Real one raised her trembling hands to cover her eyes, anything, anything to stop the nightmare from crawling deeper into her skull, but before her fingers even touched her face, a cold arm snaked around her waist.
A wet tongue dragged slowly up her cheek.
The demoness's laughter vibrated directly against her spine, low and serpentine.
"Just a little bit more," the demoness whispered, breath like frost and rot. "You're almost mine. Completely."
Her grip tightened, the fingers bending at impossible angles as if each joint had its own will. Her nails pressed into the real one's skin, cold enough to burn. The real one gasped and tried to pull away, but her legs gave out again, every step sinking as though the ground was soft flesh, absorbing her strength.
"Why are you doing this? Why are you showing me this kind of illusion?" she cried, voice cracking. "What do you want from me? Stop, please, stop it! I don't want to see anymore—"
"Oh?" The demoness tilted her head, mockingly innocent. "Breaking so soon? How disappointing. What happened to your confidence? That proud willpower you used to suppress me?" Her voice split into many, whispers, groans, giggles, layering on top of each other like a chorus of mockery. "What about your fate? What about that destiny you clung to like a lifeline? But if you give me your body now… I might consider— hmmm...."
The voices multiplied until they became a buzzing swarm in her skull.
The real one collapsed to her knees, clutching her head with both hands as if trying to hold her brain inside. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Her vision blurred, smeared like wet ink. Every inhale tasted metallic, like rusted chains grinding against her throat.
Then the illusion shifted again.
A woman stumbled in, wearing her bridal dress, the silk soaked and stained until it resembled wilted flesh. Her veil hung crooked, torn at the edges. In her hands, she carried the limp body of a young man, head balanced on her palm like an offering plate. The boy's neck was twisted unnaturally. His eyes half-open, staring at shock. He tried to say something but nothing went to her ears.
The real one's stomach lurched.
Her uncle walked in behind the bride, completely naked, his skin etched with symbols that crawled like living things. His eyes burned with feverish delight as he seized the unconscious boy.
"Well done," he said to the bride. "Your duty is finished. Hide now. Do not appear again unless commanded. You know why."
The bride nodded, veil rustling like dead leaves. "I know."
The real one's voice broke into a thousand trembling pieces because understanding what future was holding. "I'm begging you… please stop this part… I don't want— I can't anymore." Demonic version said "then give it to me." Real one said "but Stop it first." Demoness snapped her finger and all things rotated and met into a black place, where real one and demonic version were standing face to face. On them a light fell, as demonic version was moving towards her light on her was illuminated greatly and on real one, it was coming down, as her soul breaking like earth, becoming nothing but dust and being flown away. But demoness one captured her and a ball from it. She laughed wholeheartedly but a sly grin bloomed all over her face.
The demoness threw her head back and laughed. "Humans are truly fragile creatures. Always choosing before understanding consequences. And for those consequences, the number of lives that had to burn."
She again called her back in real soul form, leaned down, lips brushing the shell of the real one's ear. "But I must say, you lived quite a life. Puppet from the beginning, and now you want freedom? Adorable. Forget freedom. You'll be my puppet from now on." Real one whispered in a voice emptied of everything "What do you want now? I already gave my body to you. You can do anything to my body. I've sinned. I've hurt the people I cherished. The ones I loved. I will spend my life repenting… even if I become a demon."
"Aahh…" the demoness breathed, triumphant. "There it is. The surrender. It came at last." She wrapped her arms fully around the real one, merging with her shadow."I win. I finally win."
"But…" The demoness's grin widened until it split slightly at the corners. "Since you surrendered so beautifully, I will reward you because there is still some reluctance to unwillingness in your will. So, I will reward you by granting you to watch everything from now on. Every last moment. Even though your body is now mine."
"No—no!" The real one shook uncontrollably. "You said, you said you wouldn't show me! You said—"
"Ha hahahaha... Promise?" The demoness asked with a tilted smile. "When did I make a promise, I don't remember? " She pressed a claw to the real one's lips. "You willed your body to me. And now—this body is mine. Your suffering, however… is still yours. Hmmm... well, I will make it quick."
The world came back again in reverse way from that black place to whole.
