The leader of the Desire Demon Race, a woman named Bai Yimo, felt her body tossed about like a stray leaf in a storm. She struggled to resist the tearing forces of a "Chaotic Hell" that had expanded to 120 times its original size.
Her alluring eyes were now filled with utter disbelief!
’Why can he use my skill too?’
’And amplify it to such a degree?’
She had no time to think.
Luckily, she still had a life-saving skill, [Seeing Mist]. But just as a flicker of relief crossed her mind, the [Borer] found a loophole in her [Desire]. An excruciating pain, as if something were gnawing on her very mind, assaulted her. The agony far surpassed anything she had ever experienced before. It was as if a chunk had been viciously bitten out of her heart! Not even her life-saving [Seeing Mist] could evade it!
The pain made Bai Yimo tremble and convulse.
A massive amount of mist dissipated from her body. She lost her balance in the storm, tumbling into a vortex of desire, into the Chaotic Hell.
Anger, competitiveness, ruthlessness, vanity, arrogance, conceit, bravado... An onslaught of emotions clawed at her like demonic hands, tearing at her hair and limbs, ripping open gashes all over her. Her perfect body was on the verge of being brutally torn apart. And directly above, a ten-meter-long colossal pillar was about to crash down!
Beset on all sides!
’Bastard!’
Forcing herself to endure the excruciating pain, Bai Yimo screamed at the top of her lungs:
"The method for inheriting multiple Nirvana Origins! Do you really not want to know?!"
BOOM!
Shi Ming didn’t hesitate for a second.
The Stone Pillar of Profanity and Transgression, radiating an aura of retribution, smashed mercilessly into the Desire Demon. What was once a vision of sacred, snow-white beauty was flattened beneath the pillar, stained with the dust of desire and corruption. She was crushed from a three-dimensional being into something like a two-dimensional painted skin.
She wasn’t dead.
Shi Ming knew what he was doing.
His attack was perfectly measured, staying just below the lethal threshold. These two strikes hadn’t truly killed her, but they had stripped her of the majority of her combat strength and forced her to recognize her position. He had greatly disliked the Desire Demon’s previous wild arrogance and haughty negotiation tactics. ’Now that she’s like this,’ he thought, ’we should be able to have a proper conversation, right?’
If you wanted to beg for a deal, you should act like you’re begging.
Not put on an air of, "I’m giving you a chance to trade with me, so you’d better take it!"
His objective achieved, Shi Ming ceased his attack.
"Speak. What is the method?"
He wasn’t worried about her trying any tricks.
In a few more minutes, his Eye of Destiny’s information-gathering ability would refresh. Even if this woman refused to cooperate, he could just search for the relevant information himself. If he didn’t find it the first time, he’d try a second. If not the second, then a third. Even if he only found a few clues, he could make some bold hypotheses and test them later. And even if that didn’t work, he would surely gain something else.
It was a no-lose situation.
"You..."
Bai Yimo, who had been flattened into the semblance of a painted skin, began to inflate.
Resuming her human form, she possessed a kind of heart-wrenching, battle-worn beauty. Any being in the Star Sea, even a female Pillar Stone with an iron will, would feel a pang of pity and find a strange protective urge welling up, unwilling to harm her further.
With the passive ability of her [Desire] alone, Bai Yimo could have become a famous figure in any Cosmic Country. But the Desire Demon Race rarely showed their true faces, so the names "Bai Yimo" and "Mo Yibai" were not well-known.
But the three-headed, six-armed Shi Ming remained completely unmoved.
He still held the stone pillar aloft.
’Hmph! Trying to charm me?’
’I don’t even know if you’re really a man or a woman!’
Seeing this, Bai Yimo knew he wouldn’t fall for either threats or charms. She temporarily set aside her little schemes. As she climbed out of the deep crater, her voice was uneven and she was gasping for breath, a clear aftereffect of the intense battle.
"Hah... hah..."
"I always thought I was a once-in-ten-thousand-years genius of the Star Sea. That’s why some old geezers grew jealous of me. They didn’t kill me, but they exiled me to this strange space."
"You... are also extraordinary."
"But even geniuses cannot escape the shackles and limits of the universe. At most, one can obtain two of their own Nirvana skills, either through comprehension or inheritance."
"..."
What Bai Yimo was describing was the exclusivity of Nirvana Origins.
Shi Ming’s knowledge on the subject was even more detailed than hers.
The Eye of Destiny had once told him that Nirvana skills gained through "inheritance" were mutually exclusive. Skills one "comprehended" on their own did not have this exclusivity. However, for most beings in the Star Sea, comprehending even one Nirvana Origin was their absolute limit, exhausting all their potential. Trying to comprehend a second one was akin to creating a new world, a task more than ten thousand times harder.
Bai Yimo took a ragged breath, glanced at her completely destroyed ancestral land, and continued speaking, unconcerned.
"You probably don’t know this,"
"but my three Nirvana Origins were all acquired through inheritance."
"The value of this information is immeasurable."
"Our battle today was a complete misunderstanding. I am willing to share this secret with you without reservation. I only hope that after you learn it, you will take me away from this prison."
Bai Yimo still held onto a sliver of hope.
But this time, her tone was much softer, and the terms of cooperation had changed. She would first show her sincerity by telling Shi Ming the secret, and only after he had learned it would he fulfill his end of the bargain.
In her eyes, this was already a huge concession.
But Shi Ming shook his head.
"If I spare you, I only get one secret. If I kill you, I get three Nirvana Origins."
"Your fate depends on how much your secret is worth."
In his state of Void Clarity, Shi Ming’s mortal nature was diminished and his divine nature enhanced. Rationality took precedence, suppressing emotion. But even without the influence of the Bright Eyes of the Void, he would never have promised to free a Desire Demon who controlled [Desire] from her prison.
"You little bas— You won’t even make a promise?"
"I won’t."
"Then how can I trust you?"
The borer formed from Shi Ming’s Spiritual Power took another bite.
A bit of forceful persuasion.
"I can kill you at any time and obtain at least three Origins."
"But I am not some bloodthirsty demon. If the value of your secret is greater than those three Origins, I can follow the flow of fate and make an equal exchange. I can spare you."
"This is my only promise."
"I’ll give you three minutes to consider."
"After three minutes, we either make a deal, or you can go to the real Hell and reunite with the kinsmen who died by your own skill. For a genius, that would be a truly pathetic end."
Given that Bai Yimo had a life-saving skill, for Shi Ming to kill her, he would need to use his borer to gnaw away at her three skill Origins. He would have to overwhelm her abilities with brute force, destroying the very foundation of her existence. However, doing so would damage the three skill Origins, greatly reducing their value. And because of their exclusivity, he wouldn’t be able to absorb them directly like he did with the Holy Hall Origin.
’Besides,’ he thought, ’if I don’t squeeze her a little, how can I extract the most value?’