After completing the horrific refinement of his new Sovereign-tier fiend, Sunny was entirely exhausted. His civilian mind was completely frayed from the constant, high-stakes theatricality required to survive the Demonic Path.
He explicitly desired nothing more than to curl into a lightless corner, wrap himself in a heavy shadow-cloak, and sleep for an entire lunar cycle.
He unrolled a gruesome bone-scroll, attempting to distract himself from his impending panic attacks.
The text, authored by a mad sect chronicler, detailed the strict, elemental hierarchies of demonic beasts.
The chronicler stated unequivocally that shadow-attribute fiends were universally inferior to light-attribute manifestations, citing ancient, blood-soaked battlefield statistics.
Sunny explicitly found the ancient demonic logic to be entirely flawed. The Supreme Merge System had already proven to him that high-tier genetic fusions routinely eradicated these foundational boundaries.
His own Sovereign Ghoul Ape could effortlessly liquefy an Orthodox Paladin’s shield with a mere flex of its Abyssal Heart. The Demonic Path was not an absolute science; it was merely a waiting game until a supreme mutation broke the rules entirely.
Before Sunny could close his aching, crimson eyes to rest, the perimeter blood-wards of his pavilion flared with a sickly, localized pulse of dark Qi.
Standing rigidly outside the heavy obsidian doors was Captain Kael, 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. Every interaction 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.
"I... I beg your dark mercy, Supreme Patriarch!" Fen babbled frantically, tears of sheer horror welling in his eyes. He pointed toward 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. "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.
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. A Normal grade. The imposing, sickly green aura was explicitly an artificial illusion, masking a catastrophically damaged biological core.
Sunny explicitly knew that ascending a Normal-grade fiend required vastly different catalysts. If he accepted the five hundred stones and attempted to pump the beast full of Perfect-grade materials, the Macaque’s core would instantaneously detonate, vaporizing the pavilion.
"..." Sunny let the freezing silence stretch for ten agonizing seconds. He explicitly chose not to expose the biological fraud out loud, maintaining his mysterious persona.
Lordling Fen knelt in the dirt, his heart hammering a frantic, doomed rhythm. He explicitly believed the Supreme One was calculating the most agonizing method to flay him alive for offering an insufficient tribute.
"Twenty stones," Sunny finally rasped.
Lordling Fen gasped. Captain Kael stiffened. 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, discounts were lethal insults. A horrifying realization crashed down upon him. The beast was flawed. The Supreme Flesh-Crafter had instantly pierced the illusion arrays. The extortionate breeders had explicitly sold Fen a trash-tier, broken runt.
"Your... your judgment is absolute, Supreme One," Fen whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of sheer terror and violent 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. "Executioner," he hissed. "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."
He crushed the jade slip, panting heavily, then pressed his forehead back into the ash.
Sunny observed the political execution with complete apathy. He utilized a minor telekinetic array to drag the struggling Venom-Macaque into the darkest corner. 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, he pointed a pale finger directly at the entity hovering just over Fen’s shoulder.
It was a small, semi-translucent crimson leech, pulsating with a faint, warm light.
Sunny explicitly wanted that creature. It was a Blood-Mending Leech, a rare fiend capable of localized tissue regeneration. 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 horror. He explicitly believed the Supreme One was 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. "It is a worthless, non-combat anomaly! I beg you, take it! Consider it an absolute tribute for your peerless mastery!"
Sunny maintained his freezing silence, stepping forward to claim the soul-tether. Internally, he was weeping tears of pure joy. He finally had a healer.
The next cycle, Sunny stood at the edge of the Vanguard’s blood-soaked sparring pits.
The heat was agonizing. To combat the oppressive temperature, Sunny had commanded his spatial anomaly, the Abyssal Void-Sac, to float directly over his head like a bruised, pulsating canopy.
To the gathered cultists, the sight was terrifying. The Supreme Flesh-Crafter wearing a living organ as a hat projected an aura of absolute madness.
"..." Sunny ignored the terrified whispers, taking a sip from a chilled skull-goblet he had just extracted from the Void-Sac’s dimensional pocket.
Instructor Mian, a scarred veteran executioner, stood upon the raised obsidian dais. He gestured toward a massive, heavily warded iron cage.
"The Vanguard requires absolute lethality," Mian rasped. "This beast was captured near the Orthodox borders. Who dares to test their fiend against a true threat?"
He pulled the release lever.
A massive, plated beast erupted from the cage. It was a Siege-Horned Rhinoceros, heavily mutated. Its thick hide was fused with jagged, dark-metal plating, and its single, massive horn crackled with volatile kinetic energy. It scraped its heavy hooves against the stone, its eyes glowing with feral rage.
Sunny observed the beast, the System instantly providing its stats. It was a Peak-Commander tier, possessing near-absolute immunity to standard physical trauma and low-tier elemental arrays.
"I shall demonstrate the futility of brute force," an arrogant voice echoed.
A young, heavily armed cultivator named Vance stepped forward. He commanded a massive, bipedal Gore-Hound. The hound was a formidable beast, its jaws capable of crushing bone.
Vance was explicitly attempting to show off in front of the surrounding captains, desperate for a battlefield promotion.
The Gore-Hound charged, a blur of muscle and teeth, aiming directly for the Rhinoceros’s throat.
Sunny watched with chilling apathy. He explicitly knew the Hound’s physical bite was entirely useless against dark-metal plating.
The Rhinoceros did not even attempt to dodge. It lowered its massive, spiked head and met the charging Hound head-on.
The kinetic impact sounded like a detonating spirit-cannon. The Gore-Hound was violently launched backward, its ribs explicitly shattered by the sheer, unyielding force of the armored beast.
Vance staggered, spitting blood as the psychic backlash of his injured fiend tore through his soul-tether. He looked at the Rhinoceros in absolute disbelief; the beast hadn’t even suffered a scratch.
Instructor Mian sneered. "Pathetic. Who else wishes to offer their beast as fodder?"
Sunny remained perfectly still, taking another slow sip from his chilled goblet. He explicitly had no intention of volunteering. His Scorpion was his primary assassin, and he was not going to risk its delicate carapace against a walking tank just to satisfy the Vanguard’s bloodlust.
"I will pass," Sunny stated, his voice a freezing whisper that cut through the clamor of the pits. "My arts are reserved for absolute slaughter, not trivial exhibitions."
The surrounding cultivators recoiled, explicitly interpreting his refusal as supreme arrogance. They firmly believed the Young Master viewed the armored behemoth as so utterly beneath him that he wouldn’t even bother deploying a fiend.
Mian’s eyes narrowed, but he dared not push the issue. The legend of the Sovereign Ghoul Ape was too fresh.
Suddenly, a deafening, metallic screech echoed from the far side of the sparring pits.
A massive, multi-segmented Obsidian Centipede had just breached its containment ward. It was a wild, Frenzied-grade beast, significantly larger than the Rhinoceros.
It reared up, its countless bladed legs clicking, preparing to unleash a torrent of corrosive acid upon the unprepared crowd!