After a long, satisfying night spent rewarding his clever, complicit little alchemist, Wang Jian made a strategic decision. His plate was getting full.

He found Liu Ruyan the next morning, already back in her alchemy chamber, her face flushed with a lovely afterglow but her eyes already focused.

“Ruyan,” he said, his voice all business. “Your alchemy is paramount. That competition? It’s our key to the front door of this sect. I want you to focus entirely on your training. Do not think about Elder Fu. Do not think about his schemes. Leave all of that garbage to me. Your only job is to become the best damned alchemist in this sect. Do not distract yourself. Got it?”

Liu Ruyan, still basking in the memory of his praise and the feel of his body, nodded eagerly. “Yes, Jian! I understand! I will not fail you or Teacher!”

“Good girl.” He gave her a quick, proprietary pat on her ass, then turned and left her to her work.

He retreated to his own private chamber. He needed intelligence. Raw, unfiltered, and immediate. And he had the perfect tools to get it.

He sat on his bed and took out three communication talismans. One for Qiu Yun. One for Su Ning. One for Bai Xue.

His spiritual sense flared, and he sent a simple, cold command to each: “My chamber. Now. Alone.”

He didn’t have to wait long.

Within the hour, they began to trickle in. Liu Ruyan, acting as the loyal gatekeeper, let them into the manor one by one, her expression unreadable. She pointed them toward his chamber without a word before returning to her own work, sealing herself inside her alchemy chamber.

Qiu Yun, the fiery one, arrived first. Then the gentle Su Ning. Finally, the young, trembling Bai Xue. They slipped into his room, their faces pale with a mixture of fear and a strange, nervous anticipation.

Wang Jian was waiting for them. He didn’t greet them. He didn’t smile. The moment the stone door slid shut behind Bai Xue, he sealed it with a wave of his hand.

He looked at the three of them, three of the most desired beauties in the entire Crimson Pill Sect, standing there trembling. His voice was flat, cold, and devoid of warmth.

“Clothes. Off. All of you.”

There was no hesitation. There was no protest. There wasn’t even a moment of shy reluctance. The previous conquest had been total.

In fact, they moved with a strange, desperate eagerness. Their hands tore at their own sashes, ripping at the fine silk of their robes. They weren’t just obeying; they were desperate to please, desperate to return to the state in which he had claimed them. Their wills were not just broken; they were remolded.

In seconds, they stood naked before him, a magnificent, trembling display of female flesh. Their large breasts, plump buttocks, and soft skin were all his to command.

He stood up slowly and walked among them, inspecting them like a merchant examining prized cattle.

He stopped in front of the fiery Qiu Yun. He reached out and, with a cruel slowness, pinched her erect, dark-pink nipple. Hard.

“Gah-!” she gasped, her body jolting, a flash of pain and pleasure in her eyes.

He ignored her, moving on. He walked past Su Ning, his hand running possessively down the soft, gentle curve of her hip, his fingers digging in slightly. She shivered, her head bowed.

He stopped behind Bai Xue, the youngest. He looked at her plump, perfect, snow-white buttocks. He grinned, then delivered a sharp, playful smack. SMACK!

“Eep!” she squeaked, her whole body jerking, the jiggling flesh of her ass turning a lovely shade of red.

All the while, his expression remained cold, assessing, detached. He was the master, and this was his livestock.

“Now,” he said, finally getting to the point. He walked back to Bai Xue, his hands brazenly cupping her large, shockingly full breasts, weighing them in his palms. She trembled but pushed her chest out slightly, an unconscious offering. “I need information.”

His cold eyes swept over all three of them. “Elder Fu Yan. His faction. His allies. His plans. You three,” he gave Bai Xue’s breast a final squeeze, “are perfectly positioned to get it for me.”

He looked at them, his gaze sharp. “You are beautiful. You are desirable. I know this. But what I need to know is, do you have any useful followers? Any admirers among Fu Yan’s faction?”

He didn’t really know their social standing. He’d just taken them because they were hot.

The question, however, seemed to flip a switch. Their submissive fear was suddenly tinged with a spark of their old pride.

Qiu Yun, the fiery one, tossed her head back, her magnificent breasts jutting out. “Admirers, Master?” she said, her voice a low, arrogant purr. “The better question is, who isn’t my admirer? Half the disciples in Fu Yan’s faction would happily drink my bathwater! That fool, Zhao Kai, the Third Elder’s personal disciple? He sends me priceless Fire-Attribute herbs every week, just hoping I’ll send him a ‘thank you’ message.”

