Chapter 138: Demon-Subduing Pill

The Heart of the Barrier Sea.

The Demon King stood once more, gazing toward the north.

The ten-year pact had now reached its ninth year. Would she come? Every day, he asked himself this question a thousand times over.

Back then, she had asked him with such casual indifference, "Hu San, do you trust me?" Yet, he had chosen to place his absolute faith in her, abandoning everything to drift away from the Valley of Joy—a place he had built with his own hands, nesting it together bit by bit like a swallow building its home.

Afterward, upon returning to the Heart of the Barrier Sea, his heart had inexplicably begun to flutter with unease.

A year later, a strange new voice seemed to take root within him. Whenever he found a moment of stillness, that voice would shriek sharply: "Hu San, have you lost your mind? That woman is nothing but a liar! She swindled you out of your mustard-seed space and stole your trust. Fool! Now that she has what she wanted, she will never come to find you!"

The voice haunted him day and night. He could find no peace. For nine years, he had been unable to cultivate, or even sit in meditation.

He knew his own body best. The Demon King was well aware that this voice was his inner demon.

What was he to do? Never in his life had he felt such terror.

"Hu San, sorry to keep you waiting." After lingering in the air for a moment to observe, Feng Ke'er appeared with a radiant smile—it was her habit to scout the situation before revealing herself in a new place.

Little did she know, that smiling face seemed more brilliant and magnificent to the Demon King than the miles of peach blossoms in the Forest of Tidings.

"You... you have come." He was slightly stunned. Within his broad sleeves, his hands were clenched tightly into trembling fists.

"Impossible! How could she appear? She must have ulterior motives! Oh, her cultivation has stalled at the peak of the Void Transformation Stage. If she absorbs your ten thousand years of cultivation, she will make a great leap forward. She intends to steal your power! Strike first! Kill her, kill her immediately!" The voice shrieked hideously. In an instant, his heart felt like a stampede of ten thousand horses.

Disaster! The inner demon had taken hold and refused to retreat. It rampaged through his sea of consciousness, causing his blood to surge and his spiritual energy to flow in reverse.

His blue eyes suddenly shifted to a bewitching crimson. The world before him seemed veiled in red gauze.

"Ah. No, the inner demon is surfacing!"

He had to leave! The Demon King gritted his teeth, summoned all his spiritual strength, pressed his hands firmly against his chest, and rasped, "You—do not follow me!" Before the words even faded, he stumbled away, fleeing toward his cave dwelling.

Having observed from the air for so long, how could Feng Ke'er fail to see what was happening to the Demon King? A fist-sized inner demon resided in his sea of consciousness. She truly wondered how this fellow had managed to become a Demon King! Nine years apart, and he had managed to feed it into such a beast!

Fortunately, she had the Demon-Subduing Pill.

The pill was indeed a miraculous cure for restraining inner demons and purifying the sea of consciousness; she had not lied to Feng Fuxi.

Feng Ke'er dashed after him. "Hey! Don't run!"

"Look! You wanted to spare her, but she may not be grateful!" The voice clamored even more violently. "Kill her!"

The world before his eyes grew increasingly red and shook incessantly.

"No!" His pace grew chaotic. The Demon King knew he was losing control. Holding his breath, he shook his head with great difficulty.

Feng Ke'er intercepted him, and her heart skipped a beat—in this short time, the inner demon in his sea of consciousness had grown even larger!

Damn it, did you feed it growth hormones?

The larger the inner demon, the harder it was to suppress. Time was of the essence! There was no time for idle talk. Without hesitation, she pointed a finger and struck three times, sealing the major acupoints of his sea of consciousness.

The inner demon’s form grew larger still. It rampaged viciously within the sea of consciousness, screaming, "Ignorant child, release me!" Hmph, did she think she could restrain it this easily? If it were that simple to contain, it wouldn't be a demon! Let it see how it would shatter these three seals!

The Demon King tilted his head, the crimson in his eyes fading back to a deep azure. "Miss Feng..."

However, before he could finish, the red color flared in his eyes again, more vibrant than before.

"Once I break free, the first thing I will do is devour your Nascent Soul!" the inner demon cackled.

"Keep dreaming!" Feng Ke'er curled her lip in disdain. She pried open the Demon King's mouth and shoved a Demon-Subduing Pill inside.

At the same time, she pressed her right palm onto his crown acupoint and poured in her spiritual power. Ever since she had refined the Particles of Auspicious Light for the third time, her spiritual power had manifested in five colors. The five-colored energy forced its way down from the crown into the sea of consciousness, surrounding the inner demon. The demon struggled desperately, but the five-colored energy was inexhaustible, and the demon was pinned down, unable to lift its head.

The Demon King’s eyes returned to blue.

"Miss Feng, you..."

Feng Ke'er interrupted him in a low voice: "This is called the Demon-Subduing Pill, capable of neutralizing inner demons. Do not speak. First, wrap the pill in your spiritual energy, then use your spiritual power to dissolve it." She would have preferred him to use his divine sense, but with his sea of consciousness sealed, he couldn't call upon it at all!

Regaining clarity, the Demon King looked inward and discovered a black pill traveling against his spiritual flow, now reaching his elixir field. However, the pill was searingly hot, and wherever it passed, his meridians hissed and scorched.

