Ever had someone scam you—cheat you—gut you—and walk off with eighty million?
Li Pan has now.
Deep breaths. There's a first time for everything. Calm down and think what to do next…
He rode the shuttle back, put in a full day at work, and had no idea what he'd actually done—he just sat in the office and thought.
Endure, and the longer you stew, the bigger the loss feels. Back down, and the more you think about it, the madder you get.
"AAAHHH—! Damn it! You dog! I'll have your head!"
Across a boundless sea of sand, a blood dragon vaulted skyward, churning the red clouds—
and for a moment, wind and rain stank of iron as a torrential crimson flood drowned the dunes, until only the white felt tent and the hillocks around it stood like an island in a blood-ocean.
"Roooaaar!"
From that endless blood-sea a scarlet dragon burst forth.
Blood-red scales wept crimson tears. On its neck sat a human-faced dragon head, whiskers flared, golden eyes under black horns, blood-flame huffing from nostrils, red breath coiling about it like cloud.
"Congratulations, big brother—Refining Qi into Spirit! Your art perfected! And your Blood God Son avatar—so domineering, so awe-inspiring, murderous aura through the heavens! As expected of our sect's Divine Venerable—ha ha!"
Duan Kecheng, now a handsome teen, flipped open the tent flap, strode out laughing, and saluted the dragon.
The crimson dragon fixed him with a stare. One sweep of its tail—one twist of its body—
and a mountain of blood surged forward like two titanic hands to smash him flat.
Duan simply smiled and stood. The wave split around him and rolled on.
Then out of the blood-sea walked a youth of fifteen or sixteen: black hair, golden eyes, a red line at the brow, a blood-robe on his shoulders.
"Brother, please—your seat!"
Duan ushered Li Pan into the tent's place of honor, poured him wine. Seeing Li Pan's stormy face, he blinked.
"Huh? Big brother, what's wrong? Achieving Refining Qi into Spirit is a cause for celebration—why so glum?"
Li Pan muttered, "Someone played me."
Duan slammed the table and leapt up.
"Who? Who dares play my big brother? Tell me, and I'll butcher his whole clan!"
"…Don't know who. Just that it was a man," Li Pan said.
"Good! I'll go kill all the men in the world—"
Duan paused, sat back down.
"…Could we, uh, be a bit more specific?"
Li Pan shook his head. "Leave it. Crushing him will be like pinching a grasshopper. The problem is how to get my money back."
"That's all?" Duan frowned, then brightened.
"You were robbed? But Big Brother—your powers are vast, your heart is a calculator, your Dao clear—how could you be fooled?
"Ah—did the bastard break his word after the deal?
"Hmph! I hate that kind of swindler! Business is honesty—cash for goods, goods for cash! If he shorted you, we kill the whole family. Don't worry, I'll—"
"That's not it. What he sold me is fine. He just threw in some extra gifts I don't like, and now he wants to take it back."
"…," Duan said.
Li Pan tossed back the drink and sighed at the sky. "Trash! My money! Give me my money back!"
Duan refilled his cup at once, grinning.
"That's nothing. If you're short on cash—just take it. Rich folk fear death most. Grab a few, growl a little; if they won't pay, then kill the family. Do it a few times—first it's awkward, then it's easy—pretty soon they'll send the 'tribute' early and worship you for protection. Never fails!"
Li Pan side-eyed him.
"Kid, you don't understand how dangerous the human world is. Act that brazen and you get burned. Also, heads-up—the company has people coming for you. Try not to drag me down."
Duan waved it off.
"Relax. My Cult has fought across the heavens, assaulted ten thousand realms—kill demons, slay gods—our enemies fill seas! What's one or two more? Worry not! Come—cheers!"
"…Is that really something to brag about?"
They clinked cups.
Huh. The wine was actually pretty good—apple-sweet…
"Enough of that. Big Brother, I found something interesting!"
Duan slipped behind the tent and lugged out a wine vat.
"Look!"
Li Pan leaned over. A child was soaking in it. From the neck down, his skin had been peeled away; he steeped in a jar of blood-wine.
Li Pan glanced at the boy, then at his own cup—and calmly spat the wine back into the saucer.
"Who's this?"
Duan gave a goofy smile. "Dunno. Found him by the road."
Li Pan gave him a look.
"…You brought home a stranger? Did he fleece you, too?"
"What money? Look."
Duan pinched the boy's jaw; as the mouth opened, Li Pan caught something inside—the pupil of an eye peeking out.
That eye met Li Pan's gaze, then gulp—slid back down the throat.
Li Pan frowned. "What is that?"
"They call it a Beherit—an 'egg', a seed of this world," Duan said. "One of the things you hauled out of that pocket realm. Supposedly a presence that touches this world's 'Dao.'
"I figured it might be useful when we break the heavens later, so I used the soul of Sona Petro I captured to learn a sacrificial rite.
"Yesterday some locals were sacking a city—lots of dead, such a waste—so I borrowed the spot for a ceremony and summoned the egg.
"This kid is the one it chose, so I brought him back."
