Leaving the somber ruin of the left peak's Ancestral Shrine behind him, Lordi carefully picked his way toward the more secluded rear mountains. He planned to verify whether anything of value remained within that ancient, enigmatic stone well nestled deep within the northern reaches of the rear mountain, a place that had once been the epicenter of the clan's hidden power.
With the terrifying Souleater Kodama, which had once served as a terrifying landmark, now reduced to a lifeless husk at the foot of the shattered peak, his mental map was disrupted. The familiar reference point for locating the Moon Reflection Mirror's whereabouts was gone, forcing him to rely on memory alone.
Lordi's heart had pounded a frantic rhythm with every rustle of leaves, his body tensed half-expecting the ghost tree's lifeless eyes to reopen at any moment. He spent a considerable and nerve-wracking time combing through the thick, aggressively overgrown vegetation, his senses on high alert, before his eyes finally fell upon the well's distinct, moss-eaten stone rim, half-hidden by ferns and creeping vines.
The descent into the garden's subterranean depths felt like a return to a waking, fevered dream, one that was unnervingly vibrant with a profane and unnatural life force that persisted despite the devastation above. Just as it had during his first visit, the air hung thick and cloying in his lungs, heavy with the overpowering, sweet perfume of blood-red roses whose overripe petals drifted down like sanguine tears onto the pond's stagnant surface. He noted that the water lilies were all dead now, their brown, papery husks floating like scabs upon the water, yet the pond itself was preternaturally, eerily still—a dark, perfect mirror reflecting a world that felt fundamentally inverted and wrong.
With his nerves stretched taut, Lordi moved with extreme caution onto the familiar covered wooden walkway, its ancient beams arched overhead like the spine of some great, slumbering beast. To his side, as imposing as ever, loomed the towering screen of flawless, ghost-white marble, its smooth surface etched with the two solemn, unforgiving characters: 'Frigid Sanctum'. Even now, with mastering Krogh's Sword Intent, the stark calligraphy emanated a crushing, palpable tide of sword will, a spiritual pressure that weighed physically on his soul and made the air difficult to breathe.
A sudden, instinctual chill, cold and sharp as a shard of ice, seized the base of his spine, rooting him to the spot for a heart-stopping second. What was happening?!
His eyes darted to the pond's shimmering surface, which seemed to blink—the reflections of the roses and the marble screen shifting for a mere fraction of a second, distorting like a dozen lidless eyes opening and closing in unison before settling back into impossible stillness.
The realization was a bolt of lightning searing through his nerves, leaving behind the acrid smell of pure fear. Someone was watching him.
The thought was a visceral punch to his gut. He had been recklessly careless, forgetting his own hard-learned lesson, neglecting to send in captured beasts to scout this deeply unnatural place. A terrifying question erupted in his mind: Could the victorious evil Ju-On be hiding here, waiting in the one place that still pulsed with power?
He whirled around in a half-crouch, his senses flaring outwards, scanning the oppressively vibrant and silent garden for any sign of movement. Nothing. Only the silent, weeping roses and the watchful, judgmental marble screen. Holding his breath, his heart hammering against his ribs, he began to back away, each step slow, deliberate, and placed with painstaking care, his every primal instinct screaming in unison for immediate retreat. A tense, silent minute passed, each second stretching into an eternity. Nothing stirred. He finally reached the stone entrance, the dark well shaft above now offering a palpable promise of escape and blessed, normal air.
It must have been a false alarm. Just paranoia, he told himself, the gnawing, anxious fear at the edges of his cultivated calm getting the better of him. "I'm being paranoid," he muttered under his breath, the words instantly swallowed by the garden's dense, heavy air, offering no comfort.
But as he bent his knees, his muscles coiling to spring upwards toward safety, a new and terrifying weight settled on him—a tangible, physical heaviness pressing down on his shoulders and back, stiffening his muscles and locking his joints. "Why can't I move?" he grunted through clenched teeth, struggling with immense effort to twist his neck. It was a sensation of utter helplessness he hadn't felt since his earliest, weakest days of cultivation, a feeling of being pinned by an invisible force.
