Luosa felt exceptionally comfortable at this moment. The body reshaped for the Vajra Living Buddha was breathtakingly exquisite, with smooth, well-defined muscle lines that carried a powerful visual impact.
It was a perfect physique—athletic yet not bulky—which reminded Luosa of the various muscular anime-style heroines from his past. Yet, the Vajra Living Buddha was different from them; her athleticism had not come at the cost of her most vital feminine curves.
The Vajra Living Buddha had undergone Nirvana and been reborn. Though her strength had not yet returned to its peak, it now directly matched the Giant Spirit God of the Heavenly Tribulation 6th Layer. Yet, at this moment, she felt an extreme terror toward Luosa.
She could not see through him at all. As the master of the Devil's Den, Luosa possessed terrifying might in every gesture, but in the eyes of the Vajra Living Buddha, Luosa currently seemed to have no cultivation at all, resembling an ordinary mortal who had never practiced martial arts.
Luosa raised a hand to wipe away a nosebleed, then flicked his wrist to draw forth a stream of demonic energy that wrapped around the Vajra Living Buddha, transforming into a black veil that enveloped her. "From now on, you are the leader of the Giant Spirit God and the others. I shall grant you a name... let's see..."
At this point, Luosa stalled for a long time without coming up with a name. After all, "Empress Vajra" sounded rather silly, and didn't even roll off the tongue as nicely as "Vajra Living Buddha."
Luosa finally realized he was terrible at naming things. After racking his brains, he said, "You are my foremost warrior. Decide on your own title."
The Giant Spirit God: "???"
"I serve the Demon Lord, and having attained Nirvana through the Phoenix bloodline, I might as well be called the Huanhuang Empress."
Luosa's eyes lit up, and he immediately declared, "A fine name! From this day forward, you are the Huanhuang Empress!"
When the other Heavenly Tribulation Cultivators finally broke out of their blood cocoons, they were met with an incomprehensible sight: the mysterious Demon Lord was currently staring with a green light in his eyes, resembling a starving ghost who hadn't laid eyes on a woman in tens of thousands of years.
Scanning the group, Luosa noticed the bizarre expressions on their faces. Yet he could hardly be blamed; although the Devil's Den had influenced him to become cold and ruthless, his inner nature as a hopeless lech remained unchanged.
He had lived in the Devil's Den for twenty thousand years now, having laid eyes on barely a handful of women—let alone an peerless beauty with both looks and figure like the Huanhuang Empress.
"Ahem." Luosa reined himself in slightly, then instructed the group, "With your physical bodies recast, you need time to get used to the changes. In half a year, I will send you out of the Devil's Den."
With those words, he grabbed the Huanhuang Empress by the hand and vanished from the spot. The Huanhuang Empress felt intensely nervous; Luosa's previous gaze had practically looked as though he wanted to devour her alive.
She had encountered such gazes before attaining enlightenment, but those men had ultimately met miserable deaths beneath her boundless Buddhist magic. Having practiced Buddhism all her life, she remained a maiden, and even when she later broke the precepts against lust, it was only out of an appreciation for female beauty.
Luosa sought out a sheer cliff, and with a wave of his hand, a towering pavilion rose from the ground. He turned to the Huanhuang Empress and asked, "How does one practice Qi Condensation?"
"I am willing to attend to you in bed..." the Huanhuang Empress replied instinctively.
The air suddenly fell silent. Luosa's aged face flushed red, and he quickly said, "Let's save that for another day. This avatar of mine has only just coagulated; although I can command the power of the Devil's Den, I have no cultivation and am no different from a mortal."
A blush also bloomed across the Huanhuang Empress's cheeks as she inwardly wondered what on earth she had just been thinking. She hurriedly asked, "You are the master of the Devil's Den, an peerless powerhouse the likes of which this world has never seen. Why must you start cultivating from the very beginning? And you mentioned just now that this is merely an avatar—where is your true body?"
Luosa let out a cold snort, expressionless as he said, "You need only obey my commands. There are some things you are not yet qualified to know."
"This subordinate understands." The Huanhuang Empress finally snapped back to reality and immediately bowed her head to her knees before Luosa.
