"I've said before, what Astaroth fears the most has never been power itself," someone said.
"His essence is to corrupt the good and deceive the innocent. He manipulates others' emotions, and his power is based on the control of emotions."
"What you're doing now is to throw wild emotions that are beyond his control right in his face."
"To him, this stuff is like poison."
Chen Guan heard these words, but his consciousness was already beginning to blur.
The cries grew louder, and the resentment grew heavier. His hands trembled, not out of fear but due to the resonance.
He saw a woman holding a child jump into the fire.
He saw an old man kneeling on the stage with his spine crushed under someone's feet.
He saw too many memories that didn't belong to him.
"Chen Guan!"
An Changqing's voice came from afar, clearly filled with anxiety. "Your state is wrong. Stop!"
For someone like Chen Guan, who had a rather calm personality, any intense emotion stood out sharply.
Chen Guan didn't answer. He didn't have the energy to.
He raised his scythe, preparing for the second strike. The black mist on the blade was thicker than the first time.
His pupils were being eroded by the blackness.
Baal's voice changed its tone. "Hey, kid, are you still there?"
"Yes," Chen Guan replied, a bit late. His voice was hoarse, almost like a different person.
"Good. Lord Bael doesn't want you to turn into a walking corpse. That would be no fun."
As a demon without human emotions, Baal actually couldn't understand Chen Guan.
It would have been so much easier if he had just let Baal handle everything. Why go through all this trouble?
The scythe fell.
The second black slash tore through the air, aiming straight at Liu Xiao's face.
Liu Xiao's face contorted. He no longer maintained his calm demeanor. He forcefully pushed out his hands, and purple demonic energy poured out, colliding head - on with the black slash.
Boom!
The two forces exploded in the air. The shockwave shattered all the remaining maze walls around.
Liu Xiao took three steps back in the dust. He looked down at his palm. A tiny wound on his palm was oozing blood.
He was injured.
"You..."
Liu Xiao looked up at the figure holding the scythe in the dust, sizing up this former underclassman who wasn't very remarkable before.
"Interesting."
When the dust cleared, everyone's hearts skipped a beat at Chen Guan's state.
His left eye had completely turned black. On his right hand holding the scythe, black veins were spreading up his arm.
The lingering hatred was devouring him.
"The third strike," he mumbled. When he uttered these words, there were voices that didn't belong to him mixed in his voice.
He raised the scythe again. The black mist condensed on the blade took on the form of distorted and overlapping human faces, which let out silent howls.
"Chen Guan, that's enough!"
An Changqing's voice rang out again. He dragged his injured body towards here, leaning on his sword. Every step he took left a trail of blood.
Long Ao crawled out from the broken wall. The dented armor on his chest still had gravel hanging on it. When he saw Chen Guan's state, his pupils contracted.
"Hey! Stop!"
Chen Guan ignored everyone's calls.
At this moment, there were only two voices in his mind. One was the howls and cries of countless souls, and the other was Baal's voice, which had become extremely clear.
"If you strike the third time, your consciousness will be completely submerged. Conservatively estimated, the probability of your recovery is less than thirty percent," Baal said, his tone rarely without mockery.
"Of course, if you hand your body over to Lord Bael, I can clean up those messy emotions after you strike and keep you safe."
He still didn't give up.
"... You're still circling back to that topic," Chen Guan replied intermittently. It seemed that only when talking to Baal could the noise in his ears be a bit less noisy.
"Hehe, Lord Bael is just stating objective facts."
The black veins had climbed onto his shoulders and were spreading along his neck towards his face. Black threads were also starting to appear in his right eye.
The scythe was held in mid - air. The power being gathered made the surrounding air tremble.
Liu Xiao stood three steps away. After a brief moment of shock, his expression regained its calm, and the corner of his mouth even curled up.
"Strike, Student Chen Guan," he said, spreading his arms as if inviting.
"Every strike you make brings you closer to losing yourself. Do you think I'm not dodging for no reason?"
He stuck out his tongue and licked the bloodstains on his lips, looking confident of victory.
These words made An Changqing's face turn deathly pale.
Hong Yuan's fingers holding the axe cracked. She wanted to rush up to stop Chen Guan, but her legs were pressed down by the divine pressure and couldn't move an inch.
Chen Guan stopped.
The scythe hung in the air. The black faces on the blade let out silent shrieks, urging him to strike.
The voices of the souls in his mind became deafening. Each one was crying for him to swing the scythe, to pour out this hatred and smash the smiling man in front of him.
"Strike!"
"Strike!"
"Tear him to pieces!"
Chen Guan pressed his lips into a thin line. The muscles in his arm holding the scythe tensed to the limit as he struggled fiercely against an invisible force.
Baal's voice suddenly became very soft. "Kid, if you can stop in this state, Lord Bael will really take a second look at you."
"However, most likely, you won't be able to do it."
A hoarse laugh came from Chen Guan's throat.
"Are you using reverse psychology?"
"Caught me? Didn't Lord Bael act naturally enough?"
The black mist on the scythe churned violently, and the howls of the faces reached their peak.
Chen Guan raised his left hand.
Instead of grabbing the handle of the scythe, he spread his five fingers and pressed the black mark on his palm, which was emitting a burning light, onto his forehead.
The moment the black mark was activated, all the negative emotions that had flooded into his consciousness were blocked out by a barrier. The wailing faces crashed into the barrier, let out shrill cries, and then fled in all directions.
The black mist condensed on the scythe didn't dissipate, but it stopped corroding Chen Guan's body.
He successfully locked all the power of the lingering hatred on the blade and isolated the erosion of his own consciousness.
What Chen Guan possessed was not only the power of lingering hatred but also the gift from a half - step emotion demon.
Liu Xiao's smile froze.
"How did you..."
"You're right. I shouldn't have struck you with the third strike," Chen Guan said. His voice regained some clarity. He turned around, and the scythe no longer pointed at Liu Xiao.
Instead, it pointed at the shattered heart behind Liu Xiao. Although it was broken, there were still residual pipelines maintaining the operation of the formation.
Liu Xiao's expression cracked.
"How dare you!"
He shot forward like an arrow. The purple demonic energy in his palm condensed into a sharp blade and stabbed straight at Chen Guan's back.
And at this moment, Long Ao's figure blocked between the two of them.
This time, he didn't punch. Instead, he spread his arms and took the blow with his own body.
The purple blade pierced through his left shoulder, and blood spattered.
Long Ao bared his teeth, showing a mouthful of blood - stained teeth.
"Go," he said to Chen Guan with just one word.
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
