The speed at which she moved became something beyond tracking. She wasn't just fast—she was everywhere, her concept fully activated now, pain amplified in every blow she landed.
But the contaminated showed no reaction.
Yao paused mid-strike, frowning.
"Oh," she muttered. "They're berserk. Can't feel it."
A smile touched her lips—not pleasant, not kind.
"There are many types of pain, you know."
The screaming started immediately.
Contaminated practitioners who had been fighting in silence suddenly cried out in agony. Not physical pain—something else. Something that bypassed their berserk state and struck directly at whatever remained of their consciousness.
A little boy at the back of the group covered his ears and started sobbing.
They fell one by one, their faces twisted in expressions of absolute torment, their bodies dissolving into the characteristic nothingness that claimed all contaminated when they died.
Yao seemed to lose herself in the rhythm of combat.
When was the last time I fought? she wondered, her body moving on instinct while her mind drifted. A thousand years ago? Fifteen hundred? I honestly can't remember.
That damn Heiyun better compensate me well for sending me to fight on his behalf. Bastard owes me a decade of naps.
She was reveling in it—the violence, the motion, the simple act of doing something other than lying on a couch counting ceiling facets—when everything stopped.
Not her. Not the remaining contaminated.
Everything.
---
The air itself ceased moving.
Yao's foot hung suspended mid-step, her body frozen between one heartbeat and the next. The children at the entrance stood like statues, their eyes wide with terror, their mouths open in silent screams that couldn't escape. One girl had frozen mid-vomit, a thin string of bile still hanging from her lip.
Even the dust motes hung motionless in the air.
Only one thing moved in the courtyard.
An old man appeared beside the dissolving corpses of the fallen disciples.
Not walked. Not teleported. Simply appeared, as if he'd been standing there all along and reality had only just noticed him. He was scrawny—almost skeletal, his robes hanging loose on a frame that suggested centuries of neglect. His face carried the particular weathering that came not from age but from profound exhaustion, as if existence itself had worn him down to his essential components.His eyes were closed.
Yao's consciousness screamed at her body to move, to react, to do something. But she remained frozen, held in place by a power that had nothing to do with physical restraint.
Domain, she realized. He's established a Domain.
But this was wrong. Domains were conceptual spaces where one's understanding became law—localized areas where reality bent to the wielder's comprehension. They required active maintenance, constant focus, the expenditure of will to enforce rules that shouldn't exist.
This felt different.
This felt effortless.
The old man's eyes opened.
They were milky white—not blind, but carrying the particular opacity of someone who saw things that had nothing to do with physical light. He looked at Yao with those dead eyes and smiled.
It was not a comforting expression.
"Sleep," he said.
The word carried weight beyond language. Not a command in the traditional sense—more like a fundamental reassignment of what was. The air didn't tremble. Reality didn't bend. The word simply declared a new truth, and the universe adjusted to accommodate it.
Yao felt her consciousness dim.
Not knocked out. Not rendered unconscious through force or exhaustion. Simply... encouraged to rest. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her thoughts began to scatter like leaves before wind. The violence that had sustained her moments ago felt distant, unimportant, something that belonged to someone else's concerns.
No, she thought, fighting against the weight pressing down on her mind. This is—
Too late.
Her eyes closed.
Her body went limp, still suspended in the frozen air, held upright only by the Domain that had claimed her.
And then she fell.
---
Not physically.
Her body remained in the courtyard, frozen alongside everything else. But she—the essential part of her that observed and thought and experienced—fell through layers of reality that shouldn't exist.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Into darkness that was somehow also light, into silence that was somehow also sound, into a space that existed nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.
She landed in a bedroom.
The transition was instant—one moment falling through impossible space, the next standing on solid ground in a room that looked like it had been pulled from someone's memory of comfort. Soft bed. Gentle lighting. The kind of space designed to make a person feel safe, relaxed, ready to surrender to rest.
Yao's spiritual body solidified around her consciousness.
