The cold touch of the collar rested against the side of her neck, like a serpent’s threat, not yet fastened, but already radiating a bone-chilling menace.
And what truly peeled back the layers of despair and self-sacrifice encasing Furenna’s heart were the eyes behind the barrier, and the unmistakably clear shape of those lips.
Don’t wear it.
Don’t kneel.
Six words. No sound, yet more deafening than any thunderclap.
They came from Xiao Ling—the little maid who would cower before her, panic at a single threat, clumsily share half her pitiful rations.
Now, this girl was suspended in mid-air by invisible chains, teetering, her pain unabated, her lake-green eyes brimming with tears of reason.
Yet, behind that watery film, a faint but exceptionally stubborn flame flickered.
The soundless cry Furenna had heard, that cry meant only for her, seared her soul.
This was not a plea.
It was not a shout, but a stop, a kind of tragic, clear-headed resistance.
Xiao Ling understood. She understood what this meant.
It wasn’t just Furenna’s humiliation; it was the utter death of something even more important.
She’d rather hang on the rack of pain herself than watch that last, precious thing be extinguished.
Iris watched this scene with a faint smile.
The displeasure at being interrupted in the Demon King’s scarlet eyes had been replaced by a more profound interest.
The silent communication between insects, the tiny insistence born of despair—this dramatic tension was the finest seasoning for her “teaching.”
She didn’t need to hurry. She merely waited, like a spider waiting for the prey in her web to make its final struggle.
Whether Furenna finally flung the collar aside in a display of laughable “integrity,” or broke down and utterly donned this symbol of enslavement—both were, to her, fascinating displays of “teaching outcomes.”
The former meant a new round of, even more “vivid,” correction was about to begin. The latter was total, delightful conquest.
As for Xiao Ling?
She had been a variable in her teaching, a living teaching aid to increase the “lesson’s” persuasiveness. Her own will and feelings, in the Demon King’s eyes, were essentially no different from the trembling of a lab rat.
Time flowed sluggishly in the oppressive silence, each second stretched, filled with a viscous tension.
Furenna’s hands holding the collar trembled slightly, her knuckles white with strain.
The icy metal texture ceaselessly reminded her of the abyss she was about to plunge into, while the unextinguished flame in Xiao Ling’s eyes was like a thin, tenacious thread, trying to pull her back from the brink of utter ruin.
The scales in her heart swayed violently.
On one side, pragmatic, heavy, bloodstained “protection”—
exchanging her own utter annihilation, the transparency of her soul, for Xiao Ling’s temporary removal from the cruel focus of this “lesson,” buying a sliver of perhaps fleeting, yet tangible, respite.
This choice held a tragic grandeur of self-sacrifice, though that grandeur was built upon kneeling.
On the other side, an illusory, fragile, yet dazzling “persistence,” upholding the final dignity of humanity—
respecting the tiny courage bursting forth from another soul in a hopeless situation, even if the price of that respect might be that soul’s destruction.
This choice held a near-suicidal “correctness.” It guaranteed no one’s safety.
It only defended something invisible, intangible, yet something that had once supported her through countless battles and darkness—her “core.”
Iris seemed to tire of the prolonged silence.
A brow, almost imperceptibly, twitched. Not impatience, but like a conductor signaling the orchestra to enter a new movement—a tiny preparatory gesture.
Behind the barrier, Xiao Ling’s body jerked violently!
As if countless invisible ice needles once again pierced her nerve endings, just beginning to ease.
An extremely short, sharp inhalation was bitten back behind her lips, but the pain reddened the rims of her eyes.
Tears welling with pain rolled down as her thin body curled tighter within the energy chains, like a leaf shriveling in a cold wind.
This subtle stimulus was like the last straw, or a lightning bolt tearing through the fog.
Furenna looked at Xiao Ling’s expression of endured agony, at how the child, even then, still tried to look at her, that unwilling-to-compromise, faint light in her eyes.
She suddenly remembered many things she had long deliberately forgotten.
She remembered that what had always supported her was never some great power or mission, but a simple, almost instinctual understanding: “Protect those who need protection.”
Later, Furenna learned to weigh, learned to sacrifice, learned to make the “least bad” choice in complex situations.
To protect Ti Mo, she could sign a humiliating contract.
To preserve possible opportunities, she could endure whippings and humiliation.
She told herself this was maturity, responsibility, necessary endurance for a greater goal.
