Go to Hell

**Huff... huff... huff...**

A cold wave laced with dark energy rolled in from behind him — and Lu Nian suddenly realized there was indeed something at his back.

A Demon-Beast??

Unlikely. Even without fully unleashing his Petrify power, it would turn everything in the surrounding area into statues. Any Demon-Beast that dared approach would be Petrified on the spot.

Noticing the strange smile spreading across Zhankong's face, Lu Nian finally turned around, a knot of unease refusing to leave him.

In that one instant, a face bore down on him from a distance — fast as a gust of wind — and stopped mere inches from his own. Lu Nian went completely still.

*Who — who is this??*

Why was this face covered in blood-red veins pulsing with dark energy? How could the light burning in those eyes send a chill this deep into his bones?

"Mo... Mo Fan??" Lu Nian stared in disbelief at the figure who had lunged into his face.

"That's right!" Mo Fan's grin split wide — a wild, savage grin, pushed so far past the edge that it had curdled into something cold and cruel to the very marrow. His voice was nothing like it used to be, and yet the words that came out were ones Lu Nian knew all too well: "I told you — the next time I saw you, I'd send your inbred mongrel self straight to hell!!"

The demonic Mo Fan wasn't much for thinking. But the hatred burned into his memory before the transformation was not something that could simply be shaken loose. The simmering rage that had never fully found a Release point deep within him had, at last, found the perfect target — this vile, monstrous Military Commander Lu Nian. He would grind him to dust, soul and all.

Lu Nian still hadn't recovered, because he could no longer tell whether this person was Mo Fan — or a Mo Fan who had undergone Demonization.

He had experimented on countless living subjects. Not one of them could speak after Demonization, because they transformed completely into monsters — unable to maintain even a human appearance. The Mo Fan before him, aside from the blood-red veins crawling across his skin and the long white hair cascading upward as if defying gravity, still retained his original form.

But if he hadn't undergone Demonization — then why was his entire being radiating an evil aura that made Lu Nian's very bones tremble? How could the power pouring off him feel so disturbingly wrong???

"I can't let you die too quickly... What do you say you bow your head to me first??" The demonic Mo Fan grinned, and a row of saber-like fangs pressed through his lips.

Before the words had faded, the demonic Mo Fan's hand shot out and seized the back of Lu Nian's skull.

"With what you've got — you think standing this close to me, your body can still moooove?! — AGHHH!!!!" Lu Nian's words cut off mid-sentence as the demonic Mo Fan grabbed his skull and, with sheer brute force, drove his head straight into the ground.

Lu Nian hit face-first. No defense. No bracing. Mo Fan pressed him down like a dog being put to earth, his head driven into the stone with a **CRACK!!**

The ground, originally mud, had been Petrified to the hardness of bedrock. Lu Nian had intended this Petrification to turn the living into dead things — yet here was this same stone-hard surface, testing its durability against his own face!!

**CRACK!!!!** A great spray of powder burst outward from the Petrified rock. Lu Nian's head plowed clean through the surface and into the earth beneath, his whole body like an ostrich with its head buried in sand — wretched and agonized.

Lu Nian was a High-Level Mage, after all; his constitution far surpassed that of an ordinary person. Had a Servant-class creature taken the same blow, its skull would have burst like a watermelon dropped from a rooftop, painting the ground vivid red. Lu Nian merely had his features caved in across the middle of his face, soaked in blood.

"I'll... I'll make you pay for this!!" Golden light blazed across Lu Nian's body, the radiance shaping itself into layer upon layer of interlocking flexible plating that swiftly encased him entirely.

This Armor Enchanted Gear was of extraordinarily high caliber — it even guarded his head. Just as the demonic Mo Fan raised his fist to drive it into Lu Nian's face, the golden flexible plating had already closed over his cheeks.

The demonic Mo Fan barely glanced at the Armor Enchanted Gear that had appeared. He hauled Lu Nian upright, and his right fist burst into searing, blistering flame.

A fist blazing like a falling meteor hurtled straight at Lu Nian's face. Gold plating or not — who cared??

**BOOM!!**

Fire detonated. The moment the fist connected, the tremendous blaze exploded outward in all directions. The facial plating absorbed the brunt of the flame — sparing Lu Nian's skull from being reduced to ash — but the raw force of the blow shattered every tooth in his mouth and drove his nose sideways across his face...

The golden Armor Enchanted Gear had no hope of absorbing that kind of violence. A section crumbled away, exposing Lu Nian's thoroughly destroyed face, streaming with blood.

"Pet... Petr... *Petrify...*" Lu Nian was a High-Level Mage — and even under this punishment he still managed to summon a high-level spell.

Augmented by his armguard, the Petrify force erupted from Lu Nian's caved-in eye sockets, and everywhere his gaze swept, gray-white Petrification spread in a frenzied tide.

Lu Nian's fury had reached its absolute peak. He was going to turn this little wretch into dead matter and shatter every fragment to dust!!

The demonic Mo Fan paid no mind to the Petrify — he pressed forward. Before long, gray-white power was crawling up his legs, rooting his feet into the stone.

The infuriated demonic Mo Fan drove a fist into the ground. An enormous column of fire erupted upward from the earth, clashing headlong against that gray-white army of Petrification swarming up like termites!!

The gray-white rock had already spread to coat the hundred-meter radius around Mo Fan when the fire blasting from the earth fractured every slab of it apart. The two forces slammed into each other — solidifying, then cracking, then crumbling — like two armies, one clad in rose-red and the other in ash-white, locked in savage, grinding combat.

Military Commander Lu Nian's pupils continued to dilate. The Petrify power came from his eyes, but the trembling wracking his body made it plain he was straining to sustain it.

This was a force capable of Petrifying even Commander-class creatures. What gave this person the ability to withstand it??

And beyond that — if he had undergone Demonization, why was he still rational? Why did he still remember the grudge from before??

"You little bastard — you should... you should be *thanking* me. It was *I*... who gave you this tremendous power!!" Lu Nian snarled, shaking with fury.

Mo Fan had undergone Demonization on his own — Lu Nian hadn't even had time to seize mental control. And he had never imagined that this prime test subject would Demonize so flawlessly: human form intact, capable of speech, memory preserved, power erupting off the charts.

This kid was still an Intermediate-Level Mage, and he could already Demonize into something this terrifyingly powerful. If he survived the side effects and pushed his strength to even greater heights, he would become a demon that would shake the entire world.

Supreme Mages, Commanders, Sovereigns — all would be crushed beneath his heel!

"Of course I should thank you..." The demonic Mo Fan let madness and frenzy seep out from the very marrow of his bones. Those saber fangs bared themselves again in a deranged leer, and his voice dropped to something absolute, "So let me send you to hell — *right now!!!!!*"