Chapter 1: This Child Is Evil

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(Multiple heroines: the aloof campus beauty chases after the male lead, the mature female teacher falls lovesick, the seductive female CEO always wants to give herself to him, and the saintly fairy spends every night singing in his arms...)

...

The small woods behind City No. 1 High School.

Yang Tong nestled against the top student Li Fan’s chest. “Zhou Chen, you’re a good person, so I don’t want to hold you back. Let’s break up.”

“Oh, right. This is my new boyfriend, Li Fan, the top student from Class One.”

“The college entrance exams are coming up, and my boyfriend will tutor me. Zhou Chen, you’ll wish me luck in getting into a good university, won’t you?”

The corner of Zhou Chen’s mouth twitched. “I wish your grandmother an early delivery of a healthy baby.”

How had he never realized before that this woman had something wrong with her?

She was acting coy in someone else’s arms and still asking whether he would wish her well?

Li Fan placed a hand on Yang Tong’s buttocks and said to Zhou Chen like a victorious conqueror, “Your woman is very juicy. I like her.”

“I advise you not to pester us pointlessly from now on. I’ll help my girlfriend with her studies and get her into one of the country’s top universities.”

“As for you?” Disdain and contempt filled Li Fan’s face. “You might as well drop out now and go work at my father’s factory.”

Li Fan had once clashed with Zhou Chen over the campus beauty of City No. 1 High School. That was why he had brought Yang Tong here—to show off in front of him.

“I’ll go to your grandmother’s house and take care of her, so she can give birth to a healthy baby early.” Zhou Chen was not the type to endure humiliation meekly.

...

Night.

With his schoolbag on his back, Zhou Chen walked beneath the dim streetlights, pondering the uncertain future of his life.

Losing a girlfriend was no big deal.

But his studies had been ruined because of the relationship.

With the college entrance exams fast approaching, the road ahead seemed utterly dark.

“Don’t come any closer! Stay back, all of you! Take one more step and I’ll stab him to death!”

Not far from Zhou Chen, a thug was holding a hostage on the road.

Zhou Chen happened to be behind the thug, and at his feet lay a broken section of a shovel handle.

Perhaps because he was depressed over the breakup, Zhou Chen did not know where the courage came from.

He picked up the stick, charged forward, and brought it down on the thug’s head.

Thud!

The blow landed solidly, producing a strangely hollow sound.

The stick might not have been a good stick, but the head was certainly a good head.

The thug did not fall. His eyes reddened as he turned and slashed a knife across Zhou Chen’s chest.

Blood rushed to Zhou Chen’s head. His eyes went red, and he swung the stick down on the thug’s head again.

The thug finally collapsed, while Zhou Chen staggered and sank weakly to the ground.

The blood pouring from his chest was painfully vivid.

Embedded in Zhou Chen’s chest was a blood-red amber.

After absorbing Zhou Chen’s blood, it transformed into a streak of crimson light and entered between his brows.

Then Zhou Chen lost consciousness.

...

In a daze, Zhou Chen awoke.

A bizarre and dazzling space filled his vision, saturated with mystery and the supernatural.

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Zhou Chen saw more than a dozen objects wrapped in strands of silk. They resembled the eggs of some kind of creature, and life seemed to be gestating within them.

Aside from that,

the space contained an ancient, withered tree, a pool of spring water, and a skeleton.

Before Zhou Chen could explore the place, a voice suddenly came from the skeleton’s mouth.

“Junior, I am very pleased with you.”

As soon as the words ended, a golden light burst from within the skeleton and entered Zhou Chen’s body.

A vast torrent of memories flooded Zhou Chen’s mind, making him feel as though his skull were about to burst.

Then darkness once again engulfed his vision.

...

People’s Hospital.

“Dad.”

Zhou Chen woke to find a crowd of doctors, nurses, and police officers gathered in the hospital room. He looked around in confusion.

“Xiao Chen, how do you feel?”

Zhou Chen’s father was an orthopedic surgeon at People’s Hospital.

He had happened to be working overtime that day when he heard from a colleague that his son had been hacked with a knife and was undergoing emergency treatment. Fortunately, his life was not in danger.

The wound across Zhou Chen’s chest, however, was horrifying. It had required more than twenty stitches.

Zhou Chen was not fully awake yet. Images of that mysterious space still lingered in his mind.

Had it been a dream?

No!

Absolutely not!