But when the price of “endurance” was to completely surrender her self, becoming a plaything and puppet for the enemy’s emotions…
Was this “necessary sacrifice”?
Or had it become a betrayal of that original self who stood up because she “could not bear to see bullying”?
Kneeling to the Demon King, wearing this collar, might buy Xiao Ling a moment’s peace, let her temporarily avoid direct torture.
But that version of her, soul monitored, emotions manipulated—how was she different from a marionette?
Could an existence that actively abandoned the last shred of inner freedom truly have the ability, the right, to protect anyone?
Or would that so-called “protection” become a tool for the Demon King to manipulate her, to achieve even more horrific ends?
Xiao Ling’s silent “don’t” now sounded like a warning bell.
Perhaps, in this darkness that devoured all light, insisting on “what not to do” was more important than “what to do.”
There were some bottom lines that could not be trampled, not even for seemingly reasonable reasons like “protection” or “waiting for an opportunity.”
Even if the price of holding that line was watching something precious shatter before her eyes—
at least this shattering wouldn’t be because her own compromise had abetted the tyrant.
No.
This word, like a cold, solid boulder, suddenly sank into the churning depths of Furenna’s heart, suppressing all turbulent waves.
She would not become a puppet.
She would not sell her soul completely. She would not, in the name of “protection,” commit the act of “betrayal”—
betraying that self who first picked up a sword, betraying the final trust Xiao Ling conveyed with her eyes.
Furenna took a deep, slow breath.
The icy air flooded her lungs, bringing a sharp sting, but also a strange, cold clarity.
The violently swaying scales, almost tipping toward compromise, were seized by an invisible, despairing force, then irreversibly sank in one direction.
She withdrew her hands.
The motion wasn’t fierce, hardly showing any outward emotion, carrying only the heaviness and clarity of a settled matter.
Furenna’s hands, holding the dark silver collar, steadily, bit by bit, moved it away from her pale neck.
She didn’t dramatically throw it down to clang on the floor—that would be too ostentatious, more like an emotional performance than a considered choice.
She merely placed it gently, even with a strange solemnity, back onto the cold, rough stone floor before her.
Metal met stone with a “ting”—a clear, lonely sound echoing in the dead room, as if drawing a period to a certain phase.
Then, Furenna raised her head.
Her silver hair slid from her shoulders, revealing her pale, coldly beautiful face.
Her amber eyes were no longer filled with the previous fury, collapse, or the ashen deadness of being cornered.
They burned with a flame that seemed almost solidified—intense, cold, transparent, as if forged from all her emotions—anger, sorrow, fear, resentment—finally condensed into a will that transcended emotion.
This will reflected no shadow of compromise, only a deep, unfathomable pool of icy refusal.
She looked at Iris, her gaze terrifyingly calm. Word by word, her voice hoarse from long silence and emotional shock, yet oddly serene, each word like a carefully polished stone, smashing into the solidified air with its own weight:
“I refuse.”
The dungeon fell into an absolute, heart-stopping silence.
Behind the barrier, Xiao Ling stared at her dumbly, as if forgetting to cry or feel pain.
Her lake-green eyes instantly blazed with an incredibly bright, almost scorching light, filled with unbelievable shock, a dizzying relief, followed immediately by an uncontrollable, deeper fear—for Furenna, and for herself.
She had chosen “no.” This light was what her own silent cry had hoped for.
But when that “no” was truly spoken, cold reality immediately seized her throat.
The expression on Iris’s face froze like an artistic mask.
The embedded smile, carrying playful inquiry and absolute control, faded bit by bit, extremely slowly, from the perfect corners of her lips, like a tide receding to reveal cold, hard rock.
In the scarlet eyes, all the interest and pleasure belonging to the “observer,” the “teacher,” vanished like mist scattered by a cold wind.
What replaced it was a deep, bottomless, pure coldness.
That cold held no trace of human emotion—no anger, no surprise—only an absolute, essential indifference and will to judge, belonging to a higher existence.
The room’s temperature seemed to plummet with the change in her gaze. The air grew thick and heavy, each breath like swallowing ice shards.
“Refuse?”
Iris repeated softly, her voice abnormally calm, not raising a single tone, yet carrying a terrifying, oppressive sense of impending storm, of heaven and earth about to topple. Each syllable scraped across taut nerves.
“Are you certain, you wish to refuse me?”