"An 'egg,' huh…"
Li Pan eyed the vat again and noticed runes and blood-seals lining the inside, glowing faintly red and feeding threads of blood-qi through the medicated wine into the boy.
He understood. Light flashed from his eyes like twin high beams, splashing the boy's face—peeling back the illusion to show the truth.
This desert, this sea of blood—it wasn't the real world.
With the Blood Register Heavenly Tome now in hand, Li Pan knew Duan had remade the Interstice with ritual into a divine court secret realm—a primordial-spirit dream.
Their teenage bodies and the dragon form were manifestations of spirit; the boy in the vat was also inside a dream.
With the right art, illusions fall away. He saw what lay beneath—the truth of the Interstice.
The child was seared to a medium-rare—charred by incendiaries like a steak, burned so badly he was hardly human.
His trunk bristled with screws and steel pins driven along meridians and acupoints. Not a barbecue—golden-needle meridian work: piercing the points to reel his soul back.
Li Pan recognized it as a healing chapter of the Blood Register Heavenly Tome.
"Blood-Returning, Soul-Restoring—you're saving him?"
"Big Brother's divine art completed—you remember everything!" Duan beamed. "Exactly—the Soul-Restoring Method.
"His whole building burned. His parents shielded him, and he swallowed the 'egg.' That's the only reason there's breath left.
"I figure a man who survives great calamity may have later fortune—and he has some aptitude. I'll take him as a menial.
"And if we can't save him, I'll refine him into a blood puppet."
Li Pan sighed. Suffering is everywhere…
He opened his mouth and breathed out a blood-pearl, which burst into divine light over the boy's brow, stamping a blood-seal between the eyes.
Nothing huge—just a secret charm from the Tome to guard the shen-ting, bind the soul, and buy a little time.
"Worthy of Big Brother," Duan clicked his tongue. "That Mind-Guarding Talisman—quick, precise, textbook. You've definitely shepherded more than a few single-minded disciples.
"At the very least you've presided over a great altar, perhaps even served as a Protector-King of a realm. To befriend you is my fortune!"
"All right, enough flattery. Weren't we raiding some Demon Pit tonight? Let's go."
"Go! We're going to worship the moon among mortals."
They quit the dream, revealing their true shapes—a blood-man and a blood-infant—crawling out of a refrigerator.
"I've calculated the hour," the blood-infant said. "I've laid the wards and raised the altar—nothing can go wrong. When the moon appears we'll fly straight to the Demon Pit Realm—but you owe me three promises."
"Say them," Li Pan replied.
"First isn't much. The 'lambs' smell sweet, but they belong to others," the blood-infant said, wagging his big head. "Some old seniors grew arrogant, but our Cult's law is strict—merit brings reward, fault brings punishment; we do not plunder a hair. If we buy, we pay. Big Brother, you mustn't go berserk. If a Law Enforcer sees it and you break the code, punishment will be severe."
Kid, you really think that highly of me? Li Pan thought.
"Relax."
"Second," the blood-infant went on, "we may run into people from Demon Mountain or Demon Gate. Demon Mountain is fine—we're countrymen from the same soil; we can talk and trade. But Demon Gate is our mortal enemy. Perhaps in your past life they harmed you. Your arts aren't fully settled—bear it, for the greater good."
Li Pan nodded inwardly. "Demon Gate"—that is, the orthodox Daoists. The Cult's later-stage methods did go a bit… ethereal.
"I get it."
"As for the third," the blood-infant said, "it's rare, but custom demands I mention it since you don't recall your past life.
"If you meet the Sword Sect—we run in opposite directions. Life and death to fate. We'll be brothers in the next one."
"…Who are they, that you fear them so much?"
"A bunch of lunatics," the blood-infant sighed. "Fortunately there aren't many. If it's not their destined killing calamity you'll likely never meet one. If you do—you don't get out.
"You'll remember all this later. No more chatter—it's time."
They slipped into a garbage mountain. Only then did Li Pan notice the trash had been re-stacked—forty-nine mounds in a Zhou-Tian array—with a cleared patch at the center and a rough mud idol.
The blood-infant knelt before the idol. "Hail the God-Lord!"
Li Pan followed suit. "Hail the God-Lord!"
As his brow touched earth, he felt a radiance descend onto his crown. He rose, the Big Dipper spun, and when he lifted his head—the world had changed.
So this was the Demon Pit Realm…
He'd heard "Demon Pit" and "lambs" and pictured caves and Paleolithic tribes.
What sprawled before him was a metropolis. Twentieth-century vibe—humans still shackled to gravity.
Crowds bustled. Aside from the retro fashions, it was almost indistinguishable from Night City.
But when Li Pan glanced at himself—a skinless blood-man standing in the middle of the street—and the passersby hurried past without reacting to a demon god popping out of thin air, he understood.
Camouflage.
He shut his eyes, opened them—lightning danced in his pupils. Like searchlights he swept the crowd.
Hollow.
Every passerby was empty.
Hollow shells in clothes, scurrying back and forth.
Where his gaze passed, shells caught fire and sifted into ash.
The people were fake. The city was real.
It looked lively and jam-packed, a street teeming with noise—but it was an abandoned ghost city. Like a rushed-to-launch virtual game with no AI scripts and no live NPC budget. A screen stuffed to the brim, but nothing really interacts with you. A con.
