"They were actually from the Demon Alliance." Su Tingxue panted heavily, relieved to have escaped with her life.
Ji Sen felt the same way.
"What's the Demon Alliance?" Zhou You asked in confusion. It seemed to be a famous organization that both Su Tingxue and Ji Sen had heard of.
Now it was Ji Sen's turn to be surprised. A Cultivator who had never even heard of the Demon Alliance? What remote wilderness had he crawled out of?
Never mind anything else-the Cultivation Forum alone was full of firsthand accounts from the Demon Alliance's victims.
Could Fellow Daoist Zhou have only just learned to use the internet?
"The Demon Alliance is a sect you can only join once you've reached Foundation Establishment at the very least. No, rather than a sect, it's more of a loose organization."
"They don't train Cultivators from scratch the way sects do. Instead, they keep recruiting members from all over."
"Their members come from all sorts of backgrounds: sect traitors, reclusive independent Cultivators, even Primordial Ancient Species. The only thing they have in common is their fondness for negative emotions."
"They have no limits whatsoever. They'll pay any price for negative emotions, and they take pleasure in it. They've harmed countless people, and killed more than a few."
"They're called demons because their behavior defies normal logic. You absolutely cannot try to understand them through conventional thinking."
"The Demon Alliance is an extremely dangerous organization. Before I left the mountains, my Master warned me to be extraordinarily careful if I encountered them."
Zhou You nodded. Indeed, Lian Yi, a full-fledged Foundation Establishment Cultivator, had willingly spent an entire year pretending to be a dog at Ji Sen's side just to see his face twist in anguish today. No normal Cultivator would ever do something like that.
"A mere Demon Alliance? I could crush them with a flick of my finger." Chu Xiaoyao dismissed the Demon Alliance with contempt. They were nothing but a bunch of schemers who liked playing dirty tricks behind people's backs, yet made themselves out to be so unfathomable.
"Back on the Primordial Continent, I destroyed well over a thousand Demon Sects. Those old demons all bowed before me and pledged allegiance, never daring to step out of line."
Su Tingxue glanced at her. What did Chu Xiaoyao mean by that? The Primordial Continent? Demon Sects? These were terms she didn't understand at all.
But thinking it over, didn't they seem to hint at something utterly terrifying?!
Who exactly was she?
"Forget it. Never mind her-let's take the TV apart." Chu Xiaoyao was more curious about how the television could work without being plugged in.
Even after Lian Yi left, the TV kept hissing, emitting shrill white noise that set everyone on edge.
After getting Ji Sen's permission, Chu Xiaoyao finally got her wish and took the TV apart.
Removing the rear casing revealed an incomprehensible circuit board, a tangle of wires, a bulky screen, and a small generator.
"Huh? Why is there a generator in here?"
Although Chu Xiaoyao didn't recognize the generator, she could read. The words "So-and-so portable generator" were printed on its casing.
No matter how they looked at it, that wasn't something that belonged inside an old twenty-one-inch television.
Zhou You flipped the generator's switch off. The noisy television shut down and immediately fell silent.
"So... the television was modified?" Zhou You wore a peculiar expression. He had thought there was something magical about this TV, but it turned out to have a generator built into it.
"I remember you saying this TV was broken, right?" Zhou You asked Ji Sen.
Ji Sen nodded. "Right. When I rented the place, the landlord said it was broken and wouldn't even turn on. He said I could just throw it away. I couldn't be bothered, so I left it here."
He always watched TV on his tablet. This television was just there for decoration.
"So Lian Yi repaired the television and installed a generator just to scare you?"
"And she taught herself how to repair it," Su Tingxue reminded Zhou You. Most Cultivators were no different from ordinary people when it came to modern technology: they could use it proficiently, but very few actually understood how it worked, knew how to repair a television, or could modify its wiring to connect a new power source.
They would have to learn all of that from scratch.
"She really is... dedicated to scaring people." Zhou You's mouth twitched. The Demon Alliance's behavior truly was beyond his comprehension.
"There's another advantage to using a television to scare someone," Su Tingxue said analytically. She often watched horror movies and knew about Cultivators too.
"When a broken television turns on, an ordinary person will panic. But Cultivators know more, so their first thought will be that someone is using a spell to scare them. Yet once they discover there's no trace of a spell, that unknown makes them even more frightened."
Zhou You pieced together Lian Yi's scare routine:
First, she had played Little Black Dog for a year to earn Ji Sen's trust. Then she had barked at empty space to frighten him. While he was away, she had repaired the television and made it hiss to create a terrifying atmosphere, opened the window to make it look as though something had entered, transformed into Ji Sen to pass herself off as him, and finally revealed everything to break him.
From beginning to end, the only spell she had used was a single Transformation Technique.
What a clever scheme.
"What a terrifying being."
Lian Yi had transformed into a little dragon the length of a forearm and torn through space to escape the Red King, suffering severe injuries in the process. Recalling the battle, she still felt shaken.
"Who exactly is that Chu Xiaoyao? How could she have such a terrifying Dao Protector!"
Lian Yi felt that the Red King had been completely at ease throughout the fight. She surmised that he wanted to take her alive, but couldn't accurately gauge her strength and feared using too much force. He had never gone all out, and that had given her the chance to escape.
An expert like that was actually someone's Dao Protector.
"How interesting..."
Lian Yi slowly began to smile. Gravely injured, she laughed between coughs.
She had already picked out her next victim, but now she felt that Chu Xiaoyao would be much more interesting.
If she could make Chu Xiaoyao look panicked, or even despairing, how delicious would those negative emotions be?
The more fearless someone normally was, the tastier the contrast when they panicked at a critical moment.
Lian Yi couldn't help licking the corner of her mouth. "What method should I use...?"
Lian Yi had standards. Using cultivation and spells to drive someone to despair was a method for the incompetent.
That was why she hadn't cast any spells during the year she spent as a dog.
"I'll gather information on the Carefree Sect first."
Two days later, in an apartment building.
Dressed in loungewear and sitting cross-legged in a gaming chair in front of her computer, Lian Yi found herself stumped for once.
A pile of bottles and jars filled with healing pills sat on her computer desk. Her severe injuries had yet to heal, and she had spent the past two days gathering information while tending to her wounds.
"That's strange. Why can't I find anything about the Carefree Sect on the Cultivation Forum?"
There was very little information that couldn't be found on the Cultivation Forum. Only sensitive questions, such as how Kunlun Mountain's sect leader had become the strongest in the world, prompted the moderators to clamp down hard.
Otherwise, even a tiny sect like Ji Sen's Green Bamboo Sect would have a few posts making its presence known.
"Could it be a newly established little sect?"
Lian Yi quickly dismissed that suspicion. Chu Xiaoyao's bearing was extraordinary and gave her an unfathomable air. With a powerful expert like the Red King serving as her Dao Protector, how could she belong to a small sect?
"A hidden sect that even the Cultivation Forum knows nothing about. Its foundations must be terrifyingly deep." Lian Yi found the prospect somewhat troublesome.
To remain so thoroughly hidden spoke to the strictness of its rules. Only a great sect with a thousand-year legacy could achieve something like that.
But the greater the difficulty, the more excited she became.
"A phone call?"
Lian Yi answered. The deliveryman's voice sounded rather unfriendly, and his words nearly made her cough up blood.
"What? I bought twenty Stone Lions and fifty Stone Bollards, and they're being delivered to my home right now?!"
Before you continue