Furenna did not answer.
Any words would be superfluous now, even a sign of weakness.
She simply met the Demon King’s bottomless scarlet gaze with her own amber eyes burning with cold fire, calmly, unflinchingly.
A silent confrontation, a clash of wills, reached its peak here. The silence erupted with a roar fiercer than any shout.
“…”
Iris suddenly let out a soft laugh. It was short, dry, devoid of any warmth, instantly making the chill in the room seep into the marrow, making teeth chatter.
“I see.”
She took a slow, elegant step forward. The sound of her high heels striking the stone was unnaturally clear in the deathly silence, like a prelude to a funeral bell.
Her gaze shifted from Furenna, landing on Xiao Ling behind the barrier.
That gaze no longer held any “teaching assessment” or “observational interest.”
It was a pure, cold scrutiny, like a master craftsman examining a piece with an irreparable flaw, thus determining its final fate.
“I once believed,”
Iris’s voice remained very soft, as if stating to the void, or pronouncing a final, indisputable verdict upon Furenna. Each word hammered on the anvil of fate.
“Pain is the most direct teacher.
Lashing the flesh, tormenting the nerves, is enough to make even the most obstinate beast remember the rules.
Hence, your first lesson.”
She paused, as if recalling.
“The effect seemed good. You learned to remain silent within the contract’s bounds, learned to endure.”
“Later, I discovered,”
she continued in that terrifyingly calm tone,
“perhaps for an existence like you, stuffed with so much useless thought called ‘belief’ and ‘honor,’ physical pain is not deep enough.
It must touch something deeper, the core of bonds named ‘responsibility’ and ‘connection.’
Thus, I designed the second lesson.”
Her gaze swept over Xiao Ling again, like a pointer marking a scale.
“I brought her.
This tiny, fragile, human of your own kind.”
A trace of what could be called “rigorous” inquiry even entered Iris’s voice.
“I intended to teach you consideration and ’empathy,’
to vividly demonstrate to you, with a living example, how in this place,
your every choice, each act of defiance, is like a stone thrown into water, creating ripples,
and what is gradually eroded is often the softer, more vulnerable sandcastle on the shore.
I even attempted to make this lesson seem somewhat fair, gave you a seemingly ‘choice’—
to exchange your personal, insignificant submission for temporary, fragile peace.
See? A classic design fitting your human moral dilemmas.
I thought this sufficient for you to understand the severity of the rules and the necessity of obedience.”
Iris shook her head, a trace of genuine, cruel philosophical regret appearing on her face, like a tutor facing a dull student who just cannot grasp the point no matter how it’s explained.
“But you, Furenna, you disappoint me.”
A sliver of crystalline cold finally seeped into her voice. Not from agitation, but like the natural chill emanating from a glacier, coldly coiling around Furenna’s limbs and bones.
“You not only refuse to learn this carefully prepared lesson, refuse to consider, to understand its logic,
you even treat this extra guidance I granted, in the form of a ‘choice,’ as a bargaining chip to test and haggle with.
You play what you think are clever little games within the framework I set,
and finally, use this childish, laughable so-called ‘refusal’ to defile my classroom, challenge my authority.”
She tilted her head slightly. An action that once seemed lazy and playful now brimmed with a god-like, aloof scrutiny.
Her tone grew even softer, yet carried a weight of thousands of pounds, each word smashing down upon Furenna’s already frozen heart.
“Do you still, perhaps, indulge in those pathetic ‘hero legends’?
Believing that no matter how you provoke, transgress boundaries, in the end you just need to adopt a humble posture,
shed a few cheap tears, say ‘I was wrong,’ and things will turn around miraculously, as in a fairy tale?
Do you still, naively believe, that your hollow title of ‘Hero,’
or that pitiful, not yet fully extinguished thing called ‘pride,’
can become your talisman for infinite boundary-testing and rule-defying?”
Furenna’s heart felt seized by an invisible icy claw, abruptly stopping its beat,
then pounding wildly against her ribs, bringing heartache and suffocation.
An ominous premonition, like the deepest darkness, instantly swallowed all her thought, leaving only icy, piercing fear in her gaze.
She wanted to speak, to scream, to stop it, but her throat seemed frozen shut, unable to produce any sound.
Her body was firmly immobilized by that intangible force, not even a fingertip able to twitch.
Iris slowly raised her right hand.
