“Pleasure doing business!”

“Pleasure doing business!”

At their loud insistence, Dufei finally tossed his beloved Dungman into some subspace. They left that canyon ravaged by scalding filth and found a spot where peaks gleamed and the air ran clear, then started to celebrate.

“Come on, brothers, no need to be shy. Drink, eat!” Dufei jutted his belly, round as a harvest moon, and grinned lewdly at Ouyang and the rest.

The three pulled drinks and dishes from their own space containers in perfect sync, like magicians palming things from fog. Ouyang held a massive pig trotter, roasted till it shone like gold. “Fatty, don’t be polite. Eat, eat.” He gnawed while sipping juice; everything he ate was his own stash, clean as mountain spring.

Moqi and Glenza were no different. Glenza, a skeleton frame of pale bones, didn’t leak a thing; food vanished once it passed his toothy maw, like smoke into night.

Dufei watched, awkward as a cat in rain, and lifted a long, thin thing that looked like a whip, a viper shadow coiled on a plate.

“Ouyang, come on. This tiger whip is top-shelf. I searched ten thousand worlds for it. One-of-a-kind across the realms. A supreme tonic, saved just for you.”

“Huh? Fatty, we’re brothers. You eating it is as good as me eating it.” Ouyang handed the whip back with a sunny smile. Bai, bored on the side, seemed very interested. Seeing neither man touch it, she tugged Ouyang’s sleeve, eyes clear as springwater.

“Ayang, I want it.”

Bai pointed at the tiger whip…

“Damn—cough.” Flustered, Ouyang pulled her aside and lowered his voice, warm as a hearth. “Kids can’t eat that. Be good. I’ll find you something better later.” She might be a century old, but to Ouyang she was still a child.

Bai didn’t fuss. She looked at him, blank as morning fog, then nodded. She didn’t know why she couldn’t have it—but if Ouyang said so, she’d follow without a ripple.

Ouyang returned to the table. Dufei, that damned fatty, had already laid the whip on his plate, a snake of meat coiling on porcelain. Ouyang smiled and slid the whole plate in front of Moqi. His voice was honeyed. “Little earthworm, look—spring’s here, mating season for beasts. To keep you from going feeble, have this whip.”

Moqi flicked his tongue; snake eyes cut toward Ouyang, cold as river glass. He used his tail to lift the plate and set it before Glenza. “Skeleton, delivery’s here. You’re welcome.”

Glenza eyed the whip, then traced a ring in the air. Two skeletons marched out of the circle, bones clacking like windchimes.

“You two… this is a gift from the great Wu-Meow King!”

They shoved the whip into their mouths and chewed, relentless as millstones, even as the mash leaked from their ribcages like slurry through a fence.

Soon they finished. Dufei watched with desert-calm and snapped his fingers, counting down from ten like thunder rolling in. At three, Ouyang yanked Bai close, wrapped her in his arms, and covered her eyes, a hand like a blackout curtain.

“Three!”

“Two!”

“One!”

The two skeletons turned strange. They stroked their own bones, awkward at first, then lost reason and rolled together, a tangle of pale branches in a storm.

“Impressive, Fatty. Your tonic even hits skeletons. That’s something.” Ouyang’s mouth twitched, knowing this was coming. A tiger whip’s an aphrodisiac; if Dufei called it ‘prime,’ the effect would more than double. The skeletons only caught the juice on their bones, and even their souls felt the tug, like wildfire through dry grass.

It showed just how brutal that whip’s effect was.

“Not bad. Workable.” Glenza patted his skull, pleased as a crow with a bauble. The whip struck straight at the soul. Even as projections, once they ate it, the effect would reach their true bodies—no guesswork. It would.

Dufei waved off their ‘compliments’ with a casual flick, reeds bending to breeze. “Oh please. If you won’t eat, no matter how amazing it is, it’s got nowhere to shine.”

You couldn’t blame Dufei. The four had all been tied to the First Cult; they knew each other’s tricks too well.

Like with the food earlier, Dufei had definitely laced it. Poison, something else—who knew. It wouldn’t be anything nice, thorns hidden under petals.

That’s why the three refused his offerings and ate what they’d brought. People who season meals with ‘extras’ don’t touch other people’s cooking.

