The Rose of Decay looked at Anbaixiu, a faint smile gracing her indifferent face.
She had lived a very long life and witnessed countless things, but this was the first time she had ever heard someone invite her to Hell—and with such utter earnestness, too.
Yet without hesitation, the Rose of Decay nodded and said, "Then let us go to Hell together."
There was nothing to worry about. Leaving everything in his hands was enough.
Right now, she only wanted a good, long sleep. Perhaps when she awoke, life would be entirely different.
With her consent secured, Anbaixiu had plenty of work ahead of him.
His previous worst-case plan had been to cast her into Hell after death, relying on the infernal mechanics by which the soul of a sinner reincarnated as a devil.
Devils were just as evil as the undead, but they were living beings endowed with all their senses, which were far keener than those of mortals.
For that reason, while devils easily produced madmen and perverts, hardly any ever grew so bored that they allowed themselves to fade into self-destruction.
The greatest issue with this plan was its uncertainty.
Hell was not Anbaixiu's private backyard. No one could guarantee that a sinner's soul sent to Hell would reincarnate within Melina's territory; it was far more likely to appear in some obscure corner of the Nine Hells, perishing before Anbaixiu could even track it down—or running into all manner of unpredictable accidents.
An even worse possibility was that her soul might be seized by another devil archduke to use as leverage against him.
Every devil knew just how profitable the Hell Bank was.
If anyone claimed Anbaixiu's vulnerability was worth hundreds of millions of soul coins, not a single devil would consider it an exaggeration.
Thus, going to Hell had always been the option Anbaixiu was least willing to resort to; he had preferred to try Aige's suggestion of using a faith in freedom to reignite the Rose of Decay's soul.
Now, however, things were different: Anbaixiu was the master of the First Layer of Hell.
Designating a specific sinner to reincarnate in his own territory was no great challenge; it merely required a little practice.
Of course, he also had to craft a suitable body for her.
When ordinary sinners plummeted into Hell, they became food for hell worms. Subjected to the brutal agony of being chewed and digested, they were eventually excreted by these worms like dung.
At their inception, they were nothing more than a foul-smelling mass of sludge. It took a long time to slowly incubate into the weakest of lemures, after which they crept through growth and evolution before ever having a chance to transform into stronger devils.
This process weeded out the vast majority at the very bottom. Many sinners never even received the chance to become lemures; the moment they were excreted, scavenging devils disposed of them.
Foul or not, to lower-caste devils, souls were always a scarce commodity.
Naturally, Anbaixiu could never allow the Rose of Decay to be eaten and digested, so an alternate method of converting a sinner was imperative.
He couldn't do it before, but he could now, as the transformation wrought by hell worms was fundamentally an expression of Hell's planar laws.
As master of the First Layer of Hell, Anbaixiu was fully capable of applying this law elsewhere.
Thus, the conversion process was no obstacle; the real issue was the body.
How to forge a devil's body for the Rose of Decay was something he needed to consider carefully.
The simplest route was naturally to use an erinyes as a template and build one directly; female souls had the highest compatibility when transforming into erinyes.
Yet Anbaixiu had no desire to be so perfunctory, so he chose artificial devil engineering.
Hell had always excelled at bio-modification techniques, boasting all kinds of grotesque patchwork designs: human spiders bristling with limbs, human centipedes stitched head-to-tail, and countless other monstrosities.
This was not merely to remark on how perverse devils were, but rather to show how formidable their craft was—creations could survive even such reckless mutilation.
With devil-modification techniques so mature, creating a superior, flawless body would hardly be difficult; it was merely a matter of connections and resources.
Anbaixiu was never short on soul coins. What he had lacked before were connections.
Now, connections were no longer an issue either.
With a mere snap of Anbaixiu's fingers, the foremost devil modification chirurgeon in the First Layer of Hell came scrambling into his grand library.
The remodeled palace had taken on the scholarly atmosphere Anbaixiu preferred, yet this did not diminish the majesty of a devil archduke in the slightest.
Even though Anbaixiu was accustomed to appearing in normal human proportions, with those bizarre, gargantuan devils prostrating themselves before him, anyone could tell at a single glance who ruled this domain.
Anbaixiu casually pointed at a devil that looked like an overweight praying mantis. The creature possessed eight pairs of scythe-like appendages of varying sizes, each pair bearing different edges—serrated, smooth, and some even shaped like tweezers. It was obvious at a glance that it had altered its own form purely for convenience in its line of work.
Anbaixiu had seen this fellow split open torsos and shove infernal engines inside; its movements were crude, yet exceptionally efficient. Those eight pairs of appendages looked thoroughly professional.
"I wish to create a flawless devil physique," Anbaixiu asked. "What suggestions do you have?"
The scythe devil replied tremblingly, "May I ask... in what respect does Your Grace mean by 'flawless'?"
"Something along the lines of Glasya will do."
The moment Anbaixiu uttered those words, the grotesque gathered devils fell utterly silent.
Only after a long pause did the scythe devil ask with trembling trepidation, "My Lord, the Glasya you speak of... do you mean the Queen of the Erinyes?"
