Chapter 634 – Killed for Nothing

“Demon magic isn’t suitable for us to learn, so are you keeping the Blazing Flame Prison? Are we still catching demons?” Lilith asked.

“Of course we’re keeping it!” Mo Lan gazed at the curtain of rain outside and said with absolute certainty, “This was just a incubus—young, not very worldly, not particularly formidable by Abyss standards. He didn’t know all that much. We need to capture more, probe their memories, so we can gain a more thorough understanding of demons as a race. At the very least, they can serve as practice targets for Psychic Magic.”

She had gone to such tremendous effort—specially designing and crafting the Blazing Flame Prison and Locational Teleportation Cards specifically for demons, troubling Garona and her people for help, and spending a fortune just to have someone deliver the demon to them. How could she settle for ransacking just one demon’s memories?

Besides, Lady Carmela and the others still hadn’t returned, the Wilds weren’t completely safe yet, and she wouldn’t be leaving the Wilds for elsewhere anytime soon.

Better to ransack a few more demon memories and understand what relationship the power of malice and dark desires truly had with the soul.

However, demons whose memories had already been extracted didn’t need to remain in the Blazing Flame Prison taking up space.

It was also through reading this incubus’s memories that Mo Lan learned the name he had used to sign the Dawn Society membership contract was indeed his true name—but not his complete name.

This partial fragment of his true name could represent him and make the contract valid, but because it wasn’t his complete name, the True Name Detonation technique couldn’t truly take effect.

Nevertheless, the incubus’s complete true name had still been dug out from the depths of his memories.

Thinking of this, she produced a strand of hair she had casually plucked from the incubus’s head while reading his memories.

She sprinkled a handful of silver powder over it, then loudly intoned:

“Vhal’xaris’khel, khar’zun!”

The moment she finished, the powder-coated strand of hair spontaneously ignited. In less than a single breath, it had burned to ash, and when the wind blew, not a trace remained.

“That’s all it takes?” Vasida asked curiously. “The incubus is dead?”

Mo Lan nodded.

Vasida held up a giant water fern leaf as an umbrella and charged into the rain, heading straight for cell number seven on the first level of the Blazing Flame Prison.

She was shocked to see that the incubus in the cell had vanished without a trace.

All that remained was a small pile of black ash and a loosened strand of crimson bramble.

She pulled out her camera and took several photos before leaving the Blazing Flame Prison.

“He’s really dead! Turned into a pile of black ash!” Vasida showed them the photos.

“Why are demons’ true names so lethal to them?” Lilith asked, staring at the ash in the photos.

“Their true names are tightly bound to their souls. The more souls they harvest and devour, the longer their true name becomes—the true name essentially becomes a part of their soul.”

Beyond that, Mo Lan didn’t know much more.

The truth was, as a race, demons had virtually no culture to speak of beyond the law of the jungle and slaughter.

In their bloodlines and souls, aside from innate advancement pathways and survival instincts, the only knowledge they possessed was Demonic as a language.

All other knowledge was obtained by harvesting others’ souls and stealing the memories contained within them.

This knowledge, too, largely consisted of other races’ knowledge.

Demons themselves never studied their own origins, bloodlines, or abilities—they simply had no desire to learn or research. They couldn’t even figure out why their own true names were their fatal weakness, let alone other races.

Mo Lan’s Communication Card chimed with a new message notification. She glanced at it and told her companions, “Another new demon has arrived. I’ll go take a look.”

This time it was a flame demon.

“Drained of every last drop of blood and still alive—truly worthy of being the most physically powerful existence among mid-tier demons!” Vasida exclaimed in amazement.

“But compared to the incubus, flame demons are so much uglier!” Sylph said, looking at the hulking creature in the cell, its arms covered in magma-like pustules, continuously belching black smoke. “Put him next to the incubus and they hardly look like the same race!”

This flame demon met the same fate—having his memories copied, his true name exposed, and then dying under the True Name Detonation technique.

News that a Witch was purchasing live demons spread quickly among Dawn Society members.

Eventually, people who captured demons no longer needed to transport them all the way to the Sacred Mountains to hand over to the Witches. They could simply find the nearest Witch and sell the demon to her directly.

Not only could they earn friendliness points and other rewards from the Dawn Society, they could also skip the queue for a chance to challenge a Witch.

Before long, Mo Lan’s Blazing Flame Prison was overflowing with demons. The white peaked tents stretched from inside her residence’s courtyard all the way outside it.

Later on, for demons of types she’d already encountered, she didn’t even bother copying their full memories anymore—she simply located the true name in their memories and detonated them with a single True Name Detonation.

But as she kept killing, Mo Lan grew worried that True Name Detonation might not be able to destroy a demon’s physical body and soul together.

Demon souls were inherently filled with dark desires and malice. Even in death, they would return to the Abyss, where the Abyss would nurture them into new demons.

“If that’s the case, haven’t I been killing them for nothing?”

The more Mo Lan thought about it, the more likely this possibility seemed.

But apart from the Angels’ holy light magic, no other magic possessed the purifying power that could reach directly into the soul.

“Hire an Angel to help purify demons?”

Mo Lan shook her head. The Dawn Society simply wasn’t important enough to ordinary Angels. Apart from Miliel—that rebellious Angel who needed candy—she could hardly afford the price of hiring an Angel.

As for Miliel, she refused to condense a Ring of Faith, which meant her holy light magic was barely stronger than ordinary light-element magic. Its purifying effect on evil forces wouldn’t be particularly impressive either—purifying mid-tier demons would probably be beyond her.

“Why does Angel magic have to require abandoning emotions!” Mo Lan was deeply frustrated. “If only I could manage my own emotions—discard them when I need faith power to enhance light-element magic into holy light magic, and have them return when I’m not casting… Wait, that might not be impossible after all!”

She was human and couldn’t exist without emotions. But the Book of Cards was the manifestation of her innate talent—merely a tool. It could absolutely exist without emotions, and it could also be completely unaffected by malice and dark desires!

She couldn’t cast Angel magic or Demon magic herself, but she had acquired every last bit of related knowledge. The Book of Cards should be perfectly capable of creating corresponding cards!

The moment this thought struck her, Mo Lan could no longer sit still. “I’m full. I’m heading back to research a new card!”

“Hey!” Vasida looked at the table still laden with dishes. “What exactly did you eat to be ‘full’?!”

“From the looks of it, she’s found a way to properly deal with those demons,” Lilith guessed.

Mo Lan had been fretting over this problem for quite a while now.