In the Celestial Chamber.
Su Jiu stood alone by the window, her back to the door, gazing at the nightscape outside, lost in thought.
Su Ji pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind him with a soft click.
A faint creak echoed, followed by the sharp sound of the latch falling into place.
In the quiet room, the noise was unusually distinct.
Su Jiu’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.
Su Ji said nothing. He walked to the table, poured himself a cup of tea, and downed it in one gulp.
The atmosphere grew heavy.
After a long silence, Su Jiu’s cool voice finally broke the stillness.
"I hope Senior Brother truly managed to extract something useful from those merchants."
A trace of lingering irritation laced her words.
Su Ji set the teacup down with a soft clink.
"No need to ask."
"Hmm?"
Su Jiu turned around, her fox-like eyes flickering with confusion.
Su Ji moved to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder, both looking out at the bustling nightscape below.
He didn’t glance at her, yet his voice carried clearly to her ears.
"Junior Sister, let me show you what those so-called ‘merchants’ downstairs really are."
Moments later.
Su Ji led Su Jiu to the stairwell landing.
Su Jiu’s gaze swept across the hall below.
The burly men were still drinking, shouting, and playing finger-guessing games, no different from ordinary caravan guards.
"What’s wrong with them?"
Had Su Ji bribed the innkeeper to secure just one room while also finding time to observe others?
Su Jiu’s clear fox-like eyes instantly reflected Su Ji’s faintly amused face.
But Su Ji merely gestured politely. "Let’s talk inside, Junior Sister."
"Too many ears out here."
After a brief hesitation, Su Jiu finally stepped back into the room.
Only then did Su Ji continue. "They’re from the Blood Fiend Sect."
Su Jiu frowned. "I didn’t sense any cultivator aura from them."
As a Golden Core cultivator, her spiritual perception was razor-sharp. If they were cultivators, even suppressing their aura wouldn’t escape her detection.
"Auras can be concealed."
"But some things can’t be hidden."
"Think harder, Junior Sister."
Su Jiu searched her memory but found no clues.
Su Ji lowered his voice, brimming with certainty. "Caravan guards who’ve weathered storms and traveled far should have calloused hands and rough, sun-darkened skin."
"Yet look at them—soft and fair, as if they’ve never known hardship."
"And the way they hold their bowls? Casual on the surface, but their grips are firm, wrists steady—a habit forged from years of wielding weapons."
"This is no merchant group."
Su Jiu’s heart jolted. She had never observed mortals from this angle before. Su Ji’s words felt like opening a door to a new world.
Though, to be fair, Su Ji had already opened many such doors for her...
Only now did she realize that despite her Golden Core cultivation, her insight into human nature paled in comparison to Su Ji, who was merely at the early Foundation Establishment stage.
Su Ji didn’t give her much time to ponder, pressing on with his deductions.
"I suspect the massacre in Anyang City was the Blood Fiend Sect’s doing."
"What?" Su Jiu’s face instantly paled.
Su Ji turned to meet her wide, disbelieving eyes. "Simple elimination."
"Within a thousand miles, only three factions could pull off something of this scale."
"The Joyful Union Sect, the Love-Longing Sect, and the Blood Fiend Sect."
He counted them off on his fingers.
"The Joyful Union Sect? All they care about is dual cultivation. Slaughtering a city? They’d rather turn everyone into cauldrons—killing is too inefficient and no fun."
"They’d sooner—"
"Moan and gasp~"
"How biiiig~ Scream..."
The crude yet eerily accurate assessment made Su Jiu’s cheeks flush, though she couldn’t refute it.
"As for our Love-Longing Sect," Su Ji shrugged, "the Grand Elder’s corpse probably isn’t even cold yet. The sect’s barrier is locked down so tight not even a fly could slip through. We’re barely holding on."
"Otherwise, they wouldn’t have sent two unlucky fools like us."
