Beneath the crumbling archway, even the perpetually pale daylight seemed to succumb to an unseen despair, leaving behind only dense, encroaching shadows.
In the deepest recesses of the corner, a phantom figure, indistinguishable from Qi Yue’an in form yet far more tattered and wretched, huddled like a discarded, broken doll.
Lin Xiao listened intently, his ears catching a faint, mechanical murmur, devoid of any warmth of life, that stubbornly repeated itself like a scratched phonograph record:
“Oh, it hurts… it hurts so much, Xiao… Where are you… Where exactly are you…?”
The voice was chillingly hollow, resonating as if a pre-programmed loop, running ceaselessly.
“An!”
Lin Xiao quickened his pace, his voice echoing as he drew nearer.
Yet, the phantom remained unresponsive to his pleas, still lost in its shattered loop, murmuring softly:
“…Who is it… Why… My… it’s gone…”
He extended a hand, attempting to touch the trembling shoulder.
The phantom’s movements ceased abruptly, as though a pause button had been pressed. Then, with an agonizing slowness, a near-rigid posture reminiscent of rusted machinery, she gradually turned her head.
As the previously obscured face finally came into Lin Xiao’s full view, a sudden chill shot up his spine, leaving his scalp prickling with unease.
The face, unmistakably Qi Yue’an’s, was eerily blank where her features should have been. In place of her eyes, only two perpetually seeping black holes remained, oozing viscous, dark red fluid, as if portals to an unfathomable abyss of resentment.
Then, across the smooth expanse of skin where her mouth should have been, a jagged fissure tore open without warning.
“My eyes… Where did they go… They’re gone…”
A hollow, chilling voice seeped from the newly formed fissure.
Even Lin Xiao, who had witnessed innumerable horrors, found his composure shattered by such a blasphemous and twisted sight, instinctively recoiling half a step.
The eyeless phantom seemed to perceive his withdrawal. It struggled to rise, intent on reaching him, but the absence of a leg below the knee rendered it helpless, causing it to tumble weakly to the ground.
“Xiao… Is that you? Xiao… Xiao!”
Her voice swiftly transformed from hesitant doubt to elated surprise, finally settling into a disturbing frenzy. Abandoning any attempt to stand, she used both hands and her single remaining leg, adopting a clumsy yet relentless crawl, lurching closer to him.
With her advance, a wave of mental corruption, a hundredfold more potent than before, surged forth like a tangible tide. It was a sickening confluence of suffocating paranoia, bone-deep possessive desire, and a morbid, utterly twisted attachment.
Lin Xiao forcefully suppressed his innate urge to attack, battling the encroaching mental corruption as he retreated deeper into the shadowy corridor. Yet, without warning, his back collided with a frigid embrace.
Though utterly devoid of warmth, the embrace held Qi Yue’an’s familiar contours and scent. Strands of half-black, half-white hair brushed against his shoulder as a familiar, yet chillingly inhuman, voice whispered beside his ear:
“Xiao… I’m so cold… Hold me tight, Xiao…”
He spun around abruptly, his gaze locking onto the face of yet another phantom.
This phantom was the antithesis of the first: her eyes were empty, ethereal voids, yet a delicate, charming mouth was clearly etched onto her face, now pressing an overly intimate kiss against his neck.
Lin Xiao struggled violently once more, his eyes darting around, his heart plummeting with despair.
It was as though his very presence had awakened a slumbering graveyard; an increasing number of “Qi Yue’ans” began to slither, crawl, and walk forth from the shadows that permeated every direction.
They appeared in disparate attire: some adorned in exquisite gowns, others in simple everyday clothes, and many more in grotesquely incomplete forms, nearly naked and grievously dismembered.
They materialized from crumbling wall corners, from fissures in the ground, from unseen “graves,” swarming him like ghouls drawn to the scent of blood. From the periphery, from the depths, they converged in layers, forming an utterly terrifying tableau.
His very presence ignited the most primal desires within these incomplete “fragments.”
The missing parts on their bodies varied wildly, yet each fragment, without exception, radiated a heart-wrenching beauty of incompleteness mingled with profound terror.
