This Demon Pit city isn't entirely empty.
By the time Li Pan and Duan Kecheng drove into the city center—
(Where'd the car come from? They stole it curbside. Duan insisted that for "camouflage" they shouldn't fly in, and actually wanted to hoof it in from the outskirts…)
…anyway, with the car nosing downtown, Li Pan began to pick out "other things" among the shambling crowds.
Not people—things wearing human skin, just like them. Extracosmic fiends in suits of hide.
The skins barely held shape. Under the "human" cover, colored radiation, qi-mist, fluids, tendrils, shadows, scales, horns—a jumble of inhuman organs—poked through.
Like a game model clipping through clothes: even without magical sight you could spot them on the first glance.
According to Duan, rudely seeing through someone's true body is picking a fight. "Big brother, don't gawk."
The Demon Pit trades across worlds; every civilization, every species—customers are customers. Don't make trouble on the host's turf.
Guided by Duan's commentary, Li Pan parked at a downtown five-star:
Solomon Grand Hotel, No. 666.
"This is it—the Demon Pit's nest."
They stepped in. The doormen and pages—horns and tails, serpent eyes or beast eyes. The banquet hall's patrons were outrealm fiends, their plates covered in mosaic—yes, actual censor blur—likely a spell effect hiding the unspeakable things they were eating.
"Good evening, honored guests—how may we assist you?"
The desk clerk's human suit was neat—no scales tearing seams, no glow leaking—
but his eyes were pitch, no whites at all, like fresh-fitted implant orbs.
Duan flicked a finger and produced a gold coin, sigils on one face, a horned demon on the other.
"Room. And send Belial to wait on us brothers… jie-jie-jie-jie!"
Li Pan squinted at his little brother cackling like a serial offender.
The clerk donned gold-rimmed glasses, examined the coin, then smiled and bowed.
"Honored clients, Belial has not yet been restored. Perhaps select another proxy?"
Duan looked put out.
"Big brother, you went too hard—you did play her to death. Whatever. Assign anyone you want—we're here to trade. Someone who can appraise.
"Oh, and marquis rank at least—otherwise they can't stomach our goods. Jie-jie!"
"As you wish. Your room is ready."
He made a call and offered two room cards.
Li Pan studied the cards: the Solomon crest, a ring logo. He flipped one over—there inlayed, a golden key.
The Solomon Golden Key was larger than the Silver—its grip shaped like a ring, wearable as jewelry.
Duan clearly had been around; he swiped them into the lift with practiced ease.
The elevator went down, not up—from the lobby to U1, U2… U2,513,261…
Either a broken display—or space magic.
The doors opened onto more guest floors: carpeted halls, room doors, and facing each door a moving oil painting—every canvas a hellscape.
All colors, all faces, all human or near-human civilizations—extinction and slaughter for every cause: plague, famine, war, sentence, sadism, fire, flood, asteroid—apocalypse in a hundred styles.
Artists of the myriad worlds, it turned out, had endless inspiration for annihilation.
Duan tossed a glint to the door; it fluttered into a golden butterfly, leading them to a suite at the corridor's end.
Li Pan glanced at the painting there: a continental rift tearing kingdoms into the abyss as civilization toppled into the dark.
Duan opened the suite. Inside: an ordinary five-star.
"We'll wait here, big brother. Ooh—fruit platter. Apple?"
Li Pan went to the window. Outside was the same city-center they'd driven through—people and cars threading the blocks.
"Hologram? Space-warp? Illusion?"
Duan sprawled on the sill with his apple. "No idea. Demon Pit specialty. Only a few of them have space-gifted magi."
"Are they… human?" Li Pan asked.
"More or less," Duan said around a bite. "They were human once. They lost their way in the Xuyuan—fell into an alien world—some cosmic radiation twisted their genes. Skin and limbs adapted to the environment, but core organs and overall form are human-adjacent."
Li Pan recalled Belial's form and frowned. "You call that adjacent?"
"That wasn't her body," Duan said. "Armor—a crafted treasure of the Demon Pit.
"Worlds build with what they have. Your side favors metal for relics. Ours used to use jade and stone. The Pitfolk use Lambskin."
"Lambskin? That is Lambskin? What exactly is a Lamb?"
"Hold on—they've got an artifact that shows explainers… huh? I remember she flicked her wrist—like this…"
"…Press the power button."
"Oh! Big brother sees through Demon Pit tech at a glance—unparalleled brilliance!"
"It's a remote. Gimme."
Li Pan commandeered the remote, surfed the hotel channels, and found a Lamb documentary.
