Although Li Yao did not know much about the demon race, he had some basic common knowledge.
Hierarchically speaking, the demons could be classified into four levels, namely saint-blood, silver-blood, bronze-blood, and black-blood.
The saint-blood demons were the royal families in the dynasty of demon beasts that had lasted thirty thousand years. They boasted mysterious and unpredictable strength. It was said that they could even communicate with the gods and trigger the powerful techniques of the ancient demon clan temporarily.
However, in the era of the Star Ocean Imperium, the saint-blood demons had all been slaughtered, if not exterminated, by the Supreme Emperor.
After ten thousand years, the saint-blood demons were rarely seen, if they still existed at all.
The silver-blood demons were the ruling class. Most of the demon kingdoms and demon cities in the Blood Demon Sector were mastered by the silver-blood demons.
On Boneyard, Li Yao had slain ‘Wang Ji’, the prince of the Kingdom of Lion Butchers. He had been a silver-blood demon.
The bronze-blood demons were the warrior class, and the black-blood demons were the peasants, miners, and farmers at the bottom class.
The higher a demon’s social class was, the more human features they would carry when they were born. The demons of lower classes had to train themselves hard in order to grasp the ability of ‘polygraphing’ to make themselves look like human beings.
In the small village deep inside the Hundred Desolation Mountain, the residents could neither be the silver-blood demons with honorable bloodlines or the experts with profound expertise, but Li Yao had discovered the distinctive features of human beings on them.
For some of the villagers, except for the horns on their head, the long tail above their bottom, or the membranes between their fingers, they were almost identical to human beings.
It was also one of the most important reasons why he could hide himself among the villagers with minimal disguise.
Other than that, there was one other thing that was extremely odd.
Besides the hierarchical classes, the demons could also be divided into different parallel clans.
Even in the roughest way and not counting the subcategories, the demons could still be further classified into the Feather Clan, the Sea Clan, the Insect Clan, the Claw Clan, the Horn Clan, and a bunch of other weird communities.
Generally, demons of the same clan would live together.
The tiger demons would live in the same village, and the rabbit demons would live in another one. Their habits were different, and their demand for the environment varied, too. Would it not have been a mess if they were all put together?
The only exceptions were the large cities that had a large population. They were almost the only places where demons of different kinds would live together.
However, in the remote mountain village that had only fifty or so households, more than ten different demons lived together. Maybe the snake demons were the next-door neighbor to the rabbit demons, and the tiger demons were living in harmony with the cow demons. How strange!
‘Chaotic’ was exactly Li Yao’s first impression of the village.
It was not just the village. The households were even more so.
Li Yao discovered that, in many households, the demons of the family had vastly different appearances that not just resulted from their genetic expression. Some of the demons were even displaying features of multiple genera.
Maybe horns that belonged to the bull demons were growing on the head of a tiger demon, and the teeth of the bull demons were as sharp as those of a tiger demon.
Li Yao frowned deeply when he noticed the phenomena. He could not help but wonder how chaotic the relationship of the previous generation of the demons was.
But it was not right!
Ignorant as Li Yao might have been, he knew the basic concept of ‘reproductive isolation’.
Even if a tiger demon and the bull demon could not contain their libido and their certain ‘organs’ boasted certain’ functions’, it was impossible for a child mixed with features of tiger demons and bull demons to be born.
Odd. Really odd!
The so-called demons were refined by human beings forty thousand years ago based on animals. If so, essentially speaking, they should still be animals.
Animals of different genera cannot have children after all!
Alright, the tiger demons and the bull demons are all mammals. Let’s say that the reproductive isolation was broken when they were stimulated by the ‘Demon God Virus’. I’ll believe it for now.
But yesterday in the village, I clearly saw a female snake who had rabbit ears!
It really does not make any sense!
Li Yao scratched his head and doubted the history that he had known since he was a little kid for the first time.
Over the past few days, Lei Lan, the cat-eared girl, in order to help her ‘brother’ ‘regain’ his memories, had read a lot of tales from the Legends of Ancient Demons to him.
The Legends of Ancient Demons was a classical book that was very popular among the demons. Li Yao, for one, had discovered that the old demons in the village quite liked to interpret the Legends of Ancient Demons to the young demons while they enjoyed the sunlight.
In Li Yao’s opinion, the Legends of Ancient Demons was a collection of folklores and the most elementary textbook. It was perhaps compiled by the leadership of the demons for the ethic education of the public.
In the Legends of Ancient Demons, the descriptions about the origins of the demon race and human beings were not surprising.
That was exactly how myths should be written. Everything was all about bluffing and tracing the ancestors back to heroes and gods. The stories could never be too exaggerated, and the clan for which the myths were written always stood for justice and righteousness.
After all, it was not like the demons would acknowledge that they were evil weapons created by human beings, right?
As for the stories of the Primeval Lord of Heaven, the Pangu Clan, and the Nuwa Clan, they were quite understandable, too.