No wonder it needed to be wrapped in spiritual energy. Casting aside the chaotic thoughts in his mind, the Demon King closed his eyes, calmed his breath, and followed her instructions.

After a dozen breaths, the pill began to dissolve, and a brilliant five-colored Particle of Auspicious Light escaped.

"Wrap it in spiritual energy and guide it to the sea of consciousness!" Feng Ke'er commanded.

The Demon King obeyed, immediately separating a strand of spiritual energy to wrap around the particle and transport it.

The moment the five-colored particle saw the inner demon pinned down by the five-colored spiritual power, it leaped with joy.

The Demon King was astonished. In his distraction, he lost his grip on the energy bundle.

The particle lunged like a hungry tiger, diving straight into the body of the inner demon!

"Bang!" Wherever the particle went, it blasted a hole the size of a finger.

"Ouch!" The inner demon shrieked in pain, its fat body twisting and turning. The hole that had been blasted open began to mend at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Strictly speaking, this was the first clinical trial of the Demon-Subduing Pill. Before this, Feng Ke'er had only tested it on simulations of Nascent Souls. Sigh, she didn't have an inner demon herself. Hiding away in her space sphere, how else could she verify the results?

Seeing the hole heal, she was quite dissatisfied.

However, the Demon King was overjoyed: it was indeed a miraculous medicine designed to neutralize inner demons. The efficacy was extraordinary.

Just then, he noticed another particle escaping from the pill in his elixir field. Without waiting for Feng Ke'er’s command, he proactively prepared a strand of spiritual energy.

A teachable student. Feng Ke'er nodded with satisfaction. "Good. That is exactly how you do it." She quietly reduced the spiritual power in her palm by ten percent—given her strength, she could have crushed this inner demon directly. But that would be treating the symptoms, not the root cause. Hu San’s inner demon had to be crushed by his own hand to be cured permanently.

Feeling the pressure lighten, the inner demon groaned in pain and roared, trying to stir up trouble again.

Seeing this, the Demon King snorted coldly and added his own spiritual power to the five-colored energy.

Just in time, a new particle escaped. He used his prepared spiritual energy to wrap it and transport it to the sea of consciousness just as before.

This time, he released the energy bundle before the particle even had to struggle free.

"Bang!" Another explosion echoed in the sea of consciousness.

The inner demon wailed and instinctively curled into a ball.

Feng Ke'er took the opportunity to reduce her spiritual power by another fraction.

In the elixir field, the third particle had already emerged from the pill...

Feng Ke'er was not idle either. While protecting the Demon King, she closely monitored the power of the pill. In her elixir field, one hundred Nascent Souls were rapidly calculating based on the data collected: Each pill contained ten particles. One pill per course. So, how many courses would it take to completely subdue the inner demon?

The calculation matched her previous simulations.

In short, each case had to be analyzed individually; the number of courses depended on the size of the inner demon. Generally, for human cultivators, an inner demon smaller than a fist could be subdued in two courses. However, the inner demons of the demon race were inherently stronger than those of human cultivators. Therefore, for an inner demon of the same size, one extra course was required, for a total of three. For example, the inner demon in the Demon King’s sea of consciousness grew so fast that it had gone from fist-sized to bowl-sized in just a few breaths, a testament to its strength. He would need four consecutive courses to eradicate it.

And the duration of each course was not fixed; it depended on the patient’s level of cultivation. Generally, the higher the cultivation, the stronger the ability to dissolve the pill, and the shorter the time required.

Taking the Demon King as an example, it took him seven days to fully dissolve the pill in his elixir field.

When the final particle dove with boundless enthusiasm into the "embrace" of the inner demon, the tenth "explosion" occurred right on schedule.

It was a demon, after all; its ability to adapt was incredible. After so much pain, it seemed to have grown numb to the sensation of its body being torn apart. This time, it only curled up and let out a weak, listless moan.

By now, the inner demon’s arrogance had been completely crushed, and it huddled in a tiny corner of the sea of consciousness, its size returned to that of a fist.

Next, the Demon King spent three days healing—his meridians had first been injured by the violent spiritual energy, and then scorched by the pill. The two injuries combined, while not damaging his vitality, were still quite severe.

And so, ten days passed, and the first course was successfully completed.

Opening his eyes, the Demon King met Feng Ke'er’s smiling gaze.

His face flushed red, and he hurriedly climbed up and bowed deeply. "Thank you." This gift of rebirth was a debt he did not know how to repay.

Feng Ke'er stood up and helped him to his feet. "Hu San, how do you feel now?" As the creator of the Demon-Subduing Pill, she was most concerned with the patient's evaluation.

Good. Very good. Those were the words that surfaced in the Demon King's mind.

Of course, he could not be so vague.

"Although the inner demon has not been completely neutralized, it has been successfully restrained," he described his feelings in detail. "At the same time, my divine sense seems to have grown stronger, and both my spiritual power and energy have increased to varying degrees."

Feng Ke'er was extremely proud. She laughed from the bottom of her heart and nodded with feigned nonchalance. "Mm, I see. Three more doses should be enough to completely neutralize it."