by <unknown>
"The civil war seriously undermined the evil civilization of mankind. It also created the best opportunity for the renaissance of the demon race!
"Overthrow the tyranny of the human beings and restore the Great Dao of the balance of nature in the universe!
"Motivated by such beliefs, the descendants of the ancient demon clans that were scattered everywhere in the sea of stars stood up against human beings. After endless blood and efforts, the human beings were successfully suppressed… for thirty thousand years!
"After thirty thousand years of rest, the worlds that were riddled with holes because of the human beings' pollution finally regained part of their vitality.
"However, the human beings came back again and established the Star Ocean Imperium, planning to restore their evil reign.
"Thankfully, the Star Ocean Imperium was just a freak that was piled up by the might of a tyrant. When the tyrant died abruptly, it soon collapsed.
"Today, ten thousand years later, the human beings and the demon race are both resting. Neither party can seize control over all the Sectors in the universe.
"Ostensibly speaking, the population, resources of the human beings, and their control over the worlds are much higher than ours, but we must not give up easily!
"Evil can never suppress justice for long, as history has proved. One day, we will overthrow the cruel reign of human beings and set the universe back to the track of balance of nature again!"
The young man finally concluded his long speech. He felt that his mouth was dry, so the cat-eared girl handed over a wood bowl to him. He drank the sweet water, which was mixed with honey, in great satisfaction before he licked his lips and smiled.
"Excellent. Brother, you do remember all of it!" the cat-eared girl Lei Lan exclaimed in joy and jumped up in a high mood with the wood bowl. "I'm going to make something delicious for you. We have fresh fish. It will taste good if I blend them with ear-folding grass!"
The young man bathed himself in the glowing morning sun comfortably. Scarlet brightness covered him like a hazy red mist, making him look somewhat mysterious.
After the cat-eared girl turned around and left, the young man's right eye immediately turned from amber into a cold, deep black color.
His left eye, which was covered in a bandage, seemed to be emitting redness despite the blockage of the bandage.
"The Primeval Lord of Heaven? The thirteen ancient demon clans? The Sky Fixing Plan?
"Very interesting genesis mythology.
"However, what is more interesting is, why does this family of demons have to ask me to pretend to be this 'Lei Qi'?"
Li Yao scratched his left temple, which was covered in bandages, softly and mumbled to himself.
It had been half a month since he landed in the Blood Demon Sector.
On Firefly, the formidability of the Blood Stripe Virus and its infiltration on his soul were beyond his expectation.
Even the explosion of the soul bomb failed to destroy the Blood Stripe Virus completely.
Later, Li Yao's soul and the remaining strength of the Blood Stripe Virus had a soul-stirring fight.
The destination of Firefly was not as good as its companions. Although it reached the Blood Demon Sector safely, it was too close to the planet.
Captured by the tremendous gravity of the planet, Firefly's power rune arrays lost control, and it was pulled into the atmosphere and crashed into the ground.
The only thing that was lucky for Li Yao was that he crashed at the depths of the Hundred Desolation Mountain, which was far away from the center of politics of the demon race. He did not catch the attention of the strong demons, either.
The immense blast of the crash not only destroyed Firefly completely but also triggered a forest fire.
While Li Yao was slowly recovering in the burning Hundred Desolation Mountain, he found the team of demons who came to put out the fire.
When he saw the team, who all had different appearances, Li Yao thought of something.
Although he had planned to stay in the Blood Demon Sector and not to return to the Heaven's Origin Sector until he completely purged the Blood Stripe Virus, it was quite a tricky problem for him to survive in the Blood Demon Sector, which was brimming with demons, as a human being.
Before Li Yao left the Heaven's Origin Sector, the experts of the Blood Demon Sector had been on par with those of the Heaven's Origin Sector. They were classified into four levels, namely demon soldier, demon general, demon king, and demon emperor. The demon emperor, which was the strongest of all, equaled to the Nascent Soul Stage for the Cultivators.
In terms of combat ability, Li Yao was not scared of any top experts of the Blood Demon Sector.
However, his opponent would not solo him. The most famous strategy of the demon race was their tides of insects and beasts!
Even in the Heaven's Origin Sector, reports were not few of high-level Cultivators being surrounded by a large batch of low-level demon beasts and eventually dying of exhaustion.
He was now at the heart of the Blood Demon Sector. Should his identity be exposed, without the collective attack of several demon emperors, the rushing beast tides alone were enough to crush him into smithereens.
Therefore, when Li Yao discovered that the demons who came to put out the fire were not exclusively ugly snakes or rats, and that many of them carried distinctive features of human beings, he slightly rectified his plan and burnt his body with the flames on purpose.
With his Cultivation at the superlative height of the Core Formation Stage, he was able to control the speed of his metabolism. The cells all over his body could be replaced at a high frequency.
With enough spiritual energy, it would only take him a few hours for him to replace all the cells on the surface of his body.
The fire burn of such a degree was not a big deal for him at all.