After some polite posturing, Dufei saw nobody touch his wine. He sighed and tossed the bottles behind him. Sizzle—black smoke rose from the grass. Where the liquor splashed, it was eaten like by acid, left charred and dead, a burn ring in green.

“That stuff’s… interesting.” Glenza squinted, intrigued like a scholar at a moth. Dufei stayed calm. “You flatter me. Petty craft, not worth mentioning.”

“You damn fatty, who’s flattering you? I said the wine’s interesting, that’s all!”

Glenza could only sigh at Dufei’s self-love. Ouyang meanwhile folded a piece of cloth, slow as closing dusk. He’d kept a grip on that black fabric, and the three never quite saw what trick he was brewing, a gourd with secrets.

“What’s that?” Dufei’s tidy itch forced the question out. The cloth gave him a prickle of unease, like cold dew on the spine.

“This? My self-defense. I’m simple, afraid you old hands will scam me. So I carry this. If I feel my play’s over, I’ll throw it on, and we all go down together…”

“You’ve heard the legend. It’s called the Calamity Cloak!”

Ouyang smiled bright as sun on frost. The rules forbid power beyond mortal reach. Yet the Calamity Cloak was passive. Put it on, and every life within a set radius would trip into disaster. Trip while walking. Cough on a sip of water. Swing an arm and dislocate a bone—misfortune piling like hailstones.

In short, he wasn’t actively triggering it, so he wasn’t breaking rules.

Whoosh—the three of them retreated a hundred meters in a blink, shadows pulling long.

As First Cult members, how could they not have heard of the fabled Dark Trinity Artifacts?

Seeing them flinch, Ouyang nodded, satisfied as a cat whose whiskers were right. He had no plan to use it. Once it flared, he couldn’t keep Bai from the fallout. Within its field, every life but Ouyang would meet calamity. That wasn’t his choice to make. He showed it only to scare them, like baring a knife without drawing blood.

Look at Dufei’s antics—whip and poison wine. If Ouyang didn’t display something, they’d start plotting. They knew each other’s crooked roads too well.

After Dufei and Ouyang made their ‘statement,’ Moqi felt he had to speak up too, or he’d look easy to bully, a reed in rough water.

“Everyone, I recently developed a combat weapon. Feast your eyes.”

Moqi tapped the air with his tail. A black dot swelled like a storm eye. A house-sized monster walked out, steps thudding like drums.

It was a giant, human in shape. But his body was riddled with boils—pus-blistered knots across his whole form, except the palms and soles, a landscape of blisters.

“Seven days and nights, and I conceived this humanoid weapon—the Pus Warrior. His strongest arms are his boils. The yellow runoff eats through and—infects.”

“Once you’re touched by that pus, you become Pus No.2, No.3, No.4…”

To demonstrate, Moqi tail-grabbed a little rabbit from afar and tossed it at the Pus Warrior. The giant stomped it flat, like a melon underfoot.

“Gentlemen… that… was a mishap!”

Moqi fetched another rabbit from afar. This time, under orders, the Pus Warrior didn’t stomp. He thumbed a boil on his hand. Yellow fluid seeped like poison honey. It drenched the rabbit. The creature convulsed, and boils blossomed across its body, a garden of rot.

“Enough, little earthworm, enough. Put that thing away!” The three shouted in perfect harmony. Watching those oozing boils, each of them nearly retched, stomachs rolling like rough seas.

Afraid to spark a riot, Moqi recalled the Pus Warrior, drawing the curtain on a nightmare.

Last, it was Glenza’s turn to make a ‘statement.’

Glenza cleared his throat and drew a black wand meant for dark spellwork. The ground opened with countless holes, like a field of maw-like pits. Corpses clawed their way out—human and beast alike. None fully rotted. None intact. All wrong.

Shambling bodies jiggled their rotten flesh. A reek of decay spread like swamp fog. Some dragged intestines like ropes. Some dripped brain matter as they walked, spots spattering like rain. One reached into its chest, pulled out its heart, and chewed, a crimson fruit in a dead hand…

“Enough! Why is everyone running the Disgusting School? Can’t you be creative?”

Ouyang was speechless. His Calamity Cloak was terrifying, but in spirit those three were worse. Dufei’s Dungman. Moqi’s Pus Warrior. Glenza’s army of rot. Disgust turned up to eleven, a parade of nightmares no one asked for.