Is It Wrong to Bully the Novice Village for System Rewards?

Chapter 243: Grinding for System Points? I Have No Shame!

Moluo God-Slaughtering Tower.

Sixtieth floor.

“Shatter!”

With a guttural roar, Wu Hengshan’s lean frame violently expanded, dense demonic energy erupting from his pores. He swung his long blade in a vicious arc.

Swish!

A crescent of blood-red blade light cleaved through the empty air, neatly bisecting the four-horned, blue-faced alien tower spirit right down the middle.

Crack!

With the floor’s guardian reduced to dissolving ash, the heavy seal blocking the stairwell shattered, revealing the path upward.

Cruising through yet another easy victory, a cocky smirk briefly surfaced on Wu Hengshan’s sinister face. Without a second thought, his silhouette blurred as he charged toward the next level.

As he ascended, the tower threw an increasingly bizarre and deadly array of spirits at him. The higher he climbed, the more absurd their innate divine abilities became, making them incredibly difficult to defend against.

But Wu Hengshan hadn’t come unprepared. He carved through the resistance like a hot knife through butter, maintaining an unstoppable momentum all the way past the ninety-ninth floor without breaking a sweat.

Seeing the very first challenger put on such a dominant display, the sea of Demonic Cultivators watching the projection below erupted into feral cheers.

“Holy hell, he breached floor ninety-nine already! That kind of raw talent is monstrous. No wonder he’s the heavy favorite!”

“Senior Brother Wu is a god!”

“Wait… if slaughtering your entire bloodline makes you this overpowered, should I go home and give it a try?”

The visiting dignitaries from other sects were equally floored, trading shocked murmurs amongst themselves.

“Only a behemoth like The Saint Sect could casually produce such a terrifying young monster. The depth of their foundation is simply staggering.”

“Indeed. We are truly fortunate to witness the rise of The Saint Sect’s next generation.”

Hearing the effusive praise, Xu Wanchuan, the Hall Master of Internal Affairs, allowed a faint, smug smile to touch his lips.

He had deliberately rigged the starting order for this exact reason.

Sending in a heavy hitter like Wu Hengshan first served a dual purpose: it kicked off the trial with an explosive spectacle, and it served as a brutal flex to intimidate the visiting factions.

Mission accomplished. With the crowd thoroughly hyped and the guests thoroughly cowed, the trial was already a massive success in his book.

High above the plaza, the Sect’s upper echelon nodded in collective approval.

“Wu Hengshan’s Heavenly Fiend Absolute Blade Slash has clearly reached Great Perfection. It’s sharp, overbearing, and delightfully savage. I’d wager he can breach the four-hundredth floor. A true prodigy among prodigies.”

“If he doesn’t catch a bad break and perish early, he is destined to become a pillar of our Sect!”

“Indeed. Our Saint Sect is practically overflowing with peerless talents lately. An absolute omen of our impending golden age!”

Seated at the very center, Sect Leader Shen Honglian watched the projection with narrowed, calculating eyes.

Wu Hengshan, she mused. He was already infamous within the Inner Sect, widely recognized as one of their ‘Twin Prodigies’. He was cold-blooded, ruthlessly efficient, and perfectly willing to cross any line. A highly moldable asset.

More importantly, he was a self-made monster. He had no ties to the three major aristocratic families, meaning he came with zero political baggage. He was the perfect candidate to recruit into her personal faction.

Standing just behind the Sect Leader’s throne, Shen Xingxuan’s expression was frosty. Her large, sapphire-blue eyes kept darting toward a certain infuriatingly relaxed young man lounging among the remaining participants.

I can’t believe that bastard actually entered the trial, she thought, gritting her teeth. What a joke. Honestly, it would be best if he just died in there. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about that… recording… getting out.

But then, a horrific realization struck her, causing her delicate brows to knit together.

Wait. If he just dies, I’ll never find out where he hid the backup recording talisman. If some random scavenger loots it off his corpse… that would be a complete disaster!

For a moment, Shen Xingxuan’s flawless face cycled rapidly through a dozen different shades of panic and frustration as she spiraled into an anxious meltdown.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Back inside the Moluo God-Slaughtering Tower, the slaughter continued. Wu Hengshan was still pushing upward, but his pace had slowed to a grueling crawl.

Every hundred floors, the sheer quality of the tower spirits underwent a massive paradigm shift. Once he crossed the three-hundredth floor, the pressure had ramped up exponentially. Still, relying on his vicious combat instincts, he had managed to hack his way past floor three-hundred and ninety.

His current opponent was a Soul Formation level tower spirit. It was a grotesque chimera with an owl’s face, a tiger’s heavily muscled body, and jagged bone wings protruding from its spine. It radiated a suffocating, almost physical aura of death, feeling indistinguishable from a living, breathing monstrosity.

