Chapter 145: Paranoia

Yun Jhin could feel something wasn't right in this situation, the further one went into hell the higher the gravity and the more adverse the environment was. Yun Jhin was pretty deep in the 7th layer at the moment and very few people could travel this far, and those few people were the ones in leadership positions who couldn't travel due to the ongoing war between factions!

So how could these people be here?

Yun Jhin used his stealth technique as he glided towards the location of the demonic pool to hear if the two people talked or not.

He could hear rough breathing coming from the pool as he guessed what the duo was doing, he got closer to observe and saw a succubus and a devil going at it without any restraints.

Yun Jhin frowned as he watched them go at it for 6 days straight before the devil got bored and stopped their 'interaction'.

Yun Jhin could care less about what he saw, he was very annoyed cause he had to wait for them to talk after they finished their marathon, he was pretty paranoid right now, what if they were Yuan Fang's people?

He frowned as he waited for them to say anything but all they did was gaze at each other seemingly reminiscing of the time they had before, Yun Jhin was already getting annoyed but he stood there without moving, he already learned his lesson, what would happen if he killed them, absorbed their souls and had his location found out again?

That was the last thing he wanted right now.

The male devil finally got closer to the woman and whispered something in her ear:

"It seems we aren't alone darling."

The succubus giggled as he put her hand near her mouth, Yun Jhin frowned, he could hear them and he understood that they must have felt that they were being watched!

But that was impossible... with his current stealth attainments only someone way stronger than him would be able to look through his technique, and those people should be impossible to find in the 7th layer!

Was his stealth technique failing him at this point or were these people just really impressive?

Suddenly the devil appeared near Yun Jhin's location and sniffed the air but he frowned as he felt that Yun Jhin wasn't actually there, the devil looked around and tried to find his actual location but he failed, it seemed he knew that someone was here but he didn't know who Yun Jhin was or his exact location.

Yun Jhin frowned seeing him getting close to him only for him to fail to locate him, could the male devil have a special ability that broke through stealth? It was possible, each demon and devil had one special technique they were born with and it evolved accordingly as they ate and evolved.

Only Yun Jhin was lucky enough to find this duo in the demonic pool he hardly found and one of them had a stealth breaking technique, fortunately, unlike Yuan Fang's technique which made him reveal himself, this technique seemed innate and couldn't be taught, however, if this guy's innate talents were combined with the stealth breaking technique of Yuan Fang he wouldn't be able to use stealth properly at all anymore!

The ability to locate the general direction of the person in stealth combined with the ability to break stealth was a thing that would destroy Yun Jhin's current escaping abilities, he had his secret techniques but he didn't want to rely on them for escaping from small fries.

Yun Jhin suddenly revealed himself as an immense gravity field made the male devil flop to the floor like a fish out of water, he could barely move his hands even though his aura identified him as a powerhouse at the 3rd stage of the sage realm, the man tried to activate his avatar but it didn't budge away from his body as it was sealed there tightly by Yun Jhin's gravity.

The succubus tried to run away, only for Yun Jhin to flicker near her with the male devil in tow putting her face in the ground as well.

Yun Jhin looked at the duo and asked:

"Who are you working for?"

The male devil laughed as he tried to spit at Yun Jhin only for the spit to deviate and hit himself in the head due to the gravity field, the male's face looked as red as it could be even though his skin was purple.

The succubus swallowed a laugh as she looked at the male devil's situation and tried to use her seduction skill on Yun Jhin, even though Yun Jhin wasn't humanoid devils and demons all still retained their base instincts even when they had no intelligent capability, so she thought she could charm him.

Yun Jhin ignored the succubus shamelessly trying to put her breasts up as he looked at the male devil and started to apply more gravitational pressure on him.

The devil frowned as he felt his bones crack and his blood vessels strain due to the increased gravity, if things went like this his body would explode soon!

The male devil immediately looked into Yun Jhin's eyes and said:

"Ok, ok, I'm going to tell, stop the gravity!"

Most devils were cowards when it came to torture and Yun Jhin's methods could even break the sturdy demonic form.

The devil immediately started to explain how he was banished from the 8th layer from his sect so he took his slave girl away with him and descended to the 7th layer, here he luckily found this demonic pool, and with the use of dual cultivation he broke through to the 3rd stage of the sage realm, it seemed the devil was born in the 8th layer and his cultivation talent was sub-par in his sect thus after he reached a certain age and didn't have any good results in cultivation he was banished to the lower layer, it was normal, most demonic creatures in the 8th layer were at the middle sage realm or above, some of them even reached the God Realm.

While the man didn't seem to be lying to Yun Jhin, that didn't mean he was telling the whole story either, so Yun Jhin asked him a question:

"Yuan Fang, does this name mean anything to you?"

The male looked puzzled for a good while before he shook his head indicating that he didn't know anything about a man known as Yuan Fang. Yun Jhin sighed, it seemed his paranoia was getting a hold of him more than he wanted it to, but if he didn't have his paranoia who knew when he would be hit in the back of the head by Yuan Fang?

