At the foot of Wuji Peak, hidden behind swaying bamboo and layered formations, Li Lingrui sat deep within his cave estate, slicking back his hair and humming a couple of revolutionary tunes from his previous life under his breath.

  The cave had been a gift from Zhang Cheng.

  Compared to the drafty shack he used to have in the Red Dust Desire Hall, this place was paradise. Ten times better, at least.

  Li Lingrui took stock of what he owned.

  For the first time since entering this world, his spirit stones had broken into five digits. He had several spirit pills left. As for cultivation arts, he had not bothered collecting too many. With the cheat in his hands, manuals were never going to be his bottleneck.

  Treasures were another matter.

  In his left hand, the Universe Disc.

  In his right, the Yin-Yang Sword.

  Both Dao-grade spirit artifacts.

  If he had to fight now, he could wear an opponent down with spirit artifacts first, then finish them with ruthless killing moves. Among cultivators of the same realm, he was already well above average.

  Li Lingrui nodded.

  Then he shook his head.

  No. Not enough.

  His combat power might be sharp, but one thing still lagged behind.

  His cultivation.

  Dao Entry, early stage.

  Against someone like Guo Yuan, who had been stuck in that realm for decades, he had no reason to feel pressure.

  But the moment Zhang Cheng’s smiling face surfaced in his mind, his chest tightened.

  That smile.

  Soft. Pleasant. Almost gentle.

  Like a chrysanthemum blooming in a graveyard.

  Li Lingrui felt his scalp prickle.

  No one in the demonic sect did favors for free. And Zhang Cheng, of all people, was not the sort to hand out kindness unless he expected something worse in return.

  He let out a slow breath.

  Li Lingrui, Li Lingrui... don’t let yourself get taken in by the sugar-coated shells of capitalism.

  He needed to break through.

  Only by reaching mid-stage Dao Entry could he face whatever was coming with even a shred more confidence.

  Then his gaze drifted to the woman resting not far away.

  She had a full figure, soft curves, and a pair of eyes that seemed born to tempt men into ruining themselves. She was not the sort of beauty that toppled kingdoms, but she was more than attractive enough.

  Perhaps because Wuji Peak was hot and damp year-round, her robe had come loose at the shoulder, exposing a swath of pale skin.

  Li Lingrui frowned. “You were raised as a furnace by the Red Dust Pleasure Ward. Why do you look so... unbothered by all this?”

  This woman had been part of Zhang Cheng’s “extra gift.”

  A necessary resource for cultivating the Red Dust Yin-Yang Duality Scripture.

  Li Lingrui had only tried bargaining over the price. He had not expected Zhang Cheng to save him the bride price too.

  The woman gave a helpless smile.

  “In a place as large as the demonic sect, if a weak woman wants to stay alive, she has to be livestock. Or worse.”

  “Livestock?”

  “That’s what they call us in the Pleasure Ward. Perform in the day. Sell ourselves at night.”

  ...

  Li Lingrui fell silent.

  A line from his previous life surfaced in his mind, unbidden, heavy as old rain.

  The demonic sect truly had turned human beings into mineral veins to be mined dry.

  If he had not awakened his cheat, his fate might have been worse than hers.

  At least a furnace was still useful.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  If he had been ordinary?

  Cattle. Dog. Pig. Duck.

  Some version of disposable meat.

  Several months later, beneath Wuji Peak, a crisp cracking sound echoed through the cave.

  Hundreds of spirit stones dimmed all at once, their golden radiance guttering out as they dropped to the ground like dead coals.

  In their place, the true qi within Li Lingrui surged.

  These past months, washed again and again by a mountain of spirit stones, he had pushed his cultivation to the very edge of early-stage Dao Entry.

  The Red Dust Yin-Yang Duality Scripture was the core art cultivated by the Red Dust branch.

  At the Dao Entry realm, every minor breakthrough condensed one strand of Yin-Yang true qi. If a cultivator could fuse all three strands into one at late Dao Entry, they would forge a thread of Liangyi Spirit Qi. Not only would their battle strength soar, their odds of crossing into the Sea of Qi realm would rise by an additional ten percent.

  That was why the Red Dust lineage was infamous for advancing quickly.

  Other demonic branches might produce top-tier cultivation arts, but few could offer even the slightest help when it came to crossing the heavenly barrier into Sea of Qi.

  Li Lingrui formed a seal with both hands.

  A strand of Yin-Yang true qi floated slowly out of his dantian, gathering light as it rose.

  In the next breath, it condensed into a short flying blade etched with trigrams and black-white patterns.

  “Go.”

  The blade flashed forward like split lightning.

  It slammed into a stone formation in the distance, and with a violent crash, the rock platform exploded into fragments.

  Li Lingrui smiled.

  At last.

  With the unnamed, unspeakable blessing hanging over him, his grasp of the Red Dust Yin-Yang Duality Scripture had finally reached the Minor Mastery stage.

  It was a foundational art, yes, but not a shallow one.

  If the master of the Red Dust Desire Hall were standing here, one gesture would probably be enough to spread out tens of thousands of those Yin-Yang blades, filling the sky and cutting down enemies from several thousand meters away.

  Then again...

  How many wives would it take to cultivate it that far?

  Li Lingrui turned inward and checked the system panel.

