The phantom scent of peach blossoms had long since dissolved into gray ash, leaving the temple to be reclaimed by the freezing, stagnant air of the wasteland.
Cang Yaochen—now in his aspect as the True Buddha—sat motionless upon the cracked stone floor. Pale moonlight, sharp as a blade, filtered through the skeletal roof to carve deep shadows into his face. It was a face defined by divine purity, yet now it was clouded by a jagged, agonizing stain of guilt. He held the girl, Jiang Li, cradled within the heavy folds of his pristine white robes, as if trying to shield her from the very world he had failed.
The gash on his neck had closed, leaving his skin flawless once more, but the fracture in his soul remained.
"What have I done?" he whispered, his voice a hollow thrum that seemed to vibrate against the cold stone.
He closed his eyes, yet he could not escape the feverish, fractured echoes of the God of Love. He remembered the cloying sweetness of nectar, the frantic drumming of the girl's pulse against his thumb, and that terrifying, ecstatic hunger that had briefly possessed his divinity. It was not him—and yet, it was a rot growing from the very root of his own being.
[The Burden of Mercy]
Jiang Li had not yet awakened, but her small frame continued to convulse in her sleep, her breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches of residual pain.
Cang Yaochen let out a breath that carried the weight of a thousand unspoken prayers. Those hands, crafted to turn the pages of sacred sutras or to bind ancient demons into eternal silence, now moved with a raw, desperate clumsiness. He wove a soft, shimmering veil of golden radiance—a pure Buddhist light—around her, desperately attempting to stitch together the ravaged meridians of her mortal body.
Because of the divine blood forced into her veins, Jiang Li was like a delicate porcelain vase struck by a hammer. Cang Yaochen had to expend his own primordial essence, drop by drop, to coax the violent, foreign energy into a simmer.
He went so far as to press his palm against the frozen earth, forcing a sapling to erupt from a crack in the temple floor. He poured his life-force into the barren soil until the branch bore a single, luminous fruit. He plucked it and wiped it clean with his sleeve, his movements as hesitant as a man trying to cradle a dying flame in a hurricane.
[The Awakening of the Black Lotus]
When Jiang Li finally drifted back to consciousness, she was greeted by a vision of impossible, blinding sanctity.
The soft, holy glow; the monk with skin like translucent jade; and the fragrant fruit offered with a trembling hand.
Any other beggar girl would have wept and provelled, believing she had looked upon the face of God. But Jiang Li was not a normal girl. Though her past was a shattered mosaic she could not yet piece together, the primal loathing she felt for this man was etched into the very marrow of her bones. She remembered the "predator" who had tasted her blood, and then she looked at the "saint" before her, his eyes drowning in a sea of remorse.
He feels guilty? Jiang Li's eyes flickered, the briefest shadow crossing her iris. A wicked, poisonous thought bloomed in the void of her mind: If this saint believes his mercy is a sin, then I shall make his guilt my throne.
[The Performance of a Lifetime]
"Don't... don't kill me... please..."
Jiang Li didn't lunge. She didn't bite. Instead, like a terrified animal cornered by a predator, she scrambled backward into the furthest shadows of the temple. She clutched Cang Yaochen's robe to her chest, her small body shaking with such violence that her teeth chattered. Tears spilled from her eyes like broken pearls, hot and messy.
"Child, do not fear. I... I frightened you. The fault is entirely mine."
Cang Yaochen moved to approach her, but the moment he saw the raw, unadulterated terror in her gaze, he froze. His face went ash-white, filled with a self-loathing so potent it seemed to choke him. He pressed his palms together in a gesture of prayer and bowed his head—not to a higher deity, but to a dirty, shivering beggar girl.
"Are you... an immortal?" Jiang Li spoke in a tiny, cracked whisper, dripping with feigned innocence and a bottomless, calculated sorrow. "The man before... he was so scary. He bit me... he said I was his toy..."
[The Locked Fate]
Cang Yaochen's breath hitched in his throat. Those words nailed the fractured memories of the Love God into his heart like rusted iron spikes.
"He will not return," Cang Yaochen vowed, his voice a low, hollow oath—a promise to her, and a desperate lie to himself.
He offered the fruit once more. Jiang Li reached out with trembling fingers and took it, her head bowed as she began to eat with the desperation of the starving. Beneath her lowered lashes, a cold, predatory light flitted across her expression, unseen and unfelt.
However, as she bit into the fruit, a searing heat flared in her right pinky finger.
Cang Yaochen saw it too.
Around the tip of her finger, a faint, dark-red vein had manifested, coiling around her skin like a delicate, ethereal chain of blood.
It was the mark of "Divine Parasitism"—the first sign that a fragment of a Primordial Artifact had recognized a host.
Cang Yaochen's heart sank into an abyss. This girl was no longer just a mortal he could protect and release. She had become his Karma—a living, breathing shackle that he would never be able to break, no matter how many prayers he offered to the heavens.