The Vanguard’s staging camp offered no reprieve for Sunny’s agonizing migraine.
He was currently sitting perfectly rigid upon his spine-throne, entirely consumed by a profound, civilian exhaustion. He explicitly desired nothing more than to seal his pavilion’s heavy obsidian doors, collapse onto his crude cot, and sleep until the entire demonic crusade was over.
His uncultivated muscles ached from the constant, unnatural tension required to project his terrifying, aristocratic posture.
Before he could even close his glowing crimson eyes, the perimeter blood-wards flared with a sickening, localized pulse of dark Qi.
Quartermaster Jin was kneeling directly outside the pavilion, his forehead grinding into the toxic ash. Jin was vibrating with an intense, mortal dread. He explicitly knew that interrupting the Supreme Flesh-Crafter during his isolation was a crime typically punished by immediate, agonizing vivisection.
"Supreme One," Jin’s voice cracked, echoing through the heavy fabric of the tent. "This worthless insect begs for your dark mercy. A cartel of elite slaughter-captains has formally demanded your presence at a blood-banquet within the Obsidian Lotus Pavilion. I have prepared the bone-palanquin."
Inside the tent, Sunny felt his stomach drop into an endless, terrifying void.
A blood-banquet hosted by veteran executioners? Sunny explicitly understood that this was not a social invitation; it was a highly coordinated political ambush. These ruthless warlords intended to corner him, interrogate his impossible beast-taming methods, and forcefully conscript him into their respective factions. Sunny’s internal monologue spiraled into sheer panic. He knew definitively that if he attended, his absolute lack of actual demonic alchemy knowledge would be exposed. However, he also explicitly realized that refusing a united cartel of slaughter-captains would result in a shadow-assassin slitting his throat before midnight.
Having absolutely no choice if he wished to keep his head attached to his neck, Sunny forced himself to stand.
He pushed the heavy entrance flap aside. His innate, world-breaking villainous aura flooded the courtyard in suffocating waves. His pale face was a mask of chilling, calculated malice, and his crimson eyes bored directly into the groveling Quartermaster.
"..." Sunny offered absolutely no verbal confirmation. He merely stood there, radiating absolute death.
Quartermaster Jin openly wept, tears of pure terror cutting tracks through the ash on his face. He explicitly interpreted Sunny’s freezing silence as a definitive promise of horrific torture. Jin firmly believed the Young Master was already calculating how many strips of skin he could peel from Jin’s back as punishment for delivering this summons.
"The palanquin awaits! I swear my life as collateral for your safety!" Jin babbled frantically, scrambling backward on his hands and knees.
Sunny silently followed, his dark robes swirling ominously. They boarded a massive, floating carriage forged entirely from the bleached ribs of fallen behemoths, carried by four hulking Abomination-Golems.
Sitting rigidly in the darkest corner of the claustrophobic bone-carriage was a young, female acolyte named Lin. She was Jin’s niece, a junior disciple bound to the poison vats. Clutched tightly to her trembling chest was a shivering, mutated beast. Quartermaster Jin had explicitly forced her to bring the creature, foolishly hoping the Supreme One might bestow a casual glance upon it and offer a method for its ascension.
This was a catastrophic miscalculation. Lin was absolutely paralyzed by fear. She did not care about her beast’s progression; she was entirely convinced that the notorious, psychopathic Young Master was going to devour her soul to sustain his dark arts. Her body language explicitly broadcasted her mortal dread. She hyperventilated loudly, pressing her spine so hard against the jagged bone-wall of the carriage that it bruised her flesh, her eyes wide with the absolute certainty of her own impending, gruesome death.
The beast in her arms let out a raspy, unnatural hiss.
Sunny, merely trying to distract himself from his impending panic attack regarding the warlords, casually shifted his gaze toward the shivering creature. The Supreme Merge System instantly projected a glowing blue data frame directly into his retinas.
[Target Identified: Yin-Whisper Lynx]
[Monster Level]: Tier 2 (Elite)
[Monster Grade]: Normal
[Monster Attribute]: Shadow / Wood
[Monster Weakness]: Holy Water, Extreme Yang-Fire
[Requirements for Promotion to Commander Tier]: ...
Sunny noted the information with absolute boredom. A Shadow/Wood attribute beast was highly common and entirely uninteresting to his current survival strategy. He continued to stare blankly at the creature, his mind wandering as he silently calculated how quickly he could escape the upcoming banquet.
To Lin, this prolonged, unblinking crimson stare was the ultimate, inescapable nightmare. She explicitly concluded that the Supreme One was meticulously analyzing the spiritual density of her flesh, deciding whether her organs or the lynx’s core would make a more succulent appetizer.
"Supreme One," Jin stammered from the driver’s partition, desperately trying to break the terrifying tension. "If your divine schedule permits... could you perhaps cast your supreme judgment upon my niece’s miserable fiend this lunar cycle?"