He strained his eyes, looking behind him. Nothing was there.
Drip.
A single, shockingly cold drop of water fell from the darkness above, landing squarely on the crown of his head, its impact halting his intended leap as effectively as a chain of wrought iron.
Slowly, against the screaming protest of every nerve, he raised his head.
A dread as potent as explosive poison flooded his veins, freezing him from the inside out. And it ignited into pure, undiluted horror.
A face loomed mere inches from his own. It was framed by lank, black hair, disheveled and dripping with dampness. The skin was swollen and tinged with the blue-black hue of prolonged suffocation. The eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets, glazed over with an inexplicable, frozen rage that seemed to pierce into his very soul.
It was a man, gruesomely dead, perched right on his shoulders, its weight both physical and spiritual.
Krogh Hanz?!
"Kinson Wexford?!"
"How in the name of all that is damned are you still breathing?!" The air cracks with palpable fury, the very space trembling.
Krogh's mouth hung agape in a soundless, eternal scream. Every single hair on Lordi's body stood erect. For a terrifying, suspended instant, his own heart stuttered and seemed to stop dead in his chest, mimicking the death that sat upon him.
Lordi's hands, stiff and clumsy with a primal terror that bypassed all thought, flew to his own chest, clawing desperately at his robes, his fingers scrambling, fumbling for the life-saving texture of the Hundred-Mile Escape Dao Fulu.
"It is impossible. The Thread of Fate from Ju-On Dao Pillar should binds every soul, grinds every defiance to dust. How did you slip its grasp?!"
"Tell me Kinson Wexford… What manner of abomination are you!"
The voice that slithered from Krogh's swollen, waterlogged throat was a horrifying paradox—both shrill and hoarse, as if his vocal cords had been shredded and his lungs were packed with wet, rotting waterplants that filtered every syllable through decay.
"From the moment your petty group first stepped into my Hanz Hill rear mountain," Krogh wheezed, its bulging, glazed eyes fixed unblinkingly on Lordi with a terrifying intensity, "I sensed the unique thread of your extraordinary nature woven into the mundane fabric of the others."
Lordi could do nothing but listen. An invasive, soul-numbing icy chill was leaching from the dead weight upon his shoulders, a paralyzing cold that seeped through his robes, into his muscles, and deep into his marrow, locking his joints with glacial rigidity and draining his cultivated strength away like a slow, spiritual poison. He was reduced to a spectator, forced to watch in helpless horror as Krogh's pallid, wax-like hand slowly, deliberately delved into the folds of his robes. Krogh's fingers, cold and stiff as frozen gravedirt, brushed with intimate violation against the skin of his chest before closing with finality around his ultimate hope—the smooth, skin-like texture of the Hundred-Mile Escape Talisman.
Locked in the glacial, absolute grip of that overwhelming killing intent, Lordi was utterly frozen, a fly caught in amber. Krogh glanced dismissively at the precious talisman, a flicker of profound mockery passing through the stagnant pools of his dead eyes. "It seems you possess quite a significant background," Krogh observed, its tone dripping with scorn, "to be entrusted with such a potent trump card while languishing at only the late-stage Qi Refining realm. A pity it falls into hands too weak to wield it."
"Unfortunately," Krogh continued, its voice taking on the weight of eons, "I cultivated for a thousand years. I reached the very pinnacle of my previous world, unraveled its deepest mysteries, and expended countless resources to finally ascend to this supposed supreme but demonic plane… only to find all my struggles, all my sacrifices, were ultimately for naught." The confession was laden with a bitterness so profound it seemed to curdle the very air.
A thousand years…?!