Silk walls tore like skin. The ceiling stretched into a spiralling vortex of darkness. The ground pulsed with a heartbeat too slow, too heavy. The corpses flickered like broken lanterns in the storm of illusion.
"Now," the demoness said, raising a curtain of veins and shadow."Let's watch the last piece. Before the curtain falls."
......
Outside, the last remnants of that collapsing world were being devoured. The darkness, thick like an ancient tar, crept along the shredded horizon and swallowed what remained of colour. The "sky" — if it could still be called that, shuddered like stretched hide before tearing apart in slow, painful strips. At the very end, even the crystalline illusion that once resembled scenery curled inward like burnt paper and vanished.
What remained… was the mountain. A black mountain, rising like a corpse's spine from the void. It was visible only because the dying blue sun cast its thinning, sickly light on its edges. But even that sun began to rot. A creeping shadow — a mold-like blackness — slowly crawled over its surface. Its glow dimmed, then flickered, then spasmed like an eye trying not to close forever.
The blue sun, far above, was already worse. Its surface cracked like drying flesh. Each crack leaked a soft tar, as if the sky itself was bleeding corruption. The sunlight warped, bending in unnatural angles, staining the mountain and the woman standing upon it.
That woman, the real one, trembled. Half her body was still corrupted, that pulsing demonic mass of tendrils and living shadow. But then… unbelievably… a second woman began to form from the corrupted half. A face first. Then an arm. Then the outline of a spine arching backward unnaturally, as though grown from a wound. She realized, with horror, that the corruption was shaping another version of herself. A perfect reflection… except for the smile carved a little too wide, the posture a little too hungry, the eyes a little too alive.
Inside her eternal dream, the real her stood at the very corner of that room, a room she once believed no longer existed. The air reeked of rot-sweet incense, sweat, and the warm metallic scent of blood that had dried long ago but never truly left. She found herself unable to breathe properly every inhale scratching her lungs like breathing in broken shells.
Her dream-self stood near the gate, stiff, frozen, forced to watch.
Her mother, almost unrecognizable, crawled across the room. Sweat dripped from her skin, her limbs trembling, her eyes empty yet blazing with a feral, mindless hunger. Her sanity had already drowned beneath layers of corruption, desire, fear… and something much worse.
Behind her, attendants were sprawled on the bed. Some twitching. Some unmoving. Some… already gone. Even from someone blood came out. No one cared. No one stopped. No one even blinked.
"Stop… stop it…" the real one whispered, her voice cracking. "Don't show me this again… please…"
Her demoness stood behind her. Her breath warm with a cold smile.
"Why not? This is the last piece you refuse to accept. The last lock on your heart and you will be mine."
In the centre of the room, her uncle held a young man by the hair. The boy's eyes were barely conscious, half-alive, his body trembling like paper beneath storm winds. Her mother stumbled toward him with grotesque determination, fed him something by her mouth. The boy's veins bulged. Lines, sharp, bright, unnatural, crawled across his skin like living cracks. Then his flesh began to split, line by line, turning his body into a strange collapsing pattern. His glowing eyes faded, sinking dimmer… dimmer… gone.
Her uncle's roar shook the room.
"I GOT ANOTHER ONE!"
His laugh was monstrous, throaty, ecstatic, wild, shaking the rafters.
Her parents… the attendants… the bodies…Everything blurred into grotesque shapes moving without purpose or sanity.
Her mother and that man started to do adultery and before it was about to end with a fever pitch—
Her uncle lifted his hand. A quick horizontal sweep. Two heads spinning upward like discarded dolls. Two bodies still twitching, pushed by momentum, before freezing.
But Blood didn't fall. Not a single drop.
Her uncle placed a rectangular frame, a ding on ground. Beneath it that donkey's head mean that woman's husband. That donkey's eyes lit up as her uncle made some inaudible sounds.
The circle ignited beneath. Ten lines shot outward like ribs. Symbols, letters but twisted, malformed, descended from the air one by one on those lines and circle.
On the ceiling, an identical structure mirrored it. Ten lines…A hovering ding…
The real one collapsed to her knees.
"What is this? What madness is this? What kind of ritual is this?"