Su Ning, the gentle one, spoke up, her voice a soft, proud whisper. “Many disciples… confide in me, Master. They say I am a good listener. Elder Fu’s own grand-nephew, Fu Chen, he… he often invites me to discuss poetry. He would do anything for me, I think.”

“Me too!” Bai Xue chimed in, her voice eager, childish. “Lots of senior brothers send me gifts! They say I’m pure and sweet! They’d do anything to protect me! They’re always trying to invite me for tea, but I never go. It just makes them try harder!”

Wang Jian listened to this, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. He felt the familiar, powerful urge to fuck these women. This combination of utter, naked submission and their lingering, arrogant pride in their own desirability… it was an intoxicating mix.

He acted on the urge instantly.

“Good,” he growled. He grabbed Qiu Yun by the waist, spun her around, and pushed her against the wall. “Then you won’t mind telling me more… while you serve your Master.”

He hiked up her hips, positioned his hard dick at her wet, ready entrance, and thrust in deep.

“AHH!” she screamed, a sharp, ragged sound of pleasure as he filled her.

“Tell me about Zhao Kai,” he commanded, his hands grabbing her enormous breasts, squeezing them, as he began to pound into her pussy with a hard, rhythmic force.

“He’s… ah!… he’s arrogant, Master!” she gasped, her words coming in short bursts. “He loves to… oh gods… loves to boast! He’s always… ahn!… talking about some secret mission his master has him on… something about… array materials!”

Wang Jian bit down on her shoulder, his thrusts becoming more savage. He felt his climax building. He fucked her hard, fast, until her knees buckled, her body climaxing in a violent, shuddering wave. He pumped his seed deep inside her, then pulled out, letting her slide bonelessly to the floor.

He immediately turned to Su Ning. “You. On the bed. On your back.”

She scrambled to obey. He mounted her, spreading her soft thighs, his dick already hard again. “Poetry?” he sneered, as he pushed into her tight, wet pussy. “How… quaint. Tell me what this Fu Chen boasts about.”

“He… ah… Jian… Master!… he speaks of… of bringing ‘order’ to the sect,” she moaned, her gentle face contorted in a mask of lust. “He said… ah, yes!… said his grand-uncle has found a way to… to ‘silence’ the Sect Mistress… for good!”

Wang Jian grabbed her tits, which were softer but just as large as Qiu Yun’s. “Silence her, eh?” he grunted, his pace quickening. He bit her erect, pink nipple, making her scream. “I like the sound of that.” He fucked her with a deep, punishing rhythm, making her climax again and again before he finally spilled his own seed inside her.

He didn’t even rest. He pulled out, stood up, and looked at the terrified, desperately aroused Bai Xue. “You. On your knees.”

She dropped, her eyes wide, her face flushed. He grabbed her by the hair, positioning his dick in front of her mouth. “No. Not that.” He spun her around. “On your hands and knees. Ass up. Like the little animal you are.”

She obeyed instantly, presenting her plump, pale buttocks to him. He fucked her from behind, a raw, animalistic coupling, his hands smacking her ass, leaving red handprints. “And your admirers?” he growtled, as he pounded into her tight, innocent-feeling pussy.

“They’re… oh! oh! oh!… just disciples, Master!” she cried. “Low-level! But… but they work in the warehouses! They… ah!… they see all the materials! One of them, he… he told me he saw men in grey cloaks! Delivering… ah!… delivering crates! Late at night!”

“Grey cloaks,” Wang Jian grunted, his climax approaching. He grabbed her hips, his final thrusts deep, brutal, pushing her to the very edge of the bed. He came inside her, a hot, copious flood.

He pulled out, leaving all three women in a dazed, panting, blissed-out heap.

He stood, fastening his robes, his mind already processing the information. “Good,” he said, his voice cold again. “You did well. Now, here are your orders. Give me everything else you know. Every rumor. Every whisper. Then, you will go out. You will engage these admirers of yours. Lure them. Make them talk. And you will report everything back to me. Understood?”

Their fearful, exhausted nods were his only answer.

Over the next few weeks, Wang Jian’s hidden web of spies began to yield results. The three women, driven by a combination of fear and their newly branded devotion, executed his plan perfectly.

They began reporting to him in secret, kneeling naked before him in his chamber while he rewarded or punished them as he saw fit.

Qiu Yun, with her fiery, challenging nature, was the first to bring back solid proof. She was lying on his bed, her legs spread wide, while he sat beside her, idly sucking on one of her large, heavy tits.

“That fool, Zhao Kai… ahn… Master… he took the bait,” she panted, her body squirming as his tongue flicked her nipple. “I challenged him… told him he was just a glorified errand boy for the Third Elder. He got so angry… so desperate to impress me… he showed me something.”