Half a year passed in the blink of an eye. Luosa awoke from meditation and said, "Huanhuang, you claimed your cultivation method allows for Qi Condensation in three days. Why have I been practicing for half a year without the slightest trace of Qi awareness?"
"My master is invincible across the world; this must be because my *Battle Codex* is of too low a grade..." the Huanhuang Empress replied softly, not daring to suggest that the problem lay with Luosa.
Hearing this, Luosa could only feel helpless. He once again deduced the foundational cultivation method of the Huanhuang Empress, the *Battle Codex*, only to discover that its tier was remarkably high—far exceeding his current capability to calculate.
Pondering for a moment, Luosa shook his head. "Where did you get the *Battle Codex*? If practiced to its ultimate realm, it reaches far beyond the Heavenly Tribulation. There seems to be a realm existing above the Heavenly Tribulation itself."
The Huanhuang Empress contemplated this and said, "The *Battle Codex* is a Buddhist manual I chanced upon. The opening explicitly states it was created by the Victorious Fighting Buddha, though the manual is somewhat incomplete."
A shock rippled through Luosa's heart. If an incomplete manual could cultivate someone to the Heavenly Tribulation and even secure the fruit of a Living Buddha, just how formidable must the complete *Battle Codex* be? As for this Victorious Fighting Buddha...
The name was likely just a coincidence; after all, Luosa had transmigrated into a fantasy world, not the primordial world of Journey to the West. Surely he hadn't learned a technique created by Sun Wukong.
Struck by a sudden flash of insight, Luosa once again deduced the incomplete *Battle Codex*. If his future self were to acquire the complete version, would he be able to surpass the peak realm of the Taixuan Realm—namely, the Heavenly Tribulation Realm?
The *Battle Codex: Completion* surfaced in Luosa's mind. Yet, upon merely flipping through it, his composure shattered: the Heavenly Tribulation was merely the peak of the current era! Millions of years ago, the Taixuan Realm had been a super-prosperous age where immortals and mortals coexisted!
Only when a Dharma-ending calamity swept across the world did cultivators above the Heavenly Tribulation sever the space of the Taixuan Realm in order to preserve their own lives, refining it into small worlds akin to the Devil's Den to hide from the disaster.
The Victorious Fighting Buddha was a powerhouse at the Lesser Saint realm who had newly attained the Saint fruit. Thus, the *Battle Codex* could be cultivated up to the Saint realm—it was a Supreme Codex.
Luosa reined in his focus, no longer dwelling on those refuge worlds. The realms beyond the Heavenly Tribulation were far too distant for him; dwelling on them too much would only breed needless trouble.
Standing to the side, the Huanhuang Empress took in Luosa's complex expression. A moment later, she asked, "Master, have you discovered a flaw within the *Battle Codex*?"
Luosa said nothing further. Instead, he condensed the complete *Battle Codex* into a strand of divine sense and pushed it forward, sending it straight into the Huanhuang Empress's sea of consciousness. This manual was not suited for him, but it could allow the Huanhuang Empress to step into a higher realm.
The Huanhuang Empress froze, a look of sheer disbelief washing over her features as she murmured to herself, "The legends are actually true... There are realms beyond the Heavenly Tribulation—ascending to become an immortal, shedding the mortal shell to become a demon!
Those ancient mighty figures chose to seclude themselves from the world, which is why Heavenly Tribulation Cultivators became the overlords of heaven and earth. No wonder so many mighty figures vanished without a trace after breaking through the ninth Heavenly Tribulation.
The Dharma-ending calamity of the Taixuan Realm persists, unable to accommodate cultivators beyond the Heavenly Tribulation, so they were summoned into corresponding small worlds—the Immortal Realm, the Demon Realm, the Buddhist Realm..."
While Luosa needed to deduce the past and future, the Huanhuang Empress possessed a broad horizon, connecting her past experiences to piece together many truths. This was precisely what Luosa had wanted to know, but had been too lazy to deduce himself.
After all, there were simply too many obscure secrets like this for Luosa to target with directional divination.