Her demoness leaned close.
"This is the end. Don't you want to know what happened after you closed your eyes?"
She said nothing after that...
Suddenly the door opened and another man entered there with a sly, knowing grin.
........
A man stepped in, wearing a cap too large for his shrunken head, its shadow hiding half his face. His grin stretched wider with every step, as though his mouth was being peeled open from the inside. A robe of alchemist...
Her uncle tossed something to him. Something small… curled… trembling. An eight-month-old fetus woman.
He caught it casually. As if handling a fruit. "Enjoy," her uncle said casually preparing for ritual.
The man turned toward the bed. The real one squeezed her eyes shut. But the demoness whispered behind her ear:
"Don't you dare look away. You made this memory by standing there. I have to seal it for this moment. But you know everything and you lied to yourself. So, now watch."
The man and the woman ended up in adultery and the room sank further into depravity.
Time blurred.
After what felt like an eternity of muffled breaths, wet sounds, groans, and whispers that she wished she could unhear, the scene changed again.
They all gathered. Around that obscene circle.
The men and women clung to each other, heads tilted back, eyes blank like puppets with cut strings. Drool slid down their chins. Their chests rose and fell in a hollow rhythm.
Real one whispered: "Why… why… why are you showing me this… what is this now … what is going to happen…"
The demoness leaned down, cheek brushing hers, voice velvet-coated poison.
"See how one little choice of yours… one tiny moment at the age of six… shaped their hell? See how weak your mind was? How dense your mind was? I protected your fragile heart, sealed this irreversible truth. and now I broke that seal."
A long black nail pierced the back of the real one's head.
She convulsed, shrieking.
"A—AHHHH—!"
A bright blue aura burst from her eyes like two blazing rivers carving through darkness. Her mouth trembled open, and for a second she couldn't tell if she was breathing or drowning.
Her eyes snapped open.
The demoness hovered in front of her, smiling like death incarnate.
"Look."
She pointed.
The real body, her body outside the dream, stood frozen with an indescribable expression. Rage. Shame. Horror. Confusion. Fear. All layered like rotting skin.
The ritual had begun.
Her uncle, trembling with a grotesque joy, lifted his blade and cut off all their heads. One by one. Clean. Almost intimate.
The heads floated, not dropping, and settled exactly at the circle's intersection points, each head landing with a soft, wet thud.
The headless bodies swayed. Her uncle tore open the women's bellies. A spray of steam rose like breath from a dead earth. He reached inside and pulled out the placentas — slick, heavy, dripping — and placed them along the marked lines next to each woman's corpse.
"Stop…" the real one whispered, throat raw. "Stop it… stop…"
Her demoness chuckled.
"You haven't even seen the main dish yet."
At her uncle's order, the girl, the dream version of her, stepped forward from the door. Expression empty. Movements mechanical.
She walked to the men's corpses and tied their bodies to the wooden frame hanging from the ceiling. Their limbs dangled like puppets with snapped strings.
Then her uncle grabbed the young man, with a violent swing, threw him into the upper ding and her mother into lower ding. The metal warped but held, trapping him like meat in a cage.
The air thickened.
The rings ignited one after another, ten glowing halos pulsing with a sickly, flesh-pink radiance. It brightened until the room looked carved from raw muscle.
Then the stretching began.
The bodies tied to the top ding started to pull, limbs extending, joints cracking, spine twisting.Their skin stretched thin like wet paper.
From the open wounds, worms oozed out, pale, glistening, wriggling in clusters. Gu worms. They poured toward the dings like rivers of living thread.
Blood from the top bodies flowed downward. Blood from the bottom bodies flowed upward. Energy, essence, life all reversed, all distorted.
A grotesque circulation.
Then the door opened again.
Three men and a woman entered, kneeling before her uncle.
"Father," they said in unison. "Time has come."
He smiled. A smile that split his face wider than skin should allow.
He hacked them too. Their bodies hit the floor in pieces.
He gathered those pieces, smashed them, stuffed them into the dings.
"Hahaha… HAHAHAHAHA! SUCCESS! SUCCESS! Now… the last step!"
His laughter was enough to crack bone.
.........