This time, the action held no element of performance or threat. It was slow, steady, filled with a despair-inducing sense of ritual.
Her five fingers elegantly spread, aimed directly at Xiao Ling behind the barrier, as if across some invisible authority.
“It seems, my previous ‘teaching method’ was still too… gentle.”
The Demon King’s voice coldly pronounced the verdict, like a gavel finally falling in a courtroom, finalizing the unalterable sentence,
“Gentle to the point, that it gave you a ‘fatal misunderstanding,’ that here,
mistakes can be easily erased, that the price can be endlessly delayed, even exempted.”
“No, wait!”
Furenna’s despair, all her mental fortifications, collapsed before that raised hand.
She screamed, her voice torn and ugly, filled with the most primal fear and despair.
She struggled fiercely, her body lunging forward as if to break through the invisible restraint with her flesh, to shield Xiao Ling.
But that force remained immovable, pinning her firmly in place like an insect in amber.
“My fault! It’s all my fault! I defied you!
I was ungrateful! Punish me! Punish me however you want! Whip me! Torture me! Kill me if you must!
Don’t touch her! I beg you! Iris!
Your Majesty! I was wrong! I truly know I was wrong!
I’ll wear it! I’ll wear it right now! I’ll put it on immediately!”
Furenna babbled incoherently, tears streaming, her earlier resolve and cold determination crushed by purest terror.
She whipped her head around, frantically searching for the collar she had placed on the ground, like a drowning person grasping for driftwood.
She even tried to plead with her eyes, with the most humble posture, to revoke the impending sentence.
“Too late.”
Iris’s voice was like a sigh from the depths of the northernmost glacier, carrying the hollow echo that ends all things,
clearly piercing through Furenna’s desperate cries and the fear-dilated pupils of Xiao Ling, finalizing the end of a world-line.
“Some mistakes, once a choice is made, are like arrows loosed, with no path of return.
Some boundaries, once crossed, cannot be erased with apologies and tears.
Some lessons, if gentle narration cannot make you remember, then the most profound, most indisputable ‘price’ is needed,
to brand ‘eternity’ into the depths of your soul, becoming a nightmare and a measure you cannot escape in every future choice.”
Her five fingers, steadily, irresistibly, began to close.
“Uh— Ah————!!!”
At first, just an extremely short, choked gasp, as if a throat was suddenly seized.
Then, this gasp abruptly rose in pitch, stretched, twisted into a piercing shriek so shrill it pierced the soul, utterly inhuman!
“Ahhhhhhh————!!!”
The sound exploded!
Not transmitted through a “blurred screen,” but crystal clear, unimpeded, detonating in the dead dungeon!
The barrier had vanished at some point, or perhaps the Demon King specifically allowed the sound direct passage,
to let Furenna hear more clearly, “feel” more profoundly, in this moment.
Furenna’s scramble for the collar froze mid-air. She jerked her head up, pupils contracting to pinpoints, eyes nearly bursting as she stared at the source of the sound—
No, not staring, but witnessing a scene of terror unfolding beyond the limits of imagination.
Xiao Ling’s thin, small body was no longer merely trembling from intangible pressure,
but had fallen into a state of complete, uncontrolled, frenzied convulsions and contortions!
The sight could not be described with a simple word like “pain.”
It was as if countless invisible, most malicious hands simultaneously reached into every minute corner of Xiao Ling’s body—
beneath the skin, between muscle fibers, deep in the marrow, the ends of nerve clusters—
not tearing, but in a manner cold, precise, and chilling to the extreme, performing the most thorough destruction and agitation.
“No—! Stop! Stop! Iris!
I beg you! Stop! I’ll obey you in everything! I’ll be your s*ave,
I swear it! I swear on my soul! I’m willing to submit, to be at your mercy! Please! Please spare Xiao Ling! She’s just a child! Please! Please stop torturing her! She’ll die! Please! Please—”
Furenna screamed with a heart-tearing intensity,
her voice filled with pleading, abasement, and the deepest despair.
But Iris gave no response.
Her gaze was calm and cold, as if all this had nothing to do with her.
Furenna roared in agony, struggling desperately,
yet still unable to break free from the invisible shackles binding her body.
She could only watch, watch Xiao Ling writhe in torment, watch her grow increasingly weak, slowly approaching death.
“Iris! Stop! I beg you, stop!”
Furenna’s voice grew weaker and weaker. Finally, she collapsed to her knees in despair, tears blurring her vision.
