Chapter Eighty-Six: Becoming Stronger by Any Means Necessary

The moment Lan Yi was swallowed, most onlookers saw nothing but darkness.

No matter what tricks you had up your sleeve, being devoured by an Evil God clan creature—a monster whose physical toughness defied all reason—offered vanishingly slim odds of survival at this stage. Even just being swallowed, with the creature's mouthparts draining spiritual energy and its internal structure torturing and restraining, was enough to leave Lan Yi waiting for death.

Who could possibly stop this crimson monster?

After swallowing Lan Yi, the Evil God creature gave a satisfying shake of its body. Fine scales had sprouted all over its hide. By now, the mushroom cloud and its trailing shockwave from the distant blast were finally surging over in full, majestic force.

The Evil God creature paid it no mind at all.

Never mind material shockwaves of this level—even if the mountains collapsed and the seas roared, it doubted anything could truly harm this body of its, which was already beginning its advance toward strong nuclear force and electromagnetic force. And if worst came to worst, it could always grab a few humans to top itself up.

At that moment, the Evil God creature's bat-like face suddenly sniffed the air.

Like a bloodthirsty hound, its slender, well-proportioned five-meter frame instantly shifted behind a mound of earth. Its mouth curled open with keen interest as it observed.

Before long, a human head emerged.

The Jester crawled out, covered in dust and grime.

His expression dazed, he looked around at the dramatically altered landscape, as if standing at ground zero of a fuel-air bomb strike. The distant mushroom cloud, still collapsing and dissipating, bore witness to the ferocity and spectacle of the battle that had just taken place.

Could it be that *he* was supposed to stop the Evil God race?

"F**k! Did Gold Lion and that lunatic Lan beat each other's brains out? Or did Xinghan chuck a tactical nuke?!"

It wasn't until a stream of wet, suspicious liquid splashed over his head that Dalevis belatedly realized—standing silently behind him was a colossal demon, its crimson forked tongue flicking out as its malevolent vertical pupils dissected this human's delicious parts, evaluating whether he might suit its purposes as a pet or servant.

Oh, how it adored the delicious emotions humans produced when they tried to survive by hypnotizing themselves, deceiving themselves, wallowing in despair and rage!

Whoa, an Evil God race being...

Before consciousness could react, the body moved first.

In that instant, the Jester's frame convulsed violently—like a chick encountering a hawk, a great white shark running into a killer whale. That instinctive terror, that primal self-preservation etched into his very DNA, urged him to burrow downward immediately. Maybe that way there'd be a sliver of hope.

"Weak little chick, what's your name?"

The Evil God creature bared a row of razor-sharp fangs, its face suddenly pressed right against the Jester's ear.

Dao techniques? Martial arts? A trump card?

In that split second, the Jester thought of everything. Facing this monster that shouldn't exist in this world, he had no idea what means he possessed that could save him.

The only thing he could do was swing his blade.

At least then he could die with some dignity.

Shwing!!

Clang!!!

A long blade that hadn't even broken the sound barrier struck lazily against the claw the Evil God creature had raised. Sparks flew, steel clashed—and the Jester's specially crafted blade shattered instantly.

It had already been riddled with chips and cracks from his fight with Lan Yi. Meeting the Evil God creature now, the blade snapping was only to be expected.

The Jester clenched his fists, eyes wide, desperate to capture any opening, still trying to fight back. But the next second, he was like a helpless kitten, restrained by the Evil God creature's claw at the neck. Several viper-like tendrils extended from the creature's head, slipping slickly into the Jester's ears.

"Come, let me see what you fear most~~"

"Now."

"I shall make your entire world—that thing."

The Evil God race's method of human modification was brutally crude. It could invert a human's five senses—turning filth into delicacies, humans into monsters, mud golems into beauties, while the Evil God race itself appeared towering and magnificent. Most humans who underwent this modification went completely insane. An artificial divine realm of human civilization would emerge, where they'd slaughter each other, driven to utter madness, committing every atrocity imaginable, performing unspeakable acts upon all manner of hideous, grotesque monsters. Even if rescued and saved, they would carry enormous trauma for the rest of their lives.

The Evil God creature linked with the Jester's mind.

Then it couldn't help but freeze.

*Hm? What in the world is this? Reincarnator, Ocean Civilization, main world, warring space... what is all this nonsense? Do these things exist in the dimensional ocean? Fear! I want what he fears most!*

*Destruction from the stars?*

*The end of the world?*

*Lan Yi Lan Yi Lan Yi Lan Yi Lan Yi Lan Yi Lan Yi Lan Yi, lunatic, lunatic?*

*Oh, the main course I just swallowed is Lan Yi? What a pathetic world-ender. Humans are just weak and useless, making a fuss over a mere timeline restart... wait, what? Timeline restart?! Shit!*

The Evil God creature convulsed violently.