The sheer magnitude of those words struck Lordi with a deeper, more philosophical dread than Krogh's physical presence ever could. A thousand years? His own family, the Paynes of Deerspring, proudly traced their lineage back less than three centuries. The math was impossible, monstrous; it defied all known cultivation logic and history, where a true, heaven-shaking genius could shatter the shackles from the Qi Refinement Stage into the Foundation Establishment Stage through the Human Path ascension in a mere two decades. This being was an anomaly that broke the very rules of the world.
"Senior Brother Hanz," Lordi stammered, his voice a thin, desperate reed in the oppressive, tomb-like air, "you...you weren't already dead? Could it really be that the evil Ju-on was the one who prevailed?"
"Hmph! Of course I won!" The sneer twisted Krogh's bloated, suffused features into a fresh nightmare of contempt and rage. "What's truly hateful is that some despicable rat tricked my soul-bound natal flying sword away and stole my life-saving Foundation Stage Spirit True Essence, leaving me critically injured and died at the most crucial moment!" As he spoke, his other hand, moving with a ghastly life of its own, plunged into Lordi's storage belt, emerging with a familiar, deadly gleam—the inert but physically present Sword of Red Run.
The dulled crimson blade point lifted, coming to rest a hair's breadth from Lordi's throat. The cold steel was a kiss of imminent finality, a promise of a swift and unceremonious end.
"So… it was you," Krogh hissed, the stench of the grave and stagnant water washing over Lordi's face in a nauseating wave. "You are the pebble that caused the avalanche, preventing me from winning my Cosmic Path Foundation Establishment. Tell me, you insignificant insect, how did you orchestrate all this?"
Terror, pure and undiluted, turned Lordi's bones to water. His legs trembled violently, entirely beyond his control. The will to fight, to make a desperate, last-ditch stand, was a distant echo from a past life, a concept his petrified body could no longer comprehend or answer.
"System, I...I want to cultivate!" Lordi instinctively cried out in the desperate sanctuary of his mind, invoking his last, strange hope.
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> All-Smart Full-Host Cultivation System™ is at your service!
> One-click-cultivation, worry-free-ascension!
...
But before the system's placid, robotic voice could finish broadcasting its usual, infuriatingly cheerful welcome message, the process was violently interrupted!
~ Ding! *System Notification Chime*
[AllFullOS: Version 1.0.0]
> External attack detected.
> Cultivation session status: TERMINATED
> Host control: RESTORED
> Thank you for using the All-Smart Full-Host Cultivation System™ (AllFullOS v1.0.0)
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Oh Fuck…
The chill that now seeped into Lordi was not from the corpse upon his shoulders, but from a far deeper place—the ice of absolute exposure. His smile, a brittle mask of plaster, felt ready to crack and flake away. Cold sweat traced the line of his spine, a river of dread that had already soaked through his robes.
"Si… Senior Brother Hanz, you misunderstand…" Lordi's words ash in his dry mouth. "Senior Brother, forgive this humble's intrusion. While exploring the esteemed Hanz Clan Ancestral Shrine, I chanced upon this sacred sword of yours. To find such a treasure... diminished... it pains the heart of any cultivator who reveres your legacy. My thought was only to safeguard it. Perhaps, if it pleases you, I could escort it to the Holy Sect, where our elders might deliberate on its fate with the wisdom it deserves. Or, if deemed fitting, it could serve as an inspiration in our outer hall—a testament to past glory for future generations to aspire toward. I offer these thoughts with the utmost humility, seeking only what is proper."
"Look, I'm a big fan. From the very first day I joined the Holy Sect, I heard of your illustrious reputation. I deeply admire your past exploits, your countless acts of slaughter that have brought glory to our Holy Sect. From that time on, I..."
"Enough nonsense."
Krogh's interruption was a glacial scrape of sound. The bulging eyes, clouded with death, seemed to sharpen, pinning Lordi. The gaze was curious.
"Tell me," Krogh whispered, the voice dropping to a murmur directly beside Lordi's ear. "As a disciple of the demonic sect, you've already reached the eighth level of the Qi Refining Realm. Yet why is the karmic burden you carry, the amount of killing you've committed, so small? Almost nonexistent?"
