CRACK!

The skull split open, the devil core falling from its forehead. The rest of the huge skeleton collapsed without the support of the devil core.

Looking at the collapsed skeleton, Yue Xiaoqian was shocked. “You handled it so easily?!”

Long Chen almost stumbled. She was startled over such a simple method? Long Chen even suspected she was purposely trying to mess with him.

With a thought of his Spiritual Strength, the devil core dropped into his hand. This time, he specially used his Spiritual Strength to sense the energy within it.

He found the devil core was filled with brutal and savage intent. That kind of intent only contained a desire to massacre and destroy.

“Here.” Long Chen handed the devil core to Yue Xiaoqian.

Yue Xiaoqian carefully looked at Long Chen. “Do you want to ask me any questions?”

“No.”

“Another lie. You are clearly extremely curious, and you are also heavily on guard. My mother was right; the outside world’s people really are all hypocrites,” snorted Yue Xiaoqian.

Long Chen rolled his eyes. It seemed she had once more returned to her smart self. He retorted, “If you placed that kind of intelligence on fighting, you would be unrivaled.”

“More lies. My mother said that the reason experts are able to become experts is because they have the heart to get stronger. If they relied on intelligence to resolve their problems instead of trusting in their own strength, they would never get any stronger,” refuted Yue Xiaoqian.

This time Long Chen was startled. It seemed that Yue Xiaoqian’s mother’s thoughts were identical to Long Chen’s. If an expert wanted to get stronger, they couldn’t rely entirely on smarts.

They had to be more confident in their body than their head. Only then could they get stronger. That was what it meant to have a warrior’s heart.

Although it sounded a bit contradictory, Long Chen had believed in that theory the entire time. In the face of these schemes against him, he could have thought of an appropriate method to resolve them.

However, if he then formed a dependence on his intelligence, using brains to resolve all his disputes, then that courageous heart of his would be quietly worn down, eventually being obliterated. That was just the lazy way to handle things.

So, in the face of these schemes, Long Chen had never tried to fight them with smarts. He would use his fists to crush his opponent’s schemes.

What he wanted was absolute strength. In the face of absolute strength, all schemes and plotting were just transient clouds.

“Your mother is definitely an amazing expert,” praised Long Chen.

“Of course. My mother is the devil-” Yue Xiaoqian was happy to hear Long Chen’s praise of his mother, but halfway through her statement, she shut her mouth.

“Let’s continue onwards,” smiled Long Chen.

“Long Chen, are you not afraid of me?”

“I’m not afraid.” Long Chen shook his head. I can be afraid of anything in this world, but not a girl.

“You don’t even know why I’m gathering devil cores, nor do you know my background. But you refuse to be afraid of me hurting you?”

“Don’t you know mind reading? Can’t you tell?” laughed Long Chen.

“Of course, I don’t know how to read minds. The only thing I can do is judge a person’s mental thoughts by their eyes, expression, breath, heartbeat, body heat, and spiritual fluctuations.”

“What, it’s this complicated? Why would you bother learning all this? So you can be a fortune teller for others?” Long Chen didn’t understand.

“What nonsense. Whose fortune would I tell? My mother said that the outside world is extremely treacherous, and words never reveal the inner heart. Everyone is two-faced, vicious and merciless, agreeing with you on the outside in order to stab you in the back. She refused to let me come out adventuring before learning these things,” said Yue Xiaoqian with a bit of vexation.

“Your mother was entirely correct. Whether it is the Righteous or Corrupt path, they’re all treacherous and cruel people who tell you honeyed words before stabbing you through the stomach. The Righteous path is especially dangerous in that aspect,” sighed Long Chen.

Long Chen’s words contained a profound self-mocking. He was a Righteous disciple, but the ones who wanted him dead the most were actually his fellow Righteous disciples. That was quite the irony.

In comparison to the Corrupt path’s cruelty and malevolence, it was the Righteous path’s crafty scheming, their ability to kill others without even doing anything personally, that made people shiver.

That was because the Corrupt path actually rarely stabbed people in the back. They were savage, but their competition was always fought openly. It was survival of the strongest, the law of the jungle.

But the Righteous path wasn’t like that. All kinds of contemptible schemes were everywhere, and there were many unwritten rules. People in power blocked the path of many geniuses, as anyone that could threaten their position had to be quietly eliminated.

Just thinking of the first monastery’s conduct, Long Chen was filled with fury. Then there was also that pair of bastards Han Tianyu and Han Tianfeng. Their debt to him would have to be properly repaid.

“Long Chen, are you a bad person?” Yue Xiaoqian was curious why Long Chen would actually agree with her mother’s words. Wouldn’t that be including himself in that category?

“Yup, I’m a bad person. And in the future, I’ll become even worse.”

“Why?”

“Even if I told you, you wouldn’t understand. Our minds aren’t on the same frequency.” Long Chen shook his head. He had figured out what kind of person Yue Xiaoqian was.

Although her origin was definitely puzzling and her power was unfathomable, she was still a rookie, an amateur who hadn’t experienced anything of the world. Compared to an old fox like Long Chen who had fought his way through calamity multiple times, they really were not on the same level. Long Chen couldn’t be bothered to waste his breath explaining all this to her.

But no matter how he put it, she was someone who had saved his life. This favor had to be repaid, and since she needed devil cores, Long Chen would help her gather them.

