3 CHAPTER ONE

The Eleventh Prince​

It was strange, the life of the average salaryman, trapped in a relentless wheel of toil and drudgery, much like a hamster on a rusted, never-ending wheel. For years, I awoke each morning to the symphony of an accursed alarm clock echoing in my tiny concrete cubicle, only to descend into the abyss of fluorescent-lit purgatory that was my office. My days, like clockwork, stretched on and on, punctuated only by the rhythmic clacking of keyboards and the mechanical drone of fax machines.

For years, I was but a cog in a vast, soulless machine, a slave to a system that valued conformity and obedience above all else. The hierarchy, an unyielding mountain of rigid protocol. The Party, an ever-watchful, control-obsessed emperor. Society, stifling; its existence punctuated by a treacherous sea of censorship, political correctness, and brutal ostracizations.

For years, I performed the rituals of the office like a dance of absurdity. I bowed and scraped to my superiors, offering empty pleasantries and forced smiles, while secretly cursing them under my breath. They expected my loyalty, demanded it; for me to give my all as if my dedication would be rewarded with some grand prize at the end of the maze. But the reality was that the harder I worked, the more I was taken for granted.

In the morning, I would squeeze myself onto a crowded commuter train; a sardine in a can, crammed in as cattle en route to an industrial slaughterhouse. And for what? To earn a meagre paycheck, one just enough to keep me coming back for more? It was then I realised my existence as a disposable, interchangeable, and utterly replaceable pawn.

Whenever I think back to how everything changed for me I couldn't help but chuckle in amusement at the absurdity of it all. One night, upon returning to the cramped cell I called home, I pulled out my phone and began browsing a pirate site for uncensored web novels to read. An ad for an illegal dating site popped up as I searched for something—anything—to distract me from the futility of my very existence.

Curious, I opened it and signed up with a fake profile, but somehow managed to mess up my registration. The system, assuming I was homosexual, matched me with a man.

One I somehow happened to know in real life.

To be clear, I bore no ill will towards the fellow. We might have been co-workers for some three-odd years then, but I rarely spoke to him as he was in a department far removed from mine. It was never about some overarching personal vendetta, nor was there a standing grudge I was itching to settle with him.

I was simply curious as to what would happen.

And so, in my curiosity, I took a screenshot of the fellow's profile before reaching out to him with an anonymous account. Then, to see how he would react, I sent him the screenshot, a picture of his parents' account I found on Buydoo, and our CEO's work email.

To say his reaction was intriguing would have been an understatement as I suddenly found myself fifteen thousand yuan richer that weekend.

It astounded me how easy it was. To make a near-stranger do something he normally would never do. My curiosity grew; I wanted to see how far he was willing to go to keep me appeased.

Apparently, not very far.

He jumped from the tenth floor of the office building three weeks later. The mess was cleaned up by a dead-eyed janitor and his body was removed from the premises within five minutes of the incident. It took only three days for the case to be completely swept under the rug and promptly forgotten by the entire company.

I found another one after some days of searching. A small grocery store owner from a somewhat well-to-do, but fairly conservative community. He was married with three kids, the oldest of whom was a pretty little art major in her final year.

This one was willing to go very, very far to keep me appeased.

And so was his daughter after I sent her the video of her father masturbating to her semen-soaked picture in front of a mirror.

It was so easy. With each new one, I grew ever more enlightened. Soon, I came to the realisation that I had been living my life incorrectly all along. In this cruel, cutthroat world, the mantra was clear.

Simple.

It was survival, not of the fittest, but of the most unscrupulous.

Honour?

Fairness?

Altruism?

These were all social constructs crafted for the sole purpose of controlling the masses and preventing people like me from taking what we truly deserve. For years, I suffered at the receiving end of this complex system. Now, I have learnt to focus only on making my life better. And if that means making the lives of strangers and mere acquaintances worse, then so be it.

It was a sacrifice I was more than willing to make.

One might call me heartless, and they wouldn't be far from the truth. I've seen entire livelihoods crumble under the weight of my decisions, yet I found I never lost a wink of sleep over it.

I guess I just couldn't care less.

Case in point; take the crying, half-naked girl standing in front of me now.

The fool, Dai Wei, squirmed against his binds as I sawed away another article of Ma Yili's clothing. Her robes and sash lay shredded by her feet in a messy pile and only her dudou and a strip of clothing wrapped around her waist were left to protect what scraps remained of her dignity.

I took a seat on the bed, leaving the girl standing in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped protectively over her modest bosom. Two lines of tears ran down her rosy cheeks, and her dainty-looking knees and elbows were flushed red with how tightly she held them together. I twirled the bloody dagger in my hand absentmindedly as I gave the peasant girl a once-over, blood rushing into my loins as I caught her fearful gaze.

"I now see why you are so obsessed about her," I told my fellow transmigrator as I undid the sash wrapped around my waist. The girl gave a fearful yip, backing away into a corner as she caught a glimpse of my engorged member swinging menacingly between my thighs. Dai Wei screamed into his gag, the sound coming out muffled. Li Shen on the other hand was as silent as a dead log, seemingly unconcerned about his childhood friend's fate. I couldn't blame him though. The former protagonist knelt half-dead in a shallow pool of his own blood, a great many cuts artfully carved into his flesh. Without esoteric medicinal arts or some form of divine intervention, it was unlikely he would live past the next few minutes.

