Beasts from the immortal realm aren’t very different from beasts down here. Along with the defensive formations in the sky around the door, I also set up a few teleportation formations. It’s actually extremely difficult to place formations in the sky, sticking it to the door. The door has its own defensive formation that zaps anyone who approaches it with tribulation lightning. It took a lot of creative uses of certain treasures I seized from some lightning-based sects to disable it. The sects weren’t too happy with it, but their opinions didn’t really matter.

Speaking of sects, I think our sect needs a serious rebranding. The Shadow Devil Sect sounds a bit evil and aligned with demonic forces. While it’s true that we do participate in some unsavory activities like warmongering, slavery, robbery, planting heart devils, harvesting corpses, torture, and trapping souls to prevent them from reentering the cycle of reincarnation, I think we’d be better off if we had a different sect name. Why not the Righteous Holy Sect? We’d still engage in all those unsavory activities, but at least the scouts from the immortal realm might be thrown off. I’ll seriously consider this.

Also, beasts weren’t the only things thrown through the door. A few people were sent inside as well. The formations in the sky are designed to fire a testing shot first. They attack non-lethal body parts, and if the subject can’t resist, they’re teleported into my lab with a few vaporized portions. If they can resist, the formations operate at full power and attempt to wipe the target out. Anyway, the differences between the Immortal Continent and the immortal realm aren’t that pronounced. If anything, there’s more non-humans up there than down here.

“Auntie Ilya, are you home?”

What does Sophia want? For now, I’ll change out of these bloody robes. Torture can be done via formations, but I prefer a hands-on approach. I’ll also turn on the illusion formation to hide the gruesome sight from view, and after that’s done, I’ll open the door. “Hi there, Sophia.”

“Auntie Ilya!”

“G-good evening, Principal Pentorn.”

Who’s this? Isn’t this Hong Tian Ji’s distant cousin? What was her name…?

“Auntie, this is Ri. She’s my best friend.”

A squirrel person and a person with a vermillion bird bloodline, what an odd pair of best friends. I wonder if they’ll stay best friends when Ri realizes her best friend’s mother practically removed the limbs from all her clan members. “Hi, Ri. What can I help you with today?”

Ri’s face went unusually pale for some reason. Well, I don’t know how pale her usual face is, so this could be normal. I thought I looked very friendly. Did I miss a spot of blood somewhere on my face? No, that’s not it.

Sophia squirmed a bit before asking, “Can we look through your treasury? I want to pick out a weapon! Ri’s an orphan, so it’s hard for her to get her own weapon, so I thought I could give her one of yours.”

“Jin Mo is in charge of the treasury.” He’s one of the stronger quasi-immortals, and he even joined the sect after our contract with each other ended. I don’t pay him fifty billion spirit stones a week anymore, but he still listens to everything I say. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Sophia stuck her tongue out and shivered. “Mister Mo is scary.”

Is he? I thought he’d treat Sophia nicely since she’s Lucia’s daughter and all. “Alright. What kind of weapons do you two want?” Out of the kindness of my heart, I’ll help Ri out. Maybe she’ll feel some sort of attachment to the sect that way, and once she finds out about her clan, she hopefully won’t be too upset. I thought of letting things take their natural course, but Sophia’s just a bit too pure. It would suck if her personality changed after a fight with Ri.

Sophia raised her hand up. “I want a bow!”

A bow? “That’s an interesting choice.”

“Yeah! I want to hit people who run from me! I can only chase one person at a time, and when my classmates run in different directions, it takes too long to hit them all.”

Sophia really loves her self-defense class. Giving her a bow would really make it unfair for the rest. However, life isn’t fair. “Luckily for you, I have a few bows and training bows meant for children.” Why do I have these? Sects have everything, and sometimes, I’m too lazy to put things away in the treasury. I think I picked it up from Lucia. She loves hoarding things, and I’ve seen her fight by throwing junk at people. “How about you, Ri? What weapon do you want to use?”

“N-n-n-nothing.” Ri shook her head back and forth. Her eyes were extremely wide, and she was definitely terrified of me for some reason. “I, I, I don’t need a weapon. The school, um, the school provides them.”

“Ri?” Sophia tilted her head. “What’s wrong? You’re acting really strange. Are you scared of Auntie Ilya? She does some really weird stuff, but there’s no reason to be afraid of her.”

What? I do really weird stuff? Well, I suppose a child wouldn’t understand the things I do and can only classify it as weird.

“I’m not. No.” Ri shook her head before lowering her gaze. It was like she didn’t dare look at my face. Did someone tip her off about her clan members?

“How about these?” I still have Hong Tian Ji’s fans. I studied them a bit and picked up some inspiration for fire-based formations, but other than that, they don’t have any use for me. Fighting with melee weapons is simply barbaric. The only weapon I need is my anti-Lucia cannon.

“Oh!” Sophia snatched the fans out of my hands and placed them into Ri’s. “You said you wanted to learn how to fight with fans, right? Auntie Ilya’s really smart, and I bet she already knew. Here, take these!”