Tu Tianba’s memory was like a hemp sack full of holes—leaking bits from the east and dropping pieces from the west. Even though he could no longer recall the beginning or the end of the heavenly tribulation, he remembered with absolute clarity that this damned immortal lord was the very bastard who had ruined a grand plan he had spent a century plotting. What’s more, this man had shamelessly proclaimed…

That he was going to kill him?

Picture this: you are minding your own business, staying peacefully at home, pouring your heart and soul into researching a cure for yourself. Suddenly, an uninvited stranger appears at your front door, tosses out two cryptic, nonsensical questions, and declares he is going to kill you. Wouldn’t you be furious?

Tu Tianba certainly was: “Furious beyond belief!”

In truth, being hunted down and threatened by righteous cultivators was something Tu Tianba had long grown accustomed to. No matter how high-and-mighty, upright, and unyielding those hypocrites sounded beforehand, without exception, they all ended up slain by his own hands in the end, subsequently swept straight to the back of his mind.

Not a trace of them ever remained.

Yet, this damned immortal lord had somehow survived.

Meanwhile, Tu Tianba felt he had suffered an irreparable, catastrophic loss.

What pained his heart the most was the fleshly body he had painstakingly nurtured for nearly a hundred years.

Tu Tianba had cultivated it by wrapping the highest-grade Flesh Ganoderma around his own skeletal frame. One had to understand that his skeletal body was fused into one with an evil cauldron, thoroughly saturated with sinister demonic qi. For a celestial herb reputed to “raise the dead and regrow flesh on bare bones” not to be poisoned to death by him, it had required his relentless, round-the-clock feeding of rare spiritual plants…

The slightest lapse in diligence, and that hard-won flesh would wither away.

A whole century of effort, just to grow that modest amount!

Furthermore, Tu Tianba did not dread perishing under the heavenly lightning tribulation like ordinary cultivators did.

He would have accepted only one of two outcomes:

Either he used the heavenly lightning to pry the Soul-Refining Cauldron off his body, or he and that wicked artifact would both be blasted into dust by the tribulation lightning, leaving nothing behind.

Both scenarios stemmed from the very same original wish; they were merely different paths leading to the same destination.

—He just wanted some peace and quiet.

And what had the handsome Tu Tianba gotten now?

Nearly a hundred pounds of Ganoderma flesh, roasted to a fragrant crisp.

A breakthrough in cultivation, bumping him up to the Mahayana stage.

Setting aside just how difficult it was to maintain a Ganoderma flesh that withered whenever demonic qi corrupted it, the mere thought of needing to break through the Mahayana stage and ascend to the Tribulation Transcending stage just to welcome the next round of heavenly lightning made Tu Tianba’s vision go black.

Surveying the entire cultivation world, the last time a cultivator at the Tribulation Transcending stage had appeared was thousands of years ago.

Tu Tianba counted on his fingers, tallying the math.

His cultivation speed was incomparable to ordinary cultivators. Even if he smoothly broke through to the Tribulation Transcending stage and fattened up another plump, fair body of Ganoderma flesh, there was still a fatal flaw: the higher his cultivation rose, the stronger the Soul-Refining Cauldron grew alongside him. If the heavenly lightning failed to split the man and the cauldron apart, and he was not blasted to death but instead successfully ascended through the tribulation…

Wouldn’t he be bound to this evil cauldron for all eternity?!

At the thought of this, killing intent surged within Tu Tianba.

A chorus of demonic voices in his head hummed in agreement.

However, one inner demon openly sang a different tune. In an utterly bizarre, mechanical voice, it chirped: “Host, once a person dies, all their six senses are extinguished, you know! You must never let him off so easily! You must torture him ruthlessly!”

Tu Tianba felt this clever inner demon made a solid point.

Simply killing this damned immortal lord was far too lenient to vent the burning hatred in his chest.

It was late summer, and the daylight shone bright and clear.

The mountain greenery was lush and vibrant, though the breeze winding through the river valley carried a nip of cold. Reluctantly, Tu Tianba hauled the unconscious man out from the riverbank. Just as he rolled the body onto a flat boulder along the shore, a crisp metallic clang rang out—

Tu Tianba looked down to investigate.

Tightly clenched in the damned immortal lord’s right hand was a broken sword.

It was the very celestial sword depicted on the cover of that strange booklet.

The white-robed man had soaked in the water for quite some time, appearing thoroughly battered and disheveled. Drenched from head to toe, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact locations of his injuries, yet that pale face remained breathtakingly beautiful—resembling a fallen fragment of shattered moonlight sprawled at Tu Tianba’s feet…

The next instant, the broken sword in the man’s grip gave a soft chime.

It sounded as though it were casually greeting the person beside it.

Tu Tianba immediately felt provoked.

This damned immortal lord must have seized the chance to hack at him with a sword while he was taking the direct brunt of the heavenly lightning!

He had gone for the kill with full force—the sword had even snapped in half!

Tu Tianba logged one grievance after another onto his mental ledger. With a flick of his wrist, he pulled out the book tucked inside his robes and rapidly skimmed it from the beginning. Although Demon Venerable Tu Tianba was written as having been “slain” in the opening chapter, an obscure healer named Tu appeared at the chapter’s close, picking up the heavily wounded, unconscious protagonist.

