The Demon Immortal Wants to Trade
"Burrow!"
I'd mastered Chopsticks to the point it was basically a passive auto-attack, but this one still felt awkward when I tried to fire it off myself — probably because the Humanity Clones had been proxying it for me. I had to shout the skill name just to get it to activate properly.
The slaughter-energy cost was about as low as Chopsticks, and while the dash itself was short, it was rock-solid. Chain it and you could even whip around in completely random directions. The AoE damage was pitifully weaker than Chopsticks, but it came with knockback, and anything that actually touched the hands I was burrowing with — true to every slaughter-based skill — got one-shot even if it was an elite. The attack power was absurd.
A master skill worthy of the name, no question.
The only real drawbacks were that spamming it without regard for cooldown doubled the slaughter-energy cost, and if you didn't land a direct hit the damage was weak — plus the knockback would scatter a clump of trash mobs and force you to hit them again. Still not enough to outweigh how good the skill was.
"So this is… Burrow?"
Becoming a master skill locked the name so I couldn't even rename it, and yet its combat performance was ridiculous. No offense to the bomb skill, but this one was just easier to use and way more flexible in application.
Past me for never using this in a fight was a complete idiot.
I knew better than anyone how important a short dash or charge skill was, and I'd still skimmed the skill description and moved on. What a dumbass!
A convenient charge skill this good could cut Auto-Battle usage down to almost nothing. Granted, this was a low-level map, so that helped.
…Though same-level mobs would casually dodge a single use and counterattack if I wasn't chaining it. I'd already had a few disasters where my upper and lower halves parted ways because I used it on autopilot.
Not that it mattered. As long as my Slaughter Ocean didn't run dry, my regeneration never ran out. Defense and evasion were a lost cause for me ages ago, so I'd gone all-in on a regen build — to the point I could put myself back together from pieces with nothing but slaughter energy and sheer willpower.
"The exp's coming in real nice, though."
Slaughter energy was pouring in just as fast, but spiritual power was accumulating in absolute mouse-turd amounts. If I could get even half as much spiritual power as I was getting slaughter energy, I'd be happy.
Probably too greedy.
"Burrow! Burrow!"
As a charge skill, it was genuinely fantastic for smacking the back of the head of anything that tried to run mid-fight. Once I got familiar enough to use it without shouting the name, it might even work for ambushes.
I'd close the gap in an instant, both hands punching straight through a monster's solar plexus and leaving a massive hole — and before the stubborn thing could finish dying, a storm of slaughter energy would slam in right behind, knock it back mid-death-throes, and a volley of Chopsticks would finish the job for good.
"Yeah, it's gonna take a while longer to get used to this."
I'd tried stacking Burrow instead of chaining it — accelerating into a single decisive strike, knocking them back, then landing one more clean Burrow for the finisher — but I still couldn't fire it without the skill name. Ended up cleaning up with Chopsticks again.
"That should be enough testing for Burrow."
[Heavenly Anomaly Valley] · [Strange Rock Cliffs] · [Unno Fortress]
A fortress popped up.
"Wonder if my notoriety's applying here."
I wanted some items, and the cleanest way was to interact with neutral NPCs through Personal Trade Mode. Killing everything and relying on drops was a mess — slaughter energy wrecked drop items so often that basically nothing dropped except body materials reinforced with a cultivator's spiritual power.
If I wanted the Dharma-treasure materials Cheon Nan-cho was after, hunting was a dead end. I'd have to pray for personal trades or random rewards, or just smash every single object I could find.
"Right — does object grinding still work?"
In villages, cities, or dungeons, destroying objects had a low chance to drop same-level gear, consumables, or materials.
Object grinding meant duplicating objects in a village and smashing them over and over — either chasing jackpot gacha pulls or stockpiling same-level junk to sell for money duplication.
Problem was, I'd personally written the bug-fix mod that killed that grind and baked it into the Comprehensive Bug Fix pack. Object duplication was patched. And with Personal Trade Mode in play, mass-dumping to merchant NPCs for money dupe was effectively dead too.
So the question was: if I used the Creation Window to make objects inside a village or fortress and then smashed them, would items still pop out?
To answer that, I had to get inside the fortress first.
"Demon Immortal! It's the Demon Immortal!!!"
"The Demon Immortal is here!!!"