Even though the tower’s mechanics had forcibly nerfed the spirit’s Qi down to the early Nascent Soul stage to match Wu Hengshan, its combat experience, terrifying physical stats, and bizarre array of Soul Formation level techniques were pushing him to the absolute brink.

Whoosh!

The chimera lunged, its massive claws tearing a vacuum in the air as it swiped at his blind spot.

“Die, you piece of trash!”

Wu Hengshan roared, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated savagery. Instead of dodging, he deliberately leaned into the strike, taking the monstrous claw directly to the shoulder as he brought his blade down in a desperate, suicidal arc.

Squelch!

A geyser of blood erupted. The chimera hit the floor with a heavy thud, its massive body dissolving into motes of ghostly light.

Wu Hengshan stood swaying in the empty room. He had survived, but at a massive cost. His right shoulder was a mangled, bloody ruin, the bone nearly cleaved entirely in half.

Grievously injured, his spiritual pressure was crashing fast. He was running on fumes.

“Hoo…”

Wu Hengshan exhaled a ragged breath. He dug a high-grade pill out of his robes and swallowed it dry, waiting for the worst of the agonizing pain to dull.

After a moment of grim calculation, he unclipped his numbered token and crushed it.

A pillar of blinding white light enveloped him, immediately teleporting him out of the God-Slaughtering Tower.

Back on the plaza, Hall Master Xu Wanchuan looked down at the battered, bloody Wu Hengshan. His usually granite-like features cracked into a rare, genuine smile of approval.

“Inner Sect Disciple Wu Hengshan of Jueshang Peak. Final result: Floor 396. Next…”

The announcement sent a shockwave through the crowd.

“Floor 396?! Good god. First place is basically locked in. I’m pretty sure the winner of the last trial only hit floor 360!”

“Hold your horses. Senior Brother Chen Tianhuan hasn’t even stepped up yet. As far as I’m concerned, Chen Tianhuan is the undisputed king of the Inner Sect. He’ll crack floor 400 in his sleep!”

“Speaking of bets, did you guys hear? Some absolute lunatic just dropped fifteen million Spirit Stones on Big Qi! They are going to lose their entire life savings!”

“Tsk tsk. I want to know which braindead aristocrat has that kind of ‘fuck you’ money to throw away on a literal joke.”

“Right? Dropping fifteen million on an Outer Sect Disciple is basically charity for the bookies…”

While the crowd continued to gossip and place their bets, Qi Yuan, who had been meticulously analyzing the projection, casually withdrew his gaze. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

So that’s how it works, he realized.

The Moluo God-Slaughtering Tower was designed to forcibly suppress the cultivation level of the tower spirits to match the challenger. But the catch was, it only nerfed their Qi. It didn’t touch their base physical stats, their combat experience, or their understanding of the Dao.

This presented a slight problem. It meant that even if he used his [Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing] talent to completely mask his cultivation, tricking the tower into thinking he was a powerless mortal, he still wouldn’t be able to just casually stroll past the high-level spirits.

Because if he wanted to keep the ruse going, he couldn’t use a single drop of his own Qi. The moment he did, the tower would immediately detect his true level and un-nerf the spirits to match.

And frankly, facing a Dao Integration or Great Ascension level boss—even if they were restricted to ‘mortal’ levels of Qi—was practically suicide. Their physical bodies alone could punch a hole through a mountain. A Soul Formation cultivator like him wouldn’t last a second against that kind of raw, physical trauma.

But, luckily for Qi Yuan, he had a massive, glaring loophole to exploit.

He didn’t need Qi to throw a punch.

With his [Blood God Five Transformations] skill, he could exponentially crank up his physical strength and durability, essentially turning himself into a hyper-jacked, demonic meathead… er, an ‘Extreme Path Martial God’.

Furthermore, as the Holy Scion of the Tai Xuan Sect, he practically ate legendary body-tempering treasures for breakfast.

After chugging three consecutive Celestial Zenith Body Tempering Pills, his baseline physical stats were already on par with hardcore body-refining specialists. Throw in the fact that he had been literally struck by ten thousand bolts of heavenly lightning, and his physical body was less ‘human’ and more ‘indestructible siege weapon’.

Qi Yuan did the math. Even with his Qi completely locked down, his raw physical strength alone was more than enough to arm-wrestle an average Soul Formation cultivator into submission.

Sure, the whole ‘brute-force, bare-knuckle brawler’ aesthetic wasn’t exactly his preferred style, but hey—he was here to farm System points. And when it came to exploiting loopholes for free stats, Qi Yuan had absolutely zero shame!