"..." Sunny maintained his profound, terrifying silence. He actively chose not to speak, knowing that any attempt to reassure the girl would likely cause his voice to crack from sheer fatigue, instantly ruining his monstrous facade.
Jin swallowed hard, his heart hammering with dread. He explicitly believed that Sunny’s silence indicated absolute, murderous disgust at being forced to share a carriage with such a pathetic, trash-tier beast. Jin was certain his execution was now officially scheduled.
The bone-palanquin suddenly halted at the perimeter of the inner sect. Jin turned around. "Lin, return to the vats."
Lin did not hesitate. She practically threw herself out of the carriage, tumbling into the toxic ash, entirely convinced she had just narrowly escaped being chewed alive by the Supreme Flesh-Crafter.
The palanquin continued its grim journey, finally arriving at the Obsidian Lotus Pavilion.
This was a highly exclusive, macabre garden constructed entirely from petrified bone-trees and bubbling fountains of hot blood. Seated around a massive, circular table forged from cursed black-iron were a dozen heavily scarred, veteran slaughter-captains. They explicitly radiated the suffocating, metallic stench of fresh murder and centuries of dark cultivation.
Sunny felt his stomach plummet into an abyss. His uncultivated human heart hammered violently against his ribs. He was a modern civilian trapped in a garden full of sociopathic warlords. He explicitly wanted to turn around, flee into the ash-fog, and never return.
However, his survival depended entirely on projecting supremacy. He stepped into the bloody garden, his villainous aura flaring violently to counteract their combined, oppressive killing intent.
"Supreme One," Quartermaster Jin stammered, frantically attempting to mediate the heavy tension. "Allow me to introduce Warlord Kraven of the Blood-Axe Cohort, Baroness Vex of the Shadow-Weavers..."
Jin rapidly listed the terrifying titles of every executioner present. Sunny explicitly realized that they were all staring at him with calculating, predatory eyes.
Warlord Kraven, a massive brute with a jaw made of fused iron, did not bother with pleasantries. He slammed a spiked, blood-stained gauntlet directly onto the cursed iron table.
"We are aware of your volatile genius, Young Master," Kraven rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "However, the Grandmasters of the Inner Sect explicitly dictate that feeding highly corrosive venom-sacs to a shadow-attribute fiend results in instantaneous, catastrophic core collapse. Yet, your Scorpion survives and thrives. Explain your impossible flesh-mending theories to us. Prove you are not a mere charlatan utilizing forbidden, unstable artifacts stolen from the Sect Master’s vault."
Sunny was internally screaming in absolute, unadulterated panic. He explicitly possessed zero knowledge of demonic biology or flesh-mending theories. He could not explain anything because his entire methodology consisted of the System miraculously bypassing the laws of nature with a glowing blue button. He clearly knew that if he attempted to invent a complex biological explanation, these seasoned veterans would instantly recognize the lie and execute him for insulting their intelligence.
He explicitly understood that there was only one valid escape route. In the Demonic Path, the only defense against an overwhelming interrogation was absolute, unfathomable arrogance.
Sunny slowly rose from his seat. He did not shout in rage. He did not overturn the heavy iron table.
He merely swept his glowing crimson eyes across the gathered warlords, letting his oppressive dark aura flood the bloody garden.
"..."
He allowed the freezing, suffocating silence to stretch for ten agonizing seconds, ensuring the atmospheric pressure became utterly unbearable.
"Insects," Sunny finally whispered.
His voice dripped with such profound, absolute contempt that the ambient temperature of the blood-fountains noticeably plummeted. He offered absolutely no explanations, explicitly refusing to justify his divine, systematic methods to lesser beings. He turned his back entirely on the deadliest killers in the Vanguard and walked away, his dark robes swirling in the acidic wind, projecting the image of a sovereign completely bored by the trivial, pathetic squabbles of toddlers.
The slaughter-captains remained seated in rigid, stunned silence.
To their deeply paranoid, battle-hardened minds, Sunny’s explicit refusal to even acknowledge their interrogation was not evidence of a fraud; it was the ultimate, terrifying display of supreme confidence. They explicitly concluded that the Young Master viewed their vast, accumulated centuries of dark knowledge as so pathetically rudimentary that it was completely beneath his dignity to even correct their ignorance.
"He treats us as though we are mere fodder," Baroness Vex hissed, her pale face twisting in a complex mixture of sudden humiliation and deep-seated fear. "He genuinely believes our Elite methodologies are absolute garbage."
Kneeling near the entrance of the garden, Quartermaster Jin openly wept, his soul completely shattered. He had explicitly failed to facilitate the alliance, and now he was absolutely certain that the Young Master’s parting glare was a definitive promise of death.
Jin fully expected Sunny to return to the barracks later tonight to slowly peel the skin from his bones as the ultimate punishment for organizing this catastrophic insult.