Chapter 123 - Descent to Hell

Cale smiled with genuine amusement, a expression of pure malevolence that belonged more to a demon than to a human.

"Hehe, if I don’t descend into hell, then who else will?"

Another group of Sage-stage cultivators entered the outer reaches of the array, their divine consciousnesses blazing like beacons.

"Hm? Was there a battle here perhaps? Why are people running?" one asked, confused by the scene of devastation surrounding them.

Another nodded thoughtfully. "I see. It’s a trace of divine inheritance! No wonder; looks like they couldn’t handle it."

Many of them decided to team up, attacking the barriers from the first layer to the last, but deliberately refusing to enter the innermost regions. They were wary and cautious.

Cale laughed at their futile attempts.

"Are they getting wary now?" he mused, watching their efforts prove completely useless. "After being greedy throughout, you think you can save yourself coming this far? How adorable."

Outside the array, an elder of the Thunderclap Buddhist Sect stood with his eyes closed, accessing the memories of dozens of people who’d managed to escape or been ejected from the formation.

He opened his eyes slowly, his expression grave.

"By their memories," he told his assembled group quietly, "it looks like a great entity is there. And if you can’t defeat it, it will use you for nourishment for its own cultivation."

Leonard, standing behind him with the weight of catastrophic failure on his shoulders, asked desperately, "So elder, what shall we do? I have already lost two of my sect’s ancestors. I can’t even show my face to my sect members!"

The elder sighed deeply.

"I would not enter," he said pragmatically. "And rather watch from here. Even if someone gets it, it’s better to snatch it from that person than to risk our lives directly."

Leonard stared at the elder with wide eyes, his mind struggling to believe this man was the leader of Buddhist teachings.

’How the hell is this an elder of a Buddhist sect?’ he thought in disbelief.

As word spread and more people moved closer to the array’s entrance, witnessing firsthand the dead bodies and the desperate refugees fleeing outward, a competitive instinct awakened among the trapped cultivators.

They began fighting amongst themselves.

Each faction attempted to eliminate their rivals, reducing the competition for whatever treasure supposedly lay within. They were essentially doing Cale’s work for him and weakening each other, killing each other, making his eventual harvest far more easy.

Another two hours passed in this chaotic bloodshed.

Finally, the last batch arrived inside.

Three thousand cultivators.

A final wave of desperate, greedy, ambitious beings drawn by rumors of a divine inheritance. They looked at each other across the misty expanse, their eyes gleaming with hunger and avarice.

"Where’s the treasure!" one demanded.

"Yes, yes! Where is the inheritance!" another added eagerly.

All they could see was fog—thick, impenetrable fog covering everything. And through it, the faint silhouette of a single figure standing motionless at the center of the formation.

Cale.

"Hehe, seems like quite a lot of you have gathered," Cale’s voice carried through the fog, despite the distance. His tone was almost like a host greeting guests at a party.

"Who are you?!" someone shouted.

"Is he the owner of this tomb?" another asked.

Cale laughed, "Thanks for killing each other," he said casually. "Who knows how long it would’ve taken me otherwise?"

A Great Sage roared indignantly at this mockery. "Who the hell are you! Are you the owner of this place!"

Cale sighed. "I doubt that matters anyway. You people were only able to enter because your divine consciousness and cultivation were higher than the other fodder. That’s the only reason you survived this long."

Then it began. One by one, out of thousands, people started to disintegrate into nothingness. Their bodies didn’t burn, didn’t explode, didn’t fade gradually. They simply ceased to exist, converted directly into pure energy that flowed toward Cale’s core.

A ball of light emerged from each dissipating cultivator, flowing like moths drawn to flame toward the center.

It took only moments for someone to realize what was happening.

"H-he’s absorbing them! So many of us! Hundreds of thousands!" a cultivator screamed, his voice cracking with dawning horror.

The realization spread like plague through the remaining masses.

Eminent fear formed on every feature.

"A demon! He’s a goddamn demon!" someone roared.

"Senior please spare us! We will give everything we have to you!" another begged desperately.

"Ahh no! I’m dyin—" a voice cut off mid-word.

"Ancestors save us!" others wailed.

One Great Sage, watching his companions disintegrate around him, screamed at the other elders, "What the hell are you expecting me to do! I can’t even see the end of this array! How big is it?!"

One cultivator, his mind still sharp despite the chaos, shouted toward Cale with accusation.

"You planned all this! So... the divine inheritance... it was all fake?!"

Cale’s replied: "It was fake for you," he said with a shrug. "I still get my rewards though, don’t I? Heh."

Another cultivator, clinging to whatever pride remained, attempted to intimidate him.

"Why are you doing this! Do you know what sect I come from! I am an ancestor of a sect!"

Cale’s laughter echoed across the dying landscape.

