This Sect Is Beyond Redemption

“Get up! No more sleeping!”

Zhou Qiaoling shook the snoring Flatfish Cat lying on the straw mat with all her might, but the latter showed no reaction whatsoever.

They sleep on schedule, and they work when they’re up—that’s just how the Pal spawns at the base are set.

The only thing that could get their eyes open was a sudden invasion event.

“Sis, have a heart, will you...”

Zhou Yue held his forehead and sighed repeatedly.

Making your own Pals work for you around the clock without rest?

Even the infamous black sects known for squeezing dry their handymen wouldn’t dare do that!

At this moment, Zhou Qiaoling was still frowning, racking her brains for a way out.

Sure, if a player went to bed, the game would automatically skip to daytime.

But in multiplayer, everyone had to sleep at the same time—which was, obviously, not very convenient.

“I know what to do!”

Zhou Qiaoling’s eyes lit up as she spotted a Bat-Cat monster soaking in the hot spring nearby, dozing off.

She eagerly rushed to the Pal terminal, sent all the sleeping Pals back into it, and swapped in Dark-type Pals instead.

All at once, the quiet base stirred back to life.

Watching this, Zhou Yue was dumbfounded.

“Dark-type Pals don’t need to sleep, so at night we send these sleepy troublemakers back to the terminal and replace them all with Dark-types!”

“... That’s not ‘troublesome,’ that’s called needing sleep—they’ll literally die without it, you know!?”

“The only downside is that someone needs to manually swap them out at dusk... If only the Pals could operate the terminal themselves... they still lack the wits for that!”

“If they were that smart, the first thing they’d do is kill you!”

“So all four of us— whoever gets back to base first at night, just remember to manually swap the Pals. Don’t let them sit idle.”

“Are you even listening to me...?!”

Zhou Yue stared helplessly at the obsessed Zhou Qiaoling, then turned to look at Zhong Yi behind him.

Zhong Yi, after all, was the Grand Senior Brother of the Lingxiao Sect—if anyone could knock some sense into Zhou Qiaoling, it had to be him.

“Old Zhong, you’d better handle her. If this keeps up, our Lingxiao Sect is going to turn into a demon cult—huh...?!”

Halfway through his sentence, Zhou Yue’s eyes bugged out wide.

While he’d been grumbling about Zhou Qiaoling, Zhong Yi had already pieced together a small room, four square units in size.

At the moment, Zhong Yi was building stairs on all four sides of the room, leading straight up to the roof.

“Old Zhong, what are you doing?”

Zhou Yue gulped, a vague sense of dread creeping up on him.

“Shh, don’t talk!”

Zhong Yi rubbed his hands together with excitement and dismantled the base’s original food trough.

He watched the starving Pals stride toward the direction of his newly built room.

Zhong Yi fixed his gaze on the Pals, then, out of habit, began to explain.

“When Pals get hungry, they head to the food trough to eat. And I put a food trough right in the middle of that room... so when they get hungry, they’ll climb the stairs and go inside.”

“Then... why not just put it out in the open? Why build a whole room with tall walls?”

Zhou Yue was utterly baffled.

“Because inside, besides the food trough, I also packed it full of campfires.”

Zhong Yi explained in all seriousness.

“Wh—at—?!?”

Zhou Yue’s jaw nearly hit the floor.

“Because when they’re hungry and in search of the food trough, the Pals will naturally climb the stairs into an enclosed room... Once they’ve eaten, they’ll find no way out and get caught in the flames, waiting to be reborn...”

Zhong Yi flashed a sinister grin as he spoke.

“This, my friend, is the new generation of automated campfire therapy! If a Pal gets sick, just set up campfires and feed inside—they’ll walk in on their own and accept the treatment!”

“Brilliant! Senior Brother Zhong, this means we don’t have to carry Pals one by one anymore, and no need to worry about them running off!”

Zhou Qiaoling showered him with praise after hearing his plan.

“Junior Sister Qiaoling, you’re amazing too—this around-the-clock idea will massively boost our base’s productivity!”

Zhong Yi was equally generous with his compliments.

“You two are just... insane...”

Zhou Yue’s lips twitched uncontrollably.

Sure, he didn’t mind squeezing some work out of the Pals, either—but these two were worse than demonic cultivators!

With that thought, he quickly opened his friend list and spotted a few elders of the Lingxiao Sect online.

He’d heard that the elder of the Ten-Thousand-Beasts Peak was interested in Palworld and had invited some of his fellow elders to start a new journey together.

Zhou Yue hurriedly opened a private chat with Chao Wendao.

[Invincible No Matter What: Great Elder, something terrible’s happened! Come discipline Zhong Yi!!]

[Chao Wendao (who doesn’t want to die at dusk): True Disciple Zhou? Perfect timing. My little troublemaking cat is slacking off again—got any trick to keep it working nonstop?]

“...”

Zhou Yue felt his head practically buzzing.

“This sect is doomed!!!”

...

...

When players first dive into Palworld, their stages of change all tend to look like this.

At the very beginning, they watch the cute little Pals work alongside them and feel nothing but satisfaction and joy.

But before long, the Pals’ work speed starts surpassing the players, and that’s when the players stop bothering to work themselves—they hand everything over to the Pals.

At that point, Pals slowly change from companions into tools, and the players ease, bit by bit, onto the road of exploitation.

Naturally, this world has no capitalists—only landlords.

As needs for resources grow, the demand for production skyrockets, so players inevitably take to squeezing their Pals dry.

It wasn’t just Zhong Yi and Zhou Qiaoling—they were simply ahead of the curve.

No one even had to give a rallying cry; most players started oppressing their Pals all on their own.

In this period, the harder the players worked the Pals, the more resources they harvested—and the happier they felt.

From that moment onward, players all across the cultivation world entered a stage of gradual madness.

Behind the scenes, Lu Ze’s task progress bar was filling faster and faster...

...

“Young Friend Lu, you were exactly right!! The resentment on the evil spirit is shifting... it’s beginning to fuse into that world!”

He Muye was weeping with emotion.

For countless years, this was the first time he had seen any hope for the sect.

“Of course it is... I imagine it must really love the world of Pals, right?”

Lu Ze nodded with a smile.

The more the story progressed, the more the evil spirit had come to embody the identity of the Withered Star Dragon.

And by a stroke of luck, the Withered Star Dragon in Palworld’s storyline is a being that endlessly drains the World Tree’s energy, impacting the life force of every Pal across the land.

That wasn’t too far off from how the evil spirit cursed spiritual beasts with its resentment, driving them to hurt others and edge toward extinction.

So, guided by the remnants of the immortal arts and the will of heaven, the spirit merged seamlessly with the role of the Withered Star Dragon.

As the evil spirit melded into the world and transformed into the Withered Star Dragon, the berserk Pals born from the World Tree’s corruption became its avatars.

And the berserk Pals of the past were already formidable; now, boosted by the evil spirit, they were dripping with murderous intent.

Players enjoy relative peace on the first island, where no frenzied Pal creatures appear.

But once they leave the newbie village, life is no longer so tranquil.

Lu Ze could already picture the players being wiped out in droves as frenzied Pals chased them down.

“I wonder which lucky soul will be the first to receive the frenzied Pals’ special attention…”