Essentially speaking, the demon race was a parasitic civilization. Before them, human beings had already created a brilliant civilization. During the thirty thousand years when the demon race reigned the sea of stars, it was impossible, and unnecessary, for them to build a set of whole new civilization system from scratch. They simply inherited everything of the civilization of mankind, including the language, culture, social classes, national structure, and everything else.
Modifying the myths of human beings into the demons’ own was only natural for the demon race.
Therefore, the fancy stories on the Legends of Ancient Demons did not shake Li Yao’s belief after all.
But he was truly puzzled by the fact that the same demon was showing the features of multiple kinds of demons.
It was also why he dawdled and had not left the village even though he had completely recovered three days ago.
He was intending to find out the secrets behind the demons.
What exactly were the so-called ‘demons’?
For the ancient Cultivators forty thousand years ago, they called all animals that had trained themselves into the appearances of human beings demons.
But in the modern society forty thousand years later, evolutionism had prevailed. Human beings had acknowledged that they were also animals that had evolved from monkeys.
In other words, human beings were all ‘animals that had trained themselves into the appearances of human beings’.
Therefore, the definition of ‘demons’ had changed, too. All species whose evolution was not natural but boosted manually and by force were known as ‘demons’.
But on second thought, wasn’t the training of Cultivators ‘unnatural and boosted manually and by force’, too?
When the body fundamentalists trained themselves to the highest stage, they would trigger the potential in the deepest part of their cells, and they would show the features of primordial beasts. Those body fundamentalists in the ‘primordial state’ looked less like human beings than many demons!
Maybe there is not an essential difference between human beings and the demon race, is there? Everything is defined later.
Right now, the minor apocalypse of the Imperium of True Human Beings is coming near. The war between the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Blood Demon Sector must be concluded as quickly as possible.
But the Blood Demon Sector has enormous forces, and the demon race is adept at survival. A total war will not be finished in a couple of years.
Even if the planet of the Blood Demon Sector is burnt to the ground with the joint effort of the Heaven’s Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector and the surface of the planet is occupied, the remaining demons will still hide below the ground and stall most of our forces with prolonged guerrilla warfare and harassing battles!
At that time, a thousand enemies may be killed, but eight hundred of us will die, too. What can we fight the Imperium of True Human Beings with?
What do I do? What can I do to finish the war within a few years?
Maybe, I can switch to a different method.
I now have the strength of the Blood Stripe Virus. I can train myself in brand new ways on the cellular and even genetic level. I can even absorb the essence of the demon beasts and the demons and insert it into my genetic chain. My body will be repaired, and I will be able to produce an unparalleled ‘apocalyptic body’!
If I have such an ability, maybe I will be able to turn into an expert demon by training in the ways of the demon race at a high speed without resorting to the strength of a Cultivator. I might boast certain influence on the planet soon, and I can even become the master of the Blood Demon Sector!
By then, won’t I have the ability to manipulate the course of the war?
Li Yao’s lips curled into a cold smile uncontrollably. He seemed unaware that his withered left arm, which was tied up in bandages, was gradually expanding in size, as if a certain mysterious strength was proliferating inside it!
Suddenly—
Li Yao sniffed. His soul triggered an electric arc and slashed toward the center of his brain like a lightning sword!
Screams echoed deep inside his brain. A small bloody person was cut in half by Li Yao’s soul power and turned into two pools of blood. The two pools of blood slowly melded together into a bloody person again, only this time much smaller.
The bloody person had all the appearances of a human being despite its small size. Its facial organ was particularly vivid and identical to Li Yao. It was grimacing and jumping up and down in pain.
Li Yao’s soul sneered. It’s been only two days, and you are trying to stir trouble and affect me again?
As I said, I will slay you every time you tempt me. I will kill you a hundred times if you tempt me a hundred times. One day, I will execute the bloody devil in my heart!
The small bloody shadow in the deepest part of Li Yao’s brain was Li Yao’s mental devil after melting the Blood Stripe Virus.
After the fierce battle against the Blood Stripe Virus on Firefly half a month ago, although he could not purge the Blood Stripe Virus completely in the end, he was able to drive the virus out of his soul and condense it into such a mental devil that he sealed in his left eye and left arm.
As a result, Li Yao’s left eye and left arm became cages for the mental devil. Li Yao could monitor its status at any time without worries that it might flee and cause trouble to the world.
However, the Blood Stripe Virus was attached to his mental devil, and the mental devil was invisible and unpredictable. It appeared whenever he had negative emotions and could not be removed at all.
In the first couple of days, Li Yao would slay the mental devil whenever he sensed it.
However, it could only cure the symptoms, not the disease. One moment of carelessness, and the mental devil appeared again. When he was uncalm, the more he killed, the more times it would show up.
In the end, he had to acknowledge the existence of the mental devil, however unwilling to, and let it survive temporarily as long as it did not mess around.