demonic cultivator, then I needed to be careful. What if Devouring Demon wanted to take over my body? That was a possibility. The Devouring Demon technique could be a method to make a better vessel for, well, the Devouring Demon. Even if it wasn’t, I would refrain from using the technique until I consulted Sidra. She would know what to do.

  I should also seal the copper ring, to prevent anything else from happening. It wouldn’t do much good, considering how powerful the Devouring Demon felt when I dreamed of them last night, but it would make me feel better.

  To that end, I formed the hand seals for Heavenly Seal. Golden light emerged from my hands, before forming into a seal made of divine qi. The seal then encompassed the copper ring and restrained it. The moment this happened, the copper ring stopped giving off a demonic aura. However, I heard a faint laugh in my mind. I didn’t know if it was real or a figment of my imagination. Regardless, I put the copper ring back into my storage ring and pulled out some food.

  As I ate, I pondered my next move.

  In the end, I chose to remain inside my little impromptu cave to rest and recuperate. I had already harvested a decent amount of Violet Sand. There was no need to risk my life to gather more. And it would be a risk, given my current condition. The pills I had on hand could heal my body and restore my reserves of inner qi. However, my internal injury remained and continued leaking vitality. Until that healed, it was best to avoid any unnecessary fights.

  Since I didn’t plan on harvesting anymore Violet Sand, I decided to study the magic treasures that I looted off of Cultivator Relentless Flame and Cultivator Shifting Cloud. I started with the necklace, since it was a defensive magic treasure. After I examined it, I saw that it was similar to my crimson robes in that it summoned a magic barrier to protect its wearer. I was a little disappointed, since I wanted something to replace my bronze buckler, but I wasn’t in a position to complain. I bound the necklace to me.

  Afterwards, I turned my attention to the other magic treasure that I looted off of Cultivator Relentless Flame, the stone spear. However, after studying it for a bit, I realized that it wasn’t a flying magic treasure. This made it useless to me, given my lack of talent with any kind of weapon. The only reason why I could use my flying sword was because, well, it was a flying sword and I could direct it with my mind. If I were to try and wield it by hand, I would just embarrass myself.

  In the end, I decided to either sell the stone spear or trade it away for something I needed. I put it away again, before I pulled out the one magic treasure that belonged to Cultivator Shifting Cloud: the Seeking Mirror. As I examined it, I grew more and more excited. It turned out that when activated, the mirror showed a map of the surrounding area, though its range seemed limited to a one hundred mile radius around the mirror. This map was quite accurate and showed various geographical features in fine detail.

  However, what made the Seeking Mirror such valuable magic treasure was its ability to “mark” a location or object. Whatever was marked showed up on the mirror’s map as a glowing dot. This allowed the mirror’s wielder to track the marked location or object from a distance. I didn’t know what the limit for this was, if there was a limit, but I assumed it was quite far. Was this how Cultivator Shifting Cloud was able to navigate through the Violet Desert hidden realm? I believed so. Filled with excitement, I bound the Seeking Mirror to myself.

  Once I finished with the magic treasures, I turned my attention to the jade slip that I looted off of Cultivator Relentless Flame. During my fight with Cultivator Viviana and her comrades, my lack of any powerful mystic arts had been my biggest weakness. I tried to make up for it with a large quantity of Fireballs, but Cultivator Viviana made short work of them. If I had known a more powerful mystic art, perhaps the fight would have gone better and I wouldn’t have received my internal injury.

  The question was, which mystic art? Burning Cloud Breath? Corrosive Cloud? The former increased my offensive potential, which I found tempting. However, I could think of a number of uses for the latter. Or maybe I should learn Cloudy Steps, which would increase my agility and mobility? Choices, choices.

  After giving it some thought, I chose Burning Cloud Breath, since it would give me the biggest boost to my power in the short term. I would learn the others in time, but I needed to increase my offensive power right away. Just because I decided to hide away didn’t mean that I was safe. I needed to be ready, just in case an enemy cultivator found me, or a fellow disciple of the Dawn and Dusk Sect that wanted to steal my Violet Sand.

  Once I made my choice, I immersed myself in studying the Burning Cloud Breath mystic art. To avoid any unwanted surprises, I also made sure to keep an eye on my surroundings with my spirit sense. I didn’t want an enemy to sneak up on me.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult to learn the basics of the Burning Cloud Breath mystic art, since I had a sufficient enough understanding of Fire. However, it would take weeks to achieve even initial mastery in it. This disappointed me, but I didn’t stop. Any effort I put in now would save me effort later on.

  And so that was how I spent the rest of my time in the Violet Desert hidden realm, hiding out in a cave while studying the Burning Cloud Breath mystic art. I didn’t stop, other than to eat or drink when necessary. Soon, I lost track of time altogether. I realized that it was time to leave when I felt a familiar pulling sensation.

  Before I knew it, my body moved and I found myself surrounded by sand on all sides once more. However, instead of sinking down, a force pulled me up. Moments later, I emerged from the sand as the force launched me into the air. I managed to right myself and land on my feet. Afterwards, I took a look around.

  I was back in the main world, surrounded by the other cultivators who had also entered the Violet Desert hidden realm. There were several missing. I didn’t take an exact count, but it looked like a tenth of the cultivators who had entered the Violet Desert hidden realm had perished there. No one had an easy time of it. Everyone looked battered and weary.

  “Flamewind!”

  Ellen’s voice called out to me, grabbing all of my attention. I turned towards her just as she launched herself at me and wrapped her arms around my body. Her physical presence eased the last of my worries, as if I had put down a heavy burden that I had been carrying. I returned her embrace and buried my face in her hair.

  I was home.

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  This chapter was edited by Radriel7