Hastily severing the neural link, it casually tossed the rag-doll-like Jester to the ground and looked down at its own abdominal cavity.

Just as it was about to spit Lan Yi back out—

The blood-red Evil God creature froze solid.

It wasn't that it didn't *want* to move. It *couldn't* move. Its thought signals extinguished in an instant.

The logic was simple. Before completing the transformation of its body with strong force and electromagnetic forces, if any carbon-based life form chose to swallow a ball of spiritual-energy plasma at tens of thousands of degrees Celsius into its body—causing the material's own internal energy chemical reaction barriers to collapse—then unless that carbon-based life could convert itself into spiritual energy in time, it was absolutely dead.

A hand.

A hand wrapped in searing plasma tore through the Evil God creature's stomach.

RIIIP!!

The next second, Lan Yi, smoke curling from every inch of his body, slowly lowered himself out of a mass of charred, liquefied matter, returning to the mortal world in a rather awkward side-lying posture.

Lan Yi couldn't help but gasp in great lungfuls of fresh air.

No other reason—it stank. The inside of that filthy alien creature was absolutely reeking, a stench beyond all description, comparable to a biochemical bomb. Had he not possessed a trump card that could more effectively send this Evil God creature to its grave, Old Demon Lan would never have docilely allowed himself to be swallowed.

When Lan Yi turned around, the originally crimson Evil God creature had already transformed into a lump of half-melted, half-solid grayish-white matter, its former savage form barely discernible. Once vitality was utterly stripped away and energy thrown into complete chaos, the seemingly invincible, monstrous Evil God creature was really not much different from a pile of mud.

Lan Yi, sitting up, hadn't even steadied himself—

The Jester behind him suddenly struck.

Gripping the broken blade, he whipped around and viciously stabbed at the back of Lan Yi's head. The shard of steel sank deep into his skull.

"So that's it. You madman, Lan—a madman in every sense of the word." The Jester released his grip, his body teetering and collapsing to the ground. "Ha... hah..."

The instant the Jester let go, the broken blade embedded in Lan Yi's forehead vanished without a trace.

And beneath Lan Yi's cracked brow—there was no flesh and blood, no white bone, no brain tissue. Instead, there was an absolute darkness. A black so deep and unfathomable it seemed capable of devouring anything, even light itself couldn't escape.

That was a dao technique space that could not exist within flesh and blood!

One of Lan Yi's carefully woven trump cards.

Dalevis was a reincarnator, and a spiritual energy cultivator.

He knew his death was certain. That stab was purely to confirm his hypothesis.

Spiritual energy cultivators had two defining traits: insatiable curiosity and a rich imagination. Without those, neither dao techniques nor martial arts could carry you far. So even in death, Dalevis was curious how Lan Yi had managed to weave a dao technique space beneath his own flesh.

"Simple. Keep the dao technique space permanently open, then weave the lifeline plexus into it, maintaining the flow and exchange of spiritual energy. That's all." Lan Yi spoke calmly, showing no hostility toward the Jester, who was beginning to cough up blood as his life force faded.

"!!!"

Dalevis had a sudden revelation.

It was a crude method. Probably a crude method only Lan Yi could use.

The dao technique realm required no leakage; the innate primordial qi required spirit refinement; you needed abundant spiritual energy to constantly replenish consumption; and you needed a deep, accumulated knowledge of dao techniques. Yet this crude method provided no direct, visible combat power—it merely maintained a dao technique space beneath skin and muscle woven from lifeline plexus.

Doing something like this meant there was genuinely something wrong with him!

Dalevis finally understood, too.

Why, when he'd split open Lan Yi's throat with a single stroke, severing even his spiritual energy flow, Lan Yi had still emerged completely unharmed.

The dao technique space had swallowed ninety-nine percent of the damage.

The remaining surface-level scratch, 【Azure Splendor】could repair with ease.

Of course, toying with dao techniques like this wasn't without risk. The moment Dalevis grasped the underlying mechanism, he instantly realized where the danger lay.

"Aren't you afraid of death? You turned high-energy crystal into plasma and hid it inside your body... no, that's Shenxiao Peak's thunder-nurturing method, but not the kind you can nurture with a lifeline plexus. You modified the requirements of the dao technique organ and nurtured a weakened plasma dao technique. You're a madman who'll stop at nothing to grow stronger. You're not even human..."

Dalevis's words trailed off as his head lolled to the side. Lifeless.

His body and spirit had been gravely wounded.