Lordi's breath hitched. His mind, scrambling for any purchase, went utterly blank. This was not a line of inquiry he had ever prepared for.
"You Demonic Sect cultivators," Krogh continued, "should be bloodthirsty by nature. Your path is paved with screams, your gained strength fueled by plunder and death. An outer disciple at your level… their spiritual aura should be thick, viscous, with the resentment of hundreds, even thousands, of slain mortals. It clings. It stains. It whispers."
The shadow leaned in, its swollen cheek brushing against Lordi's temple. The cold was absolute.
"But you? You have not a single killing on your body. Your aura is… clean. Like a newborn. Or a ghost that has never lived at all."
Fuck this cultivation world...
Such perilous beyond measure…
To think that even in death, this demon could retain a fragment of its soul, lying in wait to ensnare the unwary...
"Heh... Senior Brother Hanz, you honor me with such words. We disciples of the Holy Sect strive only to walk the upright path. Our hearts are devoted solely to cultivation and to acting with benevolence... nothing more."
"Bull fucking shit!"
Krogh's form, already a testament to violent death, seemed to dissolve at the edges. His soul body became translucent, like fog held together by malevolence, revealing within a landscape of ruin—twisted bones, organs blackened and burst, gruesome wounds flowering beneath the skin. Black, tarry blood seeped from these internal cataclysms, a slow river of corruption that did not drip but flowed, defying gravity and sense.
"Every word that drips from your forked tongue reeks of the same wicked creed that stains your very soul."
This was no longer a fragment of soul. It was a prison of pure sensation—resentment and pain given physical form, a screaming soul trapped and fermented in a crucible of hatred. The thing raised its head.
The face, bleeding from all seven orifices, filled Lordi's vision. Their noses almost touched. The cruel arrogance was gone. In its place was a pure, annihilating hunger. It truly wanted to kill him.
"You! And your vile Abyss Pit Sect are an abomination upon this world. Your filthy sect—a blight, a canker festering in the shadows. You have severed the last frail thread of your humanity, surrendering willingly to depths of depravity where conscience dares not tread."
A killing intent so dense it felt solid poured from the entity, washing over Lordi. His body did not just grow cold; it felt submerged in the heart of a glacial cave, the cold leaching his will, his strength, his very breath. Every nerve in his body screamed not with pain, but with a profound, primal rage at the violation of this presence.
Fear and death were not approaching; they were already filled the entire courtyard, their hands around his throat.
"The slaughter of the innocent, the enslavement of those who cannot defy you… You have unleashed unspeakable horrors upon the mortal world, and for what? Power? A twisted, hollow dominion built on screams?"
A pungent stench assaulted Lordi. The monster's cracking skull and distended skin emitted a low, eerie sound, like wet stones grinding together. A fresh gout of black blood welled from its nostrils.
And then, as the first hot-cold drop of that corrupt blood splashed onto Lordi's cheek, the monster moved.
"Heaven itself turns its face from your filth."
Its arm rose. The sound was not a single motion, but a series of sickening, granular cracks—snap, crunch, grind—as if the bones within were shattering piece by piece, rearranging themselves into a bludgeon of pure malice.
"The earth cries out for justice."
It didn't strike with speed, but with a terrible, deliberate finality, a piston of damned flesh and shattered bone driving straight down toward the crown of Lordi's head!
"Your reign of terror ends now!"
Lordi has played every card, to no avail. He's doomed here and now.
----
So, here it is — a fresh chapter hot off the keyboard! I really hope you enjoy it.
As for me, I've got some big, exciting (and okay, a little nerve-wracking) job interviews coming up in the next few days. This is a pretty huge deal for me, because it's my first time stepping back into the "looking for a job" world while dancing with cancer. It feels like a whole new adventure, and I'm just hoping luck is on my side for a good offer!
Sending you all the good vibes with finger crossed. Now, go dive into the story! YoungPeasant