Chapter 5
Even in an age of rapid technological advances, there were still many things science couldn’t explain.
The West had myths about angels; the East had legends of immortal cultivators.
People thought later generations had invented them. Yet spiritual energy really had existed in the ancient world.
At some unknown point, it had slowly begun to run dry. Cultivators could no longer climb the heavenly ladder and ascend to immortality.
Some had even gradually regressed into ordinary people.
In those harsh conditions, some sects migrated to other worlds. Others activated great formations, sealed their mountain gates, and went dormant.
The Palace of Grievances was one of the demonic sects that had slept.
Everyone in the Palace practiced the Grievance-Feasting Demonic Codex, which fed eagerly on resentment. It was a vicious, ruthless cultivation method that relied entirely on drawing resentment from the living.
These demonic cultivators spent their days capturing mortals and cultivators alike, breaking them with torture, and absorbing the resentment they produced to increase their own power.
That had made the sect infamous, its members fair game for anyone to kill.
The world changed beyond recognition, and time moved into the modern age.
A year earlier, something unknown had shifted deep inside the earth. Spiritual energy once again seeped from cracks in the ground.
Awakened by the returning energy, the Palace’s cultivators discovered that their dantians—the internal reservoirs of their power—had been completely emptied during their long sleep.
On the verge of regressing into mortals, they returned to their old ways. They crossed the sect’s barrier, seized a few people from beside a road, and subjected them to brutal torture.
One man begged them to spare him. In exchange, he claimed, he could offer a more efficient method of cultivation.
“Torturing one or two people takes time and effort for very little resentment. It’s far too slow. Esteemed immortals, I have an idea that could send your cultivation soaring!”
Intrigued, they told him to explain.
The man was a shut-in who loved novels and animation. At great length, he introduced them to the concept of an infinite horror game.
Capture living people, drop them into horror dungeons, and force them to search frightening locations for clues by giving them missions.
The cultivators wouldn’t have to do much themselves. The classic monsters of horror fiction alone could make humans produce fear and resentment.
If the people in the dungeons slaughtered each other, or friends and family turned against one another, the yield would be even greater.
“Surely that’s more efficient than generating resentment through torture. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The cultivators found him interesting and accepted him as a disciple. With his help, they built a resentment farm called the Infinite Dungeons.
After that taste of success, the Palace began actively taking in modern knowledge.
Through controlled experiments, they found that when forced to kill, good people produced far more resentment than evil ones.
Some antisocial individuals, in particular, felt no distress at all. The dungeons could extract only pleasure and satisfaction from them. The horror game had even become their playground.
So the cultivators began screening their prey.
People who helped elderly strangers cross the road, returned lost money, or stepped in to help someone in danger…
The kinder a person was, the more likely they were to become a target.
The humans captured to supply resentment were generally called “resentment livestock.”
Those who produced enough resentment after entering the horror dungeons were left in the game, gasping and fleeing through an endless succession of trials.
Those whose output fell short were put in cells in pairs: one strong, one weak.
The weaker person was a living sacrifice. The stronger one was implanted with a “seed” that induced hallucinations.
Once it was planted, the waking livestock received false memories following a preset script.
They might have been murdered by a lover and a friend and become a vengeful ghost, or endured years of abuse before being reborn full of hatred.
These tragic plots were nothing more than catalysts to goad the livestock into killing.
Chang Gui shook her head and sighed.
“First-rate demons torture people through fate. Make someone pity a wounded soul, then discover that their loved one’s misery was caused by their own unwitting mistake. Give them something to believe in, then reveal at the end that their faith was the very thing that brought tragedy upon them.”
“Second-rate demons use emotion. Fill people with hope, then dash it. Turn everything they have ever pursued to nothing. Let someone else take the fruits of their hard work without effort. Keep them suspicious and afraid, day after day, without the courage to seek a way out.”
“Third-rate demons? All they can do is spill a little blood and slice a little flesh.”