As for the change of the length of his canine teeth and the color of his pupils, it was not too difficult, either.
Li Yao had once accepted the spiritual seed of Yan Ba, a body fundamentalist in the Nascent Soul Stage.
The training approach of the body fundamentalists was to trigger the primordial strength hidden in their bodies and force their cells into a temporary atavistic state so that the strength of the primordial ferocious animals, which were the ancestors of human beings, could be activated.
Many body fundamentalists would grow intense hair or scales while they were at the highest point of their training, and it was not unusual for their body size to triple or for them to grow sharp horns and claws.
After all, human beings evolved from monkeys, and monkeys evolved from all kinds of primordial animals.
Human beings, who called themselves the wisest of all creatures, were just another kind of animal. It was not usual for the features of an animal to be activated again.
Although Li Yao was not a real body fundamentalist, the Blood Stripe Virus was an expert in the refinement of living creatures. After absorbing most of the abilities of the Blood Stripe Virus, it was more than simple for Li Yao to slightly alter the appearance of his hair, iris, fingernails, and teeth.
Li Yao's original plan was to pretend to be heavily wounded and see if he could sneak into the villages of the demons to gather more intelligence.
If the strangers were malicious, he would attack them first and slay all the demons, save one or two captives for interrogation.
But what happened later was quite beyond his expectations.
After the demons found him 'seriously wounded' and 'out of shape', they neither went up to him and gave first aid or attacked him immediately while he seemed feeble.
After a while of whispers, one of the tiger demons who was particularly tall and strong went out and carried him back home, stating that he was 'Lei Qi', the pillar of his family and the best hunter in the village.
What was that all about?
Li Yao could not have been more confused.
He could easily tell that, except for his
canine teeth, which were slightly sharper, his half golden hair, and his right eye that had gone amber, there were absolutely no similarities between him and the tiger demon. Even a blind person would not have mistaken them for blood brothers.
Over the few days when he faked his coma, the family that brought him back did not show any happiness that a family member had luckily escaped a disaster at all. Instead, they were sighing and living in fear every day.
Sometimes, the tiger demon, Lei Chaung, would fiercely argue with his sister, Lei Lan. It appeared that Lei Chuang was unwilling to bring him back, but the demon simply had to.
An old demon whose legs had withered and looked like both a fox and a legless wolf dropped by the tiger demon's house with an enormous turtle as his vehicle several times, too, and talked to Lei Chuang in a low voice.
It seemed that accepting Li Yao as their 'big brother' concerned the fate of not only the family of the tiger demon but also the entire village. Without the demon named 'Lei Qi', dire consequences might happen to the village.
It is getting interesting now. All the fifty or so households of demons in the village know clearly that I am most certainly not 'Lei Qi', but everyone pretends that they are blind.
Why?
Li Yao pondered in silence.
Other than the identity of 'Lei Qi', the village in the Hundred Desolation Mountain was weird, too.
Chapter 833: Master of the Demon Planet |
Although Li Yao did not know much about the demon race, he had some basic common knowledge.
Hierarchically speaking, the demons could be classified into four levels, namely saint-blood, silver-blood, bronze-blood, and black-blood.
The saint-blood demons were the royal families in the dynasty of demon beasts that had lasted thirty thousand years. They boasted mysterious and unpredictable strength. It was said that they could even communicate with the gods and trigger the powerful techniques of the ancient demon clan temporarily.
However, in the era of the Star Ocean Imperium, the saint-blood demons had all been slaughtered, if not exterminated, by the Supreme Emperor.
After ten thousand years, the saint-blood demons were rarely seen, if they still existed at all.
The silver-blood demons were the ruling class. Most of the demon kingdoms and demon cities in the Blood Demon Sector were mastered by the silver-blood demons.
On Boneyard, Li Yao had slain 'Wang Ji', the prince of the Kingdom of Lion Butchers. He had been a silver-blood demon.
The bronze-blood demons were the warrior class, and the black-blood demons were the peasants, miners, and farmers at the bottom class.
The higher a demon's social class was, the more human features they would carry when they were born. The demons of lower classes had to train themselves hard in order to grasp the ability of 'polygraphing' to make themselves look like human beings.
In the small village deep inside the Hundred Desolation Mountain, the residents could neither be the silver-blood demons with honorable bloodlines or the experts with profound expertise, but Li Yao had discovered the distinctive features of human beings on them.
For some of the villagers, except for the horns on their head, the long tail above their bottom, or the membranes between their fingers, they were almost identical to human beings.
It was also one of the most important reasons why he could hide himself among the villagers with minimal disguise.
Other than that, there was one other thing that was extremely odd.
Besides the hierarchical classes, the demons could also be divided into different parallel clans.
Even in the roughest way and not counting the subcategories, the demons could still be further classified into the Feather Clan, the Sea Clan, the Insect Clan, the Claw Clan, the Horn Clan, and a bunch of other weird communities.
Generally, demons of the same clan would live together.