Up popped the same front-desk clerk with a whiteboard, scrawling like a teacher while introducing the Pit's primary agri-product: 'Lambs.'
His crayon art was—abstract. Seven or eight legs, tendrils, large swathes slapped black like a psychotic episode. Just looking at it felt like cognitive contamination.
In short: they dwell in the Interstice.
Not "life" as we define it. They persist in endless void and chaos, have no genetic code; they are not standard biota.
Per the Pit's research, they are conglomerates of intent from dead worlds—crawled from the ruins of perished civilizations and human remains—despair, resentment, pain, and madness fused with some interstitial substance to self-arise.
Some call them the dead souls of worlds. Others, the wrath of extinct humanity. Others say they are drawn—summoned—by human despair from higher dimensions and deeper abysses.
They vary: large and small, young and ancient, no fixed form, prey and hybridize and fuse like plankton in the void. At the bottom of that food web lie the Lambs.
"Why Lambs if they have no fixed form?"
"Who knows. Maybe the first one they saw had hooves and horns. The name stuck—and grew into a totem."
So it went: a civilization's bones are iron, blood is oil—for the scientific kinds. For the Demon Pit, their civilization stands on Lambs.
Somehow—trade secret—they not only hunt Lambs but also herd and cultivate them, using skin, flesh, bone, and blood to develop an unprecedented craft-culture.
Curiously, in other worlds Lambs spell doom—but here the Pitfolk live with them, peacefully. Even the high adepts of the Cult cannot calculate the cause.
Hence even those swaggering sects that "conquer the heavens" bow to trade with the Pit. As Duan put it: like primitive tribes commanding the Silk Road—you pay the toll, because outsiders can't handle life in the Xuyuan.
The Cult had learned some Lamb-uses, too. Since Earth-0791 had no good local materials, Duan planned to swap company monsters for Lambs.
A knock. The Pit's envoy had arrived. Li Pan straightened, gathered qi, ready to face a demon of another world—
"Hi there, gentlemen~ My name is Jimoni. Thanks for your patronage—♡"
In walked a thir—well, a resident-outsourced hostess, looking like a call girl in a low-cut dress and heavy makeup. Aside from void-black eye sockets with no whites, there were no horns, tails, hooves, or cherub wings in sight.
"Jie-jie-jie! A duchess! I am pleased! See to us brothers and I'll pay for overtime!" Duan cackled.
Catching Li Pan's side-eye, Duan sent a hurried whisper:
"Big brother, cackle a couple times—show goodwill. Don't scare her."
…Cackling will make it worse, idiot.
Li Pan humored him with two perfunctory "jie-jie."
"I am Li Xuehong. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
Jimoni had clearly dealt with Cult folk before. Unfazed, she smiled, pulled a card from her little leather purse, and offered it.
"So you're Master Li of the Cult. Delighted. I'm an Angel of the Demon Pit—duke rank. Here is my contract."
Li Pan glanced over the dense outrealm script—an actual contract. The glyphs wriggled like line-worms, then morphed into a format he recognized:
Jimoni
ACA Antique Collectors Association
Station S56 — Site Director
DU-Rank Collector
"The Collector…" Li Pan looked up. "Are you personally enrolled in the ACA, or is the Demon Pit itself part of the ACA?"
"My, my—Master seems awfully well-informed about the beyond-sky," Jimoni said, amused.
"Of course!" Duan preened. "My big brother knows all—sees all—jie-jie!"
Jimoni and Li Pan shared a look, then she continued:
"No concealment between masters. We abyssal Demon Pit have signed with the Outworlders, taken joint capital, formed a commercial alliance, and become core members of the ACA—party to their Multiversal Trade Accord.
"Our goods now pass through the Four Seas and the Myriad Worlds. Whatever you desire—and can pay for—we can provide."
"You joined the Trade Accord?"
Every hair on Li Pan's nape stood up.
The company doesn't know this.
Accession to the Accord requires a Security Committee vote.
A Committee member—TheM—unaware the Committee signed the rival? Or… HQ kept it from the field managers?
Even putting that aside—if the Demon Pit, a direct interworld trading bloc, joined the Accord, then TheM's monster monopoly would be forced to end.
Cutting off another's revenue is patricide in autumn. This really was heading to war.
Jimoni watched him. "Oh? Master truly does know the outer…?"
"Ha—jie-jie! Naturally," Duan crowed. "All affairs under heaven sit in my brother's palm—nothing escapes his fiery eyes!"