She looked down at her hands—translucent, ethereal, composed of something that resembled flesh but wasn't quite. Her physical form remained in the courtyard, frozen and vulnerable. This was her soul given shape, pulled into a space that existed within the old man's understanding.
An inner world, she realized. He's dragged me into his inner world.
Not quite a Domain. Not quite the Subconscious that Ascendant stage existences manifested. Something in between—a space that existed within his soul, a realm shaped by centuries of cultivation along a single path.
The Dao of Sleep.
Yao turned slowly, taking in her surroundings.
The bedroom was perfect. Too perfect. Every detail crafted to induce relaxation—the softness of the bed, the warmth of the lighting, even the faint scent of something soothing that she couldn't quite identify. This was a trap built from comfort, a prison constructed from the promise of rest.
"You should sleep," a voice said.
The old man stood in the doorway. Not the contaminated version—the human one, the practitioner he'd been before corruption claimed him. He looked younger here, healthier, his robes fitting properly over a frame that suggested strength rather than decay.
This was his inner world. Here, he could be whatever he chose to be.
"You're tired," he continued, his voice carrying that same fundamental weight as before. Not suggesting. Not commanding. Simply declaring a truth that reality would adjust to accommodate. "You've been fighting for so long. Don't you want to rest?"
Yao felt the pull of his words.
He was right. She was tired. Two thousand years of pain, of endless agony that never stopped, of carrying burdens that should have killed her millennia ago. The promise of rest—of actual, genuine rest—sang to something deep in her soul.
Just sleep. Just let go. Just stop fighting for once. Gods, it sounds so good...
Her knees weakened. The bed looked so inviting. She could lie down. Close her eyes. Let this place take her consciousness and give her the peace she'd been seeking since before the current Transcendents were born.
No.
The thought cut through the haze like a blade.
This is his world. His rules. If I surrender here, I die.
Yao straightened, forcing strength back into her spiritual form.
"Nice try," she said. Her voice came out steady despite the exhaustion clawing at her consciousness. "But I've been tired for two thousand years. Your little lullaby isn't going to put me down."
The old man's expression didn't change.
"Then I'll make you sleep," he said simply.
The bedroom dissolved.
---
The new space was vast—an endless expanse of soft surfaces and gentle lighting, a realm constructed from every comforting association sleep had ever carried. Pillows materialized around Yao, pressing against her from all sides. Blankets wrapped themselves around her limbs. The air itself became thick with drowsiness, each breath pulling exhaustion deeper into her lungs.
She fought.
Her concept activated—pain flooding outward, attacking the comfort that surrounded her, trying to establish her own rules in a space that belonged to someone else.
It didn't work.
This wasn't the physical world where her understanding of pain could override reality. This was his inner world—a space where the Dao of Sleep was absolute law, where every rule bent toward rest and surrender and the gentle dissolution of consciousness.
Yao felt herself sinking into the soft surfaces beneath her.
He's stronger than me here, she realized. Domain stage power, maybe beyond. And I'm in his world. His territory.
She tried to move. Her spiritual body responded sluggishly, as if moving through water, each gesture requiring effort that drained her more.
The old man appeared above her.
He looked down at her sinking form with something that might have been pity.
"You're resisting well," he observed. "Most would have surrendered by now. But you can't win here. This is my realm. My understanding made manifest. Your pain means nothing against the promise of rest."
Yao glared at him through the exhaustion clouding her vision.
"You talk too much," she muttered.
She gathered what strength remained and pushed.
Not physically. Conceptually. Her understanding of pain—the two millennia of agony she'd endured, the comprehension she'd developed to survive herself—flooded outward in a desperate attempt to establish dominance.
The soft surfaces around her shuddered.
The old man frowned.
"Interesting," he said. "You're not fully compelled. Your soul has more strength than I expected."
He studied her for a moment, his dead eyes seeing things beyond the physical.
"But strength alone won't save you. Let me find what will."