And in the final moment, his will had been crushed outright by Lan Yi's reckless, suicidal drive to become stronger. Though he hadn't been among the top-tier spiritual energy cultivators of the Ocean Civilization in his past life, dying like this as a reincarnator was indeed a somewhat pathetic end.

At least he'd died spectacularly, becoming the first name on Old Demon Lan's satisfying kill list.

Compared to certain reincarnators who, before the warring space even descended, had no place to flee and were purged in advance—now *those* truly died in humiliation. Those people never even got the chance to take off or clear their names.

All one could say was: good riddance!

"Grow stronger. By any means necessary. Because if I don't grow stronger, I'll be eaten by these non-human species." Lan Yi voiced his innermost thoughts to the two corpses beside him.

In his past life or this one.

Ever since becoming a spiritual energy cultivator.

A strange feeling had lingered in Lan Yi's heart—like an invisible voice constantly urging him on. *Faster. Faster still. If you stop to enjoy yourself, something irreversible will happen.*

Scaring himself?

No.

The number of enemies of humanity had always been as countless as the stars in the sky.

"Yingray, the Pantheon—bold decisions, truly. You've made your moves. For the next month, the board is mine."

He didn't even need to think.

Lan Yi knew exactly who had done this.

On the Ocean Civilization side, the only ones with the audacity and capability to participate were Yingray and the Pantheon. As for the River Civilization side... it was hard to say. Every reincarnator was potentially suspect. But that was an easy problem to solve—just beat every single one of them black and blue until the truth came out. After all, the River Civilization could let a hundred flowers bloom, but one bloom must always stand above the rest.

At that thought, Lan Yi couldn't help but chuckle.

The rumors about Artificial Divine Realm 1909 seemed about to come true.

It appeared that he, Lan So-and-So, was truly going to become the Great Luo Golden Immortal among all these celestial immortals—leaping out of the Three Realms, beyond the Five Elements.

After battle.

Came the most thrilling post-victory cigarette time. The aftertaste, the comfort, the enjoyment, and the profound satisfaction—these went without saying.

Without that post-victory cigarette time, the meaning of battle would be halved.

"Friends? Ha, 'friends,' I've come to visit you all."

Even a person of noble character and kind heart like Old Demon Lan, when mentioning his "friends" and recalling his past—when all hope was lost and he had nowhere left to turn—couldn't help but reveal a warm, genial smile from the depths of his soul.

This healthy, cheerful smile was so genuine that even a card-game fanatic would think they'd met a kindred spirit!

……

……

As a non-renewable strategic resource.

As Lan Yi's must-eat list in Tianhai, the total number added up to not that many—just over twenty or thirty people. Some of them were even rush-delivered from elsewhere by air.

For the past eight days.

The strategic resources' treatment had naturally been far from pleasant.

While they hadn't been subjected to Amaliken's globally cutting-edge prisoner-abuse techniques, the "memory restoration therapy" had been applied to them in full. Normally, they were either pampered elites, polished self-interested types, light-eating yogis, or power-wielding bigwigs—never had they enjoyed such "VIP treatment" of promoting blood circulation, breaking up bruises, regular schedules, and wellness health.

On the first day, every last one of them was bawling and begging for their parents. Not just the misdeeds they'd committed—they could recall in vivid detail the very first time they'd wet the bed as children.

Even the few hard-boned holdouts who stubbornly resisted picked up on the unusual signals from this extraordinary, special handling.

They might have...

Kicked an iron plate without realizing it.

In this strange place—no lawyers, no windows, no freedom, no trial—each day felt like a year as they barely managed to endure less than twenty-four hours.

Then the warring space descended.

Overjoyed, they decisively chose to enter!

But they failed to notice the mocking, contemptuous looks in the eyes of a few casually dressed personnel.

The Artificial Divine Realm was no gentle cradle.

If an ordinary person didn't have their wits about them, they only needed to look at how miserably Xiao Hongzhuan had fared there to understand.

For them to go in...

Heh. If they'd had any real skill, they wouldn't have been sent to the afterlife one by one by Old Demon Lan in their previous lives. And if they *did* bring back some real gains, then all the better—they could have a thrilling octagonal-cage match with Old Demon Lan.

Just as Zhang Shouzheng had anticipated.

Seven days later.

The returning strategic resources, apart from gaining a few extra wounds, losing a few inconsequential parts, or losing a chastity that could be washed clean and reused, were mostly unchanged.

They even shuddered at the mere mention of the Artificial Divine Realm, insisting they'd rather die than go back.

This place was better.

Everyone here was a talent, the conversation was pleasant—staying here felt just like coming home!

Until the earth shook and the entire underground plunged into deathly silence and darkness. Only then did they realize: in this drastically transformed world, abandoned and locked away like the dead, they were about to be buried alive.

Buried alive!

What a terrifying word!!