Rise of The Demon General

Chapter 390: Chapter 390. Seclusion

Five years passed since the fall of Qishurg City. Amon had withdrawn from civilization. He spent the entire five years in the wilderness. He made contact with no one, not even his underlings.

He had built a strong foundation on either the Vicious Faction or the Demon Gang. They were led by people he trusted to have good leadership. He knew they would continue even without his presence. Some probably thought he died during the spirit beasts’ invasion of Qishurg City five years ago, but he knew his trusted lieutenants would think otherwise. He had told them once unless they saw his dead body they should not give up.

He didn’t let them know of his whereabouts to give them plausible deniability. If someone investigated and found out half of his organizations were out of Qishurg City when the invasion occurred, they might be questioned. Knowing nothing of the truth, they didn’t need to lie to deny their involvement in the disaster. Most of them thought he was dead, which should make their testimony even more convincing.

However, he thought the chance of such an investigation was small. The rebels would no doubt take credit for the invasion to humiliate the kingdom and improve their credibility. There was no reason for the authorities to investigate further for the perpetrator.

He didn’t try to find out. He isolated himself from everyone. He stayed in an underground bunker in the wilderness. He built this bunker in secret during his years at the Royal Academy. The entrance to the bunker was hidden by shrubs.

He engraved words of power at this entrance. The enchantment he placed was nothing fancy like the seal for his residence at the Royal Academy. It could not prevent anybody from entering. His skill as an engraver was not good enough for that kind of enchantment. All he could achieve was an enchantment that caused an alarm if an intruder entered.

He also tamed a moon wolf from the pack roaming near his bunker. This moon wolf stayed hidden outside as a sentry and provided additional warning to him if it spotted cultivators approaching.

During the five years he stayed in isolation, he only encountered two trespassing events. Both were due to wandering cultivators who accidentally stumbled upon his bunker’s entrance. Luckily, on both occasions, the trespassers were Transformation Stage cultivators.

He easily dispatched the trespassers from both occurrences.

He isolated himself for five years to focus on his cultivation. With the Spring of Life, he had enough resources to help him become stronger. He didn’t need to strive for more.

He built a small pond in his bunker and poured a small portion of the water from the Spring of Life into it. Every day, he submerged himself in the pond and cultivated. The advantage of using the Spring of Life was tens of times the effect of his Royal Academy’s residence.

The advantage of using the Spring of Life was not only the advantage of his cultivation speed. With constant usage, his body underwent a change as well. His skin became denser and paler, his muscles tauter, and his bone harder. His body became more durable. It was hard to wound him even when he didn’t use any defensive art.

Combined with his Poison Blood Infusion Method, he had a much stronger and tougher constitution compared to a cultivator of the same level.

As for the Poison Blood Infusion Method, he had completed the infusion half a year after isolating himself. Consuming the concoction using Yuka’s blood no longer caused him pain. In theory, he was now immune to poison. He tested it by stabbing himself using a knife coated in Cold Stiff Poison. It didn’t even cause him discomfort.

One physical change he noticed after completing the infusion was the appearance of his eyes. His Sclera and Iris darkened. They became almost as dark as the pupil. This made his entire eyes appear black. These black eyes gave him a sinister look. He didn’t mind the change. On the contrary, he was glad about it. This change made his eyes able to see in the dark even without using the cat-eye pills.

After five years of cultivation aided by the Spring of Life, Amon entered the Martial Realm. He was now at the Beginning Mystic Stage. Entering this stage, he knew all the effort to steal the Spring of Life was worth it.

Under normal circumstances, the most talented cultivators require fifteen years to enter the martial realm as the fastest record. That was already considering they consumed various expensive cultivation pills. On average, regular cultivators who had just broken through to the Peak Transformation Stage might require around thirty to fifty years to enter the Martial Realm. A vast majority couldn’t even break through for their entire lives because they couldn’t get their hands on the required resources.

Amon didn’t have that problem. With the Spring of Life and the Poison Blood Infusion Method, he no longer needed any cultivation pills or breakthrough pills. His cultivation advanced to the next stage once it reached the limit. There was no bottleneck.

