When Your Hair Stands on End

Yu Hee screamed without making a sound.

Of course she did.

"There are no monsters!"

There were no maps above level 500!

"If I'd known it would be like this, I would've leveled up in the Abyss!"

She'd been so busy hoarding slaughter energy and spiritual power that she hadn't even bothered raising her level!

Apparently, map levels only scaled once you moved to a higher channel. No matter how thoroughly she scoured ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the surrounding maps, the highest she could find sat in the 450 range—meaning pure grinding wouldn't yield a scrap of experience!!!

"This is ridiculous…!"

So she was supposed to wander around doing nothing but searching for an Ascension Platform, or an item that could let her ascend? And those platforms weren't just lying around in any old city—they'd be in a major metropolis, which meant interacting with NPCs and unlocking related maps just to get there?!

How the hell was she supposed to pull that off.

"I'd love to just pick a city and massacre every neutral NPC in it, but I-seong would blow me up before I finished."

That damn girl.

If only she weren't Aurora, specialized in Evil-Karma-proportional damage.

"Fine. While I'm exploring, I might as well hunt for bugs."

By lower-realm standards, she was basically max level. A cultivator at the Hwashin realm could only exist down here by splitting into clones or fragments, their power dropping to Nascent Soul grade in the process.

Lose a clone or a piece of your body in the lower realm and you were throwing power away for nothing—and since there was usually nothing worth taking down here, most of them didn't bother. Yu Hee turned Togo's teachings over in her mind as she worked.

With a soft whirr, she spun the barcode scanner in her hand, transforming it into a short golden spear, and carefully tucked it into her heart.

Last time she'd pressed it by accident mid-insertion, detonating her own body and torching a mountain of slaughter energy. This time she stayed sharp, confirmed it was safely stowed, and only then looked up.

"So how long are you all planning to trail after me?"

She turned her gaze on the neutral NPCs who'd been tagging along at her heels.

She couldn't just kill them all, either.

She'd run the Evil Karma scanner—none of them registered as valid targets. They were the kind of cultivators who either took no damage or simply regenerated.

"Demon Immortal…!"

And leading those cultivators was the quest NPC—a neutral NPC. The same neutral NPC who, even after she'd completed their mission, had never flipped over to friendly status.

The Humanity Clones had a point.

Up until now, the reason she'd slaughtered neutral NPCs had been secondary to the slaughter energy and experience—the real priority was never pulling those godawful eok-kka event triggers.

Part of her had loosened up because she'd broken past level 500 into early Nascent Soul, and because she had Togo—estimated level 800—as her backer, so maybe she could tank a neutral NPC's eok-kka event now.

The biggest reason, though, was Yu I-seong standing in the Mental World with a spear—not a sword—pointed at her, threatening to raise hell if she massacred neutral NPCs for no reason.

Either way, the fact that Yu ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Hee's razor edge had dulled came down to one thing: reaching Nascent Soul. Hitting vanilla max level had given her something called room to breathe.

And in this garbage game, "room to breathe" was what people commonly called letting your guard down.

By the time a sudden, unpleasant prickle shot through her scalp and Yu Hee's instincts snapped her gaze toward the neutral NPCs, raising slaughter energy as she turned—it was already a little late.

One of the neutral NPCs lost its gray coloring and flushed a deep, bloody red.

Its mouth tore wide open. It died without even managing a scream, its skin sliding off like a discarded robe, and from inside that mouth a red speck burst free—looking straight at her, smiling brightly. Yu Hee triggered Auto-Battle a beat too late.

"Demon Immortal, I have been searching for y—!"

The mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator snorted at the murderous killing intent rolling off the Demon Immortal that had closed right in front of him.

This body was nothing more than a disposable clone, forced into shape by feeding countless cultivators a Body-Snatching Pill disguised as an elixir. He'd found the Demon Immortal he was hunting. Whether this clone got wrecked or not was irrelevant.

He had the location. Together with his fellow cultivators, he would pin the Demon Immortal down, lure out the giant, and hunt it—

The cultivator's thoughts went no further.

Because Auto-Battle had yanked a flail from thin air, spun it, and swung—while Yu Hee, watching from the Mental World, simultaneously turned the wheel of law and stamped a rule onto the strike.

