Chi Yujun had fallen into thorough mania, like a lion agitated to the extreme, heedlessly hiding in a corner of her own territory, gnawing at the fetters that threatened her freedom.
That damned Sin-Severing Lock could not be taken off once it was put on, and it directly affected the revenge she wanted to carry out against Fang Guyuan—without strength, her wanting to retaliate against him was nothing more than empty talk on paper.
So she endured the pain and gnawed her left wrist just like that, until flesh and blood were a blurred mess.
Good… good!
Only a little short!
Only the last little bit!
As long as her entire wrist separated from her body, wouldn’t that damned binding come off too!
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Fang Guyuan, ah, Fang Guyuan!
You wouldn’t think of it even in your dreams!!!
The corners of the silver-haired woman’s mouth hooked up in a cruel, delighted smile.
She truly wanted too much to see that self-righteous face of Fang Guyuan’s, always so calm, reveal an expression of despair he would regret for life.
That face, when her dad died, had been that cold and merciless, that without a ripple!!
Then!!!
When the people he cared about also died in front of him!!!
What would he be like!
Could he still keep that hypocrite’s mask of remaining unshaken through change?!
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Self-harm certainly brought Chi Yujun enormous pain, yet at the same time it gave her a fierce spiritual excitement and a disordered sense of satisfaction.
Her soul seemed to leave her body, so full it floated, and she even seemed able to stand in the sky from a third person’s view and see, on that ruined, broken husk of a face, the twisted yet happy expression produced by thinking of Fang Guyuan.
—Haah…
It hurts so much I want to shed tears…
No, no!
So good, so satisfying…
Mm-mm, I heard the sound of teeth grinding on bone, a sha-sha rasp, such a wonderful sound…
It sounds so good, a sour, sharp sound, so good so good so good—
Ah, so pleasant my scalp is about to explode, every inch of skin on my whole body is trembling, every pore is rejoicing, every cell is singing praise…
The boundary between pain and pleasure gradually blurred.
Everything before her eyes was neither fog nor smoke.
Chi Yujun sank into supreme happiness and could not pull herself free.
Flower in the mirror, moon in the water…
That’s right, that’s right!
Flowers in the mirror, moon in the water!
All things in the world were empty illusion.
All kinds of cause and effect could be cast aside.
She only needed the pain to be a little deeper, a little clearer, and her consciousness a little more damaged, and it seemed her soul could fly up, drift faintly, and touch an unspeakable wonder of another rank of being…
A voice, also like a thought, more like a wisp of wandering soul, arrived quietly while she was drunkenly enjoying the happiness of fresh blood gurgling from the wound.
It seemed to have existed there from the beginning, and also as if it had never existed, unfathomable, unobservable.
Yet Its approach made Chi Yujun sober a few degrees, or perhaps more manic a few degrees—at least she herself believed she had never been so calm.
That calling from the depths of the soul fascinated her, made her submit, made her almost unable to endure the impulse to prostrate and worship, made her want to stand before it, lift Its empty veil, look once upon the fatally attractive true face beneath, and desecrate it fiercely.
“Ah… you are… the Phoenix Body, aren’t you…”
“As expected, I have felt it… on you there is a towering hatred the same as mine…”
It had no physical form, and no sound, yet this sentence appeared out of thin air in Chi Yujun’s mind, more like direct exchange of consciousness and absolute crushing on the spiritual level.
“Let’s make a deal… I will give you an even more wonderful Destiny Path, even more powerful strength—you can even, after completing the trials of the Destiny Path, switch back and forth between the original Destiny Path and the brand-new Destiny Path, embrace great power more freely, and appreciate the hateable unwillingness and fury on your enemy’s face…”
A whisper that could not distinguish male from female, or perhaps had originally been sexless and mechanical, gently enticed her, as if gripping her hand, leading her toward another bright, level road, the flavor of bewitchment growing more and more obvious—that great road was in fact a dark, lightless abyss of degeneration, yet the silver-haired woman whose eyes had been covered by Its obscure language was completely unaware.
Barefoot, she stepped step by step onto the soft mire.