A dangerous glint flickered in Lin Xiao’s eyes. Confronted by these blasphemous creations, an impulse for absolute destruction surged within him. Yet, in the instant before his power could fully coalesce, a horrifying realization struck him: every twisted figure lunging forward, in their very essence, belonged to Qi Yue’an.
They were nothing less than still-convulsing fragments, brutally ripped from her once-whole soul.
A terrifying conjecture pierced his mind.
After death, a soul typically finds rest or transforms into a specter.
But what manner of horrifying creation would emerge if a living soul were utterly pulverized, yet, by some supreme power, each and every fragment was forcibly maintained in a state of “vitality,” prevented from true death?
The “Qi Yue’ans” before him, howling and writhing in agony, those few capable of forming expressions, all spoke of an unparalleled torment.
“You deprived her of the right to die.”
Qi Wei’s words resonated in his ears once more. These fractured remnants of a soul, forcibly gathered by the power of the Crown of Reason, contained incomplete consciousness and shattered information, all mingling like putrid paste…
This was, without question, a punishment more savage than any physical flaying; little wonder Qi Wei had called it a choice more brutal than death itself.
An overwhelming wave of guilt instantly engulfed Lin Xiao, causing a fleeting hesitation in his movements.
In that single moment of disorientation, the rampant mental corruption, like a surging flood from a breached dam, utterly overwhelmed him.
Love, hatred, possessiveness… these emotions, heavy enough to crush a soul, violently assailed his very consciousness.
The surrounding landscape began to twist and warp, and he found himself seemingly plunged onto a cold, rain-swept street, witnessing a solitary figure weeping helplessly in the downpour…
“Ugh!”
Lin Xiao bit down sharply on the tip of his tongue, the searing pain momentarily wrenching back control of his consciousness.
He found himself inexplicably sprawled on the ground, a colossal, unseen gravity pinning him down, rendering him as helpless as a sickly mortal, unable to even push himself upright.
The phantoms were now perilously close, their faces alight with dark, twisted emotions, eager to consume him whole and merge into one grotesque entity.
A gnarled, claw-like hand with razor-sharp nails, seizing upon his incapacitation, brutally tore into his ankle. Agonizing pain flared, yet it seemed only to ignite a fuse; the “maidens” behind him erupted into a frenzy, scrambling over each other, desperate to claim even a trace of his essence and flesh.
Among them, the “Qi Yue’an” who, despite lacking the lower part of one leg, was otherwise almost complete, advanced with terrifying speed. She brutally tore aside several of her kin who obstructed her path, then seized Lin Xiao’s ankle, which he instinctively tried to withdraw. Like a venomous snake coiling around its prey, she began to slowly ascend his body.
Gaznng at her relatively familiar form, Lin Xiao’s resolve to resist faltered for a crucial moment. This subtle crack in his defenses allowed her to successfully seize the most advantageous position.
She straddled Lin Xiao’s waist, and upon that face, undeniably Qi Yue’an’s, bloomed a chilling, morbid flush, a testament to her grotesque desire.
Supporting herself with one hand, she used the other to caress her own flushed cheek, her eyes fixed on him with obsessive adoration.
“Xiao… You’re not running anymore, are you… That’s wonderful…”
Her voice was cloyingly, falsely sweet.
“I want to be with Xiao… for a lifetime… No, a lifetime is far too brief. I want forever… forever…”
Lin Xiao struggled, only to discover, to his horror, that his entire body was bound by invisible shackles. Her strength was unnaturally immense, and an unseen, irresistible gravity pinned him immovably to the ground.
As if sensing his struggle, the sweet smile on her face instantly dissolved, replaced by a chilling shadow. She extended a hand, her icy fingers clamping down on his chin, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“Why, Xiao…?”
Her voice was laced with a sob, and blood-red tears continuously overflowed from her blackened eye sockets.
“You were the one who chained me to your side, so why do you now wish to flee from me?”
Lin Xiao recognized the tattered garment she wore as the very nightgown Qi Yue’an had frequently donned during her imprisonment in Lixing Palace. He had always found solace in its proximity, but this time, the familiar comfort was utterly absent.
“Why?”
She pressed him, her voice escalating into hysteria.
“Why, why, why, why, why—!!!”
Her voice abruptly pitched higher, growing sharp and frenzied, her distorted expression a grotesque fusion of agony and madness.
