Lordi's brow furrowed as he fled desperately from the crowd, his voice sharp with urgency.
"Senior Brother Blackthorn, snap out of it!" he shouted over his shoulder, the words tearing from his throat in ragged desperation. "There's definitely something wrong with that so-called Senior Brother Krogh Hanz! He's not what he seems—he's a fraud, a monster wearing human skin! Can't you see it? He's using you!" His plea was met with only enraged snarls, his words dissolving into the night like smoke. They couldn't hear him. Or worse—they wouldn't.
"Fucking nonsense!" Before Garrick could reply, a tattooed female cultivator at his side spat venomously. Her face was twisted in righteous fury, her dark eyes gleaming with zealous conviction.
"Senior Brother Hanz is benevolent and righteous," the lady hissed, her voice trembling with fervor. "He's kind-hearted and warm-hearted—the only one shielding us from the estate's perils! He's the only true ally, the only true master here!"
Lordi didn't recognize her, but something about her—the intricate tattoos snaking up her arms, the sharp angles of her face—reminded him of that tattooed male cultivator from the Dominator Squad who had barred Thorn Squad's path earlier.
Was she his sister? His lover?
It didn't matter. What mattered was the madness in her eyes, the way she spoke of Hanz as if he were a saint rather than the architect of their ruin.
"How dare you spurn his kindness, twisting truth with lies?" the female cultivator snarled, her voice rising in fury. "I bet you're the one bewitched—by the Ju-On's malice! It's clouded your mind!"
Her rebuke was a lash against his sanity, each word meant to break him, to make him doubt. But as she spoke, something else happened—something far worse.
A soft, convincing whisper curled into Lordi's ears—gentle, warm, loving.
"Stop running, Junior Brother..." It was a murmur, tender as a mother's embrace, sweet as a lover's sigh. The sound wrapped around him, seeping into his bones, coaxing, persuading. "Join us! The Ju-On has clouded your mind..."
The kindness in the tone was real—so real it made his chest ache. It spoke to him like a caretaker soothing a frightened child, like an elder sister guiding a lost sibling home. And yet—
Why did it make his skin crawl?
"Junior Brother, you promised..." The reminder was patient, sorrowful, as if his defiance pained the speaker. The air grew thick, cloying, the scent of damp earth and rotting leaves pressing in around him.
"Obey him, would you?..." The whisper was a caress, a plea, as if denying it would break its heart.
As Lordi ran desperately, his mind went into a daze for a second.
The world around him blurred at the edges, the trees melting into shadowy smears as his thoughts turned sluggish, thick like syrup. The whispers—those damned whispers—coiled around his mind, their honeyed words seeping into the cracks of his resolve.
"Come back, Junior Brother. Why run away?" they murmured, so gentle, so reasonable. "Wouldn't it be easier to stop? To let go?"
For a heartbeat, the terror ebbed. The exhaustion weighed heavier than the fear.
Maybe... maybe they were right. Maybe he was the one mistaken.
The thought slithered through him, cold and slick, and for a single, horrifying moment—
Lordi almost believed it. His mind wavered, a fog of compulsion creeping in as he found the whisper's words making sense.
It would be so simple. To turn back. To surrender. To let Garrick and the others guide him, comfort him, save him from whatever madness had taken root in his skull. The voice speaking to him wasn't cruel—it was kind. It cared. It understood. And that was the worst part. Because the more it spoke, the harder it became to remember why he was running at all.
Legs slowed, breath hitched. The forest around Lordi seemed to sigh in relief, as if the very earth itself wanted him to stop resisting.
Lordi's pulse hammered, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. The voice was so reasonable, so kind—so why did his every instinct scream? Why did he feel like if he listened, even for a second, he would never be himself again?
Something deep inside him writhed at the thought. A primal, animal part of his brain that knew—knew—that this was a trap. That the sweetness was poison. That the moment he gave in, he would be gone, just like the others. His fingers twitched. His jaw clenched. And then—
He quickly bit the tip of his tongue hard, blood immediately spilling into his mouth.
The coppery tang exploded across his senses, the pain sharp and real, cutting through the fog like a blade. His vision snapped back into focus. His knees locked.
No. No.No!
He wouldn't fall for this. He couldn't. The whispers recoiled, their warmth flickering into something colder, something angry, but it was too late—he was awake now.
The rusty metal taste and the sharp pain dragged him back to wakefulness, anchoring him to clarity. His eyes were stern. His eyes hardened with resolve.
Fucking! Hell!
He hadn't anticipated the Ju-On's evil bewitchment influence persisting beyond the Ancestral Shrine.
But of course it did. The realization crashed over him like a wave of ice water. This wasn't just some localized curse—it was spreading. Like a sickness. Like a rot. And it had already sunk its claws into the others so deep that they couldn't even see it.