Another shared look; they moved on.
"I hear someone beyond the sky monopolizes 'outer-side trade.' I take it you're ready for war?"
"Men die for wealth; birds for grain," Jimoni smiled. "Profits this fat—one must fight. And as you surely know—we have no retreat."
What does that mean?
One look, and Duan's whisper slid in:
"Oh, Demon Gate over there is hitting its millennial tribulation. They're drama magnets—every breakthrough is thunder and blood. A new generation is reaching Refining Qi into Spirit, and now they open the killing-trial to cut karma.
"Emei Mountain has rallied the crowd and is preparing to slaughter the heavens. Demon Pit's on the front line—likely genocide inbound."
Li Pan made the old-man-on-the-subway face.
"Emei??"
Jimoni grimaced. "Yes—Emei's mob. Your Cult refuses to intervene; we can only seek aid wherever we can."
"Bah! Mere Emei—not worth a mention!" Duan said aloud. "Our Cult could crush them with a hand—timing is all! Jie-jie!"
Privately:
"Don't get dragged in. It's a once-in-a-millennium grab for fortune. The whole Demon Gate is mad and butchering everything. We'll get invaded too—and when we get beaten, it's uglier. We can't help."
Li Pan nodded and smiled.
"Demon Gate's nothing. Miss Jimoni, if you want sanctuary, the Cult's a billion-world banner wide enough to shelter you. But we're here to trade…"
Duan produced a bow.
"Behold! Nice piece, huh? Jie-jie!"
"Eh?" Jimoni's eyes widened. "The Bow of Artemis? Preserved this well—and the divinity seal unbroken? From which world's projection?"
"Never you mind," Duan cackled. "Name your price. How many Lambs?"
Jimoni glanced at Li Pan. "As I understand it, such divinities are devoured by your masters—not traded. Unless they're outer-side pieces. But those, in this condition… must've been stolen from the company."
So she knew the company…
"Of course!" Duan preened. "My brother plans without flaw—companies are chickens and dogs! Jie-jie!"
Li Pan coughed. "Duchess, some things we all know. Since you're joining the Accord, you'll clash with the company eventually. If some items were, say, liberated from their custody—so what."
"Indeed," Jimoni smiled. "So what. I'll give you one hundred Lambs—and we'll be friends."
"Only one hundred?" Li Pan frowned.
Duan's face dropped immediately.
"Outrage! You make sport of us? A mere hundred for my brother's treasure? Courting death!"
"One hundred is no trifle," Jimoni said, startled. "Artemis is only an earthly god—its divinity is worth fifty. This one is unusually intact; for friendship's sake, I doubled it."
"You're being stingy," Li Pan said. "I don't mind haggling, but this isn't a normal market: it's cornered goods.
"You know the company's habits. I snatched this from the tiger's jaws at tremendous risk. If this leaks, they'll send a dozen fleets to kill me.
"Capital only dares when profit justifies risk. If you won't part with 300%, hoping to free-ride, then we've nothing to discuss.
"Brother, we're leaving."
Duan stood at once.
Jimoni hesitated, then nodded.
"Wait. You have a point. Three hundred percent… fine. Two hundred Lambs. It's a large number—I'll have to draw stock from other hells."
Duan turned and made a face.
"Big brother, perhaps she's not cheating—maybe just tight on supply. How about…"
Li Pan sighed. "You're stepping on my close. Fine, two hundred it is. We're taking a bath here…"
"My mistake, big brother," Duan said, then barked: "Hey! Didn't you hear me helping you? Throw in extras! Another apple platter!"
"…Yes, sirs. I'll arrange it," Jimoni said.
The moment she left, Duan beamed.
"As expected of you! I was going to dump the junk and squeak out seventy or eighty. You walk in and pull two hundred!"
Li Pan was curious. "Aren't you trying to break the heavenly constraints? Seventy or eighty Lambs is enough?"
"Of course!" Duan laughed. "A single Lamb has to eat five hundred thousand people to mature. Two hundred—ha! I don't even know where to graze that many!
"The people of that realm are no good for anything but fodder. Plant the Lambs and they feed themselves—like sheep cropping grass.
"To go against Heaven—to erode the Dao—they must eat humans.
"Don't worry, we don't have to round them up. Just seed them into the ground, and they grow on their own.
"By my math, forty to fifty million souls are enough to break the Heavenly Will, remake the Dao, and welcome our Cult's army through!
"Ha! Two hundred—call it one hundred million eaten. Earth still has thirteen point nine billion left—more than enough for us!"
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⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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