Yue Chen had only just spoken up for him, and she had already brought down enormous trouble on herself.
Now he had stepped forward...
The consequences would be unthinkable.
"Get out of here!"
Yue Xing could hold back no longer. She rushed forward and shoved Xuan Ye hard in the chest with her slender arms, trying to drive him out of this dangerous place.
"This isn't where you belong! Go!"
The girl's voice broke with tears, and droplets streaked down her usually cool, composed face.
Yue Chen came over too. She was much calmer than her younger sister.
"Young Master Xuan Ye, please don't interfere in the affairs of our clan."
"You're still too young. Some things... aren't for you to get involved in."
In the seat of honor, Yueye gripped the armrests tightly.
"Yue Chen! Yue Xing!"
"Take him away! Now!"
Her brows furrowed as painful memories surged through her mind.
When she was very, very young,
she, too, had wanted to ease her father's burden, prove herself, and earn even the slightest bit of attention.
But her "help" had only brought even more trouble.
Children her age would gather in a corner and point at her back.
"She's useless. All she can do is run to her parents."
"She's always making trouble. It's because of her human blood, of course."
Helplessness and humiliation washed over Yueye once again.
She didn't want to... didn't want to see the girl she had once been in Xuan Ye.
"Big Sister Yueye, trust me."
Xuan Ye's voice rang out.
Yueye's heart felt as if something had given it a savage tug.
She seemed to hear a girl's voice.
Father, trust me.
She rose from her seat and ordered sharply,
"Take him away!"
"Get him out of here!"
Yue Chen and Yue Xing stiffened.
They couldn't disobey the princess's command.
Maybe this was for the best...
Xuan Ye was still just a child.
Even if he was full of passion, what could he do?
It was better to get him away from this dangerous place for now.
Yue Chen and Yue Xing were just about to lay their hands on Xuan Ye's shoulders.
But the Goatee Elder's mocking laugh rang through the entire Council Hall.
"Do you know how much you've cost our Moon Demon Race? No, the entire demon race?"
"Our trade deal with the human merchants has fallen through because of you! Our reputation! Do you even know what that means? You've ruined our reputation among the outside world, you little brat!"
"And the food!" another elder shouted angrily. "We've always supplied food to other demon tribes. How many of our kin will go hungry now because of you?!"
"Of course, most important of all," the Goatee Elder said, raising a finger and rapping it hard on the table, "is the money we should have made! A mountain of money! It's all gone down the drain because we rescued you!"
Every word struck home.
Yue Chen and Yue Xing froze, their hands suspended in midair.
Yueye swayed, barely managing to steady herself against the chair.
She had taken responsibility for all of this herself.
Now, the elders' words had become blades, all aimed at the boy she wanted to protect.
Just as the sisters were about to drag Xuan Ye away by force, a calm voice spoke up.
"Is that really a bad thing?"
In an instant,
the entire Council Hall fell silent.
Everyone froze in place—the furious elders, the anxious Yue Chen and Yue Xing, even the despairing Yueye.
"Huh? What... what did you say?" The Goatee Elder wondered if he'd misheard.
Xuan Ye ignored him and looked instead at the elder who was fuming over the loss of cultivation resources. He spoke slowly.
"What happens if we don't deliver enough cultivation resources to the humans?"
"Then we're the ones who lose out!" The elder answered at once, still furious. "I paid for some of those resources myself, and I'm waiting to trade them for money to keep my business running!"
Xuan Ye's lips lifted slightly, but there was no hint of a smile.
"Wrong."
"They're the ones begging our Moon Demon Race to sell those goods to them."
"If there's less, then there's less. We can tell the outside world that our clan suffered a once-in-a-century natural disaster and our resources took a hit."
"The next time they want to buy the same goods, they'll have to pay more."
"Huh?"
The Council Hall fell into another strange silence.
Charge more?
You could do that?
The elders were about to denounce this twisted nonsense, but after thinking it over, they realized... there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it.
It was true that the humans had begged them to buy. They were the ones who controlled the resources.
If they withheld one shipment and raised the price next time... they could not only recover their losses, but make even more!
An elder with a quick mind immediately raised an objection.
"B-but then wouldn't our business reputation be..."
"Business reputation?" Xuan Ye interrupted, his tone carrying undisguised scorn.
"What does that matter next to cold, hard cash?"
"Besides, the resources are in our hands. If we say production has fallen, then it has fallen. If we say there's nothing to sell, who has the right to question us?"
He paused, then introduced a term these demons had never heard before.
"That's called scarcity marketing."
A few brief words, yet they rang through the elders' minds like a thunderclap.
They stared blankly at the six-year-old boy, speechless.
The Goatee Elder's face turned pale, then red. Unwilling to let a human brat steal the spotlight, he desperately searched for another opening.
"Easy to say! What about our food trade with the other demons? You've antagonized the Undead Demon Race, and so many tribes still haven't bought their food. How do you account for that loss?!"
Xuan Ye's gaze slowly shifted to him.
"What happens when they don't get their food?"
"They'll hate us! They'll make us lose money!" the Goatee Elder yelled without thinking.
"Wrong." Xuan Ye shook his head. "That's not what I asked. I asked, 'What happens to the food itself?'"
"What could happen to the food?" The elder was stunned. "If we can't sell it, it'll just sit in our hands! We could have turned it into money!"
"Still wrong."
Xuan Ye's voice grew low and eerie.
"If there isn't enough food, then what we have left won't lose value. Its price will rise."
"It'll rise... until some demons are willing to sell everything they own just to buy it."
"Suppose the market is short ten percent of its food. Then food prices will skyrocket, until even the poorest ten percent—the ones who could afford it before—can't buy any, even if they sell everything they own."
"Even if they can hunt humans, or even kill one another for food, that rule won't change. At most, the price will rise a little less."
"Boom!"
Those words hit even harder than his talk of "scarcity marketing."
The Council Hall was so quiet that not a pin could be heard falling.
Yet as Xuan Ye spoke, he felt a surge of excitement.
These theories came from the way wealth had been manipulated in his previous life. Every word was steeped in blood.
And yet they were truths even elementary and middle school students understood. Xuan Ye could explain them with ease, despite never having studied the subject.
But for some reason, the more he spoke, the more active the darkness suppressed in his heart became.
He could clearly see the scene his words described: group after group of demons starving to death because they couldn't afford food.
Xuan Ye suddenly realized he had changed.
Long Xuanye—the one who had only wanted to take good care of Long Haochen and live a peaceful life—was dead.
The person he was now had struggled to survive for three whole months on the human-demon border, living by the sword: the "demon" Xuan Ye!
He wasn't excited because he hated the harm demons had done to humanity. He simply reveled in the tragedy.
Some people... just wanted to watch the world burn.
There was a blaze of savagery burning inside him!
Before you continue