To distract himself from his impending panic attacks, Sunny unrolled a gruesome text woven from flayed human skin. He was currently reviewing a notoriously forbidden treatise authored by an ancient sect chronicler regarding elemental dissonance.
The flayed-scroll dictated a law:
Necrotic Qi fundamentally shatters against extreme Radiant energy; Shadow is perpetually dissolved by Lightning; and highly concentrated Venom boils into useless vapor when exposed to Abyssal Fire. The author cited centuries of blood-soaked battlefield data to prove these universal limitations.
Sunny explicitly found the ancient demonic logic to be entirely flawed. The Supreme Merge System had explicitly proven to him that high-tier genetic fusions routinely eradicated these foundational boundaries. His own Sovereign-tier Ghoul Ape had just utilized a necrotic resonance to effortlessly liquefy an Orthodox Paladin’s extreme Radiant shield.
Before Sunny could close his aching, crimson eyes to rest, the perimeter blood-wards of his pavilion flared with a sickening, localized pulse of dark Qi.
Standing rigidly outside the heavy obsidian doors was Captain Kael, the veteran Enforcer, accompanied by a pale, shivering youth draped in opulent, silver-threaded robes. The youth was Lordling Fen, a wealthy scion from the inner sect’s poison vats.
Fen was trembling so violently that the protective jade amulets around his neck clattered together. He was entirely consumed by mortal dread. He explicitly knew the rumors surrounding the Supreme Flesh-Crafter. The entire camp whispered that the Young Master’s newly ascended skeletal nightmare could liquefy a cultivator’s internal organs simply by standing near them. Fen firmly believed that stepping into this pavilion was equivalent to walking willingly into an executioner’s meat grinder.
"Supreme One," Captain Kael announced, his voice carefully devoid of any sudden inflections that might provoke the apex predator within. "I escort Lordling Fen. He humbly begs to offer tribute for your divine flesh-mending arts."
Inside the tent, Sunny felt his stomach plummet into an endless, terrifying void.
More clients. Sunny explicitly hated clients. He knew definitively that every single interaction in this sect was a razor’s edge where one wrong word could expose him as an uncultivated fraud. He forced his exhausted muscles to lock into a posture of terrifying, aristocratic malice.
He mentally commanded the blood-wards to disengage. The heavy doors ground open, releasing a wave of stale, death-soaked air.
Captain Kael stepped inside, bowing deeply. Lordling Fen followed, immediately dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead against the toxic ash coating the obsidian floor. He was explicitly terrified that looking directly at the Young Master’s glowing crimson eyes would result in his soul being violently extracted.
"..." Sunny offered absolutely no verbal confirmation. He merely sat upon his spine-throne, radiating a suffocating, heavy pressure of dark Qi.
"Speak your purpose, insect," Kael commanded the shivering noble, acting as a buffer.
"I... I beg your dark mercy, Supreme Patriarch!" Fen babbled frantically, tears of sheer horror welling in his eyes. He frantically gestured to a heavily chained, massive beast being dragged into the pavilion by two mindless thralls.
It was a hulking, four-armed Venom-Macaque. Its fur bristled with an intense, sickly green aura, and its fangs dripped with highly corrosive acid.
"This is my prized fiend, possessing a flawless, Perfect-grade core!" Fen wept, desperately trying to prove he was not wasting the Young Master’s time. "I humbly offer an extortionate tribute of five hundred Corrupted Spirit Stones! I beg you to force its ascension to the Commander tier!"
Sunny maintained his cold, apathetic facade, but internally, his uncultivated heart skipped a beat. Five hundred spirit stones was an astronomical fortune. It could fund the System’s gluttony for an entire month.
However, before Sunny could accept the tribute, he casually shifted his gaze to the beast. The Supreme Merge System instantly projected a glowing blue data frame into his retinas.
[Target Identified: Venom-Macaque]
[Monster Level]: Tier 3 (Peak)
[Monster Grade]: Normal
[Condition]: Terminal Core Fracture (Sustained via forced illusion-dust ingestion)
Sunny’s crimson eyes narrowed imperceptibly.
A Normal grade. The imposing, sickly green aura radiating from the monkey was explicitly an artificial illusion, masking a catastrophically damaged biological core.
