Everything Is According to Plan

The Immortal Fairy was furious. As one of her cult members, Tang Yunsheng didn't have even the barest shred of loyalty! Looking back on the ancient era, as a local hegemon, an entire planet of people had been fiercely loyal to her, taking immense pride in being her followers and treating her every word as gospel. *Give me a break,* Lu Yang thought to himself. *That was only because they were worshipping an idealized immortal of their own imagination. If the Immortal Cult found out what the real Immortal Fairy was like, forget loyalty—I wouldn't be surprised if the whole cult disbanded the very next day.* At the very least, he, the Cult Founder, wanted to resign every single day. If even the Cult Founder felt that way, there was no need to mention ordinary believers. *Wait, why not shift angles and have the Immortal Fairy resign, letting the Immortal Cult switch to a completely new faith?* The more Lu Yang thought about it, the better the idea seemed. Lost in his wild thoughts, Lu Yang wasn't panicked in the slightest. With Eldest Senior Sister around, there was no way any of them would come to harm. The real problem right now was deciding what to do with Tang Yunsheng. If they killed him, their subsequent moves would be hard to carry out; if they didn't kill him, the three of them would be done for. It was a real headache. Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu weren't scared either. Before they set out, Lu Yang had told them that this entire trip was all according to Eldest Senior Sister's plan and nothing would go wrong. With the words "Eldest Senior Sister" backing them, what could be more reliable? Tang Yunsheng raised his hand and withdrew a blood-red broad saber enveloped in malevolent wraiths and vengeful spirits from his storage space. Seeing that Lu Yang's trio didn't make a move, he assumed they had lost the will to resist. Makes sense. Facing an insurmountable gap in cultivation realms, this was a normal reaction. Tang Yunsheng had seen countless cultivators resign themselves to fate just like Lu Yang and his companions. "Die!" Tang Yunsheng radiated a chilling, eerie aura, looking every bit the great devil who had slaughtered countless souls. With a sinister grin, he leaped high into the air, brimming with boundless killing intent, intending to cut all three of them down with a single stroke and leave behind not even a trace of their bones! At that moment, the space before a massive boulder nearby twisted, and the Cult Master of the Immortal Cult stretched lazily as he stepped out from Backup Base No. 5. He had left the others inside to tidy things up while he stepped out for some rest. And the moment he emerged, he saw Tang Yunsheng brandishing a blood-red saber, leaping high in the air to slaughter Lu Yang's trio, while the three stood motionless as if scared out of their wits. Cult Master: "..." Tang Yunsheng: "..." The Cult Master's head was full of question marks. *What on earth is going on here?* "Tang Yunsheng, what do you think you're doing?!" Realizing that now was not the time to be baffled, the Cult Master let out a thunderous shout and struck without hesitation, seizing Tang Yunsheng in an iron grip that made the man's bones creak and groan. "Wait, Cult Master, I can explain—" Tang Yunsheng panicked. *What kind of joke is this? I just picked a random spot out in the wilderness—how on earth did the Cult Master pop out of nowhere?!* The Cult Master didn't care for Tang Yunsheng's excuses. With complete disregard for the consequences, he roughly swept his divine sense through Tang Yunsheng's spiritual space, tearing through his sanity while ripping out his memories. As the master of a demonic cult, he was naturally no benevolent soul; killing people for treasure and tearing open spiritual spaces were things he had done plenty of times. The Cult Master finally understood the ins and outs of the situation. Lu Yang's trio had gone through great pains to successfully infiltrate the Dao Seeking Sect, only for their undercover plan to fall apart completely because of the actions of Vice Cult Masters Liu and Gao. And to make matters worse, after their failure, Liu and Gao had revealed that Vice Cult Master Jin was a traitor. Devoted and loyal, Lu Yang's trio had journeyed all the way here with the sole intent of reporting this news to headquarters, only for Tang Yunsheng, driven by selfish motives, to attempt to silence them forever. "Bastard!" The Cult Master crushed Tang Yunsheng to death. If not for his coincidental appearance, these three