I woke up only to find myself standing in a pure white space.
It felt familiar in a way that made my skin crawl, yet I was certain I had never seen it before. The emptiness stretched endlessly in every direction—no horizon, no sky, no ground that could be trusted. The white was soft, almost gentle, yet it pressed against my senses like a silent warning. My feet touched something solid, but when I looked down there was nothing.
A voice rose from all sides at once, layered and echoing, yet it belonged to only one being.
"Human who always summons us to fulfill your needs and keeps his promises… tell me, how did you come to know of our existence?"
The speaker remained deliberately translucent. A feminine silhouette hovered in the white, curves suggested but never fully revealed. Her face stayed blurred, as if she refused to let me memorize it. Only her eyes cut through the haze—curious, sharp, almost delighted, the eyes of a predator examining a strange new toy. A succubus. A true devil.
I kept my face calm while cold understanding settled deep in my chest. This was a mind realm. Only high-level cultivators could enter one of their own will… or be dragged into one by something far stronger.
"My grandfather told me," I answered evenly. "He spoke of Illgard first. Then Margard. And finally Keralod."
The translucent figure stiffened. Her voice turned sharp and ugly with sudden anger.
"Those are nothing but servant-class devils. They have no connection to our true existence. Do not insult me by placing us on the same level."
"Please don't be angry," I said quickly, lowering my head just enough to show respect without looking weak. "There is more. Look at this frail body of mine. When I was still a child—barely old enough to understand what desire even was—I was already a horny little brat. I used to lie awake imagining all sorts of filthy things I had no business knowing. The problem was my tongue. I couldn't pronounce the words properly. 'Suck boobs' always came out twisted and childish.
Somehow, in my mouth, it became 'succubus.' One day I was holding a rare devil-summoning scroll I had no right to possess. My hands slipped. The scroll fell. At that exact moment the word left my lips. That was how the pact formed. You already know the rest."
Silence stretched between us like a blade.
The succubus clearly hated that the story made sense. A proper summoning only required the correct name of the devil's kind; appearance and rank were secondary. The names my grandfather had given me all circled around lust and the body. Looking at me now—thin, pale, with the quiet air of someone who had spent more years in bed than on any training field—it was easy to believe I had lived a life of nothing but sleep and sex. Calling me trash would have been unfair to actual trash.
Yet she was still impressed. Devil scrolls were rare even among wealthy cultivators. For a commoner child to successfully form even a low-level pact through pure accident and a child's mispronunciation was the kind of absurd luck that bordered on mockery of Heaven itself.
At last she spoke again, colder than before.
"Everything is clear. You are not what I first suspected. I will excuse myself. Enjoy the services of the lesser ones."
Her form dissolved into the white like smoke pulled into a vacuum.
The moment she vanished, cold sweat burst across my forehead and down my spine. My knees gave out. I hit the ground with a heavy, graceless thud. One misstep. One wrong word. One moment of arrogance. I would have been a cold corpse left floating in this white void. Only high cultivators could freely access the mind realm. The sole exception was invasion by beings who already possessed that power—beings I had no hope of defeating at Rank 1. That voice had belonged to a true devil, high enough to appear without any advanced summoning array or blood sacrifice.
I had deduced all of it the same way I deduced everything else in this world: cold logic borrowed from games, movies, and the ruthless underworld of my previous life.
Fatigue crashed over me all at once. My vision darkened. I collapsed fully and began snoring before I could even crawl back to my physical body.
The next two days passed in a gray, exhausting blur of routine.
Guard shifts under the sun and the moon. Careful, restrained cultivation so I would not rupture the still-recovering aperture. Watching Lira practice the circulation methods I had taught her, correcting her posture with a few quiet words. Eating tasteless meals. Sleeping in short, uneasy stretches. The residual effects of the Wealth Burning Smoke still lingered inside me like a pleasant poison, forcing patience. Jack, on the other hand, had used our shared commissions and his own savings to push himself to Rank 1 Peak Tier in those same two days. He was no longer just a convenient partner. He had become a proper helper.
