The blood from my forehead was the only warm thing left in the world.
It dripped onto the cold stone, sizzling faintly as it hit the crude chalk lines I had drawn. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely clasp them together. My meridians, shattered, useless ruins, ached with a phantom pain, a reminder of what the Young Master had taken from me.
I had no Qi. I had no dignity. I had only this forbidden book and a desperate, suicidal wish.
"Oh, Great Demon King of the Ninth Hells," I stammered, my voice cracking. It sounded pathetic in the damp silence of the cave. "Accept this offering… accept my soul…"
I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the backlash. Waiting for the cave to collapse, or for nothing to happen at all.
Then, the air changed.
It didn't get hot. It didn't smell of sulphur.
It went dead.
The moisture in the air vanished, replaced by a taste like dry ancient dust. A vibration started in my teeth, a low hum that bypassed my ears and rattled my bones. It felt like the atmosphere itself was fleeing from something that had just arrived.
"Demon King?"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It sounded like grinding stones. It sounded like the end of an era.
I flinched, curling into a ball. Terror, cold and absolute, washed over me. "P-Please! I have nothing left! The Elder killed my sister… The Young Master broke my meridian channels… I just want…" I choked, and the grief finally overpowered the fear. "I want them to die. I want to burn the Heavens."
Then, a soft rustle of fabric.
"You aim too low, child."
The voice was closer now. "Why stop at the Heavens? Why not tear down the stars, too?"
I gasped and looked up.
She stood outside the circle. No, she stood over it. The barrier I had spent my last spirit stones to create shattered like brittle glass as she stepped through it. She was tall, woven from shadows and moonlight, terrifyingly beautiful and utterly otherworldly.
She reached down. Her fingers were colder than the grave. They gripped my chin, forcing my head up. I couldn't look away. Her eyes were abysses. I felt insignificant. I felt like a bug beneath a boot.
"What is your name, child?"
"Wei," I whispered. My throat felt raw. "I am Wei."
"Well then, Wei," she said. Her thumb brushed the blood from my cheek. "Get up. I am Lilith. And I suppose you are mine now."
She released me. I slumped back, gasping for air. She hadn't eaten me. She hadn't torn my soul out.
Yet.
She looked at me, her gaze dissecting me. It felt like she was peeling back my skin to look at the underneath.
"You mentioned being broken," she said. Her voice was flat, commanding. "Specifically, that 'man' injured something internal to you. A wound that prevents you from using it."
I blinked, my mind reeling. She wanted to know about… anatomy?
"L-Lady—" I began.
Click.
She tapped her heel against the stone. The sound hit me like a physical blow, snapping my jaw shut.
"Mistress," she corrected. Her tone was light, but the pressure in the cave spiked, crushing the air out of my lungs. "I told you that you are mine now. You will address me properly."
My blood ran cold. I swallowed hard, forcing my head down.
"M-Mistress," I whispered, trembling. "Mistress, do you mean the meridians? The channels that carry Qi?'
"The words are irrelevant. Meridians. Tell me how they break."
I forced myself to speak, to explain the Holy Dao to a monster. "They are… invisible paths. We use them to draw in the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth. We call this energy Qi".
She inhaled sharply.
"Qi," she repeated. She made the word sound like a curse. "So the very air here is changed. And you must draw it in through specific paths?"
"Yes! Without strong meridians, we cannot advance. The Young Master used a Vicious Flow palm strike to seal and shatter mine. Now, the Qi just… leaks out. I am useless."
She circled me. I could feel her presence moving behind my back, a predator pacing in a cage.
"Useless," she echoed.
Then, she stopped in front of me. She raised one finger.
I flinched, bracing for the killing blow.
She pressed the tip of her finger against my sternum.
It wasn't a strike. It was an assault.
A cold, otherworldly current rushed into my chest. It wasn't Qi. It was heavier, darker, and ancient. It slammed into my shattered meridians, and I felt them scream.
I gasped, my knees buckling.
She held me up.
"How crude," she whispered. "You are built to circulate, not to endure."
She pushed.
She didn't push my body. She pushed my soul.
Agony. Absolute, blinding agony. It felt like she was reaching inside me and bending my bones with blades. My meridians, the delicate pathways of life, were being forcibly twisted, widened, and fused back together by something that didn't care about the laws of nature.
I screamed.
The sound tore out my throat, raw and animalistic. The cave shook.
Then, a new pressure descended from above. The Heavens. I felt the familiar weight of the Dao trying to crush us, trying to stop this.
But she just smiled.
"Oh," she whispered, looking up. "So you do notice."
The pressure from the Heavens didn't crush her. It broke against her. The chalk circle turned black and vanished.
My vision went white.
…
Darkness.
Then, Pain.
My fingers scraped against the stone. I was alive. Why was I alive?
I tried to stand, but my body felt wrong. It felt… heavy. Dense. Like my veins were filled with lead instead of blood.
I forced myself upright. My joints clicked. I stood hunched, terrified to look at her, terrified to look inside myself.
But I couldn't help it. I looked inward, checking my Dantian, checking my broken channels.
They weren't broken.
They were wrong.
The Qi inside me wasn't the light, airy vapour of the Heavens. It was a thick, dark sludge. It moved like mercury, slow and cold. It didn't leak. It sat there, heavy and terrifying, coiled like a sleeping snake.
It wasn't my powers. It was Hers.
I started to feel my breath trembling.
"Check your breath," she commanded.
I inhaled. The air rushed in, but the dark energy inside me didn't disperse. It grabbed the air and consumed it.
I looked up at her. She was watching me as if she had fixed me.
"What did you do to me?"
"I made you functional," she said, waving her hand as if she hadn't just rewritten my existence. "I dislike broken tools."
She turned toward the tunnel. "Come. This hole is tedious. Find me a town, little pet. And find me something to drink that doesn't taste like static."
Pet.
She started walking.
My body wanted to run the other way. My mind screamed at me to flee.
But the dark thing inside me, the thing she had put there, pulled. It tugged at my limbs like puppet strings.
"You will walk," she had said.
And so, I walked.
I took a step, then another. My movements were stiff. I felt like a stranger in my own skin. A living doll.
"This world is inefficient," she murmured ahead of me. "It demands you open yourself to the sky, then punishes you for being empty."
I said nothing. I followed her shadow as if I no longer belonged to the light.
We reached the mouth of the tunnel; I heard voices ahead. Guards. The sect.
Her walk suddenly slowed; seeing that, my body immediately responded to it with a stop.