r perfected roles—the Empress, the Sadistic Minister, the Poison Sovereign, and the Hucow—the Ancestor's gaze turned to his secondary tier of assets: the four captured heroines, now elevated to Secondary Concubines. They were valuable spoils of war, but raw potential was useless without refinement. Each would be honed into a specialized tool, their unique talents perverted to serve the Eternal Dynasty.
Bai Wei: The Blade of Subjugation
Bai Wei's spirit had been the hardest to break. Her pride as a sword cultivator was a deep-rooted weed. The Ancestor did not try to pull it out; he poisoned it.
He assigned her not to a drillmaster, but to Chu Ling, his Sadistic Minister. Her training was not in swordsmanship, but in the application of pain through the medium of the blade.
Chu Ling, a meticulous and cruel teacher, had Bai Wei practice her precise, elegant forms on bound prisoners. A flick of the wrist was no longer to sever a head, but to precisely slice a tendon, ensuring maximum, lasting disability. A thrust was not to pierce the heart, but to nick the spine at a specific vertebra, inducing permanent paralysis without death.
"Your sword is not a weapon of war," Chu Ling would hiss, her voice like silk over glass. "It is a scalpel for social surgery. You do not kill dissent; you amputate its ability to function."
Bai Wei's once-proud sword intent, which sought to cleave the heavens, was forced inward. It became a cold, focused thing of exacting cruelty. She learned to use the flat of her blade to deliver vibrations that shattered bone from within, or to channel her qi into a target's meridians, creating agonizing, chronic internal injuries.
The Ancestor watched her first deployment: a merchant guild was resisting new tariffs. Bai Wei did not kill a single person. She visited the guild leaders' homes at night. The next morning, one found his sword arm hanging useless, the tendons severed. Another could no longer speak, his vocal cords precisely nicked. A third was left with a permanent, agonizing tremor in his writing hand.
The resistance collapsed. The message was clear: defiance would not be met with death, but with the loss of what made you you.
[Asset 'Bai Wei': Sword Intent successfully corrupted into 'Surgical Dread'.]
[Proficiency: Master of Maiming & Non-Lethal Pacification.] [New Designation: 'The Imperial Lame-Maker'.]
Lin Xian'er: The Apothecary of Atrocity
The gentle healer's spirit was broken by her forced service to the Tyrant child. The Ancestor now sought to break her art. He gave her to Wang Xia, the Poison Sovereign, as an apprentice.
Lin Xian'er's vast knowledge of the body's rhythms and her ability to nurture life were systematically inverted. Wang Xia, with her serene, deadly smile, taught her to identify not the points that healed, but the points that harmonized with toxins.
She learned to brew medicines that healed wounds but created addictive dependencies on the regime that provided them. She developed poultices that soothed surface burns but caused internal organs to slowly necrotize. Her most horrific creation, under Wang Xia's guidance, was a "Youth Elixir" that truly rejuvenated the skin and energy of the drinker… by leaching the life-force from their own future, condemning them to a sudden, rapid, and total aging death within a decade.
Her healing touch became a thing of dread. To be treated by Lin Xian'er was to know you would survive, but to fear what you would become in the process.
[Asset 'Lin Xian'er': Healing Arts successfully inverted into 'Malignant Mercy'.]
[Proficiency: Master of Bio-Alchemical Warfare & Iatrogenic (physician-induced) Harm.] [New Designation: 'The Hospitaller of Harrow'.]
Luo Ying: The Keeper of the Panopticon
Luo Ying's spatial affinity made her the perfect candidate for a different kind of training. The Ancestor himself took charge of her refinement. He did not torture her; he showed her the futility of her gift.
He demonstrated how he could nullify her spatial tears with a thought, how the Citadel's defenses were built to repel masters far beyond her. He then offered her a choice: utter irrelevance, or to become the architect of his omniscience.
He had her weave a new layer into the Citadel's spatial matrix. She was forced to create thousands of microscopic, undetectable spatial "eyes" throughout the harem, the gardens, and the main halls. She became the operator of a perfect panopticon—a prison where the inmates could never know if they were being watched, but always had to assume they were.
Her duty was to observe. To report any whisper of dissent, any fleeting look of rebellion, any secret meeting. She could no longer use her power to escape; she could only use it to ensure no one else ever could.
The constant, violating surveillance broke her in a way torture could not. She became a ghost in the machine, her own humanity eroded by the endless, intimate violation of watching others.
[Asset 'Luo Ying': Spatial Affinity successfully perverted into 'Omniscient Surveillance'.]
[Proficiency: Master of Spatial Espionage & Psychological Control via Perceived Omniscience.] [New Designation: 'The All-Seeing Eye'.]
Elder Sister Lian: The Weaver of Delusions
Lian's connection to lunar energy and ancient rites made her susceptible to more subtle manipulations. The Ancestor tasked her not with causing physical harm, but with eroding reality itself.
Using artifacts from the plundered Su Clan treasury, he had her begin weaving complex, area-wide illusion arrays. But these were not mere mirages. They were "Reality Hushes."
One array, cast over the servants' quarters, fostered a pervasive, low-grade anxiety and forgetfulness, preventing them from organizing or even remembering their grievances clearly. Another, over the gardens where the captured heroines walked, subtly amplified feelings of isolation and despair, poisoning their few moments of peace.
Her most important task was maintaining the array around Niu's stable. This illusion did not hide anything; it reinforced Niu's bovine serenity, gently smoothing over any flicker of human memory or distress, ensuring her continued placid productivity.
Lian's gentle nature was turned into a weapon against the mind. She became a poisoner of peace, a weaver of quiet desperation, her lunar energies used to create a perpetual, twilight gloom over the hearts of the captives.
[Asset 'Lian': Lunar Affinity successfully corrupted into 'Ambient Psy-Ops'.]
[Proficiency: Master of Mass Illusion & Psychological Warfare.] [New Designation: 'The Mistress of Whispers' (Mental).]
The Ancestor reviewed the reports from the System. His collection was complete. Every woman, from wife to concubine, had been refined into a perfect, specialized instrument. The harem was no longer just a place of pleasure and breeding; it was the engine room of the Dynasty's control, a symphony of terror where every note—from the scream of the tortured to the silent tear of the hopeless—was composed by him.
The garden was not just growing; it was now a perfectly calibrated ecosystem, and he was its god.