What puzzled Li Pan was how convincing it was for a mere disguise—or an abandoned project. He punched the pavement; it rang with rebar and concrete.
"Big Brother, don't make waves. We're guests," someone tugged his arm.
Li Pan blinked away the gleam and turned.
Duan Kecheng had yanked down a passerby's skin and pulled it over his big blood-infant head, shaping the white-clad, red-haired teen form from the dream.
"Those skins are Cult craft," Li Pan said. "But the city—this looks like my side's work."
He copied him, snagged a human skin, and cloaked himself in a human-shaped blood garment.
"As expected, your comprehension is unmatched—seven orifices exquisite—learns at a glance—"
"Flatter me again and I'll smack you."
"Heh. I only speak from the heart," Duan said, smiling as he led Li Pan toward the market district, gesturing as he explained.
"This territory was seized by Demon Pit. The native race has been eaten. Because it lies close to your world, it serves as a smuggling jump board.
"They say the 'Heaven-Calamity Star' patrols now and then. Best to hide our tracks so they don't notice and rain heaven-thunder and earth-fire to wipe the world."
Heaven-Calamity Star… heaven-thunder… SEC survey ships, probably.
If so, then this was border Earth.
Li Pan studied the city—a mirror of Night City—no, Neo Tokyo. He even spotted the Oda crest. He formed a guess about Demon Pit's location.
Time for a sidebar on the numbering of Earths in the myriad worlds.
In the Legion age there was only one Earth; other planes were colonies named at will—Gaia, Kyushu, New Eden, Takamagahara.
Among those, Earth-01—the first full-scale other-Earth—became the Old Human Union's capital, with wormhole stargates to every other plane.
After the Security Committee formed, it cleaned up the debt crisis and standardized the multiverse, assigning numbers to the Earths according to when each colony settled its debts—even selling its Earth to a company—then signing the Multiversal Trade Accord.
Starting from Earth-0 (origin) and Earth-01, numbers climbed: 02, 03, and so on.
War and merger broke that system—corporate wars, extinctions, research disasters, ever-new superweapons, purge protocols…
In war, an Earth can die in a day. In peace, a dead one can be rebuilt in a century.
After a cataclysm that nearly erased a third of all worlds, the Committee changed the rules.
Now numbering follows paths—the route your stargates take.
Once, a wormhole could reach any world. Now, interworld routes are restricted.
Take 0791: the path is 0 → 01 → 07 → 079 → 0791.
For 0113: 0 → 01 → 11 → 0113.
That's the official gist—there are exceptions and privileges, of course.
Rule one: Earth-0 is the beginning and end. Its stargate locations are top secret. No ship reaches Earth-0 except via 01.
Rule two: In indices you often omit 01, because there's no Earth left there.
It's the Legion's graveyard and the Committee fleet's home. Titans and Dreadnought bases hang in the debris of a broken world.
Rule three: Stargates require Committee approval.
Each Earth can host ten official gates, 0–9.
All 0-gates are Return Gates.
On Earth-02, the official gates are 020, 021 … 029.
Gate 021 leads to Earth-021; Gate 020 returns to Earth-01.
Earth-01 is the exception.
It permits traffic to 02–19—eighteen directions.
Beyond its hidden Gate-0, Earth-01 is the hub: the Old Human capital and the Committee's interworld HQ. Major companies maintain private gates and secret lanes there.
And Earth-01 alone preserves the original wormholes to every universe.
That's why Committee fleets can appear anywhere, anytime, to enforce order.
The reverse isn't true.
If a 0791 merchant wants to trade elsewhere, they must climb the Return path:
07910 → 0790 → 070 → 01—then on.
If 0113 wants Taishui from here via civilian lanes, it's five jumps to reach 0791.
Every jump costs a fortune—in fuel, tolls, and customs.
But TheM is a Committee member, so they used committee channels—a Dreadnought jumped straight to 0791 in an instant.
By the way, the cushiest slots in this system are 02–19.
They're one hop from Earth-01, so every path branches through them, and the worlds downstream pay tolls.
Those eighteen owners are, in effect, the Committee members.
Obvious corollary: every new stargate and every new world requires Committee approval.
When the Ethics Committee's survey ships discover a world, only the winning bidder gets to build the gate.
One more note: from 0791 you can't go outward.
We have only the 07910 Return Gate—no 07911.
Back in Eighth Neo Tokyo, Takamagahara had a shot:
to develop a new world—07911—and become a candidate member.
They got greedy—bid on 07911 and a Committee seat. Result? Nothing.
With the bid lost, the sunk-cost 07911 project was scrapped; shareholders bled out.
The Oda clan refused to accept defeat and secretly pushed illegal construction of the 07911 gate.
They poked the Security Committee in the eye. War exploded.
One Titan shattered. Two Titan fleets annihilated. Takamagahara lost the 07911 gate; the Committee leveled the illegal structure. GG.
Takamagahara surrendered. Bankrupt. Game over at the finish line.
So… is the Demon Pit located on Earth-07911?
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⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
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