As for her origin, Long Chen didn’t care. Since she refused to say, that meant she had her own secret troubles. Forcefully getting to the bottom of her secrets wasn’t Long Chen’s style.

“Alright then. But I don’t feel like you’re that bad,” said Yue Xiaoqian.

Long Chen almost laughed. Why did that sentence sound so awkward? If he wasn’t that bad, didn’t that mean he was still pretty bad?

It seemed she didn’t understand what Long Chen had truly meant when he called himself a bad person. Long Chen was too lazy to explain it, and so the two of them simply continued onward in silence. A bend in the path appeared in front of them.

After making their way past the bend, they suddenly saw a pile of skeletons. There had to be hundreds of them, forming a mountain of bones.

Both Long Chen and Yue Xiaoqian jumped in fright. They hadn’t expected to see such a scene. In front of that pile of skeletons was an empty space.

Within that empty space was another skeleton. But this skeleton was only three meters tall. After all these countless years, its clothes and flesh had long since disappeared.

That entire skeleton was a bronze color, looking as if it had been made of metal. Its body emitted a powerful pressure.

Even though they were miles away, they could still sense the powerful will coming from the skeleton. Its will was like a surging ocean.

The skeleton was holding a blood-colored saber that had been stabbed into the ground. Despite having died long ago, it was still just standing there, emitting a torrential battle intent.

“What powerful willpower.” Long Chen was stupefied. There was actually such a terrifying expert in this world.

Could it be that the surrounding Two-Winged Devilmen were all killed by this one person and that as a result, this person had run out of energy, dying in the process?

“That person should be a warrior from the barbarian race of the ancient era. They were called the ten planar worlds’ strongest warriors. Each one of them was unspeakably brave, and their combat ability was enough to shake the heavens,” muttered Yue Xiaoqian, who was also stunned to see that skeleton.

“I’m not referring to the so-called barbarian tribes of yours. Back when the world was flourishing, at the very beginning, seven great races were born, and they were one of them. Their ancestor was a god who was called the Barbarian God.”

“This world really has gods?”

Yue Xiaoqian hesitated for a moment, but in the end, she spat out a single word. “Yes.”

That one word caused huge waves in Long Chen’s heart. So there really were gods in this world.

Then, were the legends true? Back in the immortal era, gods were everywhere? With a wave of their hands, stars shattered and the entire ten planar worlds could be destroyed?

If that was true, then that dream he had had wasn’t a baseless fantasy. In that dream, he had seen a man, or perhaps more accurately a god, fighting an incredibly powerful beast within the stars.

“Thank you. Your answer was extremely important to me.” Long Chen was extremely grateful. This let him confirm a certain theory: the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art was not an ordinary technique for cultivators, but a divine technique.

Perhaps as long as he continued to bitterly train in the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, he would one day reach godhood. His blood raced when he thought of that scene with the man whose divine ring burst apart the heavens, who could destroy the void with a wave of his hand. That dream was true.

“Let’s leave.” Yue Xiaoqian nodded with a smile.

“Leave? Why? You don’t want those devil cores?

“There are too many skeletons here, and they’re too close together. We can’t handle them one by one, so we can only give up. Otherwise, we’ll end up throwing away our lives.” Yue Xiaoqian shook her head.

Although she felt a great longing for those devil cores, she had the intelligence to give up on them. If they activated all these skeletons, the two of them would definitely die a tragic end.

“Giving up like this isn’t my style.”

“Long Chen, don’t take such risks. No matter how precious something is, you still need your life to enjoy it,” advised Yue Xiaoqian.

“But…” Long Chen really was unwilling.

“Thank you, Long Chen. But just two devil cores is already enough for me. It can at least resolve part of the desperate situation in my clan,” said Yue Xiaoqian gratefully.

She really hadn’t thought Long Chen would be so loyal to her. These devil cores were extremely important to her, but she had already given up on them. However, Long Chen was actually willing to brave this danger to get this many devil cores for her. She really was incomparably grateful.

“Ah, but it’s not enough for me. I want that saber.” Long Chen was unwillingly staring at that blood-colored saber, a fervent passion burning in his eyes.

“You...scoundrel.” Only now did Yue Xiaoqian realize she had misjudged him. She reached out a hand and gave Long Chen’s arm a vicious pinch.

“Aiya, what’s wrong with you?!”

Long Chen felt an incomparable pain from his arm. He didn’t know what energy Yue Xiaoqian was using, but she was actually able to ignore the power of his physical body, causing him to feel incredible pain. Sweeping over his divine sense, he saw a large bruise.

“You…!” Seeing Long Chen get angry, Yue Xiaoqian felt wronged and a wet mist appeared in her eyes. “My mother really was right, the outside world’s people really are all scoundrels! You’re also a bad person.” Yue Xiaoqian actually began crying.

Long Chen really hadn’t expected that just his mouth would be able to cause this woman, who was unimaginably powerful, to cry. “Hey, hey, don’t cry! Here, as my apology, I’ll do my best to think of a way to get you more devil cores, alright?”

“Really? I guess you have a conscience.” Yue Xiaoqian’s tears turned into smiles.

Long Chen was speechless. This woman was outrageously powerful, but why did she seem like a child?

The two of them slowly continued onward. Long Chen’s target was a skeleton on the outer perimeter of that pile.