On the morning of the third day a trader arrived together with Jack.
His name was Wade. Rank 1 Peak Tier. He carried the detailed transaction records of everything we had quietly sold in the past weeks, which meant the three of us were already tied to the same sinking ship. Betrayal would drown us all.
He greeted us with the oily, practiced flattery of a man who lived by other people's greed.
"Great benefactor! So generous as to allow a humble man like myself to witness your wondrous trading. Might this lowly one accompany you just this once?"
Jack's thoughts were written clearly across his face. Same request as always. Dozens of cultivators have tried to follow Bayley for easy profit. Most of them ended up dead in ways I still don't fully understand.
I looked at Wade for a long moment, measuring him. Then I nodded once.
"Sure. You can come along."
Both Jack and Wade froze. Genuine shock flashed across their faces. Even Lira, standing quietly behind me, raised her eyebrows.
We set out toward the inheritance grounds under the late morning sun.
Wade's eyes grew wider with every step. When he finally understood what we were actually doing—systematically looting the cooling remains of those who had died inside the Rank 6 inheritance rather than competing for the inheritance itself—his expression changed. Greed mixed with cold calculation. I need to report this to the clan, he was clearly thinking. This is too big.
I watched him from the corner of my eye while I sorted the latest batch of corpses and residual treasures with practiced efficiency. Useful pills and completely untraceable materials went into our sacks. Everything that carried clan markings, owner seals, or spiritual signatures was set aside with care.
Then I began throwing things away.
Wade frowned. Items I had never once traded with him—ordinary stones, broken talismans, scraps of useless metal—flew from my hands into a growing pile near the edge of the clearing. One perfectly ordinary-looking stone landed with a soft click.
Something in Wade's instincts finally screamed danger. He turned to run.
I moved.
Shadow Jump carried me across the short distance in a blink of darkness. At the same time, illusion hands formed in the air ahead of him—long, clawed, and terrifyingly real to his panicked senses. They reached for his neck as if ready to tear his head clean off. The illusion forced him to stagger sideways in terror, straight into the thick, sweet smoke still rising from the special pile I had prepared earlier.
The Wealth Burning Smoke hit him like a divine hammer.
Wade's eyes glazed over almost instantly. He began to laugh—high, broken, ecstatic. Then he started to dance. Fire spells and earth spikes erupted from his hands in wild, uncontrolled bursts that scorched the ground and shattered rocks. He spun in circles, screaming about freedom and ultimate pleasure and the beautiful void waiting for him, until he finally raised his own bow with trembling hands, drew the arrow back to his cheek, and drove it cleanly through his own throat.
The body collapsed in a heap.
When the smoke finally thinned, Jack stepped out from the trees. He had known the outline of the plan in advance.
"People who wish for easy money eventually die," he said quietly, staring at the corpse. "Since he never sold us out, this bag of money can count as the commission we would have paid him. But if the clan ever searches the transaction records…"
"Don't worry about that," I answered, already dragging Wade's body toward the hidden mortuary entrance. "I already figured out how to handle it."
I shoved the corpse inside with the other dead. The inheritance would feed on him the same way it fed on every other greedy fool. Then we left without looking back.
A few hours later the clan's announcement platform blazed with official light across the outer territory.
The heir of the Rank 6 inheritance had been selected. All visible bodies had been counted and recorded. Several clan members had entered illegally and died for their greed. One particularly foolish Rank 1 Peak Tier cultivator had also forced his way inside and perished.
No one mentioned a missing trader named Wade.
I stood at the southern gate beside Jack, listening to the announcement with a calm, almost bored expression. Inside my chest the thin white thread of my luck remained fragile and quiet.
The inheritance had chosen someone else.
Perfect.
Now I could finally stop playing with leftovers and focus on the only thing that truly mattered