Anbaixiu retorted, "Why? Does the Lord of Hell have another daughter?"
This Glasya was none other than the renowned Princess of Hell, formerly the wife of Mammon before being forcibly torn apart from him by Asmodeus, and now the ruler of the sixth layer of Hell.
The scythe devil now wished for nothing more than to end its own life with its claws.
The body of the Princess of Hell—was that something they could possibly fabricate?
She belonged to Hell's most exalted royalty, possessing the purest baatezu noble bloodline; on the day Her Highness was born, all of Hell had sung her name. This was no longer a question of whether it could be done; even if they truly could create such a body, who would dare pull a stunt like that?
Did he think the Lord of Hell was asleep and oblivious to everything? Desecrating the king of Hell—did they think the infernal torture guide wasn't thick enough, and fancy offering themselves as test subjects to write hundreds of volumes of sequels?
Yet they didn't dare say this aloud. After all, the newly instated archduke before them was notorious for his ruthlessness. Before even ascending the throne, the devils he had caused the deaths of already numbered in the thousands—and that was counting only named devil lords, without factoring in the rabble at the bottom.
The ferocious reputation of the Deceiver had long spread far and wide through Hell. Now that he had become the new devil archduke, subordinates like the scythe devil truly dared not breathe too loudly.
Seeing them keep their mouths shut, Anbaixiu said impatiently, "Can't do it? Then what use are you? I might as well throw you all back into the furnace for recycling!"
This frightened them half to death, genuinely terrified that this newly crowned archduke would slaughter a devil just to establish his dominance.
The scythe devil hastily pleaded, "My Lord, please appease your anger! It is not that we refuse to do it, but the materials... The Queen of the Erinyes is a natural-born deity. Flowing through her bloodline are the very laws of Hell. There is no way for mortals like us to craft such a thing artificially."
Anbaixiu replied disdainfully, "Who said deities cannot be made artificially? Back when I was still mortal, I witnessed godhood crafted through alchemy, and I even created one myself—though merely a lesser deity. You're just incompetent yourselves; stop looking for excuses."
The scythe devil desperately wanted to retort: even if you are a devil archduke, you shouldn't lie through your teeth! Creating a god with alchemy? What kind of fantasy novelist's fabrication was that? If you had that capability, why not make one yourself instead of squeezing low-ranking devils like them?
Yet in the next second, Anbaixiu tossed Malar's corpse directly before them and remarked casually, "The god I created even slaughtered an Abyssal Lord."
At first, none of them believed it, dismissing it as just another casual falsehood from Archduke Deceiver. But when they sensed the aura radiating from the corpse, a devil with five tentacles finally stammered in hesitation, "This is... the Beastlord... Ma... Malar?"
Anbaixiu sneered, "Finally, someone with eyes. You, the tentacled one—what is your name?"
The octopus-headed devil hurriedly squirmed before Anbaixiu and said humbly, "My Lord, others call me Sucker. As for my original name... I have been modified too many times and my soul was damaged; I remember nothing anymore."
"Sucker? What kind of rubbish name is that."
Anbaixiu beckoned with his hand, pulling the octopus-headed creature forward, and transformed a finger into an illusory form, thrusting it straight into its soul.
"Just a minor defect..."
Anbaixiu casually stirred his finger, eliciting shrieks of agony from the octopus-head.
All the other devils buried their heads even deeper, terrified of becoming the next victim. This Archduke Deceiver was far too frightening—more brutal and unreasonable than Zariel!
However, the octopus-head soon ceased its screams, crying out in agitation, "I... I remember! Morgan! My name is Morgan! That is my name... Ahhh!"
The screams turned into weeping, yet not from torture, but from the overwhelming joy of reclaiming his name.
In merely a brief moment, his chaotic, shattered memories had been combed through and brought into sharp focus; from the moment he had fallen into Hell up to the present, he remembered every single experience.
No one could fathom what the octopus-headed Morgan was feeling. After all, experiences in Hell were rarely pleasant, and many devils felt forgetting them was a blessing.
Yet looking at him now, it seemed to be a good thing?
Archduke Deceiver hadn't been punishing him, but healing his soul damage?
Anbaixiu, however, had no time to play games of statecraft with them. With a slap, he shut Morgan up, then said to him, "Morgan, I remember your name. Starting today, you are the Chief Modifier of Avernus, the First Layer of Hell. You will manage this bunch of good-for-nothings. My requirement is simple: make good use of this demon lord's corpse and use your finest techniques to cultivate the most flawless devil body for me."
The octopus-headed Morgan trembled with excitement, saying eagerly, "It shall be done! I will never fail Your Lordship's trust!"
Yet Anbaixiu's next words gave him a fright.
"Three days. You only have three days."
All the devils were stunned. That was utterly impossible; merely researching a design would take months!
Anbaixiu paid them no heed. He drew out a wisp of soul from each of the bizarrely shaped devils, then casually bound them together.
In the next second, the devils were all writhing on the ground, wailing. The agony of having threads pulled from one's soul was far more terrifying than any physical torture.
