In the blink of an eye, a few moons passed by quickly on the desolate frontiers of the Heavenly Demon Sect. They were quick, but at the same time, soaked in a horrifying amount of blood.
Within this period of time, Sunny had made many more forced trips to the Abyssal Vanguard's subterranean staging areas. Ever since Captain Vane crawled back from the catastrophic breach of the Rotting Marrow Swamp, he had become a hollow shell of a man, jumping at every shadow.
Sunny also noticed that the atmosphere of the entire war camp had become suffocatingly grim.
But he was playing the role of an untouchable Supreme Flesh-Crafter, and showing concern was a sign of weakness in the Demonic Path.
However, when he and Captain Vane met in the absolute privacy of the warded pavilion later on, the scarred mercenary had recounted the apocalyptic horrors of that fateful day to Sunny.
A Calamity Lord.
Who would have thought that just by accepting a suicide mandate from the Elder Council, Captain Vane would have borne witness to a true Calamity Lord and the Sect Protector Wyrm all in one disastrous night.
Vane was the only commander Sunny knew who possessed the sheer, cowardly luck to abandon his men fast enough to survive.
Sunny had wanted to express his profound relief that they hadn't dragged the Grave-Matrix back to his tent, but he did not know how to word it without sounding like a coward.
He ended up simply tossing another raw spirit-core to his Scorpion instead, maintaining his freezing silence.
In these past moons, under Sunny's terrifying "methods," the number of Commander-tier Four-Armed Abyssal Mantises owned by the Abyssal Vanguard increased by another forty. He had simply used the System to forcibly merge their surviving fodder-beasts into the elites.
This mass ascension finally made up for the devastating losses that Captain Vane incurred during the swamp massacre.
Captain Vane had also tried to offer Sunny a blood-bound concubine and a chest of highly restricted soul-gems in private, but Sunny refused it with a chilling glare.
"I am not a beggar. Your tribute fulfills the oath. To offer me unrequested flesh is to question my own hunting prowess."
Captain Vane also had his desperate reasons for offering the illicit tribute. He hoped to chain Sunny to his band long-term. As per Sunny's arrogant terms previously, the blood-oath they had sworn was completely unbound and could be severed on a whim.
Vane had initially thought the unbound terms were a blessing, a way to avoid getting dragged down if the Young Master was assassinated by a rival Elder.
But now, he could not avoid trying to grovel for a permanent alliance. If he did not establish an unbreakable bond of mutual slaughter with Sunny, what would he do if the Young Master decided to ascend the beasts of a rival band next moon?
He had no idea, however, that Sunny had absolutely no plans to act as a permanent mercenary doctor for anyone.
He was merely using the Abyssal Vanguard to farm high-grade fusion materials for his own survival plan.
A standard Elite-tier corpse could only yield a fraction of dark essence, whereas a Commander-tier fiend's core could provide enough pure death Qi to trigger a minor evolution.
If a rare, highly toxic Commander-tier beast could be procured intact, it was the perfect catalyst for a cross-species fusion.
The Calamity tier, however, was a realm Sunny desperately wanted to avoid entirely.
Hence, Sunny planned to passively hoard dark essence until the Shadow-Ghoul Ape reached the Commander tier, and then find an excuse to retreat to the inner mountain.
By that time, his terrifying reputation as the Supreme Flesh-Crafter should have secured him an untouchable status among the Grand Elders. He planned to lock himself in a warded manor and refuse all visitors. That was the path of supreme laziness that Sunny had plotted.
As long as he maintained his villainous glare, nobody would question his cowardice.
Other than all this, Disciple Vesper had also managed to single-handedly eradicate an entire Orthodox scout-camp using her Rot-Weaver.
Being a sociopath, this fueled her bloodlust immensely, and she refused to leave the frontlines to report her success for a full week, simply hoarding the corpses.
Sunny later found out through the casualty reports that the Orthodox scouts were led by a Radiant Paladin wielding a localized sun-relic.
There was indeed nothing much that could have been done for the Paladin. Vesper's Rot-Weaver was a Commander-tier nightmare, and easily liquefied the Paladin's defenses before the relic could be fully charged.
Finally, within these few moons, the Phantom Ash Scorpion's internal core had completely stabilized at the Commander tier, whereas the Shadow-Ghoul Ape had passively absorbed enough spirit stones to finally break through to Tier 3. Sadly, the anonymous Blood-Bounty that Sunny had posted for the Blood-Lotus Roots was never fulfilled by any mercenary. The roots within the Rotting Marrow Swamp were strictly guarded by the Grave-Ash Horrors.
Living up to its miserable nature, the Ghoul Ape simply huddled in the corner of its cage every day, dumbly staring at the empty lead chest where the toxic roots were supposed to be.
