Exorcist's Self-Cultivation

```

If the Evil Spirit Du Wei enjoyed mocking others,

then that remark could be said to be extremely hateful.

In fact, it was exactly so.

The Demon God looked at the Evil Spirit Du Wei with rage.

With a fierce expression, it said, "You will surely die."

Having said that, a hand was pressed on the ground.

London City was immediately engulfed by darkness.

From the ground to the streets, to those Gothic buildings from the Victorian Era,

everything seemed to be pulled into the abyss, unable to hold a shred of light.

Everything ceased to exist.

But at that moment,

only an indifferent voice spoke again, "The reason humans are called so is that humans have weaknesses, and no one can erase these weaknesses."

"One's greatest enemy is oneself."

"From the beginning, I knew this plan would fail."

"Why create a god?"

"I deny everything because I don't acknowledge those ethereal beings."

"I have many doubts in my heart, and they are about myself."

"But now, there's only one thing I want to do."

"And that is to kill you."

"The moment you became mine, you had already lost, you are defenseless before me."

Du Wei had weaknesses.

But the Evil Spirit Du Wei didn't.

Because its only weakness was the body.

Now, this weakness had been completely compensated for.

One could say, it itself was its own god.

And only it could do things that completely defied common sense in the eyes of ordinary people.

...

Minette felt nothing but confusion before her eyes.

Her vision seemed to be obstructed.

All the colors she usually saw seemed to have been drained away.

Looking around, she could only see black and white.

Or rather,

the world had been transformed into black and white by some strange force.

"Where is this?"

"Am I dead?"

"No... Du Wei... Du Wei, where are you?"

Minette murmured.

But as she spoke that name, the scene before her eyes suddenly changed.

Twisted, chaotic.

The lost colors all came back to life.

In the sky, clouds gathered densely.

So oppressive they made breathing difficult.

Everything seemed to return to how it was three days prior.

Following that,

Minette saw a huge altar appear before her eyes.

On each step of the altar, there stood a member of the Veda Sect.

Those people were wearing masks and praying in low voices.

The people surrounding them were her associates.

All wore expressions of bewilderment.

They seemed not yet to realize what had happened.

It was as if they had been resurrected once again.

Only the rival of the Evil Spirit Du Wei was not present.

"Look... on the altar..."

Minette opened her mouth, her eyes filled with shock.

The others also turned their gaze in that direction.

They all felt a chill creeping up from the bottom of their hearts, shivering uncontrollably.

They saw, above the altar,

the Evil Spirit Du Wei sat on a throne, one foot resting on a twisted human form, while its Right Hand held a raised posture with a crazily spinning pattern of a clock hand on its back.

Upon closer inspection,

It was spinning counterclockwise.

This scene was exactly like the arm inside an Antique Clock.

The Evil Spirit Du Wei slowly withdrew its hand.

Time indeed was reversing.

It forcibly turned time back by three days.

And only it could bear such agony.

Consciousness started to crumble little by little.

The body was being turned into dust.

The reason it could go this far

was actually quite simple.

It had used up the fear spawned by millions of people within London City in one go.

Among the dark clouds,

a shriveled red balloon slowly descended.

Accompanying it was a torrential downpour.

The Evil Spirit Du Wei stomped the head of that being into the altar built of stone walls; the latter was twisting wildly, becoming less and less human.

It seemed to be trying to free itself from the influence of this body.

```

It didn't want to become Du Wei.

Only by abandoning this identity could it become a conceptual existence again.

But Evil Spirit Du Wei's pupils constricted.

Immobilization activated.

Its eyes filled with bloodshot, this was already the limit.

Yet the invisible duel brought it the feedback that it couldn't resist at all.

Once it allowed this ghostly thing to become a conceptual entity again.

It would be impossible to have a true contest with the adversary.

Even, impossible to confirm a target.

"There must be a way to kill you," it said.

"If the maker of the mask could do it, there's no reason I cannot."

Blood streamed from the corner of Evil Spirit Du Wei's eyes.

After entering Hell's Gate.

Evil Spirit Du Wei no longer thought that this place was the past, as the past and something resembling the past were not the same concept.

What had been proven before, whether it was Corrine Dowqui or Alex's former life Minette.

In a certain sense, they did indeed exist.

But it shouldn't be here.

So, it did something very simple.

It stopped the time of Minette and the others, cutting off three days of time.

It concluded a conclusion.

This place was not the past.

It hadn't traveled through time, just that some kind of anomaly occurred at Hell's Gate, as if it entered a fragment of the past, and everything being done now was merely repeating.

But behind Hell's Gate, there should indeed exist a Demon God.

It didn't forget the resistance it met when it wanted to enter Hell's Gate.

The Demon God it had to kill.

From beginning to end, it was that Demon God behind Hell's Gate.

Therefore, Evil Spirit Du Wei chose to undergo Armored Divinity Ascension here, using itself as bait to lure out that Demon God.

Now it had succeeded.

But it made its heart grow even colder.

The Demon God behind Hell's Gate was real, but the repeating fragment of the past was false.

In a false past, it had put a false shell on the real Demon God.

Concept against concept.

And as for this slice of the past, had it ever really occurred?

It couldn't give a definite answer.

However, now that it had come this far, to try to go back was impossible.

The creature it stepped on had already lost its humanity.

Like some kind of liquid turning into vapor and dissipating.

Somewhere, one could hear a suffocating whisper as if it came from the deep sea.

As if plummeting into the abyss.

Evil Spirit Du Wei was affected.

It felt itself being assimilated, and even in its memory emerged some information that didn't exist.

It seemed to truly see an expanse of the deep sea.

Underneath the altar, Minette and the others watched this scene, as if they understood yet also did not.

What they understood was that His Excellency the Duke before their eyes had not gone mad.

What they didn't understand was that they all were merely repeating things that had happened in the past.

The only difference,

perhaps was that the Demon God of the past and the Demon God of now were not the same entity.

At that moment,

Evil Spirit Du Wei took a deep breath.

It thought of a method.

Crazy and extreme.

"Shadow..."

Evil Spirit Du Wei whispered softly.

Immediately, a shadow emerged from its own.

Evil Spirit Du Wei took out a mask and placed it onto the shadow's face.

"I need to use this mask, so now I will give you true freedom."

The face-swapping mechanism was one of Evil Spirit Du Wei's original abilities.

No existence could be more familiar with it than itself.

If it could swap, it could also be reversed.

Immediately, the shadow's face was restored.

Its nearly erased determination was awakened at this moment.

Bloodshot eyes immediately filled with malice, staring intently at Evil Spirit Du Wei.

However,

Evil Spirit Du Wei let out a cold laugh, gripped the shadow's neck hard, and forced it back into its own shadow.

"But freedom is precious, it breeds thoughts that shouldn't exist."

"As a master, I must ensure that every subordinate of mine is absolutely loyal to me."

"If you like hiding in my shadow so much, then become my shadow."

Having said that,

the shadow completely merged into Evil Spirit Du Wei's own.

It was no longer the Masked Evil Spirit.

After doing all this, Evil Spirit Du Wei put on the mask and placed a hand on the ground.

Fine threads emerged from its hand, infiltrating the black liquid.

Then, they flowed back into Evil Spirit Du Wei's body.

The face-swapping mechanism, commencing now.