Because a vast amount of memories had somehow appeared in Zhou Chen’s mind.

Insect hive... energy cultivators... seeking immortality and the Dao... eternal life!

Zhou Chen found it unbelievable.

These things actually existed in reality!

“Xiao Chen, it’s good that you had the courage to help someone in danger, but you still have to consider the circumstances. You can’t act recklessly...”

As he listened to his father’s concerned reprimand, Zhou Chen’s thoughts were nowhere near the matter.

In this age of declining cultivation, with spiritual energy exhausted, was it truly still possible to cultivate immortality and seek eternal life?

Every young man had once dreamed of cultivating immortality. He had never expected that one day he would genuinely come into contact with it.

...

Three days later, Zhou Chen was finally discharged.

When he returned home,

his mother, Yang Shurong, had specially stewed him chicken soup to restore his strength.

Zhou Chen hurriedly finished his meal, returned to his bedroom, and immediately sat cross-legged on the bed and closed his eyes.

Over the past three days, Zhou Chen had digested the memories contained in the inheritance.

He now knew that the mysterious space he had visited was an insect hive sealed inside the blood-colored amber.

The amber had been given to him by his grandfather, who lived in his ancestral village.

According to his grandfather, he had found it while gathering herbs in the mountains.

As for the skeleton within the insect-hive space, it had belonged to an immensely powerful ancient energy cultivator.

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To seal the extraterrestrial insect hive, he had not hesitated to sacrifice himself.

Perhaps Zhou Chen’s act of courage had earned his approval, which was why he had passed his inheritance on to Zhou Chen.

The inheritance contained quite a few cultivation techniques.

But Earth was now in an age of declining cultivation, where even a wisp of spiritual energy was difficult to find. Zhou Chen feared that even after exhausting an entire lifetime, he might still be unable to establish his foundation.

Yet among the inherited techniques was an extraordinarily unusual one that did not require the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

The Dao-Heart Demon Seed!

This technique focused on cultivating the soul rather than absorbing spiritual energy from the world.

As the soul grew stronger, it could condense demon seeds.

These demon seeds could be planted deep within the souls of other living beings. The energy cultivated by those beings would then be fed back to the practitioner.

The reason Zhou Chen chose this technique was that an insect hive existed within his sea of consciousness.

From the inherited memories, Zhou Chen learned that the insect eggs in the hive space were all mother insects trapped in slumber.

As long as he planted demon seeds in the mother insects, they would be able to provide him with a continuous supply of the energy required for cultivation once they began reproducing.

These strange insects were different from human cultivators. Every species of mother insect was unique.

For example, Soul-Eating Insects devoured the souls of other living beings to strengthen themselves.

Disease-Eating Insects, on the other hand, could consume the viruses within other creatures and transform those viruses into energy.

Lymphatic tumors, colds, fevers, and the like could all be converted into cultivation energy.

In an era when cancer patients were everywhere, Disease-Eating Insects were absolutely the perfect cultivation tool!

Because he had previously received the inheritance of the ancient energy cultivator, Zhou Chen’s soul had already reached the level required to condense a single demon seed.

With his spirit turned inward, Zhou Chen once again entered the insect hive.

There were fifteen silk-wrapped insect eggs in total, each containing a different kind of mother insect.

After hesitating for a moment, Zhou Chen walked to the egg of the Soul-Eating Insect.

Although Disease-Eating Insects could increase his strength the fastest, cultivating the Dao-Heart Demon Seed required him to raise his soul strength first. Only then could he condense more demon seeds and control more mother insects.

The college entrance exams were just over twenty days away. He needed to get into a good university first.

After all, he was still an ordinary person, and cultivation was something mysterious and unpredictable.

Besides, this was an age of declining cultivation. The results would be the same no matter where he cultivated.

More importantly, the breakup had hit Zhou Chen hard, and he was still harboring a great deal of resentment.

Since you broke up with me, I’ll go find myself a campus beauty—a goddess-level girlfriend.

So you can sell your body and curry favor with a top student just to study?

Fine. I’ll become the top scorer in the entire country and make you regret everything!

Ultimately, Zhou Chen’s mindset had not yet changed. He was still an ordinary high school student, young and hot-blooded.

After all, what he had received was the memory inheritance of an ancient energy cultivator. It was impossible for him to suddenly become free of all desires and devote himself wholeheartedly to seeking immortality and the Dao.

If that had truly happened, it would not be called an inheritance, but possession.

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