The heavy iron key turned with a screech of rusted protest.

  ?Jiang Chen pushed the door open.

  ?It didn't feel like entering a room; it felt like stepping into the throat of a dying dragon.

  A blast of heat, thick with the chemical stench of sulfur and rotting flowers, slammed into him.

  This was the Waste Chute—the intestine of the Alchemy Peak, where the failures of the "Earth-Tier" pills were flushed away.

  ?To a normal disciple, the air alone was toxic enough to cause lung failure.

  To Jiang Chen, it smelled like a buffet.

  ?He stepped inside, the iron door clanging shut behind him, sealing him in the gloom.

  The tunnel was narrow, slanted downward at a steep angle, lined with heat-warped stone.

  The walls were coated in a thick, multicolored sludge that dripped slowly into the darkness below—the "Slag" Elder Han coveted.

  ?[Environmental Hazard Detected: Alchemical Fumes.]

  [Toxicity: High.]

  [Venom Heart (Level 2): Auto-Filtering.]

  ?Jiang Chen took a deep breath.

  The violet fumes swirling around his ankles were sucked into his lungs.

  Instead of coughing, his chest expanded. The [Venom Heart] scrubbed the poison from the air, stripping out the volatile Qi and discarding the rest as harmless carbon dioxide.

  ?He exhaled a plume of gray smoke.

  "Spicy," he whispered.

  ?He looked at the wall.

  A glob of neon-green sludge was sliding down the stone. It hissed, burning a small groove into the rock.

  Jiang Chen reached out.

  ?Don't touch it, his human instinct screamed. It melts stone.

  Eat, the Serpent whispered.

  ?Jiang Chen scraped a handful of the green slime off the wall.

  It burned his skin, sizzling against the [Iron Skin] passive, but his flesh held.

  He licked his palm.

  ?It tasted like battery acid mixed with honey.

  ?[Consumed: Earth-Tier Residue (Waste).]

  [EV +2]

  ?"Two points," Jiang Chen muttered, his eyes adjusting to the dark. "For a single lick."

  In the outer sect, he had to kill a rat for 10 EV. Here, the walls were bleeding experience points.

  ?He began to descend.

  ?He didn't walk; he slid.

  The chute was slick with grease and failed potions. Jiang Chen dug his heels in, using his claws to control his descent.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Every few meters, he stopped to scrape a particularly glowing patch of filth into his mouth.

  ?Crunch. A piece of calcified bone powder.

  Slurp. A puddle of mercury-laced fluid.

  ?[EV +3]

  [EV +2]

  [EV +5]

  ?The deeper he went, the hotter it got.

  The sludge became thicker, darker.

  The "waste" here wasn't just failed experiments; it was the concentrated impurities of pills meant for the Sect Elders. Even their trash contained more energy than a servant would see in a lifetime.

  ?Suddenly, the chute leveled out.

  He dropped into a small, circular cistern—a collection pool where the slag gathered before cooling.

  It was a nightmare pit.

  The floor was ankle-deep in a black, tar-like substance that bubbled sluggishly.

  Bones—human and beast—floated in the muck, bleached white by the chemicals. Previous "cleaners" who hadn't survived the fumes.

  ?But Jiang Chen didn't look at the bones.

  He looked at the center of the cistern.

  ?Rising from the black tar was a mound of solid, crystallized slag.

  It pulsed with a chaotic, unstable rhythm. Red, blue, purple—colors warred beneath its jagged surface.

  It was a "Slag Golem"—not a monster, but a natural formation of magical waste that had congealed into a solid block of volatile energy.

  ?[Target Detected: Condensed Slag Crystal.]

  [Mass: 50kg.]

  [Energy Density: Critical.]

  [Warning: Unstable.]

  ?"Jackpot," Jiang Chen grinned, his teeth stained rainbow colors from the journey down.

  ?He waded through the tar. It was hot enough to boil water, but his Constitution (5.2) ignored the heat.

  He reached the crystal mound.

  He didn't have a pickaxe. He raised his hand.

  ?[Skill: Rending Claw.]

  ?His fingers hooked, glowing with red Qi.

  Slash.

  ?He carved a chunk the size of an apple off the main block.

  It vibrated in his hand, hot and angry.

  ?He bit into it.

  CRUNCH.

  ?It shattered like glass in his mouth.

  Instantly, a shockwave of energy blasted through his meridians.

  This wasn't the gentle warmth of the rat meat or the slow burn of the pills.

  This was raw, unfiltered chaos.

  ?"GAAH!"

  Jiang Chen fell to his knees in the tar, clutching his throat.

  The energy tore through his system, trying to shred his veins.

  It was too much. Too fast.

  ?[Alert: Energy Overload.]

  [Venom Heart Capacity: 85%... 90%...]

  ?Expand, Jiang Chen commanded his body. Adapt.

  ?He didn't spit it out. He swallowed the rest.

  He forced the chaos down, using his will to crush the rebellious energy into submission.

  The Serpent in his Dantian stirred, annoyed by the noise, and opened its mouth to siphon the excess.

  ?The pain peaked, then broke.

  The chaos settled into power.

  ?[Consumed: Earth-Tier Slag Crystal (Fragment).]

  [EV +15]

  [Constitution +0.1]

  ?Jiang Chen panted, wiping black sludge from his face.

  "Fifteen points," he rasped. "And there's fifty kilograms of this stuff."

  ?He looked at the mound.

  He didn't think about the danger. He didn't think about Elder Han waiting upstairs.

  He only thought about the hunger.

  ?He began to eat.

  Handful after handful.

  He tore the mound apart like a starving animal, gorging himself on the poisonous wealth of the sect.

  ?[EV +15]

  [EV +12]

  [EV +18]

  ?His skin flushed red. Steam poured from his ears.

  His muscles twitched and bulged, knitting themselves denser, harder.

  The "Waste Chute" wasn't a punishment.

  It was the best restaurant in the world.

  ?After an hour, the mound was gone.

  Jiang Chen sat in the empty cistern, his belly distended, his eyes glowing with a feral, terrifying light.

  He belched, and a spark of green fire escaped his lips.

  ?[Digestive Cycle Complete.]

  [Current EV: 21 + 220 = 241 EV.]

  [Constitution: 5.2 -> 6.0]

  ?"Two hundred," Jiang Chen whispered, feeling the power thrumming under his skin.

  He stood up. The tar on the floor no longer felt hot. It felt lukewarm.

  ?He looked at the small service ladder leading back up to the laboratory.

  He had to go back. If he stayed too long, Han would get suspicious.

  He scraped some of the remaining loose sludge into a bucket he found near the wall—the "offering" for the Elder.

  ?But as he turned to leave, his foot kicked something hard submerged in the tar.

  Clang.

  ?It wasn't rock. It was metal.

  Jiang Chen paused.

  He reached down and pulled the object out of the muck.

  ?It was a ring.

  A simple, tarnished silver band, corroded by years of acid, clinging to a skeletal finger bone.

  He pulled the ring free.

  ?[Item Detected: Old Storage Ring.]

  [Status: Damaged/Sealed.]

  [Owner: Deceased (Previous Cleaner).]

  ?Jiang Chen wiped the grime off the band.

  A storage ring? Even a damaged one was worth a fortune to a servant.

  And if a "Cleaner" had this... they must have stolen it, or found something they weren't supposed to.

  ?He tucked the ring into his belt.

  He grabbed the bucket of sludge.

  He began the climb back up to the light, a demon wearing the skin of a disciple, his belly full of poison and his pockets holding a dead man's secret.