In his case, he spent eight years reaching that limit. Three years during the Royal Academy’s senior years without using the Spring of Life and five years during his isolation using it.

He was now thirty-five years old. He still had the body of a youth of twenty years. That was because he reached the Transformation Stage early. Now that he also entered the Mystic Stage early, he would keep this appearance for quite some while.

From the theory he learned, his lifespan should now be three hundred years. This was something unimaginable in his previous life. With this lifespan, he only lived through ten percent of his life. When his cultivation improved, his lifespan was further extended. It was even said that one could become immortal when one reached the Divine Realm. He couldn’t wait for that to happen.

Amon continued to spare equal time between his divine and infernal cultivations. The Spring of Life granted the same effect for infernal cultivation. Hence, his infernal cultivation also improved. His infernal cultivation was now at the Peak Malevolent Stage.

The closer his infernal cultivation got to his divine cultivation’s level, the less it received a cultivation boost. He had known since he started cultivating infernal energy that his two opposite cultivations tried to balance one another. When the infernal cultivation was much lower, his normal energy core acted like a magnet that helped his black energy core improve. Now that they were almost equal, this magnet effect decreased. He did not doubt once the two energy cores were at equal sizes, they would no longer help each other.

Amon didn’t just focus on cultivation. He didn’t neglect training his arts.

Thanks to his cultivation improvement and his S-rank darkness affinity, he finally learned the darkness-element arcane art given by the Dark God, the Elder God Tentacles. This arcane art was classified as a high-tier profound art, the highest level of art he ever knew of. Even the Royal Academy didn’t have a record of art at this level. Hence, the difficulty in learning. For now, his mastery of the art was only at the beginner level.

At this mastery, the Elder God Tentacles conjured a dark tentacle out of thin air. The limit he could conjure the tentacle was ten meters away from him. The tentacle itself was twenty meters long. It was highly flexible and fast. Amon could control the way the tentacle moved. If he didn’t exert control, the tentacles would automatically lash at anything it deemed hostile.

Anything caught by the tentacle suffered erosion. It could erode even the aether circulation, so a cultivator caught by this tentacle would have problems generating enough power to escape.

Aside from learning the Elder God Tentacles, he also learned another new art. The art was a low-tier profound movement art from the Pyramid Library. The art was called Invisible Sky Steps.

This art was suitable for Mystic Realm because it didn’t need footwork. It could be used in the air. The art gave him a quick boost of speed in any direction. It could be executed consecutively, giving him great maneuverability.

Amon also learned two new poison recipes from the 101 Primal Poison Tome. The first recipe was to concoct a poison named Eternal Anguish Poison. Coincidentally, he had access to its rarest ingredients, which were Midnight Bloom and the blood of a mythical-grade beast.

The Midnight Bloom was a flower that only grew in an area filled with infernal aether. He acquired this spirit plant during the incident with the Dark God. Thankfully, this spirit plant could live and grow inside his black space ring, proving the space inside his black space ring contained the infernal aether.

As for the blood of the mythical-grade beast, he had Yuka. Hence, he continued to harvest her blood even after completing the Poison Blood Infusion Method.

The Eternal Anguish Poison was not a deadly poison. On the contrary, the poison kept its consumer alive. However, those who consumed it would wish they were dead instead. This was because the poison delivered excruciating bodily pain while healing the victim of the wounds it caused at the same time.

Furthermore, the poison stretched its victim’s perception of time. The victim experienced the suffering longer than it truly was. The higher the grade of the mythical beast’s blood, the longer the time dilation. Using the blood of a higher mythical beast like the Zuanze Butterfly, the victim experienced one year of torture in the span of an hour.

This was the ultimate torture tool. He concocted many bottles during his free time.

The second recipe was called Endless Slumber Poison, another non-lethal poison. It put the victim in an endless sleep. The victim would only wake up when a special antidote was administered.

At the end of this fifth year, Amon stepped out of his bunker. He decided it was time to end his seclusion.