She knew, it was all over.
Xiao Ling was dead, and she had lost her forever.
Iris, this Demon King, had won.
She had shattered all of Furenna’s resistance, all her pride, all her hope, in the cruelest way.
Furenna was utterly, completely, in despair.
She knew she had nothing left to lose.
Her life now held only endless pain and darkness.
“Iris, I hate you!”
Furenna used all her remaining strength to roar out these words.
But Iris still gave no response.
She merely looked at Furenna calmly, a trace of pity in her eyes.
Furenna knew, Iris did not regard her at all.
She was just a failure, a pawn played by the Demon King at will.
Her life was utterly ruined.
She had nothing left.
I swear! I swear on my soul! I will never resist! I will always obey!
Stop! Please stop! Look at her! Look at her!!”
Furenna lost her mind.
She struggled, roared weakly, cried, pleaded, struggled with all her might, veins bulging on her neck and forehead.
Nails tore and bled from clawing desperately at the invisible restraint.
Tears blurred her vision, then were washed away by new ones. She couldn’t see clearly yet was forced to see with agonizing clarity.
Every frame of the scene, each inhuman shriek, was like a red-hot steel needle,
driven one by one into her eyes, her ears, her brain, her heart!
Furenna wished she were the one enduring this pain now, a thousandfold! Ten-thousandfold!
Not that child! The child who had once looked at her with timid eyes, called her “Heroine Sister”!
Iris paid no heed to her collapse and pleas.
The Demon King merely tilted her head slightly, quietly watching Xiao Ling, so close at hand, enduring this slow, precise destruction she herself had wrought.
Her expression was placid, showing neither pleasure nor disgust, only a pure, cold “observation.”
Her scarlet eyes were deep as pools of blood, clearly reflecting the twisting, convulsing small body,
as if appreciating the process of a complex instrument following its programmed course to final scrapping, serious, objective, without a trace of extraneous emotion.
The dark silver collar had somehow returned to her left hand,
played with and turned idly by her slender fingers, the cold metallic sheen forming a grotesque and cruel contrast with the hellish scene beyond.
“See,”
Iris’s voice, cold, steady, as if explaining the cause of a natural phenomenon, clearly transmitted over the backdrop of Furenna’s desperate cries and Xiao Ling’s fragmented screams,
“this is what ‘price’ ought to look like.
Not post-facto remorse, not superficial tears, not flimsy promises.
The price must be real, heavy, irreversible, absolute and complete.
It must leave a mark, must alter something’s ‘state of existence,’
from ‘being’ to ‘nothingness,’ from ‘life’ to ‘death,’ from ‘whole’ to ‘broken.’
Only thus can the one paying the price, and the one witnessing it, truly understand the exact ‘weight’ of ‘error.'”
Xiao Ling’s struggles and screams, after a duration that felt as if time itself had congealed, began to show signs of weakening.
That shrill, inhuman shrieking gradually turned into low, intermittent, guttural moans and gasps, like a tattered bellows in its final struggle.
The violent, full-body convulsions became unconscious, sporadic twitches of local muscles,
their amplitude growing smaller, their frequency lower and lower.
The last flicker of distorted light in her eyes, residue of extreme pain, was rapidly scattering, extinguishing, replaced by a vacant, dead grayness.
The husk utterly lost all support and restraint. Xiao Ling’s thin, broken body,
like a puppet with all its strings cut, tattered and ruined, fell softly, lifelessly, from mid-air.
Thud.
A dull sound of flesh meeting stone.
Not loud, but like a massive hammer, smashing down upon Furenna’s seemingly long-stopped heart.
She lay curled there, side-lying in an unnatural position.
Her light brown hair, once in a neat braid now completely disheveled,
sticky blood covered most of her deathly pale little face, revealing only a small patch of ashen forehead,
and that half-open mouth, from which no more breath flowed, caked with dark red blood clots.
Her filthy, tattered maid’s dress messily wrapped her seemingly shrunken form.
Beneath her, the dark red bloodstain spread outward on the cold floor, soaking,
like a blooming flower of death.
The barrier had long vanished, and along with it vanished the faint, final trace of life belonging to the existence named “Xiao Ling.”
Only the thick scent of blood, mixed with an indescribable, faint charred and putrid smell of a body pushed far beyond its limits, began to permeate the sealed space.