Her small, exquisite, adorable toes, her delicate, thin, jade-like ankles, her pale, tender, lotus-pink calves gradually sank with her paces into the polluted, degenerating mud.
The contrast of purity and filth was displayed on her to the fullest.
—Until those beautiful legs were completely swallowed to the root, wrapped in chocolate-colored, slick filth, she stopped.
“Then what is the price?”
“One hun and one po of yours.”
“All right.” For revenge, whether it was using her own flesh or her soul, Chi Yujun in this state clearly did not care.
She only wanted Fang Guyuan dead, the faster the better.
That consciousness seemed rather joyful.
“You are very sensible. Even if you did not agree, I would take it anyway. After all, you are ‘my’ ‘vessel.’ You have no room to choose.”
“That’s all?”
The instant the pact was established, Chi Yujun perceived that something had been drawn out of her husk.
It was very light, very faint, yet also very heavy.
She only floated for an instant, but something important hidden in some corner had indeed been lost.
“Mm, I also took some memories that do not belong to the present ‘you.’ The flavor was quite good.”
That cluster of firelight that perhaps existed and perhaps did not trembled once in Chi Yujun’s blurred perception, sparkling ripples spreading out, like spring wind praising sunlight.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“What a pity.” It was like a black-and-white picture suddenly dyed with color, Its tone no longer calm to the point of lifelessness. “But it doesn’t matter. In the future you will become a part of me. What is mine is yours, and what is yours is mine. Thank you for the ‘nourishment’ you gave me. I will cherish it well.”
“None of that matters. As long as I can take revenge, whatever you want afterward you can just take.”
“What a generous child. Even if I replace you and live in this world, that would be all right? Even if the people you care about most, the things you care about most, from then on forget you, and transfer and pour the feelings they had for you onto me, that would be all right?”
“All right.” A clean, crisp answer.
“That truly is…” Facing Chi Yujun’s lack of hesitation, the other party hesitated, then smiled again. “Since you have said so, if I did not accept your kindness, it would be too impolite. But one day you will regret this sentence you spoke, and your revenge will fail because of it…”
“It won’t.” Chi Yujun shook her head indifferently.
In this empty, drifting space, her body had already been swallowed by the sinful mire up to her neck, only a head left above the waterline, and even that head of silver hair had become filthy beyond bearing—yet she remained ignorant and unaware of it. “There is already no one in this world I care about. And if you want me to give up revenge, unless I die.”
“I like your temperament very much. I truly want to see that look of yours then, powerless and too late for regret—it’s all right. What is yours is mine, and what is mine is yours. The people you care about will also be the people I care about.”
“So that even more wonderful Destiny Path you spoke of, what Destiny Path is it?”
This was the question Chi Yujun cared about most.
She could not wait to obtain brand-new strength, could not wait to grasp it, and then could not wait to use it to deliver a fatal blow to her enemy’s heart.
The voice echoing at the bottom of her heart laughed low, like pity, like mockery.
“Dear vessel, you already drank my elixir of your own will. Why are you still asking this kind of thing now.”
“The Destiny Path I bestow on you is naturally…”
“—Witch.”
In the words, mountains and seas overturned, the dipper turned and the stars shifted, and empty, clear music suddenly struck up.
The moment the ancient, obscure language sounded, Chi Yujun, who had not yet received answers to all her questions, was drowned by an all-covering sense of suffocation.
That fierce suffocation of struggling on the edge of life and death in turn gave this sinking, shattered delicate body of hers an unspeakable soaring pleasure, making her spasm as she woke from the feeling of her soul leaving its orifice.
She was like a fish drowned in an abyss where every step was hard, gasping violently, opening her eyes, and returning to reality.
The wounds on her left hand had already vanished without a trace.
The position of the Sin-Severing Lock had not moved a hair from the start.
Yet on her right wrist there was already one more dim floral pattern of a rose wreathed in purple qi and surrounded by thorns.
The fragrant rose flashed and vanished the moment it met her gaze, and that pattern also gradually sank into the skin and showed no more.
—It was only losing one hun and one po, and she could obtain a whole new Destiny Path?
—There was even this kind of good thing?
Chi Yujun felt as if in a dream.
She felt she had won massively.