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The moment they spotted me, the two gatekeepers started screaming across the entire map with spiritual power behind every word, while another cultivator hammered a bell that looked like a Dharma treasure with both fists in a full Dempsey Roll, blasting out sharp, spirit-charged peals like a warning klaxon. I let out a long sigh.
I'd suppressed my slaughter energy and sealed my killing intent tight, but they'd already locked onto either my spiritual power or my appearance. Busted in an instant.
I watched the minimap of Unno Fortress — once solid gray — flood with red dots in seconds. As the red tide started pouring toward me, I had no choice but to draw out the slaughter energy and killing intent I'd been holding back.
Wrapped in slaughter energy and killing intent like a cloak of crimson cloud, only Yu Hee's vividly glowing red eyes shone through — and high above, the red star that watched over her glittered like those same eyes, as if it could hardly wait for what was about to happen.
The mere appearance of the Demon Immortal sent every cultivator in Unno Fortress swarming together. It was the instinctive clustering of the weak, bulk for bulk's sake — though the cultivators themselves barely registered it as such.
Of course they didn't. This was the Demon Immortal whose name had been on every tongue for decades.
Word was: unless you sensed her presence and immediately threw every Dharma treasure you owned into a full-speed escape, you would never outrun the death that wore a little girl's shape.
In truth, the only cultivators who had ever survived were the ones who ran that hard. Everyone else was dead. The most recent rumor claimed an entire fortress's worth of cultivators had been wiped out after going to check on someone from their sect who supposedly still lived.
And that Demon Immortal was here. Now.
The gatekeepers confirmed her and raised the alarm — and in the same breath, a tangible red killing intent rolled out to blanket the entire fortress, visible even to mortal eyes. Everyone understood at once.
Death was right in front of them.
"This is insane! We have to run!"
In the end, one weak cultivator tried to flee alone. He smashed a spirit stone pulled from his storage pouch, flared his spiritual power, and forced out an escape technique — only for a red energy to worm into the spell and snuff it out completely.
Other cultivators who'd been quietly prepping their own escape arts saw it happen. Their eyes shook. Then they all cast at once, every technique different — and every single space-crossing art was blocked cold.
That red energy wasn't mere killing intent. It was slaughter energy, blanketing the whole fortress, and once you were inside the minimap's range, the only way out was to physically run or fly. The cultivators who didn't know that fell into total chaos.
The one person who should have stopped that chaos — the fortress lord of Unno Fortress, a late Golden Core powerhouse — had left the place in his disciples' hands long ago and vanished into a secret realm that opened once every few thousand years, taking a beloved disciple with him.
There was no one in this fortress who could stop the Demon Immortal.
"Anyone with a gray dot who has a spiritually potent flower or herb they can trade me — step forward."
The little girl's young voice carried the reek of blood with it, a horrific copper stench that seemed to soak into everything. The cultivators froze as one.
Then, among those who finally parsed what the Demon Immortal had said, one cultivator forced his locked body forward and opened his mouth in a rush.
"Demon Immortal! I have a Thousand-Day Crimson Heart Her—!!!"
Behind the Demon Immortal, one thousand twenty-four blood-red halos bloomed into existence. A single blood-red halo shot forward and smashed into the cultivator who'd stepped up. The late Core Formation cultivator's reflexive barrier technique shattered on contact, and the blood-red rain that followed punched his body full of holes — then ground what was left into paste.
"Who the hell told a non-tradeable red dot to speak up? I was talking to the gray dots! Why the fuck do I have to converse with a red dot?!"
So what the hell even are red dots and gray dots?!
No one dared ask out loud. They just screamed and howled inside their own heads, frozen solid, desperately reading each other's faces. The Demon Immortal watched them for a moment, then spoke again.
"Fine, let's clear the red dots first and then check. No — even if they're gray, if they turn red they die, what kind of nonsense is that. Still, someone might survive that way, right? Honestly, grabbing what I need and killing the rest would be better for exp, wouldn't it? Okay, okay, I won't touch the gray dots. God, you're annoying."
The words tumbled out in a chaotic stream, half monologue and half conversation with someone who wasn't there — and every syllable landed in the cultivators' ears, driving their terror to the absolute limit.
Anyone could see it. The Demon Immortal was completely insane.