Chapter 413: The Effect Of Liam’s Unique Energy

The four assassins lay crushed against the rooftops, their bodies pressed flat by the overwhelming pressure radiating from Liam’s presence. Their faces were twisted with humiliation and rage—emotions that warred against the primal terror flooding their nervous systems.They had never imagined this outcome. The four of them were at least second-stage Golden Core realm cultivators, veteran who’d survived countless missions through skill and power. Each one had killed dozens of targets, some more powerful than themselves through careful planning and coordinated assault.

And yet here they were, utterly helpless before what appeared to be a teenager. A nameless kid who shouldn’t have posed a threat to any one of them individually, much less all four working together.

What sort of monster was he? Where had he come from? What had they done to attract the attention of something like this?

The questions churned through their minds like poison, but none of them could voice their thoughts. Speaking required air, and breathing itself had become a struggle against the crushing weight pressing down on their chests.

Liam had no idea what they were thinking, and honestly, he wasn’t interested. Their internal turmoil meant nothing to him. They were simply obstacles between him and information he needed.

His gaze settled on his first target. The pressure from his racial aura, already enhanced by his cultivation level, concentrated further on the woman who’d attacked first.

She’d been the most vocal. Perhaps that passion would make her more willing to talk. Or perhaps it would make breaking her more satisfying.

The other three assassins felt the pressure shift, some of the crushing weight lifting from them as Liam focused his attention elsewhere.

But even with that small mercy, they remained completely pinned to their positions, unable to move anything beyond their eyes. The residual pressure emanating from Liam was still more than enough to keep them immobilized.

Liam bent down slowly, deliberately, bringing himself to the woman’s eye level. When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost gentle.

"Where is the headquarters of your organization located?"

The woman’s eyes, which had been glazed with pain and shock, suddenly focused with surprising clarity. Despite everything, some core of defiance still burned inside her.

She laughed. The sound came out wet and strangled, forced past a throat compressed by Liam’s aura, but it was genuine.

"I won’t tell you anything," she managed to rasp out, each word clearly costing her tremendous effort. "Even if you extract my soul from my body, even if you tear my consciousness apart piece by piece, I’ll never betray the Devouring Petal Pavilion!"

Liam’s smile widened slightly, taking on a quality that made her defiance waver. "I won’t extract your soul," he said pleasantly. "That would be wasteful. But I do have methods that are far more painful than soul extraction. Would you like a demonstration?"

The woman shivered despite herself. She wanted to maintain her defiance, wanted to believe he was bluffing, that he couldn’t possibly have anything worse than the soul-tearing techniques she’d been trained to resist. But something about the calmness and certainty in his voice, the complete lack of anger or frustration in his expression, told her he was probably speaking the absolute truth.

The method Liam had in mind was actually quite simple, born from genuine curiosity that had been building since his transformation. He’d always wondered how the bodies of cultivators would react when he poured his unique energy into them.

Now seemed like an excellent time to find out.

Without warning, without giving her time to prepare or brace herself, Liam placed his hand on her shoulder. And then he began pouring his energy into her body.

The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.

The woman’s back arched violently, her spine bending at an angle that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. Her mouth opened in a scream that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs, a sound of agony so pure and primal that it made the other three assassins’ blood run cold.

Under normal circumstances, transferring energy between cultivators was a delicate procedure that required extreme care and compatibility.

Even when done properly with compatible energies, the process could be uncomfortable. When energies were incompatible, the recipient experienced intense pain as their body struggled to process or expel the foreign essence.

But what Liam was doing went far beyond simple incompatibility.

His unique energy, born from the fusion of dark energy, spirit qi, and mana, was fundamentally alien to the woman’s cultivation system.

It was like trying to force liquid metal through veins designed for blood. Her body recognized it as an invader and tried desperately to reject it, but Liam’s will was absolute.

The energy kept flooding in, overwhelming her defenses, saturating her meridians with something her body had no framework to understand or process.

And he wasn’t doing it carefully and he wasn’t making any attempt to ease the transition or minimize her suffering. He was simply pouring his energy into her with the indifference of someone filling a bucket with water.

The woman writhed on the rooftop, her body thrashing with such violence that she would have injured herself if Liam’s aura hadn’t been pinning her down. Blood began to leak from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. Her screams took on a desperate, animalistic quality that barely sounded human anymore.

Through it all, Liam’s hand never left her shoulder. He watched with detachment, genuinely curious about what would happen, how her body would adapt or fail to adapt to the foreign energy flooding her system.

After several seconds that must have felt like hours to the woman, Liam began to notice something interesting. Her cultivation base was beginning to dissipate and she was dying, in a slow and agonising manner.

Liam frowned slightly at this discovery. That wasn’t quite what he’d intended. He’d wanted to cause pain, yes, but destroying her cultivation entirely would leave her useless as a source of information.

He removed his hand from her shoulder, cutting off the flow of energy.

The woman went silent immediately, her screams cutting off as if someone had flipped a switch. She collapsed fully against the rooftop tiles, her body going completely limp except for occasional twitches and tremors.

Drool leaked from the corner of her mouth, mixing with the blood already staining her face. Her eyes remained open but unfocused, staring at nothing, seeing nothing.

She was alive, technically. But the person she’d been was gone, shattered and scattered by an experience her mind simply couldn’t survive intact.

The other three assassins watched this transformation with expressions of pure horror. They’d seen many terrible things in their careers as assassins. They’d inflicted terrible things. But what they’d just witnessed went beyond torture and cruelty.

When they looked at Liam now, they no longer saw a powerful teenager or even a dangerous enemy. They saw something that wore human shape but operated on completely inhuman principles. A demon in truth, not just in title. For the first time, they understood why people called him the Demon God.

Liam looked at the woman’s vacant expression and sighed internally. He’d accidentally overdone it. The method had proven more effective than he’d anticipated—perhaps too effective for interrogation purposes. She was clearly in no state to answer questions now, and from the look of things, she might never recover enough to be coherent again.

Well. Mistakes were part of learning. He’d know to be more careful with the dosage next time.

He turned away from the broken woman and toward the remaining three assassins, a small smile crossing his face. Time to try again with a lighter touch.

The assassins saw him start walking in their direction and panic flooded their systems. They tried desperately to move, to stand, to flee, to do anything except lie there waiting for him to reach them. But their bodies refused to obey. The pressure pinning them down was absolute. They couldn’t even lift their heads, much less stand and run.

All they could do was watch as the demon wearing a teenager’s face approached them step by casual step.

Liam reached the position where the bald assassin lay and crouched down beside him, assuming the same casual posture he’d taken with the woman. "Let’s try this again," he said pleasantly. "Where is your organization’s headquarters located?"

Before the bald man could respond and before he could even open his mouth to deliver whatever defiant statement he’d been preparing, the young assassin lying beside him began speaking in a rapid, desperate stream.

"It’s in the Crimson Valley!"