“Showed you what?” Wang Jian murmured against her breast.

“A piece of jade,” she gasped. “He called it… ‘Void-Patterned Jade’. He said it was incredibly rare, from the Azure Sword Clan’s private mines. He said his master and Elder Fu were building… mmmh… building a special array for the competition… one that would… ‘surprise’ the Sect Mistress.”

‘Void-Patterned Jade,’ Wang Jian thought, his mind latching onto the name. ‘Azure Sword Clan. Just as I suspected. They aren’t just allies; they are supplying the hardware for the coup.’

A few days later, it was Bai Xue’s turn. She was kneeling at his feet, massaging his legs, her voice a shy, innocent whisper. “Master… I did what you said. I… I asked my admirer, the one in the warehouses… I asked him if he’d seen any more of those ‘scary men in grey cloaks’.”

“And?” Wang Jian prompted, opening his eyes.

“He got very nervous,” Bai Xue reported. “He told me to never speak of them. He said they weren’t men at all. He said… he saw one of them drop a package, and its hand… it was made of wood. Jointed wood, under the glove. And he said… the weirdest thing… he said he saw some of the low-level servants from Elder Fu’s courtyard… and they… they moved wrong. Their eyes were blank, ‘lifeless’, he said. Like… like puppets.”

‘Lifeless servants. Jointed wood. Grey cloaks.’ Wang Jian’s blood ran a little cold. ‘The Silent Puppet Guild. They aren’t just supplying materials. They’re supplying personnel. Or their twisted version of it. Infiltrators. Lifeless puppets posing as servants. This is deeper than I thought.’

Su Ning’s intel was more subtle. She had her “poetry discussion” with Fu Chen, Elder Fu’s grand-nephew. Wang Jian had been there himself, concealed in the shadows of the pavilion, listening to the whole, agonizingly boring conversation. Fu Chen was a romantic fool, and Su Ning played him perfectly, her gentle, melancholic act making him desperate to be her “hero.”

“My grand-uncle,” Fu Chen had boasted, his voice low and important, “will soon cleanse the sect of its weakness, my dear Su Ning. He will restore our strength. Even the Sect Mistress… she will soon see the wisdom of his path. He has… prepared a special ‘elixir’ for her. One that will… ‘calm’ her spirit and make her more… agreeable.”

‘Elixir,’ Wang Jian thought, his mind flashing back to the garden he’d found. ‘He means an aphrodisiac. A powerful one.’

Using this combined intel, Wang Jian took a greater risk. Armed with detailed patrol schedules provided by Qiu Yun (from her admirer, Zhao Kai), he infiltrated Fu Yan’s private dwelling while the Elder was confirmed to be in a meeting with the Third Elder.

Moving like a ghost, his Void-Merging Breath making him undetectable, he found it: Fu Yan’s hidden, private herb garden, tucked away behind a powerful illusion array. It was filled not with medicinal herbs, but with row after row of potent, disgusting, and incredibly rare aphrodisiacs. The air was thick with their heavy, sickeningly sweet scent. “Nine-Tailed Fox Blossoms.” “Dragon’s Desire Root.” “Heart-Enslaving Vetch.”

Nearby, in a hidden study, he found the scrolls. Not just pill recipes, but detailed schematics for lust-inducing formations, arrays designed to amplify carnal desires and break a cultivator’s mental defenses.

Wang Jian’s lip curled in cold, amused contempt. ‘It’s not just about power,’ he realized, the final piece of the personal motive clicking into place. ‘The old bastard is a pervert. He doesn’t just want to defeat Lianhua. He wants to own her. He plans to seize control of the sect and make the Sect Mistress his personal, mind-broken slut. How delightfully, predictably depraved.’

His final piece of reconnaissance, a few days later, was the most damning. Bai Xue, bless her innocent heart, managed to get her admirer to “complain” about a heavy, late-night shipment. She distracted the warehouse guards with a “lost” spirit-cat, while Wang Jian, invisible, slipped inside.

He saw them. Crates. Dozens of them. Being moved by Fu Yan’s most trusted disciples. He got close enough to sense the energy signatures on the sealed crates. They were complex, layered. He recognized the sharp, aggressive, wind-and-steel signature of the Azure Sword Clan. And beneath it, a colder, more insidious, and unsettlingly familiar energy… the dark, spirit-twisting energy of the Silent Puppet Guild.

The crates were being transported, under cover of darkness, towards the Grand Cauldron Arena.

The scope of the plan was now crystal clear to him.