The tiger demons would live in the same village, and the rabbit demons would live in another one. Their habits were different, and their demand for the environment varied, too. Would it not have been a mess if they were all put together?
The only exceptions were the large cities that had a large population. They were almost the only places where demons of different kinds would live together.
However, in the remote mountain village that had only fifty or so households, more than ten different demons lived together. Maybe the snake demons were the next-door neighbor to the rabbit demons, and the tiger demons were living in harmony with the cow demons. How strange!
'Chaotic' was exactly Li Yao's first impression of the village.
It was not just the village. The households were even more so.
Li Yao discovered that, in many households, the demons of the family had vastly different appearances that not just resulted from their genetic expression. Some of the demons were even displaying features of multiple genera.
Maybe horns that belonged to the bull demons were growing on the head of a tiger demon, and the teeth of the bull demons were as sharp as those of a tiger demon.
Li Yao frowned deeply when he noticed the phenomena. He could not help but wonder how chaotic the relationship of the previous generation of the demons was.
But it was not right!
Ignorant as Li Yao might have been, he knew the basic concept of 'reproductive isolation'.
Even if a tiger demon and the bull demon could not contain their libido and their certain 'organs' boasted certain' functions', it was impossible for a child mixed with features of tiger demons and bull demons to be born.
Odd. Really odd!
The so-called demons were refined by human beings forty thousand years ago based on animals. If so, essentially speaking, they should still be animals.
Animals of different genera cannot have children after all!
Alright, the tiger demons and the bull demons are all mammals. Let's say that the reproductive isolation was broken when they were stimulated by the 'Demon God Virus'. I'll believe it for now.
But yesterday in the village, I clearly saw a female snake who had rabbit ears!
It really does not make any sense!
Li Yao scratched his head and doubted the history that he had known since he was a little kid for the first time.
Over the past few days, Lei Lan, the cat-eared girl, in order to help her 'brother' 'regain' his memories, had read a lot of tales from the Legends of Ancient Demons to him.
The Legends of Ancient Demons was a classical book that was very popular among the demons. Li Yao, for one, had discovered that the old demons in the village quite liked to interpret the Legends of Ancient Demons to the young demons while they enjoyed the sunlight.
In Li Yao's opinion, the Legends of Ancient Demons was a collection of folklores and the most elementary textbook. It was perhaps compiled by the leadership of the demons for the ethic education of the public.
In the Legends of Ancient Demons, the descriptions about the origins of the demon race and human beings were not surprising.
That was exactly how myths should be written. Everything was all about bluffing and tracing the ancestors back to heroes and gods. The stories could never be too exaggerated, and the clan for which the myths were written always stood for justice and righteousness.
After all, it was not like the demons would acknowledge that they were evil weapons created by human beings, right?
As for the stories of the Primeval Lord of Heaven, the Pangu Clan, and the Nuwa Clan, they were quite understandable, too.
Essentially speaking, the demon race was a parasitic civilization. Before them, human beings had already created a brilliant civilization. During the thirty thousand years when the demon race reigned the sea of stars, it was impossible, and unnecessary, for them to build a set of whole new civilization system from scratch. They simply inherited everything of the civilization of mankind, including the language, culture, social classes, national structure, and everything else.
Modifying the myths of human beings int
o the demons' own was only natural for the demon race.
Therefore, the fancy stories on the Legends of Ancient Demons did not shake Li Yao's belief after all.
But he was truly puzzled by the fact that the same demon was showing the features of multiple kinds of demons.
It was also why he dawdled and had not left the village even though he had completely recovered three days ago.
He was intending to find out the secrets behind the demons.
What exactly were the so-called 'demons'?
For the ancient Cultivators forty thousand years ago, they called all animals that had trained themselves into the appearances of human beings demons.
But in the modern society forty thousand years later, evolutionism had prevailed. Human beings had acknowledged that they were also animals that had evolved from monkeys.
In other words, human beings were all 'animals that had trained themselves into the appearances of human beings'.
Therefore, the definition of 'demons' had changed, too. All species whose evolution was not natural but boosted manually and by force were known as 'demons'.
But on second thought, wasn't the training of Cultivators 'unnatural and boosted manually and by force', too?
When the body fundamentalists trained themselves to the highest stage, they would trigger the potential in the deepest part of their cells, and they would show the features of primordial beasts. Those body fundamentalists in the 'primordial state' looked less like human beings than many demons!
Maybe there is not an essential difference between human beings and the demon race, is there? Everything is defined later.
Right now, the minor apocalypse of the Imperium of True Human Beings is coming near. The war between the Heaven's Origin Sector and the Blood Demon Sector must be concluded as quickly as possible.
But the Blood Demon Sector has enormous forces, and the demon race is adept at survival. A total war will not be finished in a couple of years.
Even if the planet of the Blood Demon Sector is burnt to the ground with the joint effort of the Heaven's Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector and the surface of the planet is occupied, the remaining demons will still hide below the ground and stall most of our forces with prolonged guerrilla warfare and harassing battles!