"Come here," I ordered the girl. Unable to resist the chi-imbued words Ma Yili stumbled over before kneeling in front of me between my legs. I ran my fingers through her hair before gripping a handful of it and forcing her down towards my throbbing penis.

"Open your mouth." Her small lips parted open just wide enough for me to force my cock up her throat. She bit down fiercely, her teeth trying and failing to do more than tug at the loose skin near the base of my veined member.

A throaty exhale escaped my mouth as I ignored both Dai Wei and Ma Yili's muffled cries. To my disappointment, the girl soon grew tired of trying to chew my penis off. Finding the pliant nature of her lips around my organ uninteresting, I pulled her away, lifting her by her hair and tossing her on the mattress.

She struggled weakly as I mounted her from behind, my moist member sliding easily into her snatch. I felt her virtue break on my lengthened organ and the hot blood of her innocence drip down the wrinkly folds of my testicles.

The room soon fell silent with only my faint grunts of exertion echoing off the walls. Li Shen was probably already dead. Dai Wei looked upon the rape of the object of his obsession, dead-eyed, unable to look away thanks to the compulsion I placed upon him to witness it all. Ma Yili wept silently, her despairing gaze locked against Dai Wei's lifeless ones.

Unmoved by the display, I subconsciously reached into the spatial ring I pilfered from Dai Wei's person, memorising the content of the scriptures engraved on the wall even as I continued to plough the village girl into the soft mattress beneath us.

As I had expected, it was indeed a dual cultivation technique. I revolved the technique once, weaving my Chi in the manner described in the scriptures. A breathy moan leaked from Ma Yili's lips as the entirety of my cultivation base pressed against her nearly non-existent one.

I kept ploughing and she kept weeping, eyes streaming out tears. At last, her pain seemed to subside, and her expression changed. The tight muscles in her face smoothed out into loveliness, and her eyes went back into her head … and she whimpered with new vigour.

I tugged on her long dark mane, forcing an arc into her back as my pelvis smacked into her bruised buttocks. Even with the level of restraint I displayed, it was inevitable she would end up red in the flesh. The difference between a cultivator and a mortal was simply too great for anything else to happen.

My hips pumped into her, tip-tingling with the wet slides of my movements. I grabbed the girl, tossing her on her back before sheathing myself back in her. She struggled rather futilely, yelping. I lowered my mouth to a nipple I freed from her dudou and sucked on it, swirling my tongue around the nub. A laugh escaped me when I realised she couldn't help the way her hips bucked at that.

She was still so tight, panting obscenely and occasionally forgetting to struggle. The loud wet slapping noise of my pelvis mashing against her engorged organ filled the room, along with her muffled moans and cries. I could feel a crescendo nearing, the process hastened by the revolving Chi in my Dantian. Soon a faint pressure built at the base of my spine and I froze as ropes of my royal semen spilled into her.

With a faint exhale, I rolled off her, smoothening my messy hair with a single brush of my palm. I turned to Dai Wei, finding him sufficiently dead-eyed and broken for the next phase of my plan. From my personal spatial ring, I summoned a golden cauldron the size of a bathtub with an infernal green flame burning beneath it.

Pulling a large vat of primordial spring water and a basket of assorted spiritual herbs and Gu parts seemingly from the ether I emptied them into the glorified cooking pot before using my Chi to pull at the essence contained within them. A Hundun's breath is a notoriously hard flame to procure and handle, but given the ease with which it breaks down spirituality into its chaotic base constituents, it was especially important for what I intended to do. Goading the green flames with my Chi, I unravelled the spirituality of the herbs in the cauldron. Slowly, items in the cauldron melted down into a dark blue slush with a constituency similar to that of cooking oil. Deeming the base for the pill I intended to create complete, I grabbed the final ingredient before tossing it into the mix.

Dai Wei screamed as his skin and flesh sloughed away and mixed with the rest of the slush, his bones melting into a whitish fluid a few moments later. I left the mixture to cook for another few minutes, ignoring Ma Yili's horrified stare as I tossed in some Luan feathers to feed the flame. The Hundun's breath underneath the cauldron flared, burning blindingly bright for a few moments before soon fizzling out.

It was ready.

Sitting in the blackened interior of my now ruined cauldron was a glossy grey pill the size of a large grain of rice.

According to the records in the royal library, the Nirvana pill was supposed to be glossy white, but given the fact that Dai Wei had foolishly eaten the Nirvana fruit raw, forcing me to resort to using the unabsorbed remnant in his body instead, it was not unexpected that the pill came out somewhat blemished. Breaking his Dao heart before refining him into a pill helped somewhat, but there was only so much that could be done about Houtian impurities borne as a result of using mortal ingredients.

A problem for another day, I guess.

Pinching it between my fingers I examined the pill for a moment before tossing it into my mouth.

Hmm… I hummed, considering for a moment before I arrived at a conclusion.

Tastes sour.