DEMON GROUPI ACCIDENTALLY ENTERED THE EVIL CHAT!

The morning after Master Chen's rejection was terrifyingly quiet.

Yuan Lin woke up, but there was no feeling of rest or renewed energy.

He had barely slept.

His mind was replaying that short, humiliating conversation over and over again.

"I am the master of my own small world..."

"...and I have no desire to be a servant in someone else's."

The old man's words echoed in his mind like a sarcastic refrain.

He got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror, but the person staring back at him again seemed strange.

His eyes held a cold, decisive glint.

There was no longer any trace of that sarcastic, indifferent employee.

The anger and humiliation he had felt yesterday had cooled and turned into something else.

Something harder and more dangerous.

It had transformed into an icy resolve.

"Who is this person?" he asked himself silently, seeing his own harsh gaze in the mirror.

"Yesterday, I was angry because he rejected me."

"Today... I am calmly planning how to break his will."

"When did I become like this?"

"When did 'subjugating' someone become a logical option on my list of solutions?"

He felt a rare moment of clarity.

A moment of detachment from himself.

And he saw the path he was on.

He was changing.

And quickly.

It wasn't just the acquisition of power.

It was a transformation in the very essence of his thinking.

"System", he asked in his mind, his inner voice quiet and filled with a genuine curiosity.

"This change in my way of thinking... this coldness... is it just a result of circumstances and pressure, or is there something else happening to me?"

There was a moment of silence.

Then the blue screen appeared before him, its texts more detailed than ever before, as if the System had decided it was time to reveal a deeper layer of truth.

[Analysis: The host's personality is being influenced by two main interacting factors: 1. The psychological experiences that shape the will. 2. The inherent nature of the energy being cultivated.]

Yuan Lin felt his heart pound.

[Clarification: Traditional spiritual energy, or what is known as "Heaven and Earth Qi," is a harmonious and stable energy. Its cultivation tends to promote calmness, serenity, and integration with nature.]

[Gray Chaos Energy, in contrast, is a primordial and unstable energy. It is the energy of entropy, decay, and absolute ambition that knows no bounds. It is the energy that precedes creation and follows destruction. It is, by its nature, arrogant, expansionist, and indifferent to existing structures and laws. It is the energy of the supreme predator at the top of the cosmic food chain.]

Yuan Lin read these words, feeling a coldness creep over his skin.

Then came the line that made him feel as if the ground had been pulled out from under his feet.

[Every thread of chaos energy you assimilate and make a part of you not only strengthens your body but also slowly reshapes your neural and psychic pathways to align with its nature. It amplifies traits such as arrogance, emotional coldness, indifference to the means for the sake of the end, and the desire for control. The stronger you become, the closer your personality gets to the nature of the power you wield.]

Then came the final, simple, and horrifying conclusion.

[In short: You are not just using chaos, host. You... are becoming chaos.]

Yuan Lin stared into the void, the blue texts still burning in his vision.

So, he wasn't imagining it.

It was the truth.

The power he was chasing was a sweet-tasting poison, seeping into his soul and changing it from the inside.

Every point of strength he gained took a small piece of the old Yuan Lin from him.

For a moment, he felt fear.

A real, existential fear.

A desire to stop.

To get rid of this system.

To return to his boring, safe life where his biggest problems were jammed printers.

But then, he remembered.

He remembered the feeling of helplessness in the alley.

He remembered the fighter's punch in the park.

He remembered the look of condescending pity in Master Chen's eyes as he rejected him.

Weakness.

Weakness was also a poison, a slow, suffocating poison that kills the soul with despair and humiliation.

"So, this is the price," he whispered to himself, his voice terrifyingly steady.

"The price of power is a part of myself. Fine. At least it's a price I'm choosing to pay."

He had made his decision.

He would no longer fight this change. He accepted it as a necessary part of the deal.

If he had to become a monster to protect himself, then so be it.

At least he would be a monster holding the reins of his own destiny.

With a new determination, he returned to his living room. His goal was now perfectly clear. Master Chen had to be subjugated. And the only way to do that was to master that forbidden technique Xue had sent him.

He opened the mental interface and displayed the `[Manuscript of the Ninth Hell's Blood Thorn Seal]`.

The technique was devilishly complex.

It wasn't just a spell; it was a process as delicate as spiritual surgery.

It required him to take a part of his own chaos energy, compress it, shape it into a sharp and precise soul needle, and then implant this needle into the target's soul, bypassing their willful defenses, to brand them with the seal of eternal loyalty.

The first step was the hardest: forming the needle

He sat cross-legged, lit an incense stick, and began to meditate.

He pulled a thin thread of Qi from his inner furnace His energy was much stronger now after absorbing part of the orchid's power, but it was still wild.

He tried to compress it, to shape it into the fine needle described in the manuscript.

The moment he tried, the thread dissipated in a puff of unstable energy.

He tried again. And failed again.

"It's like trying to shape water with your bare hands," he thought in frustration. "The raw power is there, but my control... my control is as precise as a gorilla's grip."

He realized he couldn't jump straight to the final technique. He had to practice the basics. He had to refine his control.

He spent the next few hours practicing something he could have never imagined.

He wasn't fighting monsters or contemplating the secrets of the universe.

He was sitting on the floor, with a small bowl of uncooked rice in front of him.

Using his `[Chaos Grip]` skill, he would lift a single grain of rice into the air before him.

Then, he would try to use a very fine thread of his Qi to carve something onto its surface.

On his first attempt, the grain of rice exploded into dust.

On his second attempt, it burned and turned to black carbon.

On his tenth attempt, it split in half.

He kept trying, sweat pouring down his face from the intense mental concentration.

This was much harder than fighting stray dogs or confronting phantoms.

It was an absolute test of patience and precision.

Hours passed. He didn't eat, didn't drink. He was obsessed.

He was driven by that rejection, by that silent challenge Old Man Chen had given him.

Then, late at night, after hundreds of failed attempts, he succeeded.

Under his precise control, the thin thread of energy moved like an artist's chisel and carved two primitive characters onto the surface of the tiny grain of rice.

Y. L.

The letters were distorted and imperfect, but they were there.

He opened his eyes and looked at the grain of rice floating before him.

A slow, exhausted smile formed on his face.

It was just a grain of rice. But it represented a victory.

It represented a new level of control he didn't possess before.

He let the grain of rice fall into his hand, closed his fist over it, and crushed it into powder.

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the city lights.

He felt exhausted, but beneath that exhaustion, there was a quiet, decisive strength.

"Training time is over," he thought, his cold eyes staring into the darkness.

"It's time to hunt."