In the book, this healer was an insignificant rogue cultivator who happened to pass by the valley. He originally intended to haul the unconscious stranger back to use as a medicinal test subject, but upon discovering the man’s extraordinary constitution, wicked greed seized him. He fed the man a meridian-blocking Gu pellet and branded him with a curse seal commonly used by evil cultivators to enslave servants…

“The Pure Qi Physique?”

All told, Tu Tianba was only a little over three hundred years old—scarcely more than a junior in the vast span of the cultivation world. From the age of seven to seventeen, he had endured bitter, isolated training inside Daoist Blue’s spirit formations. Daoist Blue had taught him cultivation only to raise him as raw forging material for an artifact; while he was never denied spirit stones or elixirs, he was taught little else about the world.

Over the next decade, Tu Tianba roamed the realm alone, carving out a blood-soaked reputation as a demonic overlord.

For the three hundred years following that, he lived in seclusion on his own turf. In order to solve the dual agonies of the human-cauldron fusion and relentless mental demons, he had devoured countless miscellaneous ancient tomes, one of which—Discourses of Heaven and Earth—specifically mentioned this physique.

It was said that those blessed with this constitution enjoyed the profound favor of the Heavenly Dao. They were peerless cultivation geniuses seen once in a millennium, rarer even than top-tier furnace physiques, yet no one dared covet them. Cultivators bearing such a body possessed overwhelmingly high cultivation bases, and their true nature was practically impossible to detect.

Unless they were critically injured.

Tu Tianba stowed the booklet away and turned his gaze back onto the damned immortal lord. Channeling true qi into his eyes, he saw that the thin wisps of spiritual energy drifting through this mundane river valley were indeed converging into the white-robed man’s chest, spontaneously mending his damaged heart meridians.

For reasons unknown, Tu Tianba felt an instinctive pang of hunger, accompanied by an irritated sense of having his meal snatched away. It seemed to be an impulse from the Soul-Refining Cauldron, faintly urging him to refine the man lying before him.

He refused to surrender to that urge.

The clever inner demon was right.

This man could not be allowed to die so easily!

As he scrutinized him further, he suddenly realized that the damned immortal lord not only possessed an overly handsome face, but was also remarkably tall and well-proportioned. Because the white robes were soaked through, clinging tightly against every curve of his frame, Tu Tianba could see everything with crystal clarity.

While the man possessed a slender waist and long legs, the rest of his build was…

Tu Tianba was consumed by genuine envy, bitterly lamenting his own inability to grow such a build.

He, too, longed to be a burly, broad-chested he-man!

All these traits that he desperately coveted yet could never possess were stacked together upon this single individual, souring Tu Tianba’s opinion of the damned immortal lord even further.

To sum it up in a single phrase:

Jealousy had completely warped his countenance.

“…Hmph.”

The clever inner demon seemed to catch on to his displeasure—as well as the well-concealed, tiny pinch of bitterness beneath it—and promptly offered comfort: “Oh, come on! Once the Host feeds him the Pill-Gu and stamps him with the slave seal, aren’t you free to play with him in the palm of your hand however you like?”

Tu Tianba nodded in agreement.

Thus, he spoke:

“Well said. Where do I find this so-called Pill-Gu?”

“I’m going to cram an entire bottle down his throat.”

Two seconds of dead silence followed.

The clever inner demon gasped, asking in return: “Wait, wait a second! I just modified the Host’s data! By all logic, shouldn’t you now possess the character memories of the original scumbag ex-husband, along with the inventory and gear bundled with that role?”

“Shouldn’t the Pill-Gu be right on you?”

A brief look of pure bewilderment crossed Tu Tianba’s face.

Was it?

“No memories appeared out of thin air, nor did any extra spatial treasures show up,” Tu Tianba reasoned after a moment’s thought, pulling out a porcelain vial of his own accord. “No matter. I have concocted plenty of pills with varying effects before. Among them are some with effects quite similar to the Pill-Gu described in the book…”

Action followed thought.

Tu Tianba rolled up his sleeves, pried the damned immortal lord’s jaw open with one hand, and tipped the entire vial of pills straight into his mouth with the other. Seeing the dry pellets clogging the man’s throat, he pulled out another bottle of medicinal liquid to help wash them down into his stomach.

As for what this bottle of liquid actually did…

Well, he had forgotten.

Just as Tu Tianba was racking his brain to recall, he suddenly felt the Adam’s apple beneath his palm bob up and down several times in an exaggerated gulp, desperately swallowing the mouthful of unknown concoctions down his throat.

Two breaths later.

A faint, muffled cough broke the silence.

“Cough, cough…”

Tu Tianba naturally tilted his head down, lowering his gaze toward the sound.

He collided straight into a pair of eyes shimmering with watery mist.

Clear, blank, and profoundly bewildered.

At that exact moment, the clever inner demon began frantically shrieking in his head:

“Host! Your key line! Say the line!”

Tu Tianba parted his lips, froze, and shut them.

A beat passed.

He parted his lips once more: “You damned… ah, no. W-Wife…”

Immediately after, he clamped his mouth firmly shut again.

Fucking hell.

Only just now did he remember that he wasn’t even a cut-sleeve.