seeds of the demonic path, entirely dedicated to the Immortal Cult, would have died right here! In truth, after the brutal soul search, Tang Yunsheng had already been reduced to a drooling idiot, no different from a dead man anyway. "You three have suffered," the Cult Master comforted them. This was his first time meeting Lu Yang, Meng Jingzhou, and Man Gu. Handsome and distinguished, true pillars of the demonic cult, future pillars of the realm! Lu Yang: "..." Lu Yang had heard Tang Yunsheng cry out "Cult Master" before dying, which meant the middle-aged man before them was the Cult Master of the Immortal Cult? And had he just stepped out of Backup Base No. 5? And had the three of them actually gained the Cult Master's trust just like that? A flurry of questions erupted in Lu Yang's mind. *Did we skip a few steps? How did we already achieve the goal of this trip?* Inside the spiritual space, Eldest Senior Sister's expression remained unchanged, still aloof from the mortal dust as she said, "Everything is according to plan." The Immortal Fairy looked at Eldest Senior Sister in utter admiration. *This young girl is so formidable, so scheming—I could never pull off something like that.* Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu also assumed this was all part of Eldest Senior Sister's plan, thinking that she truly lived up to her name—nothing ever escaped her calculations. With Eldest Senior Sister around, one could always rest easy. Only Lu Yang wore a bizarre expression, suspecting that this was all sheer coincidence. Yet, taking Eldest Senior Sister's terrifying strength into account, he figured even coincidences were probably part of her plan. Yes, Eldest Senior Sister's plan was truly flawless. Originally, the Cult Master had considered Lu Yang and the other two to be promising talents with great potential, very suitable vessels for the Immortal Celestial's body seizure. However, he had worried they might die at the Dao Seeking Sect—or, if they survived, that they might have been turned into double agents by the Dao Seeking Sect and thus couldn't be trusted or summoned for the trials. Now that he had witnessed this scene with his own eyes, backed by the certainty of Tang Yunsheng's memories, all his suspicions vanished into thin air. "As for the matter regarding Vice Cult Master Jin, do not speak of it to anyone. I want this to remain known only to the four of us." The Cult Master assumed that the accusation of Vice Cult Master Jin being a traitor was merely Liu and Gao biting back in spite before their demise. The Immortal Fairy nodded. Eldest Senior Sister nodded. Halfway through nodding, the Immortal Fairy frowned. "This person is very strange... Why do I sense a familiar aura from him?" The aura was extremely faint and required careful sensing. "It feels like the Immortal Dao fruit, yet not entirely like it. How odd." Hearing the Immortal Fairy's muttering, Yun Zhi raised an eyebrow, sensing that the truth behind the Immortal Cult might be somewhat different from what she had imagined. The Cult Master personally led Lu Yang and the other two into Backup Base No. 5. Lu Yang's trio finally arrived at the Immortal Cult headquarters, but the scene before them was completely different from what they had imagined. In their imagination, even if the Immortal Cult headquarters didn't reek of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, there should at least be an eerie atmosphere of ancient devils lurking in the shadows. Instead, at the actual Immortal Cult headquarters, cult members were flying to and fro, hauling bricks, sawing timber, and building houses and altars in a flurry of grand-scale construction. The Cult Master casually said, "To be safe and avoid the Dao Seeking Sect's pursuit, our cult has just relocated. Although everything has been moved over, things still need organizing and building. "The three of you came at just the right time. Our cult is preparing to hold an internal selection. Soon, a large batch of Qi Refinement and Foundation Establishment believers will arrive to compete alongside you. The most outstanding among you will receive the favor of the Immortal Celestial. "All right, that's enough for now. You three will stay here temporarily. When the selection begins, someone will notify you. I still have matters to attend to." With that, the Cult Master hurried away. The Immortal Cult had no more backup bases left to use; he needed to scout three more just in case. The reason he had been able to rise to Cult Master was not just his cultivation, but his prudence.