Elder Shen was tired. Arguably, the little prank he had played on that young disciple should've been enough to achieve the intended result. But who could guess that the boy was an equally sinister person with paranoia?

To think that he even blackmailed me into solving his problems with that troublesome inner sect disciple...

Even though what the boy pulled seemed quite logical when one thought about it superficially, but a person who was hard pressed for money wouldn't care about so many details and terrible possibilities when using an orthodox method to earn the money, right? Who the hell would think that far ahead and make backup plans? When did teenagers become so cunning?

Sigh...it's getting harder and harder to scam people these days. But at least the scam this time wasn't an outright failure.

Elder Shen's musings were interrupted by a cloaked figure that suddenly appeared in front of him out of thin air.

"Sect master Zi, I assume you're aware what has transpired?"

The cloaked figure silently stood still for a while before replying.

"Yes. That was...unexpected."

"Unexpected...heh, I'll give you that. But your target wasn't achieved."

Elder Shen snickered dryly.

"Maybe. But this also ensures a critical fact. Disciple Han Xuhan isn't prone to resort to violence, neither does he have any particular method to deal with higher level cultivators other than using his wit. At best, he might have a treasure that can predict certain things regarding the future. Otherwise, he wouldn't have any reason to waste that much of his previous time writing these useless books. The profit isn't alluring enough considering his tight situation with the deadline closing in."

"Well well, sect master sure has a high opinion of that little bastard. But beware that today, he scammed the disciples, tomorrow, he might scam you, the sect master, too. And there would be nothing you can do about it."

"That hardly matters. If a day comes when he manages to scam a cultivator at my level, I'll hand over a decent position in the sect to him willingly. Considering how hard it is for him to cultivate, he would have earned it in that case anyway. But you, elder Shen, must not forget to do your job. I'll pass this off as an accident since both of us underestimated him. But I do not want a repeating of this."

"But-"

"I do not want to hear any excuse. Do your job or you know what can happen. This sect keeps attracting these anomalies. We need to be careful or risk fatal danger."

Elder Shen gritted his teeth in anger, but nodded gloomily in the end. The cloaked figure of the sect master vanished off into the darkness moments later.

..... ..... .....

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

In retrospect, Xuhan felt that there were too many protagonist level characters in this sect. Never having seen cultivators in his life before coming here, he couldn't come to a decision regarding whether it was this sect that was odd, or if this was a general phenomenon all around the cultivation world nowadays.

There was his boss Mu Ran.

There was elder Kong whose behaviour was very suspicious too, just like those novels with the mc acting as teachers.

Martial sister Yuen Zhou who had a mysterious and tragic backstory, as well as the demeanour of determined female protagonists.

Then that weird guy who just broke through in the middle of a fight with me after listening to someone's rumbling stomach, just like a classic protagonist in need of an ass-pull move to win the battle.

And finally, there was Han Xuhan himself, who, despite having no cheats and bearing the label of "trash", had a grudge with the heavens and wanted to become the most powerful side character ever...

The protagonist concentration of this sect was really way too high.

But all that didnt matter now that he had more pressing tasks at hand. He had eleven days left to make another breakthrough, reach the second layer of physique transformation realm and safeguard himself from expulsion.

Looking down at the pile of spirit stones on the floor of his hut, Xuhan felt quite satisfied. His little scheme against the sect had gone pretty smoothly.

Yesterday afternoon, countless female and some male disciples of the sect had rushed to the black sheep mountain peak, their faces showing rage and spite, probably angry at their daoist partners for buying a book that contained instructions on how to make harems.

In fact, the amount of disciples who had bought the first book by Xuhan wasn't large. But many disciples bought the second book just to be on the safe side. Some bought it due to their suspicious nature as well, feeling that their daoist partners might buy the first book secretly.

This formed a chain reaction where the innocent daoist partners who realized that since there was already a solution to the first book, then it wouldn't be a problem even if they bought it to satisfy their curiosity, at least that's what they told their counterparts anyway before proceeding to buy the first book gleefully.

Xuhan, the sole perpetrator of this whole fiasco, observed the situation with great interest since it meant that he was the only winning party here.

As the pile of spirit stones got bigger and bigger with time, Xuhan could already smell his target, the second layer.

It had only been three days. Nearly every outer sect disciple, regardless of their relationship status, had bought at least one of these books. Heck, some extra smart disciples had bought both books to find some loopholes and mixed tricks that would help them outsmart the normal disciples who would only know the tricks written in the books.

If the situation continued, perhaps the two books would've started affecting the inner court and even the elders. But unfortunately for Xuhan, the authorities, including the sect master himself, came out to put a stop to this farce and banned both books after lecturing the outer court disciples about how insidious and useless the books were.

Thankfully, he didn't mention that it was actually Xuhan who had written the first book to trap the disciples into those scheme, possibly because he didn't want the elder's backstabbing prank to ruin the sect's reputation.

Xuhan was actually feeling quite thankful to elder Shen for pulling that "innocent prank" on him. Otherwise, all those disciples who were scammed into buying the book might have tried to murder Xuhan in secret. Thinking back, it had been an accurate decision to choose elder Shen upon learning about his bad reputation from the senior disciples.

With all the parties except the victims of this scheme left satisfied, the matter concluded there.

"I've earned nearly two thousand five hundred spirit stones, excluding the production cost and labor fees. I must thank Xiao Wu and those seniors who helped me. I'll remember this favor..."

Xuhan collected around a thousand spirit stones in a pouch and went to visit elder Shen again, this time to buy more resources.