Yun Jhin decided to give the duo a chance to live as he told them they could live if they both swore to become his loyal servants, the succubus was shameless and immediately swore first while also getting near Yun Jhin and putting her butt up to the sky waiting for his big form to claim her.

Yun Jhin shook his head as he slapped her away, making the relatively big surface jiggle as he fell to the male devil, the male devil gritted his teeth for some time before he used his blood to swear as well.

Then Yun Jhin let them go and instructed them to infiltrate the biggest organization in the 7th layer as they were strong enough to assassinate the leaders and replace them, then use their strength to end the war, winning for the devil's side!

Devils were smart and hated people like Yuan Fang the most, at least that would be if he kept his original righteous airs, who knew how was he now? Was he a hypocrite like most of the other sects in the mortal realm?

But Yun Jhin knew that devils only liked profit and schemes, so if he could come with bigger profit compared to Yuan Fang he would be able to sway them, Demons were dumb and once they learned something they would tread on that path until the end, so if they were controlled by Yuan Fang, Yun Jhin couldn't do anything about them.

He sighed as he let the duo go then decided to enter the demonic pool, he could feel that the pool's energy was around 60% emptied due to the male devil's absorption, but with it, he could break through the sage realm even though he wouldn't be able to strengthen his avatar at all. However, for Yun Jhin it was still good enough considering how much time he searched for the pool.

He dived directly into it as he started to absorb it's contents while meditating upon the upcoming matters.

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Yuan Fang was meditating under a big yellowing tree that was seemingly dying from the core, the tree had a big mouth and eyes that were seemingly crying, it's face was stuck in a horror motion as it looked at Yuan Fang's body below him.

The male with a monkey's tail approached Yuan Fang as he kneeled in front of him and asked:

"Now that we have finished our revenge for Xing'er should we head to hell master?"

Yuan Fang looked up at the dying tree and shook his head as he thought for a little time before saying:

"Paranoia is a strong double-edged weapon for us cultivators, you should already know about this right Yang Qi?"

Yang Qi nodded at Yuan Fang but he didn't know where he was going with this.

Seeing that he didn't understand Yuan Fang ripped a piece of bark from the dying tree behind him and started to scratch it:

"Let's say this bark is a person and I'm paranoia, while I scratch the bark slowly nothing happens to it, you see?"

The bark was quite thick and Yuan Fang's delicate fingers couldn't leave a dent in it even if he didn't use some power.

"I'm not affecting the bark any way right now, but what would happen if the paranoia increased by let's say.. 100x?"

The bark turned into powder in his hands as he said 100x and looked into Yang Qi's eyes:

"Paranoia is good for a cultivator to have as it keeps them weary, but too much of it and it would give them inner demons, you should know why you are supposed to head to Hell anyway, but you don't have to anymore, Yun Jhin's strength is certainly increasing at the moment and if I sent you there you would just become his food, his soul was also pretty much recovered the last time my soul willpower marked him."

"While his soul wouldn't increase his battle power much, you wouldn't be able to kill him anyway, what if he escaped with his soul and he went to reincarnate again? We would lose all of our leads on him up till now."

It seemed that while Yuan Fang knew about Yun Jhin's situation, he didn't know that if he died now he wouldn't reincarnate again.

"If his soul wasn't as strong as it currently was, he might not have been able to escape, but even if I went into hell there was a chance he could still escape, he is a rather slippery fellow, you can attribute it to his immense experience."

Yang Qi still didn't understand why did they have this conversation, what could they do to give Yun Jhin so much paranoia that he would self-destruct?

Seeing that he was puzzled made Yuan Fang chuckled as he said:

"I have already installed the seed into his psyche, all it has to do is bloom now, you don't have to beat your head with these things, I just tried to teach you but it seems you don't understand, you are our wheels anyways, all you have to do is keep yourself at full ki so we can escape or travel when we want to."

The man nodded as he left, Yuan Fang looked at the dying tree and told it:

"How do you like dying you old fart? Do you regret killing Xing'er now?"

The frozen face on the tree started to move as it coughed green phlegm which tried to attach itself to Yuan Fang only for it to freeze in the air then dissipate:

"Oh? Trying to poison me on the verge of death? Quite cliched don't you think?"

The gigantic tree didn't say anything seeing that he failed to injure Yuan Fang, it closed its eyes as it turned deathly gray and all of its leaves disappeared into ashes.

The trunk of the tree also turned gray as it fell to the ground ready to smash Yuan Fang into meat paste, the tree was gigantic and Yuan Fang wasn't even as big as an ant compared to it, but the moment the tree trunk reached him it easily floated to the side seemingly scared of injuring him.

"So my job here is done... as long as I will break through to the God Realm in the following 150,000 years there should be no problems to follow the road of the True Awakening, I only need to get rid of the competition..."

His eyes glowed as he thought about the competition, and mainly about one person that left a big mark on his mind and former body, Yun Jhin!

Yuan Fang grasped his chest as he looked to the horizon, the setting red sun indicating that a tragedy had happened on the elves planet, he muttered to himself:

"Only if you could self-destruct... but all I'm doing is impeding the inevitable... our meeting will still happen sooner or later..."