Xan couldn't help but jump after hearing those words. He turned around and saw the old man with a cold smile, which made a shiver run through Xan's back.

'Fuck, I'm dead.' he thought.

Finding himself in danger, Xan tried to push Rad, but he could not even move him a centimeter.

"I already told you that I'm stronger than you. You must read my diary a few times before you can do something against me." Rad said, laughing while taking a step toward Xan.

Xan instinctively took a step backward, trying to keep his distance from the man.

"You have nothing to fear. I'm not going to hurt you in any way." Rad said before he sat on a nearby chair.

"How can I know you are telling the truth?" Xan asked suspiciously.

"Because if I wanted to hurt you, I would have already done it. It wouldn't take me more than fifteen seconds to rip your four limbs."

"That's very few seconds for so many limbs. Ok, I will not do anything stupid." Xan said while kneeling.

Seeing that, a vein on Rad's forehead began to bulge.

"Don't surrender so easily!" he shouted before hitting Xan's head with his cane."You don't even know if what I said is true. Everything could be a farce. Next time you face an enemy whose you don't know his power, don't surrender as soon as they tell you they are powerful."

Xan's eyes became wide open after hearing Rad's words.

"So, are you telling me I should fight you back?" Xan asked, perplexed.

"I said the next time." he said before hitting Xan again." You already know I can kill you before you cross that door, so I wouldn't try anything funny if I were you."

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"You are making too much sense for someone everyone says is senile. Everything was an act to cover that you are a cultist, right?"

"Correct."

"Well, that explains many things, but it doesn't explain why you told me about your diary in the first place." Xan while slightly closing his eyes.

"Well, you seemed like the right one," Rad said while smiling.

"The right one for what?"

"The right one to become one of us."

"What? How in the world have you ever thought about me becoming a cultist? Anyone would do it better than me. Heaven, I'm not even a cultivator. How can I be useful?"

"Because you have ties with no one and are still in a pretty good position. Everyone in this place had either mistreated you or done nothing against those who mistreated you, so it would be easy to convince you to join us against them. Also, as a young member of the second area, if you were to obtain a cultivation technique and advance rapidly through the stages, you would get access to some of the subordinate families or even the Yellow Blood Familly. That is the moment in which you become useful." Rad explained.

"It doesn't sound like a bad idea if it weren't because of those things about becoming corrupted, losing my soul, and the multiple moral dilemmas," Xan said as honestly as he could.

"You don't have to become corrupted or lose your soul as long as you are not stupid; in that case, you will surely do both." Rad explained while laughing." And about the moral dilemmas, I don't see any. Becoming a cultist is the same as becoming a powerful cultivator. The only difference is that most of the time, regular cultivators only hurt people indirectly, but we do it directly. You only have to look at how the poor devils of the outer area live. If those guys from the inner area used their power to help instead of using it to gather wealth, everyone would be able to live without fearing death."

"You are right in most of those things, but I don't think we can compare that with sacrificing their souls to a demon."

"It is not always about souls. In fact, most of the time is not about them."

"Really?"

"Well, it depends on your patron, but mine prefer other things," Rad said.

"Like what?" Xan asked curiously.

"Deaths," Rad replied seriously.

"That's the same as souls!" Xan complained.

"It is not the same. If you kill someone and offer their souls to a demon, those people would not return to the cultivation cycle, dying forever. If you only kill them, you are simply speeding up the life cycle as they will be reborn in a new body later." Rad explained.

"Well, if you look at it that way, it doesn't sound so bad," Xan said while nodding.

And like that, the two continued talking about cults, demons, and corruption for the next few hours.