“…It’s alright, Xiao. We can start now… Be with me… forever…”
Ultimately, all her agitation subsided, settling back into that spine-chilling, morbid attachment.
The other fragments surrounding them echoed her, beginning to repeat the same delirious murmurs. They pressed in, and with each inch of proximity, the mental corruption intensified exponentially.
They tore at his clothes, licked his wounds, like hyenas squabbling over carrion, frantically desperate to possess every single thing connected to him.
The “she” straddling him leaned down, beginning to gently strip away his clothes with an almost reverent, chillingly deliberate grace.
Under the crushing weight of such potent mental interference, even the excruciating pain of his limbs being torn became a distant, blurred sensation. He could only watch, utterly helpless, as it all unfolded.
“Xiao… It’s time for the next step, you know…”
She gazed at the utterly helpless Lin Xiao with a perverse infatuation, her voice laced with an eerie seduction. Her fingers traced a path along his thigh, and then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she began to unfasten the front of her own garment.
But… what was exposed beneath the garment was not the expected pale skin, but a hideous, bloody void, its position perfectly matching where the “Nail of Judgment” had pierced her, taking her life.
Lin Xiao’s pupils abruptly constricted, his scattered consciousness suddenly galvanizing under the intense shock. He mustered every ounce of his remaining strength, violently pushing the “she” off him.
Thrown abruptly to the ground, the rejected “she” first displayed disbelieving astonishment, which swiftly morphed into a raging fury.
Her lips tore open at the corners, stretching all the way to her ears, revealing rows of densely packed, gleaming fangs.
“Xiao… You don’t like it this way?” Her voice turned hoarse and dangerous. “Fine, then let us… merge completely… in a different manner!”
She lunged at him again, her movements brutal and direct, biting savagely into Lin Xiao’s blocking arm, tearing it clean off. She then began to chew on the severed limb, producing a sound that set his teeth on edge.
“Ah… The taste… It’s so bitter…”
She licked the blood from his body, her eyes growing even more deranged.
“But it’s alright… Soon… we’ll be together forever…”
Freed from her “suppression,” the other monsters also cast aside all restraint, swarming him en masse.
The delayed pain, like a belated tsunami, swept through his nerves.
He distinctly felt that they were tearing apart and devouring not merely this body, a mere projection of his consciousness, but the very essence of his soul.
A grotesque and despairing thought surfaced in his mind:
He had shattered Qi Yue’an’s soul into countless fragments, so now, they too must tear him into countless pieces to “fairly” possess him forever.
“Perhaps… this is the end I deserve?”
His consciousness began to blur under the agony and erosion. Lin Xiao surrendered his resistance.
“My greed and arrogance… turned her into this… Perhaps being devoured by her like this… is also a kind of…”
However, just as his consciousness was about to completely dissipate,
“Boom!”
A cluster of deep, dark purple flames erupted beside him without warning!
The flames, possessing a cold, searing heat, instantly ignited several of the “Qi Yue’ans” who were at the forefront.
Amidst their shrill, inhuman wails, they dissolved into wisps of white mist, yet did not disperse. Instead, as if drawn by an unseen force, they converged towards a figure standing to Lin Xiao’s right.
He struggled to lift his heavy eyelids, his gaze falling upon that direction.
Standing there was a “Qi Yue’an.”
In her hand, she wielded the familiar, golden, magic-infused rapier. Unlike all the other frantic, suffering, or incomplete fragments around her, her body was almost entirely whole, and her posture was calm to the point of elegance.
However, what most deeply unsettled Lin Xiao were her eyes.
They were completely vacant silver irises, devoid of pain, devoid of resentment, devoid of attachment, utterly devoid of even the slightest emotional fluctuation.
They were like two perfectly polished mirrors, reflecting only the external world, yet within, they held an absolute, cold emptiness.
She simply, almost mechanically, swung her sword. Deep purple flames of envy flowed with her blade, incinerating every approaching “self” with precise efficiency.
There was no hesitation, no mercy, as if she were merely clearing away a pile of useless, noisy data.
This was less a battle and more a one-sided slaughter. All the specters shattered beneath her blade, turning into white mist to fill her hollow core. After she kicked down and pierced the last “Qi Yue’an,” her vacant gaze turned towards him.