"If you don’t know where to put your pride, you can put it under my feet instead."

One might have expected Cale to display some conflicting emotions—some internal struggle with what he was doing. Some vestige of humanity protesting against the slaughter.

He displayed none.

He wasn’t numb to death exactly. Death held meaning to him. But witnessing people die had become as natural as breathing. Death was simply part of existence, as inevitable and unremarkable as sunrise.

It wasn’t always this way.

Once, he’d been someone who hesitated. Someone who felt guilt. But that was before the Nine Heavens Demon Palace.

Before he’d risen from the lower echelons of the demonic sect to become the Sect Master’s personal bodyguard. Before he’d learned that strength was the only currency that mattered, and killing was the only universal language in this other world.

The Nine Heavens Demon Palace—also known as the Heavenly Demon Cult—was the strongest demonic path organization he ever encountered. Hundreds of lesser demonic sects operated beneath it like satellite moons orbiting a sun.

It was one of the strongest demonic sects on the entire planet.

And he served as the personal bodyguard of its Sect Master. A position of incredible prestige and power.

But a bodyguard had no life. No identity beyond service. Nothing except the sect master’s will and the constant demand for strength. In a cult, not a regular sect - people fanatically followed the leader, willing to give up their lives without hesitation.

It was precisely that fanaticism that made the Heavenly Demon Cult so devastatingly powerful in the future. And precisely why they never invaded Vaeloria. Their strength was so absolute that lesser continents simply weren’t worth the effort.

He escaped that prison by dying. By regressing time itself.

And now, in this moment, he was becoming something his old masters would have recognized instantly: a being that transcended the very concepts of sect politics and factional loyalty.

A true demon.

All three thousand cultivators roared attacks at Cale simultaneously.

A tidal wave of desperate power crashed toward him—spells, techniques, weapons, domains, everything they possessed unleashed in one final, hopeless assault.

One by one, they died to his sword.

Not through complicated techniques or elaborate displays of power. Simply to his blade, moving with the grace of inevitability, ending each life with each step.

’Ahh... finally,’ Cale thought as the last cultivator fell.

[Congratulations Host! For cultivating to Low-Apex Stage of cultivation!]

[Reward: Five Elements Transcendent Art ]

[A cultivation art that allows the cultivator to simultaneously comprehend the five fundamental elements:

Wind — The Path of Freedom

Wind represents speed, movement, sharpness, and freedom. The cultivator learns to move like wind itself, unrestricted and transcendent.

Water — The Path of Adaptation

Water represents flexibility, regeneration, persistence, and absorption. Rather than specializing purely in offense, the Water Path excels at surviving and adapting to any circumstance.

Earth — The Path of Immovability

Earth represents strength, defense, weight, stability, and suppression. The cultivator becomes as immovable as mountains.

Wood — The Path of Life

Wood represents life, growth, regeneration, vitality, and reproduction. The cultivator establishes a connection with the world’s life force. Spiritual energy continuously regenerates. Even if the body is destroyed, as long as a fragment of essence survives, the cultivator can potentially regrow.

Fire — The Path of Destruction

Fire represents energy, destruction, purification, and explosive power. Fire is the ultimate expression of transformative force.

Five Elements Fusion:

Once all five paths reach sufficient mastery, they can be combined into a unified whole.

Five Elements Samsara:

The cultivator establishes a domain containing all five elements in perfect harmony.

The Cycle:

Wood → Fire → Earth → Wind → Water → Wood

But instead of following the ordinary elemental cycle, this technique allows the cultivator to reverse and combine the cycles in impossible ways.]

Cale laughed with satisfaction.

"Good, good. This is a good technique. This thing now eases my worries about using all five elements simultaneously. And see, it’s increased the level of my origin essence too. Hehe."

He checked his status:

[CULTIVATION SPEED MULTIPLIER: 9.7x]

He sat down, exhausted but satisfied.

Everyone was dead. The last cultivator had been converted into essence too. Rexa, Emma, and Fiora were already on their way out of the array’s core region.

The array’s barriers began reforming, but this time with different properties. Instead of trapping new arrivals, they now served as a shield—a protective cocoon around Cale’s meditating form during this crucial period.

The Four-Winged Frost All-Devouring Centipede, bloated from consuming thousands of corpses, shrank down to a manageable size. It crawled up onto Cale’s lap like a satisfied pet, its crystalline carapace smooth and cool against his palm.

Cale caressed it gently, stroking its body with affection.

"Hehe, having fun, are we?" he murmured to the creature. "Now do it."

The centipede obediently turned to face his arm and bit down.

From its body, an elixir emerged—a refined product of all the consumed flesh and souls, concentrated into essence. The liquid shimmered with rainbow colors, containing enough power to enhance his talent by tenfolds, perhaps even twenty.