Chapter 54: Demon’s Heart
Grand Elder Shen He knelt upon the obsidian floor, a jagged sacrificial dagger pressed so tightly against his own wrinkled throat that a thin line of dark blood was already welling beneath the blade. The ancient cultivator was entirely consumed by mortal dread, explicitly convinced that the Supreme Flesh-Crafter’s unbroken silence was a divine mandate for his immediate, agonizing suicide.
Sunny sat rigidly upon the hovering bone-palanquin that had brought him into the cavern. His pale face was a flawless, chilling mask of aristocratic apathy. His crimson eyes stared unblinking at the kneeling Elder.
Internally, however, Sunny was experiencing a catastrophic spiral of civilian exhaustion. His uncultivated mind was screaming. He explicitly did not want the sect’s lead military commander to bleed out onto his boots. He simply wanted to return to his pavilion, pull the heavy shadow-blankets over his head, and sleep until the Carrion-Locust swarm either passed or consumed the entire continent.
"..."
Sunny allowed the heavy, freezing silence to stretch for three more agonizing seconds, ensuring the atmospheric terror was absolute.
"Sheathe your blade," Sunny finally rasped, his voice a flat, emotionless void.
Shen He gasped, his entire body shuddering as he hastily lowered the cursed dagger. He pressed his forehead into the cold stone, weeping tears of pure, unadulterated relief. He explicitly interpreted the command not as an act of mercy, but as a terrifying dismissal—the Young Master viewed his blood as too pathetic and polluted to even serve as a proper apology.
"I am unworthy of your dark clemency, Supreme Patriarch!" Shen He babbled, scrambling backward.
Sunny shifted his glowing gaze back to the massive, golden-hued Abyssal Siege-Toad squatting behind the reinforced spirit-glass. The beast explicitly resembled a small mountain of pulsing, acidic warts and rippling dark-muscle.
According to the Grand Elder, the Vanguard High Command intended to utilize these massive amphibians as living artillery against the encroaching locust swarm. The logic was sound; fiendish toads were the natural predators of demonic insects. However, the catastrophic kinetic feedback loop within the Toad’s biological matrix meant the beast would literally shatter its own spine upon its first concussive landing.
A low, guttural croak reverberated through the cavern, vibrating the very marrow within Sunny’s bones. The Abyssal Siege-Toad was growing violently restless.
From the shadows of the cavern, a lowly blood-thrall scurried forward. The emaciated servant was trembling so violently he could barely hold the massive, rusted iron spear in his hands. Impaled upon the spear were several dozen charred Carrion-Locusts, heavily dusted with a hallucinogenic rot-spice that the Vanguard utilized to artificially stimulate the appetites of their siege-beasts.
"S-Supreme Ones," the blood-thrall whimpered, keeping his eyes firmly glued to the floor. "The beast... it requires its hourly gorge. If it is not pacified with the rot-spice, it will begin secreting highly volatile acid from its pores."
Sunny explicitly recognized a critical flaw in his own understanding of the beast. He needed to know the exact limits of its psychological conditioning. Was this golden monstrosity a mindless, feral engine of destruction, or was it thoroughly bound by the sect’s blood-ledgers?
Sunny slowly descended from his bone-palanquin. He projected his dark Qi, allowing it to billow around him like a suffocating cloak, and stalked toward the trembling thrall.
The thrall froze, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm. He explicitly believed the Supreme Flesh-Crafter was approaching to casually snap his neck and feed his corpse to the Toad as a secondary appetizer. The thrall squeezed his eyes shut, actively preparing for the agonizing sensation of his soul being violently extracted.
Sunny did not strike him. He simply reached out with a pale hand and grasped the heavy iron spear, easily wrenching it from the thrall’s paralyzed grip.
Sunny turned and walked directly toward the reinforced spirit-glass separating them from the Abyssal Siege-Toad.
Inside the containment cell, the beast’s massive, glowing orbs locked onto the impaled locusts. It let out another deep, demanding croak, its acidic saliva sizzling against the floor.
Sunny maintained his cold, apathetic facade. He slowly raised the iron spear, explicitly dragging the charred locusts back and forth.
The Siege-Toad’s massive eyes tracked the movement. Its dark-muscled hind legs tensed, explicitly preparing to launch its multi-ton body forward.
Sunny explicitly felt his civilian heart plummet. He was terrified the beast would shatter the glass and flatten him into a bloody smear. However, he forced his physical vessel to remain perfectly still. He projected absolute, unfathomable arrogance.
With a deliberate, mocking slowness, Sunny lowered the spear and offered it not to the Toad, but to his own shadow.
The Phantom Ash Scorpion, which had been trailing silently behind him, immediately scuttled forward. The Tier 4 assassin explicitly cared nothing for the Toad’s hunger. It greedily snapped its venom-dripping pincers, snatching the charred locusts from the iron spear and devouring them in a series of rapid, crunching bites.
Inside the cell, the Abyssal Siege-Toad vibrated with sheer, unadulterated malice. The acidic warts on its back flared with a sickly green light. It opened its cavernous maw, revealing rows of jagged, inward-facing fangs.