Then that made sense.
Memories of their first day in the cherry blossom grove flooded back—when they had waited outside the mountain estate, before they'd even stepped foot inside. The Ju-On had done the same trick then. Even Garrick Blackthorn, a peak Ninth Layer cultivator, had stumbled out from the Blood Puppet Floats in a daze, ensnared by the same malevolent force.
Lordi's stomach twisted. If Garrick hadn't been able to resist it back then, what hope did he have now?
Lordi's face darkened as he raced forward unstopping, his mind churning for a strategy to counter the relentless pursuit and the Ju-On's psychic assault.
There had to be a way. There had to. He couldn't fight them all—not like this. Not when every shadow seemed to whisper, when every breath he took felt like it dragged the curse deeper into his lungs.
Garrick pressed on, his voice earnest yet hollow.
"Junior Brother," the Thorn Squad captain called, his tone dripping with warmth, "turn back while you can. A repentant sinner is worth more than a mountain of Spirit $tones."
The words were smooth, practiced, as if he'd said them a thousand times before. "I know well this isn't you. Now that you're saying these things, it means you've been bewitched by the Ju-On. The evil being's lies have swayed you."
A pause. A sigh. "Come with us to Senior Brother Krogh Hanz—he'll free you from its grasp. He'll dispel the curse for you. And then... you'll see how wrong you were."
It was a plea. A promise. It sounded convincing.
These people had been deeply bewitched by the evil Ju-On—so deep that they couldn't even entertain a single negative thought about Krogh Hanz.
Lordi's teeth ground together. There was no reasoning with them. No bargaining. They were gone. And if he didn't get out of here, he would be too.
Realizing their enchantment was too deep to break with words, Lordi weighed his odds in his mind.
He couldn't explain. They wouldn't listen. And even if they did, the Ju-On was still out there, lurking in the dark, waiting for the slightest slip in his focus to sink its claws back into his skull.
Flee. Just flee.
As Lordi vaulted over a city wall, Garrick Blackthorn and the other pursuers followed closely behind.
Most poured through the moon gate on the city wall, their movements synchronized, their faces blank. But a few—an unlucky few—were caught in the crowd, shoved aside in the chaos. Their bodies slammed into the stone with sickening thuds.
If it had been the wall of the secular world, it would not have been able to withstand a cultivator's collision.
But the Hanz Estate was different.
Unlike mortal barriers, the Hanz Estate's city walls, crafted for a near-Golden Realm Core Formation Stage ancestor cultivator, were fortified with protective runes.
The stone shouldn't have held. But it did.
Although this haunted estate had suffered from neglect, the undamaged runes still worked.
And as those few cultivators crashed into the wall—
The runes flared slightly, and the few cultivators were immediately bounced back, falling to the ground.
They collapsed in a daze, limbs splayed, their bodies twitching as if the impact had knocked the very will to fight out of them. For now, at least, they were out of the chase.
Upon seeing this, Garrick and the others roared with fury, their voices twisting into something monstrous, something inhuman.
"Lordi Payne caused the death of Junior Brother Brody and the others!" The accusation rang through the mountain like a blade, raw and guttural. "Damn you, Payne—you're simply insane! Not only did you betray Senior Brother Krogh Hanz, but you slaughtered your own sect comrades! You deserve a miserable death a thousand times over!"
What. The. Fuck?
They're... dead?
The words hit Lordi like a physical blow, his stomach lurching. He'd been too focused on survival, too desperate to put distance between himself and his pursuers, to even notice the fallen cultivators behind him. But now, with Garrick's enraged howls ringing in his ears, the dread of the situation crashed down on him.
He hadn't laid a finger on them. He'd been running, not fighting. But the way Garrick screamed it—the way the others echoed his fury—made it sound like he was the one who'd turned the city wall into a death trap. Like he had murdered their own.
With his exquisite finesse Footwork Art, Lordi quickly looped back near the city wall, Garrick Blackthorn and the others dashing after him in a frenzy.
And there, sprawled on the ground, were the fallen cultivators—their bodies stiff, their faces locked in unnatural, wooden expressions. But they weren't dead. Not yet. Their limbs twitched erratically, feet kicking at the air as if still trying to run, fingers clawing at the dirt like they were dragging themselves forward.
Yet Garrick and the others turned a blind eye to them.
They shouted about vengeance, about justice—
"We'll avenge you!"
"Die criminal!"
—even as they ran over their own comrades, boots slamming down on skulls, on ribs, on outstretched hands. The sound of bones cracking underfoot was sickening, wet and sharp at the same time.
Originally, those fallen cultivators had still been alive—barely, but alive.
Now?
Now they weren't moving.
Now their chests barely rose.