A silence so despairing it could freeze the soul.
Only the sound of Furenna’s coarse, broken breathing, with its violent sobs and despairing gasps, echoed alone and desolate in the empty room.
She remained frozen in her forward-leaning, arms-outstretched posture, rigid, in place,
like a statue instantly turned to stone.
Her eyes were wide to their limit, staring fixedly, unblinkingly, at that small body on the floor, utterly still.
The world before her eyes completely collapsed, shattered, spun, then transformed into a void of darkness.
Sharp tinnitus swallowed all sound. Only her heart pounded violently and hollowly in her chest,
bringing waves of suffocating pain and near-death hallucinations.
Iris slowly paced over, stopping beside Xiao Ling’s corpse.
The gleaming tip of her black boot halted inches from the edge of the blood pool.
She lowered her head slightly, looking down in appraisal for a moment, her gaze like scanning a scrapped experimental subject.
Then, she raised her right foot, and with the toe of her boot, with extreme casualness, even a hint of assessing texture,
gently nudged Xiao Ling’s thin, limp shoulder.
The girl’s cold, stiff body swayed limply from the slight force, her head lolling to the other side,
thick, dark red blood seeping from the corner of her mouth, dripping onto the cold stone with a faint, almost inaudible plip.
Apart from that, there was no other sound, no reaction.
“It appears,”
the Demon King’s flat voice sounded again, breaking the silence enough to drive one mad, also like an ice pick, chiseling open Furenna’s frozen senses.
“This lesson’s ‘teaching aid’ has been expended.
However, its instructional purpose can be considered vastly exceeded.”
She turned, the click of her boot heels against the ground sounding rhythmically,
walking towards Furenna, who seemed to have her soul completely stripped away, leaving only an empty shell.
Furenna gave no reaction.
Her eyeballs seemed incapable of turning, only fixed dully, emptily on Xiao Ling’s corpse.
Fixed on that glaring dark red, fixed on the life that had once brimmed with timidity, concern, clumsy kindness, and astonishing final courage,
extinguished, annihilated before her eyes in the cruelest, slowest, most irrevocable manner.
The cold collar was even clutched unconsciously in her hand, the metal edge digging deep into her flesh, blood oozing between her fingers, dripping,
but this physical pain was insignificant compared to her heart being swallowed by that suddenly collapsed, boundless, icy, endless dark abyss.
That abyss swallowed light, swallowed heat, swallowed all emotion, leaving only pure, absolute ‘nothingness.’
Iris stopped before her, bent down. The cold, black-leather-gloved hand pinched Furenna’s chin, forcefully, compelling her stiff neck to turn, her vacant eyes to meet the scarlet ones.
The Demon King’s voice, like a frigid wind from the deepest netherworld, coldly poured into Furenna’s shattered eardrums, word by word, crystal clear,
as if carving these words permanently onto her now blank, dead soul-slate with the hardest chisel,
“Remember this moment. With your eyes, your ears, the chill your skin feels, the instant your heart stopped, the agony of your soul being torn—
remember all of it.
Remember the ‘result’ your ‘refusal’ brought.
Remember the child who, because of your laughable, pointless, self-righteous persistence, and ‘dignity,’
bore a punishment far exceeding what she deserved, and ultimately perished completely.
Remember the color of her blood. Remember the sound of her last cry. Remember how she lies there—her posture.
Her pain, her fear, her struggle, her demise.
…
All of this, none of it is chance, not accident.
They are the ‘price.’
The price you must pay, and can no longer retract, for making that choice.
This price, paid by her, but its origin lies with you.
Every ounce of its weight will forever press upon your soul, becoming the shadow and burden you cannot escape behind your every future breath, every heartbeat, every thought. Do you understand?”
Furenna’s pupils, in their extreme vacancy, contracted almost imperceptibly,
but still held no light, no reaction, like two amber beads that had lost all vitality.
Iris seemed unconcerned with whether she reacted.
The pronouncement itself was the purpose.
She released Furenna’s chin, straightened up, and again held that dark silver collar she had been toying with
before Furenna’s eyes, almost touching her unfocused pupils.
Now,
the Demon King’s voice regained a trace of that earlier “instructional” evenness, but beneath it lay eternal ice,
“We ask once more. Regarding ‘consideration’ and ’empathy,’ regarding the price of disobedience, regarding the rules one must follow to survive here—
have you learned?”