Not only that, the moment their souls were linked together, their thoughts began transmitting without barrier, causing their suffering to compound and multiply several times over.
Had they not all undergone multiple modifications, their souls might have shattered from the sheer agony.
"When conducting research, the biggest delay isn't running experiments, but communication. Spoken and written words are colossal wastes of time. So, I have connected your souls so that your thoughts are shared. In a single second, you can precisely transmit every idea and blueprint to one another, saving seventy percent of needless wasted time.
"Now go. Three days. If you fail, you will be recycled in the furnace."
Without caring what the devils thought, Anbaixiu blasted them right out.
Hell truly was delightful: everyone here was a sinner of countless crimes, so treating them ruthlessly carried zero psychological burden. What Anbaixiu loved most were subordinates he could exploit at will, without feeling a shred of remorse if they died.
Cast out by Anbaixiu, Morgan and the other devils had no time for anything else and immediately launched into a brainstorming session, desperate to produce a viable plan. Soul communication was indeed extraordinarily rapid, but in less than half a second, they exchanged hundreds of furious arguments.
"Scythe! You idiot, this is a meeting to discuss plans, not an opportunity to stage a rebellion inside your head! Stow your disrespect toward the archduke!"
"You piece-of-shit Sucker, suddenly you're his loyal dog?!"
"Moron, my name is Morgan now! Unlike you bastards modified to the point of brain damage, I have my own name!"
...
Every one of them harbored grievances against the archduke, but having thoughts usually concealed deep within suddenly exposed to everyone else was exceedingly awkward. Fortunately, Morgan reacted quickly. Leveraging the authority Anbaixiu had just bestowed upon him, he lashed his colleagues violently with his tentacles.
Even though the scythe devil and the others were whipped until their flesh tore open, they ultimately dared not resist.
After this beating, the group finally calmed down and began seriously discussing how to design this devil physique.
However, Morgan offered a preliminary warning: "Our approach must focus on cultivation. We only need to produce an embryo—don't even think about forcibly synthesizing and directly carving a form."
"Why? That contradicts our usual practice! We always sculpt the flesh first, then slice and polish it bit by bit..."
Morgan barked angrily, "Idiot, do you still not understand? Why did the archduke use Glasya as an example? Because he is crafting a body for an important woman! Even if we don't know who she is, she is unquestionably someone of immense significance to him. She might very well be his wife! Do you want to slice and polish his wife's body? Do you have a death wish?!
"We need only extract the necessary materials from the demon lord Malar and synthesize an incubation egg. Doing so will also drastically shorten the production cycle; otherwise, given three days, you wouldn't even be able to finish a skeleton!"
The cluster of devils immediately saw the light and couldn't help praising Morgan's profound wisdom.
Previously, the octopus-head had seemed like a taciturn idiot. Could repairing soul damage actually make someone smarter?
The devils reflected that working hard was indeed the right path—perhaps the next one healed would be them.
Before long, the devils set to work on Malar's remains. All manner of high-powered machinery roared to life, carving up the corpse amid volcanic fury and crackling lightning. It was fortunate that Malar was already dead; had he still been playing possum, their machines could have billowed black smoke without making a dent in him.
After dissection came extracting the essence and incorporating various formulas to begin creating an entirely new devil embryo.
It was akin to simulating the digestive process of hell worms, whose excreted matter grew on its own—except this method was vastly more rigorous and far more delicate.
Three days passed. The combat on the Blood River battlefield grew increasingly ferocious. Having confirmed that something was amiss on this front, the demons launched several probing assaults in rapid succession.
Bel kept watch on the front line day and night, but his forces were stretched thin, and he was beginning to feel he couldn't hold the line much longer.
Right at this juncture, the octopus-headed Morgan presented a devil embryo the size of a human head before Anbaixiu.
Morgan explained tremulously, "My Lord, so long as a soul is placed within, the body will develop in accordance with the host's own inclinations. This embryo has perfectly integrated Malar's residual divine power. Once fully grown, the body will approach that of a deity, though it likely cannot reach the true realm of godhood. We truly did our utmost, and a complete maturation will take a considerable amount of time."
Anbaixiu looked at the blood-red fleshy egg, carefully sensing the power contained within, and nodded in satisfaction.
These devils were indeed capable. Letting the Rose of Decay choose her own appearance was certainly far more suitable than fabricating a finished body outright.
Waving his hand to dismiss the devils, Anbaixiu casually tore open a Gate of Hell.
The Rose of Decay walked slowly out from within, arriving beside Anbaixiu with an indifferent expression.
She took in her surroundings at an unhurried pace, then said, "So this is Hell? It doesn't seem all that different."
"Indeed there is little difference; the undead originally dwelled in Hell to begin with. But soon, everything will change. Rose, today is the day of your rebirth."
Anbaixiu gently gathered the Rose of Decay into his arms, reached out, and tenderly drew forth her soul.
The planar laws of Hell coalesced, beginning to alter the undead soul and transform it into that of a devil. Then, Anbaixiu placed her soul into the fleshy egg.
Growth required time, but time was something Anbaixiu could readily manipulate.
Chapter 621