After the Heavenly Demon Emperor’s demise, his surviving Divine Artefacts had argued feverishly over who would carry out his final order of choosing a successor for him; and once their words had failed to convince one other of their respective worthiness, they’d been left with no choice but to battle over it.

The loser of the subsequent rock-papers-scissors tournament had ripped out a fragment of their consciousness to create the spirit adviser, preferring a permanent loss to their strength over taking up the boring role of waiting an eternity for a suitable candidate to show up.

After choosing a successor, the spirit adviser was supposed to replenish its spent lifeforce in the successor’s domain, in there taking up a mentor-like role to the successor, true to its name.

But the solitude of many millennia had caused the spirit adviser to desire death over everything else, even if this was an impossible wish due to the rules it was governed by.

These rules also required it to listen to all commands from the successor, which the spirit adviser could not risk the Little Master learning of - already he had stopped addressing it respectfully, subconsciously having degraded it from superior to equal, so how much longer would it be before he stumbled on the fact that he was in fact the superior? In such a scenario, he could very well command it to take refuge in his domain and force it onto life support against its wishes.

Now that he’d asked to hear the functions of the Emperor’s Divine Art, this was the do or not-die moment.

Nor would the timing get better than this as the spirit adviser was currently at its weakest having officiated the ritual, and would soon pass away naturally if left alone.

As for how it planned to accomplish this, well, it just so happened that while the rules cast on it were rigorous, they had never been play-tested in a real-life situation before. Hence, there existed loopholes that the Divine Artefact had never thought to consider.

For example, one rule prevented the spirit adviser from ever intending harm on the Little Master, while another obligated the spirit to sacrifice itself if necessary to save the Little Master from danger, together ensuring that the spirit adviser would act as a proper guardian to the Little Master. And the spirit adviser took this role very seriously.

“So, Little Master, one of the primary functions—”

Zeng Fei’s ears perked up at the noise of a deep rumbling, sounding like tectonic plates grinding against each other. Alarmed, he started scanning his surroundings like a meerkat, causing the spirit adviser to look at him oddly.

“Are you okay, Little Master?”

“Did you not hear that?”

The spirit adviser showed a blank expression. “Hear what?”

Only then did Zeng Fei glance up at the ceiling; and his heart dropped. What he had believed to be square tiles on the ceiling were actually massive stone blocks stuck together… and the one directly above him was prominently bulging out as though it was sliding out from its foundations.

His mind flashed the image of his body being crushed into a mash of flesh and bones.

His eyes expanded wildly at the surge of adrenaline, yet he couldn’t move, frozen in fear; and so he watched the creeping approach of the stone block, staring so hard that he saw his very death written on its underside.

And then the stone block slipped free of the ceiling, plunging through the air.

Its looming shadow enveloped his body, its figure growing until it had encompassed the entirety of his vision.

Suddenly Zeng Fei felt something wrench his vision from its fixed perspective, his body being shoved away as though someone had tackled into him; this shock force must have kickstarted his senses too as he could finally move again.

Then came the peal of thunder from the stone block crashing into the floor, like an ordnance strike mere inches away.

Shaken, Zeng Fei rose to his feet unsteady and saw what had saved him: there, trapped beneath the stone block, was the torso of a translucent old man, the rest of his body gruesomely crushed as made clear by the spirit’s agonised expression.

Yet, despite the pain it was under, the spirit adviser was screaming something towards him that he couldn’t make out: a vacuum had opened up in his ears after the explosion, leaving his ears with a faint ringing and nothing else.

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The spirit must have realised this as it stretched its hand towards him and released a sliver of qi into his body.

Soon after, Zeng Fei could perceive the furious pounding of his heartbeat and, if he focused with all his effort, he could even make out what the spirit adviser was trying to say.

“The ritual must have strained the foundations of this room - the whole place is caving in! You have to escape, Little Master! Get out of here now!”

Zeng Fei’s mouth gaped open and shut like a fish out of water, trying to speak but finding the words to do so out of reach.

“You must survive, Little Master! Continue the Emperor’s legacy! I beg you, don’t let my sacrifice be in vain! Run, run for your life before the whole place collapses!”

Hearing this, Zeng Fei glanced up and spotted multiple other stone blocks slipping from their foundations.