Su Jiu’s heart sank. She already anticipated his next words.
"So, Junior Sister, tell me—after eliminating two wrong answers, what’s left?"
The Blood Fiend Sect!
The name flashed through Su Jiu’s mind.
The Blood Fiend Sect was infamous for its blood-path cultivation, its disciples ruthless killers who showed no mercy.
But a millennium ago,
they reformed their techniques.
Switching to animal and demon beast blood for cultivation.
Slowly whitewashing their reputation.
Now they stood among the top sects, ranked second—
far mightier than the Love-Longing Sect’s humble ninth place.
If they needed to refine some sinister artifact or practice a forbidden ritual, sacrificing a city wasn’t beyond imagination...
Su Jiu fell silent.
She studied her seemingly carefree yet terrifyingly perceptive senior brother, emotions churning.
Truly, no one succeeded without reason.
She’d thought reaching Golden Core meant she could protect Su Ji effortlessly. Yet faced with real danger, she still felt like a clueless child.
Meanwhile, Su Ji always saw through the fog first.
"Then... what should we do?"
The question slipped out, laced with a dependency she didn’t even notice.
Su Ji’s voice warmed with inexplicable excitement.
He strode to the window, spinning to lean against the sill, watching her with lazy amusement.
"Junior Sister, what’s our mission?"
"To uncover the truth about Anyang City," she answered reflexively.
"And now the truth is right before us. But without proof, who’d believe us? Should we march back and tell the Sect Master it’s the Blood Fiend Sect? Think he’d trust us, or assume we’re making excuses?"
Su Jiu had no rebuttal.
"So..."
Su Ji stepped closer, leaning in until his breath brushed her ear, sending a shiver down her spine.
Su Jiu jerked back, putting distance between them, her guard up.
"Must Senior Brother speak like this...?"
At this moment, Su Ji remained oblivious to the gravity of his actions.
One misstep, three immortals doomed.
---
Meanwhile, downstairs.
The table of ‘merchants’ drank heartily.
One burly man spoke up: "Boss, about Anyang—"
The leader gulped his wine. "Wasn’t us. Why else would we invite the Love-Longing and Joyful Union Sects to investigate? Thieves crying ‘stop thief’?"
The first man frowned. "Then why are we here to..."
He dropped his voice. "...slaughter a city?"
The leader drained another cup. "Too many questions."
"I’m starting to doubt your loyalty."
"I dare not, young master!"
The leader of the 'merchants' could only drown his frustrations in wine.
Why slaughter the city?
Simple, really.
Damn it, wasn’t it because the Grand Elder of the Blood Fiend Sect had kicked the bucket?
That old fossil had somehow lost his mind and suddenly clawed his way out of his coffin.
And now? Too late to crawl back in.
He just dropped dead right in front of it.
His time was up—gone, just like that.
You know how it is—a Grand Elder doesn’t necessarily have to lift a finger, but you can’t afford not to have one.
Without a Grand Elder, even those eunuchs from the Love-Longing Sect could trample all over them.
Then came the incident in Anyang City.
Who cared about the truth?
Just pin the blame and be done with it.
The lives of Wan’an City’s entire population would serve as fuel.
Let the Sect Master grow stronger, ascending as the new 'Grand Elder' to anchor the sect’s fate.
He didn’t dare wag his tongue carelessly.
If the Love-Longing Sect or the Joyful Union Sect caught wind of this…
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
lities. One day, Qi Yuan was buying groceries when he unfortunately came face-to-face with a monster. Just when he thought he was going to die on the spot, he suddenly heard the monster's thoughts... "This aura, he's definitely not an ordinary master!" "So terrifying, so terrifying." "A fight with my back against the wall, I can't take it anymore." Qi Yuan: Ah, no one told me that my awakened ability isn't telepathy, but rather the stronger my enemies imagine me to be, the stronger I truly become. PS: Zhou Hai in the first chapter is not the protagonist.