It explicitly wanted to eradicate the arrogant human and the insect that had just stolen its tribute.
Yet, it did not leap.
The Toad’s massive body trembled, suppressing its feral instincts with visible, agonizing effort. It simply glared at Sunny with pure, concentrated hatred, before slowly turning its massive back toward the glass, retreating into the darkest corner of its cell.
Sunny exhaled a microscopic, silent breath of relief.
The beast was explicitly bound. The heavy blood-contracts woven into its soul by the Vanguard’s elite tamers absolutely forbade it from attacking a commander bearing the high-tier aura of the Inner Sect.
Behind Sunny, the blood-thrall had collapsed entirely, openly weeping in a puddle of his own making. He explicitly believed that the Young Master had intentionally provoked the Calamity-tier Toad simply to demonstrate his absolute, god-like dominion over all living flesh. The thrall was entirely convinced that Sunny’s psychological cruelty was boundless.
"Your... your dominance is absolute, Supreme One," Grand Elder Shen He whispered reverently, his voice trembling as he stepped forward. "Even a starving siege-beast cowers before your dark majesty."
"..."
Sunny ignored the flattery. He turned his glowing crimson eyes toward the ancient cultivator.
"The Vanguard seeks to deploy these vessels," Sunny stated coldly. "What is your pathetic theory regarding their structural flaw?"
Shen He flinched at the insult, but hastily bowed. "We... we believed we could fortify their skeletal matrix, Supreme Patriarch! If we weave heavy dark-metal runes directly into their marrow, we might increase their density enough to withstand the concussive backlash of their own leaps!"
Sunny stared blankly at the Grand Elder. He explicitly marveled at the sheer stupidity of the sect’s conventional flesh-mending. Increasing the beast’s density would only exponentially increase the kinetic force of its impact, ensuring it shattered even faster.
Sunny casually activated the Supreme Merge System, pulling up the environmental data frames regarding the impending threat.
[Target Identified: Carrion-Locust Swarm]
[Monster Level]: Tier 1 (Billions of entities)
[Monster Grade]: Normal
[Monster Attribute]: Wood / Decay
[Special Characteristic]: Swarm Consumption (When gathered in numbers exceeding one million, the swarm generates a localized domain of absolute decay, accelerating the rotting of all organic matter and nullifying standard kinetic attacks.)
[Monster Weakness]: 1. Abyssal Fire. 2. Extreme vulnerability to pure Yang-flame corrupted by Yin-rot.
Sunny explicitly understood the tactical reality. The locusts were a Wood-attribute anomaly. Dropping a giant, heavy toad onto them would crush a few hundred, but the swarm would instantly devour the Toad’s flesh the moment it landed. Kinetic force was useless against a billion individual targets.
They explicitly needed area-of-effect elemental destruction. They needed fire.
The Abyssal Siege-Toad was an Earth-attribute fiend.
Sunny shifted his focus back to the Toad’s hidden evolutionary pathway provided by the System.
[Hidden Fused Evolution: If fused with a Tier 2 ’Kinetic Slime Core’, the biological flaw is entirely negated, granting absolute blunt-force immunity. If subsequently fused with an ’Ember-Demon Heart’, the Earth-attribute core will permanently ignite, transmuting the beast into a Living Magma-Caldera.]
Sunny’s eyes widened slightly in the gloom. The System was explicitly offering him the blueprint to build an indestructible, bouncing volcano.
He slowly turned his back on the holding cell, his dark robes swirling ominously. He fixed his terrifying, glowing gaze upon the Grand Elder.
"Your methods are archaic garbage," Sunny whispered, his voice dropping the ambient temperature in the cavern to a freezing chill.
Shen He dropped to his knees instantly, shivering violently. "I am a blind insect! Please, illuminate my pathetic mind!"
"..."
Sunny allowed the silence to stretch, projecting an aura of supreme, unfathomable genius. He explicitly formulated his demands, ensuring he sounded as cryptic and terrifying as possible.
"You will not carve runes into its marrow," Sunny commanded. "Bring me a Kinetic Slime Core. And an Ember-Demon’s Heart. Ripped fresh from the quarantine pits."
Grand Elder Shen He’s head snapped up, his aged eyes wide with absolute, paralyzed shock.
"A... an Ember-Demon’s Heart?" Shen He stammered, his mind reeling. "But Supreme Patriarch, injecting a pure Fire-attribute catalyst into an Earth-bound vessel violates the First Law of Demonic Harmony! The conflicting Qi will explicitly vaporize the beast from the inside out!"
Sunny stepped closer, explicitly letting his towering shadow swallow the kneeling Elder.
"Do you explicitly dare to question my architecture?" Sunny hissed, his voice vibrating with manufactured, lethal intent.
"N-no! I will secure the catalysts immediately!" Shen He shrieked.
He explicitly hoped the System’s magic fusion button worked as advertised, or he was going to accidentally detonate a giant toad inside the sect’s primary laboratory...