The collar’s surface, those intricate purple-black patterns, slowly swirled under the dim green light, cold, sinister, like countless indifferent eyes waiting to open.
This time, there was no struggle, no hesitation, not even the process of thought.
Furenna’s arm, as if paralyzed, rose with extreme slowness, with a mechanical stiffness.
Her fingers loosened, releasing the wound her own nails had gouged, the blood staining the cold metal.
Then, she clumsily took hold of the collar.
Her fingertips registered the coldness of a dead thing.
She lowered her head. Her gaze seemed to finally shift from the corpse on the floor for a moment, landing on the collar in her hand.
She looked for perhaps a second, perhaps a century.
Then, slowly, she placed the collar around her neck, already shackled by one restraint.
A soft click sounded crisply in the deathly silence.
The cold metal pressed against her skin. Power sourced from the runes streamed continuously from the collar, directly penetrating her skin, reaching her nerve endings, but causing no harm to anything outside Furenna’s immediate vicinity.
The intricate patterns along the collar’s edge suddenly lit with a layer of dim purple-black radiance, as if activated from slumber.
Countless filaments, finer than hair, icy and viscous “tendrils”—not physical entities,
but a highly concentrated magical sensory field—instantly pierced her skin, ignoring the barrier of flesh and blood.
They precisely, greedily spread towards her nervous system, connected to her cerebral cortex, entwined her emotional centers, and established a link with her most basic life energy fluctuations.
This unprecedented, nauseating “sense of connection” was forcibly established.
She felt the periphery of her soul tightly wrapped in a layer of completely transparent, yet absolutely inescapable “perceptual membrane.”
The other end of this connection felt infinitely distant yet infinitely close, linked to a vast, profound existence radiating absolute pressure and cold will.
Iris.
She could vaguely “sense” that existence’s “state”—
a smug, all-controlling, cruelly pleased “calm.”
And this external, belonging-to-the-Demon-King emotional “undertone” was forcibly, irresistibly seeping into the background of her own consciousness,
intertwining, mingling with the dead, icy, boundless darkness and despair within her,
forming a most cruel, most ironic, most soul-shattering discord.
Simultaneously, she became acutely aware that her everything—
each acceleration or deceleration of her heartbeat, each change in depth of breath, each tension or relaxation of muscle, each wisp of emotional fluctuation, even the deeper dread and nothingness in her subconscious—
was all greedily captured, amplified, tagged by this collar, then transmitted in a continuous, one-way flow through that newly established intangible connection
to the other end.
She had become a book, forcibly opened, placed under a spotlight for the Demon King’s casual flipping through.
The book titled “Furenna” held no more privacy, no more secrets.
Iris smiled in satisfaction.
The smile was genuine, pleased, even carrying a trace of “educational achievement” contentment.
Simultaneously, through the collar, that loathsome connection, a clear, intense, utterly undisguised surge of “pleasure” and “complete control”
crashed over Furenna’s consciousness.
This external pleasure, forming a stark contrast with her own realm of despairing deadness, magnified the humiliation and nothingness manifold.
“Very good.”
Iris reached out, patted Furenna’s head where the new collar sat, like rewarding a pet finally learning to relieve itself in a designated spot.
“The action could even be called ‘gentle.'”
“Though the process was twisted and roundabout, and the ‘educational cost’ paid was somewhat high.
But it seems sufficiently profound, sufficiently concrete demonstration and price can indeed achieve educational effects beyond the reach of words.
You have finally begun to understand what rules are, what price is, what is an absolute, non-defiable will.”
She withdrew her hand, no longer looking at Xiao Ling’s body on the floor, as if it were merely a discarded teaching prop that had served its purpose and needed disposal.
She turned, her scarlet cloak sweeping in an elegant, cold arc as she walked towards the open cell door.
Her movement was clean.
Outside the door, shadow-like guards stood in silent, iron-still attendance.
Their gazes didn’t even glance again at that small, young and tender body on the floor.
Then, she left.
The sound of high heels tapping the ground gradually faded, ultimately vanishing into the corridor’s profound darkness.
The heavy cell door slowly closed behind her with a dull, final thud, locking Furenna and Xiao Ling’s corpse
together into this eternal cage, leaving only faint light and the scent of death.
Furenna remained where she was, on the cold, cold floor.
The two metal restraints around her neck, old and new, were heavy and cold.