He moved toward her slowly, almost ceremonially, as if the entire world had narrowed into a single corridor that began at his feet and ended at her trembling body. The room vibrated with a low, droning hum, a sound like insects trapped in the walls, like whispers crawling under the floorboards.
For a moment, something flickered in his eyes. A hesitation. A tremor of recognition.
He saw something wrong inside her gaze but in triumph blinded him. He ignored it.
"This is the last step," he whispered, more to himself than to her. I have completed "The Ten great direction, now gods demons, devils all are nothing but void…"
He raised his hand.
The air bent. Reality cracked like old lacquer. Her chest trembled, a distortion, not a wound, as though invisible threads were being unraveled from within. Something luminous, shaped like a heart yet too abstract to be flesh, was drawn out from her body. No blood. No tearing. Just a quiet, horrifying extraction of essence.
She collapsed, breath shattering, clutching at the ground with trembling fingers.
The "heart" hovered in the air, rotating slowly, shedding unnatural glimmers like falling scales of red frost. Then the other hearts, the essence-shadows of the others he had sacrificed, rose from the ritual circle. They spun around hers, orbiting in shifting rings.
one making Yin. one making Yang. They are connected by rings and rings were made by symbols. Ten rings. Ten directions. Become a void.
He stepped between the twin dings as if walking into a throne woven from nightmares. The air thickened. The ten rings expanded, larger and larger, until their pressure alone fractured the wooden beams of the house. Dust rained down like grey snow.
The house collapsed outward instead of inward, as though being peeled apart by unseen hands.
And then the energy came.
The rings pulsed, and the essences bled into each other, a torrent of red, black, and white light that wove together like strangling vines. The twenty secondary hearts dissolved into shimmering mist and streamed into the man's body. Strange sigils crawled across his skin like living tattoos. Shadowy shapes — Gu spirits, half-worm, half-whisper — burrowed into him like threads vanishing into fabric.
A burning silhouette rose from the "first body," and he inhaled it as though taking in breath itself. A shockwave rippled outward, bending the air like molten glass. Divine veins, impossibly luminous, impossibly unnatural — traced themselves across his skin like rivers of forbidden light.
From other remnants, blood veins organs, eyes, crawled out, weaving around him, forming a cocoon and like an living thing, that was covered by those human fleshes at the last. On the cocoon or egg should be an better to call, twenty eyes, hands, legs, ears and ten noses, mouths were hovered over that egg like it became an living body.
Now, no one know what was inside now, what is happening, what is this madness for, what will be result no one knows.
Suddenly from those a heavenly blood-red pulse erupted upward, piercing the night like a spear. Above, the sky shuddered. Clouds twisted, forming a colossal vortex. Thunder without sound flickered in the void. A bloody tribulation began to gather, lightning shaped like claws, wind that whispered in dead languages, the scent of iron drifting across heaven and earth.
She, the girl who had lost her heart, lay on the broken floor. Her breath was thin but her cultivation kept a thread of life within her.
She crawled. Inch by inch and about to go away from there but her vision faded.
Outside, cultivators rushed toward the collapsing mansion, drawn by the terrifying fluctuation. Footsteps echoed. Shouts blurred. The sky's red glow reflected in their horrified eyes.
And now dream realm glitched.
The ritual room dissolved like melting ink. The corpses, the rings, the man, the cocoon, all stretched and distorted into threads of red silk. The entire dreamscape collapsed into a silk realm, endless and suffocating.
The demoness floated above the tangled crimson expanse.
The real one was bound, wrapped in thousands of tightening red silk strands like another cocoon. The demoness approached her slowly, eyes glowing with cruel serenity. "You've remembered enough," she said softly.
She pressed a seal on that cocoon. The silk tightened again.
The real one sank slowly into the red abyss, swallowed strand by strand.
And the demoness whispered with sly smile:
"Now… sleep deeper."
"Ohh... What an unbelievable story? I did not knot know this much happened in my absent years."
Demoness suddenly felt something was wrong and saw that silk realm remained only as a platform and nearby every area split into two parts one was black and another was white. On the last corner of the silk realm a woman sat on the tiger and playing sad tunes of flute.
To be Continued...