Now their mouths hung open, blood trickling from lips that would never speak again.
Seeing this, Lordi's heart skipped a beat.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck—
This wasn't just mind control. This was something worse. They weren't just puppets—they were sanity broken, their perception of reality warped so completely that they couldn't even see what they were doing.
And in that moment, a terrible, desperate idea sparked in Lordi's mind.
Halting abruptly, Lordi braced himself as Garrick's palm strike came at him with killing intent.
He could have dodged. Could have twisted away, could have kept running.
But he didn't.
Instead, he let the blow land.
BANG!
The impact was like a cannon blast to his chest. Pain exploded through him, white-hot and blinding, as Garrick's monstrous strength launched him backward. His ribs screamed. His vision blurred. For a single, weightless second, he was airborne—
—and then the ground rushed up to meet him.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The world became a brutal, spinning mess of pain.
He hit the slope hard, his body bouncing off jagged rocks, tumbling over roots, dirt and leaves scraping his skin raw. The forest whirled around him—sky, ground, sky again—until finally, finally, his body slammed into the gnarled trunk of an ancient pine.
Agony lanced through him. His ribs were on fire. His lungs refused to work. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and thick.
And above him, the footsteps grew closer.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Deliberate. Unhurried.
They knew he was done. They knew he couldn't run anymore.
Ribs aflame, breath ragged, Lordi knew he had only one chance left. With a final, shuddering gasp, he activated the Withered Heart Technique.
A chilling stillness seized him. His heartbeat stopped. His breath vanished. His skin paled to the color of a week-old corpse, his limbs stiffening like dried branches. Every trace of warmth, of life, of existence drained away in an instant.
"This is the miserable fate of those who slander Senior Brother Hanz and harm our sect comrades," Garrick declared, his voice dripping with venomous satisfaction as he landed beside Lordi's motionless form. His neck twisted sharply to the side with a sickening crack, the movement too fluid, too unnatural, as if his bones were no longer bound by human limitations.
The Thorn Squad captain's grin stretched impossibly wide, splitting his face like a grotesque wound, teeth glinting like polished tombstones in the dim mountain light. Beside him, another disciple raised trembling arms in worship, his grayish skin stretched taut over protruding bones, fingers spasming open and closed like the legs of a dying insect.
The gathered crowd of enthralled cultivators stared down at Lordi's "corpse" with hollow-eyed contempt, their expressions twisted into identical masks of cold disdain. "Alright, the traitor's dead," one muttered, voice flat and emotionless. "Let's go back and report to Senior Brother Hanz." Their words carried no triumph, no relief—just the empty obedience of puppets whose strings had been pulled too tight.
As they turned away, the whispers that had plagued Lordi's mind for so long finally began to fade, their malice receding like venom fog under morning breeze. The Ju-On's grip on him seemed loosened.
Because he had chosen his death position carefully, Lordi avoided being trampled as the group dispersed. He watched through slitted eyes as they shambled away, their movements jerky and disjointed, like marionettes controlled by an unskilled hand. Their limbs twitched at wrong angles, feet dragging through dirt as if weighted down by invisible chains. Some lurched sideways, spines bending in ways that should have been impossible, while others staggered forward only to freeze mid-step, swaying unnaturally in the stagnant air.
Worried that the Ju-On might order Garrick and the others to double back, Lordi didn't dare cancel the Withered Heart Technique yet. His body remained locked in deathlike stillness, his lungs refusing to draw breath, his heart stubbornly silent. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to run—but he forced himself to wait. To endure.
"Damn," he thought, the words sharp and furious in his mind. "No wonder the Ju-On's bewitchment is so terrifying... and yet it still failed to deceive the Sword of Red Run."
The realization struck him like a physical blow.
The enthralled cultivators weren't just controlled—they were diminished. Their minds had been hollowed out, their intelligence reduced to something animal like, sluggish. They hadn't even thought to check his pulse, to drive a blade through his heart to ensure he was truly dead. They hadn't rifled through his belongings, hadn't done anything but stare with those empty, doll-like eyes before shuffling away.
Even that devil sword—wild and bloodthirsty as it was—had been smarter than this.
Calculating the time, Lordi finally deemed it safe to move. He prepared to cancel the Withered Heart Technique, his muscles tensing for the rush of returning sensation—
Then his gaze froze.
The crimson threads of malice that had bound him—proof of Krogh Hanz's control—were snapping.
One by one, the ghostly filaments unraveled, their frayed ends dissolving into the air like smoke.
PS:
Quick fun question for you: try to guess who will be the MC of the upcoming NTR-themed side story? Drop your theories in the comments! Whoever guesses right gets to pick a fetish for me to include—so make it fun! 😉
Freshly baked chapter with 2600+ words is served just for you. Dive in! ❤️