He reached out with his awareness—not touching her, not physically interacting, but looking. Peering into the essence of what she was, searching for weaknesses to exploit, for vulnerabilities that would let him end this resistance.
His consciousness touched her soul.
---
And stopped.
The old man's eyes widened—the first genuine emotion Yao had seen from him. Not fear. Not quite. But something close to recognition. The terrible understanding that he'd made a mistake.
"What—" he started.
The inner world began to shake.
Not from Yao's resistance. Not from any attack she was launching. Just from the simple fact of his awareness touching what she carried, from his consciousness brushing against the burden that defined her existence.
Two thousand years of pain.
He'd thought to find weakness. To peer into her soul and discover what fears drove her, what attachments bound her, what vulnerabilities could be exploited to break her resistance.
Instead, he found agony beyond comprehension.
Physical pain that had never stopped for two millennia. Conceptual pain that attacked the very idea of existence. Soul pain that gnawed at consciousness itself. Psychic pain that shredded thought before it could form.
All of it. Always. Without pause or reprieve.
The old man screamed.
His inner world—the realm of comfort and rest he'd spent centuries constructing—began to crack. Fissures spread across surfaces that shouldn't be able to break. The gentle lighting flickered and died. The promise of peace that had defined this space shattered against something it couldn't withstand.
Blood poured from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears.
Not golden divine blood. The dark, corrupted fluid that ran through contaminated veins. His carefully maintained human form dissolved back into the monster he'd become, and even that couldn't protect him from what he'd touched.
He tried to pull back—to withdraw his awareness, to sever the connection he'd made.
But Yao's soul wouldn't let him.
Not consciously. Not deliberately. She wasn't attacking, wasn't retaliating, wasn't doing anything except existing. But existence itself had become weaponized through two thousand years of impossible suffering, and the old man had made the mistake of looking too closely.
His screaming intensified.
The inner world collapsed around them—not dissolving gradually, but shattering like glass, fragments of constructed reality breaking apart and falling into nothing. Yao felt herself pulled back, dragged out of the sleep realm by forces she couldn't control.
The last thing she saw before consciousness fled was the old man's face.
Not contaminated anymore. Not even fully present. Just... disintegrating. His soul couldn't withstand even the briefest contact with what she carried. The corruption that had transformed him burned away. His existence erased itself rather than continue holding the memory of that pain.
Then everything went dark.
---
In the physical world, reality resumed.
The frozen air began to move again. The children at the entrance drew breath mid-scream. The dust motes continued their lazy drift through shafts of light. One girl finally finished vomiting.
And Yao Xian rose into the air.
Not by choice. Not through any technique she'd activated. Her body simply lifted, suspended by forces that had nothing to do with her conscious will, held aloft by something fundamental reasserting itself after being briefly suppressed.
The ground shook.
The sky darkened—not clouds gathering, but light itself withdrawing, as if reality was afraid to look directly at what was happening.
The old man materialized in the courtyard.
His physical form, pulled back from the inner world, collapsing under damage that had nothing to do with physical injury. Blood—the dark corruption that ran through contaminated veins—poured from every opening in his body. His eyes. His nose. His mouth. His ears. Every pore became a fountain of agony as something fundamental inside him shattered.
He fell to his knees, then forward, then still.
Dead before he hit the ground.
Unlike the other contaminated who dissolved into nothingness, this one remained—human again in death, the contamination burned out of him by something it couldn't withstand.
Then even the corpse began to disappear.
Not dissolving like contaminated remains. Being erased. Removed from existence as if reality itself couldn't bear the evidence of what had just occurred.
The children watching from the entrance stood in absolute silence. One boy whispered, voice cracking, "Is... is she dead too?"
Yao floated above them, unconscious, her body held aloft by forces none of them could see or understand.
And in the space within her consciousness—in the internal darkness where she retreated when something else took control—Yao Xian felt peace.
For the first time in two thousand years, she felt nothing but peace.
---
End of Chapter 56