Sunny explicitly knew that ascending a Normal-grade fiend required vastly different, highly specific, and incredibly cheap subterranean roots to stabilize its frail meridians. If he accepted the five hundred stones and attempted to pump the beast full of Perfect-grade catalysts, the Macaque’s core would instantaneously detonate, vaporizing the entire pavilion and everyone inside it.
"..." Sunny let the heavy, freezing silence stretch for ten agonizing seconds. He explicitly chose not to expose the biological fraud out loud, knowing that explaining the intricacies of beast-cores would ruin his unfathomable, mysterious persona.
Lordling Fen knelt in the dirt, his heart hammering a frantic, doomed rhythm. The Young Master’s silence was absolute psychological torture. Fen explicitly believed the Supreme One was currently calculating the most agonizing method to flay him alive for offering an insufficient tribute.
"Twenty stones," Sunny finally rasped, his voice a flat, emotionless void.
Lordling Fen gasped, his head snapping up in absolute shock. Captain Kael stiffened, his hand drifting instinctively toward the hilt of his halberd.
Twenty stones? The standard rate for ascending a Perfect-grade beast was never lower than four hundred.
Fen stared at Sunny’s unblinking, crimson gaze. In the Demonic Path, a supreme master did not offer discounts out of charity. They offered them as a lethal insult. Fen’s mind raced frantically, and a horrifying realization crashed down upon him.
The beast was flawed. The Supreme Flesh-Crafter had instantly pierced the illusion arrays placed upon the macaque. The extortionate breeders in the inner sect had explicitly sold Fen a trash-tier, broken runt, masking it as a Perfect specimen to steal his wealth. Sunny was charging twenty stones because the beast was literally only worth twenty stones.
Fen explicitly realized that Sunny was not insulting him; Sunny was demonstrating a terrifying, omniscient mastery over demonic biology.
"Your... your judgment is absolute, Supreme One," Fen whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of sheer terror and violent, boiling rage directed at his own retainers. He practically threw a small pouch of twenty stones onto the obsidian altar.
Fen immediately drew his communication jade slip. His pale face twisted into a mask of suicidal ferocity.
"Executioner," Fen hissed into the jade, entirely ignoring protocol. "The Head Breeder of the eastern pits. Seize him. Throw his entire bloodline into the marrow-boiling vats. He sold me a hollowed-out runt."
A terrified voice crackled from the jade. "My Lord! The Breeder swore upon his soul—"
"The Supreme Flesh-Crafter explicitly diagnosed the fraud with a single glance!" Fen roared, his killing intent flaring violently. "Do it now, or you will join him in the acid!"
Fen crushed the jade slip in his fist, panting heavily. He then immediately pressed his forehead back into the ash, explicitly terrified that his sudden outburst had offended the Young Master.
Sunny observed the political execution with complete, chilling apathy. Internally, he was profoundly relieved. He had avoided a biological detonation and maintained his flawless reputation without explaining a single thing.
Sunny utilized a minor telekinetic array to drag the heavy, struggling Venom-Macaque into the darkest corner of the pavilion. He swiftly crushed a handful of cheap, stabilizing roots, forcing the paste down the beast’s throat. Within minutes, the artificial illusion-dust was purged, and the Macaque expanded slightly, its core stabilizing into a legitimate, albeit weak, Commander-tier state.
When Sunny emerged from the shadows, he pointed a pale finger directly at the shivering scion.
More specifically, he pointed at the entity hovering just over Fen’s shoulder.
It was a small, semi-translucent crimson leech, floating gently in the stale air. It lacked any offensive aura, merely pulsating with a faint, warm light.
Sunny explicitly wanted that creature. He had recognized it from the sect’s bestiaries. It was a Blood-Mending Leech, an incredibly rare fiend capable of localized tissue regeneration and toxin purging. In a sect where a papercut could lead to demonic gangrene, Sunny desperately needed a biological medic.
"That parasite," Sunny commanded coldly. "Explain."
Fen flinched, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated horror. He explicitly believed the Supreme One, unsatisfied with the meager twenty-stone tribute, was now demanding the rare healing beast to consume it for a dark ritual.
"I-It is a Blood-Mending Leech, Supreme One!" Fen stammered, frantically unhooking the soul-tether chain from his wrist.
"It is a worthless, non-combat anomaly! I beg you, take it! Consider it an absolute tribute for your peerless mastery!"