The new collar’s “sense of connection” and the persistent, faint emotional static—a remnant representing the Demon King’s pleasure—
was a grating, restless, faint emotional noise that ceaselessly reminded her of her lost boundaries and the reality of being a transparent prisoner.
This collar was not just a shackle, but a brand of shame, of deprivation,
proof of her submission and Xiao Ling’s death.
Her gaze slowly, extremely slowly, shifted once more, falling on the spot not far away.
Xiao Ling lay there quietly, curled up, small, utterly lifeless.
The blood pool had ceased expanding, its color growing ever darker, nearly blending with the dark stone floor.
The soiled dress, the disheveled hair, the ashen complexion—
everything took on an unreal, nightmarish silhouette-like quality under the dim green light.
Furenna looked.
She saw, and tears welled again.
Tears had long dried up—perhaps exhausted while witnessing that slow destruction, while uttering her most desperate pleas.
Her face held no expression. Her muscles seemed completely dead, incapable of any reaction.
Anger?
That world-destroying fury seemed to have been instantly frozen, extinguished amidst the extreme stimulus and subsequent deadness, leaving nothing behind.
Sorrow?
That soul-drowning grief seemed too vast, becoming instead emptiness, sinking to the bottom of that icy, boundless dark abyss, no echo audible.
There was only emptiness.
Cold, absolute, utterly silent emptiness.
Within this “emptiness,” something was slowly settling.
Not emotion, not thought, but something more fundamental, more essential—a change in “state of existence.”
An inexplicably acknowledged layer of ice, with that cold collar as its anchor point,
with Xiao Ling’s corpse on the floor as its boundary marker, with the Demon King’s final pronouncement as its code,
began spreading, thickening, freezing over from the deepest depths of her soul, irreversibly.
This was not simple submission, but a complete acceptance of “reality”—
accepting her inability to change anything, accepting that her choices inevitably led to the worst outcomes,
accepting that she had even lost the qualification to “protect,” accepting that her very living became proof of some error and a continuation of the price.
Beneath that ice layer lay the eternal brand named “price.”
Xiao Ling’s final twisted face, her piercing, miserable screams, her cold corpse, the dark red blood pool—
these images, these sounds, these smells were not forgotten.
Instead, in a way surpassing memory, they were “branded” into her very being.
They became part of her breath, the rhythm of her heartbeat, the forever unerasable background of her sight.
This “price” was too heavy, too concrete, too bloody, so much so that any thought about “resistance,” “hope,” “future,”
the moment it sprouted, would be instantly frozen to pieces, annihilated by the extreme cold and despair radiating from this brand.
And at the very core of that ice layer and brand, in the absolute depths untouched even by “resignation” and “price,” the last faint glimmer belonging to the existence “Furenna” itself—
that unyielding core that had supported her through battlefields, endured betrayal, and in hopeless situations still attempted to perceive shackles, seek cracks,
that ember briefly ignited by Xiao Ling’s final courage and barely preserved by her own “refusal”—
at this moment, it had not been extinguished.
But it no longer burned.
It had been frozen.
Utter despair, heavy price, icy resignation, and the collar around her neck symbolizing complete enslavement,
together constituted an absolute zero, entombing it in the deepest, lowest layer of her soul.
It was still there, perhaps forever would be, as the final proof that “Furenna” once existed.
But it provided no warmth, gave no direction, fought no darkness.
It was merely a point of eternally frozen, cold ember, sealed within transparent, unbreakable ice, silent, dead.
The dim green light, as always, impartially bathed everything in the dungeon.
It bathed Furenna, lying on the floor, neck bearing the new shackle, eyes hollow.
It also bathed the small, cold corpse on the floor not far away.
Soundless, breathless.
Only the new, dark silver collar around Furenna’s pale neck, with her nearly imperceptible, faint breaths,
flickered with a cold, sinister faint glow, extremely slowly.
The light pulsed rhythmically, like a newly opened, indifferent, non-human eye.
In this silence saturated with death and despair, tirelessly, faithfully, it performed its assigned mission:
monitor, connect, proclaim ownership.
And under the gaze of that cold eye, soaked in the dim green light, Furenna remained motionless, as if she had already become part of the dungeon’s furnishings.
Future seemed a word that had lost all meaning.
Time, at this moment, also seemed to have lost its momentum to flow forward.
It congealed within this eternal instant, filled with the smell of blood, death, and absolute submission.