A Spoon bristling with savage options, the Law of Return layered on top so that the ginseng-shaped handle blazed with light, smashed straight through the mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator's clone.

Fixed damage riding on penetration damage punched through the shattering clone and, in an instant, slammed into the completely unguarded main body on the other side.

It was a perfect hit—Defenseless and Ambush both fully applied.

Yu Hee's already monstrous attack power had been doubled on the way in. An ordinary mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator would have died on the spot.

But Mudu—who had lived so long that his remaining lifespan was nearly gone even before ascending to the upper realm—somehow endured the blow.

His life-bound Dharma Treasure cracked and shuddered, every automatic defensive artifact on his body shattered to pieces, and his Nascent Soul coughed up streams of essence blood. He still held on.

If Yu Hee had seen it, she would have screamed, How ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the hell is an NPC with no boss modifiers still alive?

"Fellow Daoist Mu! Are you all right?!"

"I am… not! Cough…! This… this is… absurd…!"

It had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been an unreasonable strike.

Cultivators raised clones and body doubles precisely to hide from threats like this, or to resolve problems without taking damage. And Mudu, a cultivator especially well-versed in the arts of cloning, felt the shock of that single blow all the more deeply.

A Demon Immortal who saw through every clone at once—clones sophisticated enough to deceive even Heavenly Tribulation into taking the damage in their place—ignored them all, and struck the main body in a single unfair blow.

No wonder so few had survived her until now. Mudu forced down a precious elixir from his storage treasure, barely stabilized his body, and painstakingly reclaimed the blood and essence blood he'd spilled.

"You were struck by the Demon Immortal?"

"…Embarrassing as it is, yes. She targeted me through the clone in a single stroke."

"Surely the giant behind the Demon Immortal had a hand in—"

"The Demon Immortal has reached Nascent Soul. There is no longer any need for other cultivators to gather and target the giant behind her."

Mudu's eyes glittered with hatred and rage.

He had already been waiting for death. That single strike had carved a massive chunk out of what little lifespan remained. Even after gathering the essence blood back up, the lifespan that had leaked away in those few seconds amounted to decades. Of course he was furious.

"I will give you the location. Go ahead and pin the Demon Immortal down. I will collect artifacts in the east and follow immediately."

Wonpa caught the Dharma Treasure Mudu flung at him and nodded. That his friend would hand over a treasure he had cherished so dearly told him exactly how angry Mudu was.

Wonpa rose.

Two mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivators set out to hunt a giant.

Mudu—a master of cloning arts who had spent his entire Nascent Soul lifespan making artifacts for pleasure—abandoned his original plan of crafting tools from a giant's body. Blind with rage, he declared he would pour every artifact he had ever made into the fight.

And Wonpa—who had prospered the machines, raised countless cultivators, and from the very beginning had intended only to kill the Demon Immortal who had wiped out the sects and fortresses his hands had once touched—was full of confidence.

After all, Wonpa had personally slaughtered every cultivator who stood in the way of the machines' prosperity.

Yu Hee, of course, had no idea two Nascent Soul cultivators were coming for her. She was busy arguing with her Humanity Clones.

"I'm telling you, the only way to not get hit by an eok-kka event is to kill them!"

"But my hair definitely reacted…!"

There was no way her eok-kka radar—her own hair—had misfired!

Ugh. Uuuugh.

"Demon Immortal, the one just now bore an exact resemblance to the portrait of Senior Mudu, a mid-stage Nascent Soul great senior. If I may be so bold, I believe it may have been his clone…"

Between the extra information from the neutral NPC and the Humanity Clones raising hell, she finally agreed to let the neutral NPCs go free.

"No matter how I look at it, I don't think the eok-kka event is over."

Her hair had never betrayed her. Not once.

Her hair was more accurate than her gut, and she knew it.

Drawing on hard-won experience, Yu Hee used Dig to carve a tunnel into the map the neutral NPCs had just left, laid down a massive carpet of slaughter energy disguised as spiritual power, stocked her consumables, and settled in to camp.

She'd done this before—holed up on nothing but a feeling that an eok-kka event was coming—so the reaction came naturally.

Low level, high level, max level: it didn't matter. A player's greatest enemy in this game was never the bugs, never the mod conflicts. It was the godawful eok-kka events that could pop out anywhere, anytime.