No longer did his mind bother to think; he was running before he even knew it, his legs taking charge to flee the imminent danger.

Every explosive crash behind him further invigorated him until he was sprinting at speeds he didn’t know he was capable of.

Within no time he was out of the corridor, into the dark cave, tripping off something but catching himself on the wall, running still, then finally leaping out of the cave towards safety.

Only then, gulping down breaths, did he dare to pause and look behind, whereupon he saw the rocky facade of the mountain. The weathered rock had weeds growing in its cracks, no different from the surroundings. As for the cave entrance he’d just exited? Gone.

Gone with it were the violent noises he’d been hearing, in its place the whispers of the wind and the bleating of a distant goat.

Although the life-threatening danger had passed, his brain was too flooded with adrenaline for him to be able to pick apart what had just happened; it took many minutes of him standing there, staring blankly at the rock facade, for cognisant thought to return.

And the first thing he thought of was the image seared into his brain: the translucent old man’s pained and flushed expression, legs brutally crushed by that boulder of a stone block.

Traumatic, yes; and now baffling.

After all, Zeng Fei could have sworn the spirit adviser never had legs to begin with… so what exactly had it been trapped under there?

Zeng Fei’s expression crumpled into a frown, then twisted into outrage as he realised the trickster spirit had gotten him again.

How else was it possible the spirit hadn’t noticed the stone block sliding until the very last moment when its senses were many times stronger than his?

Or how come none of the stone blocks had shattered on impact with the ground, and caused him collateral damage? In fact, none of the bookshelves had been hit either while he’d been in there, meaning no wayward splinters stabbing into him.

And how come the crashing sounds had vanished the second he’d exited the cave? Yes, that was a function of the invisible barrier set up by the entrance, so what a coincidence that said barrier hadn’t been there to block him from exiting this time, yet had popped back up immediately after to prevent re-entry.

All the signs pointed towards the spirit adviser acting in defiance of its assigned role and getting rid of him. In fact, it’d rushed through the entire inheritance process from the start as though it was a just chore to get over with.

In the end, it hadn’t even bothered explaining the basic details of the legacy it’d forced onto him… What kind of terrible after-purchase service was this?!

By this point, Zeng Fei was so incensed that he forgot all previous decorum and strode up to the rocky facade, threateningly waving his hand.

“Hey, you piece of shit spirit. Open this cave entrance right now! I fucking command you! You hear me?”

The sole response he got was another bleating, sounding closer this time.

Zeng Fei turned in that direction and saw a mountain goat peeking at him from behind an outcropping, bleating again as if asking him what all the ruckus was about.

For some reason, this only infuriated Zeng Fei more.

Over the next half-hour, an inordinate amount of cursing, complaining, and crying left his mouth before he finally gave up, unable to force the spirit adviser to show up.

In truth, this was the best thing he could have done as the spirit adviser had not heard a single thing he’d said. Immediately after he’d ran out of the cave, it’d rushed into a secret room it’d built long ago with the specific purpose of being noise-cancelling.

There, it had laid itself to rest in its coffin and prepared to peacefully pass away, comforted by the memories of pulling wool over the Little Master’s eyes repeatedly, indulging in the occasional ohoho.

The loophole it’d taken advantage of was a simple one: although the spirit was unable to intend harm upon the successor, there was nothing stopping it from using its powers to place him in a dangerous situation with the intention of saving him before any actual harm befell.

And if the Little Master just so happened to misunderstand the situation and run away with his tail between his legs, then what ever could the poor spirit adviser do, abandoned by its own master?

At least the spirit adviser could be content it’d accomplished the function it’d been created for; even its trickery had been an extension of this, giving the Little Master a very practical lesson on how crafty old foxes would run circles around spring chickens like him if given the opportunity.

After all, although otherworlders indeed possessed esoteric knowledge on how people would act and how events would develop, the Heavenly Demon Emperor himself had admitted that placing too much reliance on these beliefs was no different from begging for a nasty surprise.

Now having shown this to Zeng Fei firsthand, the spirit adviser could only hope that he would glean the right lessons from this experience (and not the wrong one that it’d tricked him solely to get rid of him or any other shallow reasoning like that).