***
"All Vanguard disciples assemble at the Blood Plains! The preliminary culling ends today!" roared Executioner Mian, his voice magically amplified to rattle the obsidian tiles of the camp.
Everyone already knew the brutal reality of what was happening today. Some truly deranged disciples skipped forward excitedly, eager to display their cruelty, while others wore a look of absolute terror on their faces, evidently aware that their fiends were too weak to pass.
A last group of them, however, simply marched with hollow eyes, knowing that surviving the culling only meant being sent deeper into the meat grinder.
The first thing Executioner Mian did upon the massive execution altar was something that sent a chill through the entire army. He did not call for combat trials.
He pulled a massive, glowing scroll woven from flayed skin from his robes.
"I will first announce the names of the condemned," Mian lowered his heavy, scarred brow and read out,
"Disciple Zhao, to the marrow mines! Disciple Li, to the marrow mines! Disciple Han, to the feeding pits..."
A few disciples were completely paralyzed with shock; others could not resist their panic and began to frantically beg the Enforcers for mercy.
Executioner Mian appeared to have expected this display of weakness. Without raising his head, he simply gestured with his bone-sword,
"Those who weep will have their tongues removed before they are chained."
He quickly went through the entire scroll of the damned. Within Sunny's own cohort, over a hundred disciples were condemned straight away, without even being given the right to fight for their lives on the altar.
"I know that your pathetic, crawling minds cannot comprehend this, but I will only say this once: In these past moons, the shadow-scouts have documented how each and every one of you have bled. Whether or not you have hidden in the corpse-trenches during a raid, we know. The Heavenly Demon Sect does not harbor parasites.
"I also know that you believe you can deceive us by mimicking cruelty. But if you could not even force your fiends to consume the flesh of the fallen and had to cower behind the artillery lines, then your souls are worthless to the Vanguard. Zhao, did you think we wouldn't notice you constantly hiding behind the Young Master's shadow instead of commanding your own beast? Han, from tomorrow onwards you will dig in the abyss until your hands rot off, the frontlines are no place for a coward," he sneered, randomly pointing out two weeping disciples as the Enforcers dragged them away.
Everyone else immediately clamped their mouths shut, swallowing their terror.
What horrifying fates they imagined in their heads, no one would ever know.
"The rest of you shall begin your final assessment. We shall start with testing absolute lethality..."
The brutal assessment went on for hours, and did not waste time with non-lethal sparring.
Each of the fiend's kill-times against captured Orthodox prisoners were recorded by a blood-array and sent straight to the High Command's viewing crystal.
The kill-times were processed using a cruel sect formula that prioritized agony, efficiency, and the beast's innate malice. Within the hour, the final judgments were cast.
"Grand Elder, this is the blood-ledger. A total of two hundred disciples have proven their cruelty is sufficient for the Inner Vanguard," one of the scarred lieutenants handed a dripping parchment to Elder Shen He.
"Mm, leave it." Elder Shen He took the parchment in his hands and placed it on the skull-throne next to him without even glancing at it.
In front of him, a massive, invisible serpent was slowly crushing a captured Paladin to death, the agonizing sounds echoing in the dark hall.
It was like watching a nightmare slowly constrict reality...
After ten minutes, the screaming finally ended. The invisible serpent uncoiled, leaving a shattered heap of armor, and casually slithered back into the rafters.
Only then did Elder Shen He turn around and reply, "Then two hundred it will be. The extra fifty who survived the trials shall be executed as offerings to the arrays. We only require the absolute elite. I will inform the Sect Master that the Vanguard is ready for the deep strike. Go inform the Executioner."
"Yes, Grand Elder." The lieutenant quickly bowed his head and retreated.
As always, Grand Elder Shen He was ruthless on the outside and an absolute monster on the inside.
In the end, the number of disciples who survived the culling was exactly two hundred, an astronomical reduction from the thousands who had initially marched.
"Now that you have survived the culling, you must register your fiend's combat designation. From now on, the slaughter won't be like the random skirmishes you've been surviving. When you choose the designation for your fiends, remember to align it with their darkest attributes, or else your formation will collapse and you will be left behind to die," reminded Captain Kael.
"Venom-Spitter." That was the designation that Sunny mentally chose for his Phantom Ash Scorpion. There was nothing worth hesitating about in making this choice. Toxic, area-denial assassination was definitely the Scorpion's absolute strength.
In the end, those who chose the Flesh-Shield designation were the most numerous, acting as desperate meat-walls, with a total of over eighty disciples.
Of the remaining, more than sixty chose Soul-Reaper.
Those who chose Venom-Spitter and Curse-Weaver numbered less than forty combined.