  [Name: Li Lingrui]

  [Lifespan: 19]

  [Cultivation: Dao Entry, Early Stage (Great Perfection)]

  [Physique: None]

  [Talent: None]

  [Cultivation Arts: Red Dust Yin-Yang Duality Scripture (Minor Mastery), Red Dust Rising Yang Scripture (Beginner), Night Without Borders (Beginner)]

  [Treasures: Universe Disc, Yin-Yang Sword]

  [Notes: Netherworld Sensitivity, Returning-Yang Fruition (1/2)]

  “Your divine art shakes the sect, Young Master.”

  Li Lingrui turned.

  Shiya lay on the couch nearby, head tilted, lips slightly parted, her expression soft and full of feigned devotion.

  She was from the Kingdom of Wu, like him.

  War had wrecked her family. Her parents had sold her. From there she had been swept into the demonic sect, assigned first to the Red Dust Desire Hall, then resold again and again until she ended up in the infamous Red Dust Pleasure Ward, a place where women were polished, priced, and exhausted like luxury tools.

  Only a few months ago had Zhang Cheng bought her and delivered her to Li Lingrui.

  Li Lingrui looked at the pale swell of her chest and, for some reason, felt his kidneys ache.

  The furnace was excellent.

  Cultivating with her made progress absurdly fast.

  It was also exhausting enough to shorten a man’s life.

  He sighed.

  “I’m going to start cultivating the Red Dust Rising Yang Scripture. Kidney essence matters. Stay in the cave and focus on your own cultivation for the next few days. You’ve worked hard enough.”

  Shiya’s face flushed at once.

  She bit her lip, eyes turning red around the edges.

  “Yaya isn’t tired. Young Master... do you not want me anymore?”

  Her fear was not hard to understand.

  Returned goods from the Pleasure Ward were branded as defective.

  After that, women like her were usually sent into one of three hells.

  The better option was mining in the Abyss of Ten Thousand Beasts.

  The worse one was being handed over to the Heavenly Palace of Curiosities as a living experiment.

  And the worst?

  The Nether Ghost Manor.

  The stories said that once women were sent there, they either became food... or ghosts.

  Not the poetic kind either.

  The screaming, clawing, hair-draped-over-the-face kind.

  Li Lingrui coughed dryly, suddenly embarrassed.

  Demoness. Just wait until I push the Rising Yang Scripture to Great Perfection. Then we’ll see who says they aren’t tired.

  He kept that thought to himself.

  “You’re overthinking it. Guard the cave. I have business outside.”

  She lowered her head obediently. “...Yes.”

  Li Lingrui left the cave, went first to the Scripture Pavilion, and spent a thousand spirit stones on the Red Dust Desire Maiden Scripture.

  It was the counterpart to the Rising Yang Scripture, meant specifically for women. It tempered yin qi and stabilized the source.

  A useful thing to have.

  Especially if he planned to sell it to Siming later.

  After that, he rose into the air on a cloud of qi and flew until he arrived before a sprawling residence of violet stone and luminous eaves.

  The sacred ground of the demonic sect.

  The Inheritance Pavilion.

  The Pavilion was one of the oldest foundations the sect possessed in the Fangze Realm.

  The entire secret domain around it had been built from a rare violet stone called Huanxisha.

  This stone was extraordinarily sensitive to spirit power, divine sense, and fluctuations of qi.

  Whenever a cultivator trained, cast a technique, or broke through within the domain, the flow of power in their body, the rise and fall of their moves, even brief sparks of insight, could be imprinted into the stone itself.

  Anyone who came later only needed to touch the corresponding wall or array pattern to witness those old inheritances in full.

  Of course, that required payment.

  Naturally.

  A guard elder lay sprawled in a rocking chair near the entrance, eyes half-closed as if the entire world bored him.

  “New disciple?” he said lazily. “If you’ve come to sacred ground, then learn the rules.”

  Li Lingrui clasped his hands. “Please instruct me, Senior.”

  The old man snorted.

  “The inheritance imprints are divided into four grades. Dao Entry. Sea of Qi. Manifestation. Drifting Life. Prices go up accordingly. One hundred spirit stones, one thousand, then all the way to one hundred thousand for a single Drifting Life imprint.”

  Li Lingrui’s pupils shrank.

  A hundred thousand.

  Absurd.

  The elders who cultivated the Red Dust arts could buy a wife for a hundred spirit stones.

  Here, one inheritance imprint cost the same as a living person.

  The old man cracked one eye open and gave him a sideways look.

  “Too expensive?”

  He clicked his tongue.

  “Then I may as well make the ugly part clear too. The imprints in here are mixed quality. This is sacred ground, yes, but any disciple of the demonic sect with enough contribution can come into the Violet Manor secret realm to cultivate and absorb its spiritual energy.”

  “Which means plenty of the so-called inheritances are nothing but ordinary cultivation arts left behind by ordinary people.”

  He shifted in his chair.

  “And the most important thing... even if luck smiles on you and you draw some supreme devil art or true formula, what you get is still only observation and comprehension. Without the actual heart-method, you’re still ten thousand miles away from truly mastering it.”

  Li Lingrui asked, “Are the demonstrations complete?”

  Now the old man looked offended.

  “Of course they’re complete. Huanxisha records everything. Every detail.”