Time lost all meaning within the crucible of pain. The fiery salve was not a medicine; it was a trial by inferno. For hours, or perhaps days—Ercio could not tell—his world was a narrow, screaming plane of existence defined by the searing heat in his back and the hard pallet beneath him. Mei's hands had been both his torture and his anchor, her strong, sure fingers kneading the burning unguent deep into his flesh until the last remnants of Elder Zhuoyan's glacial qi were scorched away.
When the worst of the volcanic agony finally receded, it left behind a profound, throbbing exhaustion and the raw, tender feel of new skin. He was a piece of steel, quenched and tempered. The green, cool salve had been reapplied, and its gentle numbness was a blessing that finally allowed his mind to slip from the edge of consciousness into the vulnerable realm of dreams and memory.
It was a memory he had revisited a thousand times, the ghost that haunted every moment of quiet between his schemes and punishments.
Let it come, Mighty Ercio whispered, its voice strangely subdued. Remember the door. Remember the fall.
The world behind his eyelids shifted, dissolving the healing chamber's herbal scent, replacing it with the familiar, mundane smells of his old life: the faint odor of diesel from the city bus, the cheap fabric of his college backpack, the lingering taste of the bubble tea he'd just finished.
He was walking home, the concrete sidewalk solid under his sneakers. The city lights were beginning to blink on against the twilight sky. To pass the time, he pulled out his phone, his thumb automatically finding the icon for the game—"Celestial Harem Conquest." It was a silly, titillating mobile game full of beautiful, animated female cultivators in increasingly revealing outfits. A guilty pleasure. He'd opened it, smirking at the daily login reward—a new, particularly alluring character named "Luna, the Veiled Blade." The game prompted for permissions—access to storage, location, camera. The usual. Bored, he clicked "Allow All."
The screen did not go to the game's main menu.
It went black. A profound, absolute black that seemed to swallow the light from the streetlamps around him. A cold dread, entirely separate from the qi of this realm, trickled down his spine. Before he could react, a sensation of being unraveled, of his very molecules being pulled apart, seized him. There was no sound, no light, only a nauseating, silent vertigo.
The void between worlds, his demon murmured, a note of ancient knowledge in its tone. A careless key turning a lock never meant to be found.
Then, impact. Not on hard concrete, but on something soft and fragrant. He gasped, his eyes flying open. He was lying in a field of glowing, silver-leaved grass under a sky with two moons. The air was thick with spiritual energy and the intoxicating perfume of a thousand unknown flowers. The city sounds were gone, replaced by a profound, beautiful silence.
And then, a voice, sharp as a razor and cold as the void he'd just fallen through.
"What is this? A male?"
He looked up. Standing over him was a woman of such devastating beauty it stole the breath from his lungs. Her robes were of white and jade, and they did little to conceal a figure that was both willowy and powerfully curved. Her face was a cold, perfect oval, her eyes like chips of frozen amethyst. It was Elder Zhuoyan, though he did not know her name then. She looked at him not with curiosity, but with a disgust so profound it was like a physical blow.
He tried to speak, to explain, but only a strangled croak emerged. He was just a college student, a boy playing a game on his phone. He had no words for this.
Her lip curled. "A stinking, male rat. How did it crawl into our sacred realm?"
That was his welcome. His introduction to the world that would become his gilded cage, his personal heaven and hell. The memory began to fray at the edges, the searing pain in his back pulling him back to the present, to the consequences of that single, careless click..
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The memory shattered like glass, the cold disdain in Elder Zhuoyan's amethyst eyes dissolving into the dim, herb-scented air of the healing chamber. The profound agony of the salve had subsided into a deep, resonant ache, a symphony of pain that thrummed through his entire being. Yet, the memory had done its work. It had fanned the embers of a quiet, simmering rage.
They found you, a lost soul, and their first instinct was to brand you a rat, Mighty Ercio's voice was a low, venomous growl in his mind, stoking that rage. They built this cage around you. Every lash, every humiliation, is just payment for that first look of disgust. Never forget that.
Ercio groaned, a sound that was now more frustration than pure pain. He shifted slightly on the pallet, the movement sending fresh sparks of discomfort across his back. The vow to reform, which had seemed so righteous in the immediate aftermath of the beating, now felt like a betrayal of his very self. To be a "good man" in this realm was to accept their definition of him—to live as a docile, neutered creature in a world of lush, untouchable beauty. That was a punishment far worse than any lash.
His thoughts, sharpened by pain and resentment, turned to Ling Xia. She was different. She had not looked at him with that ingrained contempt. In her honey-colored eyes, he had seen curiosity, a flicker of loneliness that mirrored his own. She was a potential ally, a flower not yet poisoned by the realm's pervasive prejudice against his kind.
A flower to be plucked, the demon corrected, its tone shifting to one of strategic glee. She is our key. The others, they are addicted to the conflict, to the cycle of punishment and secret pleasure. But the peach girl… she can be made to see. She can be made to want.
A new plan began to crystallize, not as a reckless impulse, but as a cold, calculated campaign. He would not rush this time. He would be a ghost, a patient shadow. He would learn Ling Xia's routines—where she gathered her spirit herbs, which secluded clearing she used for her morning meditation, the path she took to the Moon-Washed Grotto. He would engineer "chance" encounters, each one brief and impeccably respectful. He would offer small, harmless kindnesses—a rare herb she needed for alchemy left in her path, a warning of a territorial spirit-beast in a sector she frequented. He would be a helpful phantom, building a foundation of gratitude and trust without a single word of overt flattery.
And all the while, Mighty Ercio purred, we will watch the others. We will stoke the fires of their jealousy. A whispered word to Su Lin that the new disciple has been asking about her potent salves. A casual remark to Mei that Ling Xia admires the power of her leg techniques. Let them turn their sharp eyes and sharper nails on each other. A divided forest is easier for a fox to hunt in.
A grim, determined smile touched Ercio's lips. The pain was receding, and in its wake, a sharp, lucid clarity was taking hold. The beatings were part of the game, a price of admission. But the game itself was far from over; it was simply entering a new, more sophisticated phase. He would use their own rules, their own petty rivalries, against them. He would make Ling Xia's induction into his harem not an act of clumsy seduction, but a masterstroke of psychological warfare, a revenge served not cold, but with the slow, simmering heat of desire.
He closed his eyes, no longer seeing the ceiling of the healing chamber, but a future of intricate schemes and inevitable, hard-won victories. The groans that escaped him now were not just of pain, but of anticipation. The fox was wounded, but he was learning, and his fangs were still sharp.
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