Meanwhile, Lin Qingfeng uploaded a post about Yan Buliu's vile actions to the sect channel and pinned it to the top.
[Lin Qingfeng]: Due to Yan Buliu's despicable behavior, Elder Qian Buyu has bugged out. Until the daily reset, it's impossible to draw or upgrade Cultivation Techniques. This incident almost got our junior sister in trouble, which means our sect was almost prevented from ranking up!
[Lin Qingfeng]: Disciples, spread the word. If you have a score to settle, go after Yan Buliu! [Video.mp4]
As soon as the post went up, the countless players who were still doing quests to save up for Cultivation Techniques flew into a rage. They flooded the channel with condemnations, vowing to make Yan Buliu pay the price the moment he logged back on.
[Player A]: Fuck! Yan Buliu, you heartless bastard! What a dick move! You've really outdone yourself this time! The moment you're online, I'm camping your corpse!
[Player C]: Camp him!
[Player D]: We have to! Let's teach him why flowers are so red!
[Little Fangirl]: He just wasn't thinking straight, please stop yelling at him... (sobbing)...
[Lin Qingfeng]: @Yan Buliu's Little Fangirl Guilt by association. We'll camp you too.
[Little Fangirl]: Wait, I was just kidding!!!!
[System Notification]: [Little Fangirl] has been muted for one hour.
Lin Qingfeng inwardly sighed in relief. 'Good thing Ji threw his life away so quickly. He really is a pro at dying, quality guaranteed!'
He looked at the deathly pale Su Ling'er beside him and spoke. "Haha, Junior Sister, don't be afraid. This is… this is a perfectly normal phenomenon."
Su Ling'er turned her head skeptically, her eyes filled with terror. "Nor… normal? But that man just now… he… he seemed to… explode…"
"Sigh. Mr. Qian… he has a… peculiar habit. He likes to use this method… to temper all of our resolves!"
"Sigh, we're all used to it. As for that guy from before… he… he was just… holding a watermelon, and it exploded. He was so upset he fell asleep. This on the ground is just the juice from his exploded watermelon."
As he spoke, Lin Qingfeng forcefully turned Su Ling'er's head away from the pile of bloody flesh and severed limbs, making her face the direction of the Knowledge Hall.
A chill ran down Su Ling'er's spine and her stomach churned violently.
'Asleep? Watermelon juice?'
'Do you take me for a three-year-old?!'
'His head exploded and his leg is still hanging from a tree, and you call that sleeping?! Are you calling a deer a horse right to my face?'
'And what does he mean, "temper our resolves"? By using disciples' lives? They hunt and kill each other at the drop of a hat, and he says they're *used to it*? This evil sect…'
'Survival for disciples here is so difficult. Not only do you have to be on guard against your own sect mates, but you also have to be ready to be killed by an elder for sport at any moment!'
'Then again, it seems that elder's Cultivation isn't exactly top-tier. Otherwise, how could he have been successfully ambushed by a mere disciple, ending up so mentally broken that he can only run into a tree over and over?'
'Is this… what an evil sect is like?'
'I've really seen it all now!'
She suppressed her terror and replied, her voice trembling, "Is… is that so! Oh… so that's how it is… I… I must have seen things wrong…"
Seeing that Su Ling'er seemed to believe him, Lin Qingfeng inwardly sighed with relief. 'Thank goodness. This junior sister is pretty gullible. She actually bought a load of nonsense that even I couldn't convince myself of.'
He quickly said, "Let's go, let's go. The registration area is just up ahead."
Finally, Su Ling'er followed Lin Qingfeng to a large hall named the "Knowledge Hall."
The hall was dimly lit. An attendant was slumped over a wooden desk, dozing.
But when Su Ling'er got a clear look at the attendant's face, she froze in her tracks once more.
'That face, that blank, emotionless expression… Isn't that the bloodthirsty Mr. Qian?!'
'Wasn't he still back on that path, running into a tree? How did he get over here so quickly?'
'Aside from his elder's robes being swapped for an attendant's uniform, everything else was identical!'
'Could he be a supreme expert capable of creating thousands of incarnations of himself? No! If he were truly a peerless master, how could he have been so easily taken down by a mere disciple?'
'Wait! I get it! So that's what's going on!'
'They take living people and refine them into identical puppets—and more than one!'
'It's because he's a puppet, not a real person, that the disciple dared to be so disrespectful to his own "Master"!'
'And it's because it's a puppet created through evil arts that it malfunctioned and went on a killing spree!'
'Just how many unheard-of atrocities is this evil, demonic sect hiding?!'
'In that case… this First Senior Brother in front of me… could he suddenly strike me dead with a single palm strike if I displease him? I don't want my head to explode like a watermelon!'
Her First Senior Brother, Lin Qingfeng, noticed her odd reaction. Of course, he knew that the Mr. Qian from the path and the one before them looked completely identical.
'Couldn't the dev team have made a few more NPC models? You could have at least changed the hairstyle! Look how you've scared the only NPC junior sister in our whole sect!'
He immediately put on a solemn, grave expression and began a new round of theatrics.
"Junior Sister, there is no need for alarm. This is one of Mr. Qian's unique and supreme Divine Techniques—[Myriad Incarnations]!"
"Mr. Qian's mastery of the Dao is profound. He has long since reached the Transformation Realm, where one is all and all is one. The figures you see walking about the sect are all incarnations of his Daoist arts. That is how he is able to manage the entire sect by himself."
He put on a proud expression and continued his explanation.
"This Divine Technique is the ultimate expression of our sect's most secret art, the [Ten Thousand Transformations into One Skill]. And if I may say something I probably shouldn't, even our famously elusive Sect Leader is, in fact, one of Mr. Qian's incarnations!"
"Little Junior Sister, you have truly come to the right place by joining our sect!"
Su Ling'er was so incensed by this load of nonsense that she nearly coughed up blood, but what she felt even more strongly was terror.
'First Senior Brother is still lying through his teeth without even blinking!'