‘Fu Yan isn’t just planning to win a pill competition,’ Wang Jian thought, his mind racing. ‘He’s a coward. He knows he might lose. This is a coup. He’s going to let the competition play out, and if he loses—or maybe even if he wins—he’s going to activate this massive, externally supplied array. It’s a suppression-and-control formation. It will lock down the arena, neutralize Lianhua and her faction, and his puppet-servants will move in. Then, he’ll use his disgusting aphrodisiacs on Lianhua, break her will, and seize absolute control. He’s collaborating with two outside powers to do it.’

Wang Jian felt a cold, dangerous thrill. This was a messy, risky, and incredibly dangerous game Fu Yan was playing. Collaborating with external, rival sects? Treason of the highest order.

But it also presented Wang Jian with the most perfect, golden opportunity. A chance to intervene. A chance to manipulate. A chance to profit beyond his wildest dreams.

For the next three months, Wang Jian became a ghost in the Crimson Pill Sect.

His primary task was locating and tampering with Fu Yan’s trap. Using the intel from his spies, he pinpointed the exact locations near the Grand Cauldron Arena where Fu Yan’s forces were secretly embedding the array nodes, deep beneath the ground or hidden within ornamental pillars.

It was a complex, multi-layered formation, just as he’d suspected. He could sense the sharp, offensive power of the Azure Sword Clan’s technology, designed to suppress spiritual energy. And he could feel the insidious, creepy, and complex energy of the Silent Puppet Guild, likely designed to control minds or animate puppets for the “cleanup.”

Infiltrating these sites was the most dangerous thing he had ever done.

Fu Yan was a Late Stage Core Formation expert. His spiritual sense, even when passive, covered a vast area. Wang Jian was a mere Initial Stage Foundation Establishment cultivator. The gap was like that between an ant and a mountain.

He had to rely entirely on his Void-Merging Breath, his body and aura reduced to nothing. He could only move when his spies (primarily Qiu Yun, through her admirer) confirmed that Fu Yan was not on the premises, that he was in deep seclusion or at a meeting across the sect.

He moved particle by particle, a ghost in the machine. He didn’t attempt to destroy the arrays. That would be too obvious, too easily detected by Fu Yan. No, his plan was far more subtle.

He tweaked them.

With painstaking, agonizing care, moving only a single mote of spiritual dust at a time with his precisely controlled Stellar Qi, he found the core control runes. He subtly, microscopically, altered the runic pathways. He wove in his own tiny, dormant, and completely undetectable control sigils, sigils that resonated only with his unique Stellar Qi. He created hidden backdoors, alternate command sequences that only he knew.

He also found the energy flow regulators. He didn’t stop the flow. He just… adjusted them. He ensured that while the array would appear to activate at full power, its peak output was secretly capped, just slightly. And he added a bypass, a hidden switch that would allow him to seize control of the entire formation, to turn it off, or, more enticingly, to turn it against its own masters.

He was turning Fu Yan’s ultimate weapon into his own secret, trump card. ‘When the moment comes,’ he thought, a cold smile on his face as he silently replaced a paving stone, ‘when that old bastard thinks he has won, when he’s about to claim his prize… I will be the one to pull the strings. I will be the one who decides who falls and who rises.’

Simultaneously, over these three months, Wang Jian didn’t neglect his own needs. He was a busy, busy man.

Using his invisibility and the detailed intel from his sluts – who now had their admirers wrapped around their little fingers, revealing patrol schedules, guard rotations, and the locations of private, unguarded herb gardens – he made numerous covert trips.

He raided every garden he could find, a silent, invisible phantom in the night. He didn’t steal the plants outright. That would be too obvious. He took seeds. He took small root clippings. He took tiny leaf samples. He transferred them all instantly to his Verdant Eternal Spring Essence space, his own personal, interdimensional garden, which was now overflowing with an impossible collection of the Crimson Pill Sect’s most prized, rare, and legendary herbs.

He also found locations rich in natural Wood Attribute energy – ancient, thousand-year-old trees in the deep sect forests, hidden spiritual springs bubbling with life force. He would spend hours there, invisible, silently absorbing their pure, natural essence, feeding his own Verdant Eternal Spring Essence, enhancing his healing, his vitality, and his lifespan.

The three months drew to a close. Wang Jian felt ready. His own cultivation was stable, his Qi slightly advanced from the rich environment and the constant, high-quality Yin essence from his sluts (and from Liu Ruyan, on the rare nights her Master didn’t visit). His understanding of the Crimson Pill Sect’s entire political and alchemical landscape was now deep. Fu Yan’s trap was now his trap.

And his primary, public-facing pawn, Liu Ruyan, was, according to her own excited, confident reports, ready to challenge the heavens.

All the pieces were in place. He just needed to wait for the curtain to rise.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep