Chapter 81: Unshakeable
*Things like sexism and racism are purely for worldbuilding and to make it more realistic. Thank you for your understanding.*
Qing Fang felt as though he was falling; falling through countless abysses. He felt as though he was there but also was not. Everything around him seemed to be a manifestation of something lesser, a creation of a being far from perfect.
Time and space did not seem to exist here and his senses were blinded. He felt a force constantly enacted upon his body, pulling his left and right as if he was an inconsequential thing being thrust through space.
His body nor his mind was not here, yet he himself seemed to be in between, pulled apart from the two. He didn't care to think nor even try to look around him as he closed off his senses and let himself be pulled.
His presence in this space was purely metaphoric like he was travelling between a lining of existence.
And then he felt a heavy gravity pull on him, dragging him noticeably downward at speed that was unknown. It felt as if he was falling at speeds cataclysmic but also felt as if he was simply static amidst a blurred visage.
His mind was calm and undisturbed as if he was ready to snap his eyes open at any time, waiting to witness what he was put here to do. He knew that the current him existed in a space he could not comprehend nor escape from. He was drifting across the whimsical runes that the great existence, Da Shi Fu Wen, had left with all his strength.
And then, with a sudden and distorting snap of illusory reality, Qing Fang was dumped onto the ground. He felt the wind rush across his body, borne from the tyrannical skies. He heard sounds, shouted from forlorn throats, tearing into his ears. He smelt ash, burning and hatred; born from a malevolent world.
"""Demon! Demon! Demon!""" Terrible cries screamed from thousands of throats amalgamated into a thunderous roar that condemned him to the pits of hell! A darkness wafted across the plains of the earth, and tons of might was directed solely unto his body! The shouts were horrid and malicious, being able to sway the will of many an ordinary cultivator from the sheer amount of malice directed upon them.
Who could say they could hold strong before thousands of shouts being bellowed into their ears?
"Tie him up! Hoist him up! Tear and shred the skin of the demon!" Louds wails constantly sounded, carried by the gripping wind of a hundred worlds that sailed across the earths and seas!
Qing Fang felt his ears twitch in heavy pain at the insane shouts of lost spirits, cursing him to a thousand deaths! He felt the resentment fill the air, resentment from millions of the dead and living straight from the depths of Hell itself!
And he opened his eyes to it.
Qing Fang's eyes flashed with a bright gleam for but a moment before a snorting and scornful disposition washed him into apathy. His cold gaze peered outwards and his visage was deathly still and composed, striking unease even to those with greater power!
Before he was a hateful planet. A planet that he used to call home. A planet that he had spent all his years nurtured by.
That was Qingshan, revered capital of the Qing Empire.
The sky was a terrible grey, malformed into twisting clouds that resembled the crooked fingers of the evil Gods. They clawed at the earth beneath them with disdain and a show of power that would drive mortals into vicious madness as they howled with reverence! The winds assailed them, thrusting the grey clouds that were untouchable by mortals into twisted figures of hate and malice.
Fires were lit all around him, casting their red and orange glow like an invitation into the underworld. Huge pillars of stone were underneath, holding the fires that were large enough to swallow a city up above the ground, washing it with the tint of war and pain.
And beneath them was a city. Twisting buildings formed from crooked and murky memory stood, winding and intertwining like a sick nightmare pretending to be reality. Colours interweaved info something nasty and explicit that could beckon a sickening feeling that tarnished memories.
He was hoisted up above the city, his arms tied by thick chains that seemed to want to pull him apart. His legs hung off the ground, hanging there weakly like the epitome of captured defeat. His head, however, was raised, and his wings were a thick mantle that gave him confidence and strength of mind!
Around him, thousands of figures stood at the base of the buildings, forming into a fear-inducing army of curses as they crowded him from all directions. Their blue robes were, too, stricken by the wind and bashed about. Despite that, their bodies within held still and their ashen and hateful faces unwaveringly cast upon him the greatest of scorn!
Huge stone statues that depicted great cultivators of old were tearing into the sky and, different from his memory, seemed alive as their eyes glowed and seemingly stared at him! The stoic faces he remembered from reality were twisted into vicious grins of stone teeth!
The angry mob of hateful figures left not a piece of brick untrodden as the place was so full and booming that it could awe most into a stupor. The cries of execution were constant as they boomed from many hoarse throats and even silenced the deafening wind into a mere whisper!
A face flashed before him.
"Little Fang, how could you do this to me? Don't you love me? Aren't you thankful for the years I invested to raise you?" It was a woman's face. A familiar face: Qing Bai, his elder sister. Her lovely smile was distorted and thrust into a mad hatred that could dissuade even the most cynical!
"Won't you speak?! I always knew you were nothing; a stranger to a world of promising goodness. You are hateful. I despise you; I despise everything you ever were. All those years I looked at you, I only hated you, you bastard. I knew I should've killed you the first chance I got when you were still a snivelling little piglet gripping my hand." Her face was malformed and witchly as Qing Fang looked at the unrecognisable woman.
Another face appeared. "Won't you listen to your sister, Qing Fang? Won't you just leave and die quietly as we all wish for?
Just disappear into nothingness. No one will miss you. We will rejoice at the fact that you die a horrible death!" The face was Su Jie's, Qing Bai's fiancé.
"""Disappear!! Die!! Leave!!""" The words were echoed in an orchestra thousands of times louder, ringing in his ears and begging him to just disappear and die forever!
The huge masses were washed with an even brighter red as torchfire and weapons were thrust to the sky and pointed at him, lusting to tear his flesh apart until his life waned!
"I never loved you. No one has ever loved you. You are nothing, a valueless piece of flesh in the dirt. Why won't you just die as we all want you too?!" Qing Bai's voice came once again and the faces of many appeared. Every person he had ever met, all the elders and acquaintances, people he had only ever spared a glance as he walked the streets.
They all wanted him to die. They wanted him to fall away and be forgotten.
"Child, you are such a disappointment. We should have never birthed you at all, wastrel. I regret giving you an ounce of love; you didn't deserve anything, not even the warmth of my womb." And then, two unfamiliar faces appeared. They were aged and weathered, yet hatred was still there and filled their faces.
'My parents? Hahaha, I never knew your faces and now this is how I will remember you. Trash.' Qing Fang only smiled with viciousness that could match the horde of mad spirits!
Countless faces appeared, spitting vile words at him that would only be spoken unto the hated of thousands of years of history! Yet, Qing Fang was uncaring.
These people were rubbish under his feet. A memory of his past that he did not care about. Sentimentality? Belonging? Feelings of betrayal from his own kin?
'Ridiculous.' Qing Fang sneered and his thick, black fangs turned his bottom lip into an orcish smile!
Seemingly feeling his disdain, the world suddenly warped without a moment's notice. Everything that was before him warped into a blur of darkness, a remnant power of conjuration.
And then, a figure appeared in the sky. It was the demon he had just seen that painted itself in his image: the master of the third trial. A will-breaking demon of illusion and temptation that could cause beliefs to crumble and turn the victim into a mindless pig.
"You care not for emotional pain? You have faith in those you hold dear, rising above the pain of betrayal and hurt..?" The demon looked down as it manifested from thick wades of darkness in the twisted blur of a sky. This entire world seemed to be formed from it as the demon walked freely among the blurry madness.
"No... Hahahahahah!!! You are not rising above kinship! You simply have none! You are a demon like me, twisted by the conviction that is perceived to be madness. How entertaining!" The demon's loud cries came from the gaps between the blurry space yet seemed to sound only within Qing Fang's mind at the same time.
"How many silly cultivators have failed at this single step? It takes extreme faith...or someone like you. Hehehe, now... Let us move on. Emotional pain has no effect on your firm will; I like it.
However, I will now subject you to physical pain. Let me see; let me see how you endure..." The voice twisted away into nothingness as the will-breaking demon vanished. Qing Fang was left there in the chains, simply observing all that the illusory world of the demon has to offer.
All that was left of this world was the podium that held the chained Qing Fang. The remnant image of Qingshan that was formed from Qing Fang's memory and the demon's power vanished into a grey landscape of emptiness. He was here, chained between huge stages of fire and drifted amongst an empty grey abyss.
"Shake." A world-rending voice came.
Everything happened so fast that Qing Fang couldn't even perceive it properly. Being thrust into this world, time flew by him as things manifested before his eyes in split seconds before being crushed by him. But now, however, the entire world was shaking!
A pulse of force emitted from the grey void came from every direction, concentrating on Qing Fang's chained body as he held still! The air shimmered like disturbed waters as the space itself witnessed the power thrust towards Qing Fang! It was turned over into strange patterned spherical shapes, an unnatural phenomenon that had been caused by the manifestation of horrifying, otherworldly power...
And Qing Fang shook.
His eyes burst wide open as blooded veins flooded the black sclera, making his eyes like an active volcano cracking through a dark and tattered volcanic rock! His eyes seemed to be bursting with strain and a mix of anger, fury and uncontrollable malice!
His huge black fangs interweaved with one another as his jaw clamped down extremely hard, his lips peeling back into crumpled skin and revealing a painting set of fangs! His neck burst into a horrid mass of wiry veins and bulging muscle that could barely be contained by his skin!
His chained body exploded with strenuous power that pulsed and bulged, finding any strength to fight the power that was trying to crush him into pieces! However, though strained and seemingly mad, Qing Fang's eyes were abnormally focused as he concentrated a horrifyingly steely gaze directly at the sky! His brow and forehead crumpled into a bundle of skin that accentuated his terrifying expression that could probably kill mere mortals alone!
"Shake!" The voice returned, tearing the sky in twine!
"Mmraaagh!!" Qing Fang's huge fangs parted into a humongous shout that tore straight into the sky, filling the empty grey void until the edges of the earth! His mouth was cleaved wide-open and his neck pulsed madly as he seemingly roared with the strength to crush lower beings into nothing!!
"I decree: shake!!" Ethereal and boastful of power, the voice returned tenfold!
Qing Fang's entire being shook heavily and turned several shades redder, the power of his resistance enough to make the space surrounding him shimmer extraordinarily! His chained body did not seem weak, nor even chained, at this moment as the awesome power he displayed to resist was exquisite!
And a being of the blackest darkness suddenly formed beside Qing Fang, winding black claws along his steaming flesh whimsically and placing a thick and winding tongue beside his ears. Red eyes came from the darkness and looked at Qing Fang with a sickening love that could make hearts twitch in horror!
"Give in, shake for me. All the pain will disappear if you just give in to me. Come on, do it. Give in. I know you want to. All those years of fighting and pain that have made your body so tattered and worn, it can all just go away. I can take you to a place where you don't have to think about anything, where you don't have to think at all. A place of comfort, just come along with me. I can make you whole." The demon whispered serpentine words into the ears of Qing Fang with a bewitching tone. However, Qing Fang, who was still shaking uncontrollably as he endured the massive pain that was being placed upon him, did not react in the slightest.
As he spoke, the demon's eyes slowly became more and more dissatisfied and must become outright hateful and malicious!
"Come on~ I promise what I said. All you have to do is just...fucking shake! Damn you, little fucker!" The demon turned incredibly hateful as it saw its efforts fall upon deaf ears. Its mouth that had formed into a pair of seducing female lips suddenly exploded into a huge maw tens of times the size of Qing Fang's!!
Huge fangs and a poisonous tongue screamed at Qing Fang madly! The huge maw formed from a shadowy darkness was inexplicably dark and hateful as the red eyes that had expanded into tiny suns that seemed bred by the Gods of Hell themselves!!
At that moment, Qing Fang's volcanically bloodshot eyes turned from tearing a hole into the sky and stared right into the huge demonic head that was screaming at the side of him insanely! The head seemed to move at light speed with the sheer strength it was using to madly scream into Qing Fang's ears!
"Fuck you..." Qing Fang hissed with an extremely insidious tone between gritted fangs!!
"Aargh!!" The huge demonic head recoiled for a second before it erupted into an extremely vicious howl directed at Qing Fang! The massive head opened wide to span several times the size of Qing Fang's entire seven-meter body!!
And then, the head caved into a mass of darkness that surged forth and engulfed Qing Fang in mere seconds, washing his body with a plague of darkness!
...
A huge knee fell down and cracked the wet black stone beneath it, sending small waves of webbed cracks outwards and small shards of broken stone over the place.
"Huff~ Huff~ Huff~" Massive gasps of breath surged into Qing Fang's mouth as his eyes stared down at the floor in disbelief! His hands clutched his chest as his heart was beating extremely rapidly and a strange feeling of panic was still seeping into his mind from a foreign source!
His red eyes looked forward and saw white-clawed feet standing directly before him! Following the feet upwards, Qing Fang saw that same clone of him before he went into that trial just now! Darkness still seeped from it and conjugated in many forms as it cling to the mirror image of his own body staring down at him with stilled hatred!
"Impressive." The clone said a single word as Qing Fang was still knelt on the dripping wet stone of the closed cavern where he arrived after falling into the pit.
Seeing Qing Fang's gaze, words were spat from the clone's mouth.
"You thought you were travelling to a different space just now? Well, what can be expected from an inferior world-bound cultivator like you? That test of pain just now was all caused by me, and you never stepped one foot from that place you stand." The demon clone looked down with disdainful eyes, yet Qing Fang couldn't muster the anger to object.
"So..." Qing Fang started.
However, he was cut off by the clone. "An illusion. An instant. You were just inside of your own head." The domineering figure of the clone seemed all the more terrifying as it was wrapped in a cloak of darkness as it seemed like a regent looking down upon the pitiful Qing Fang. At this moment, Qing Fang knew he didn't really understand what type of being he was standing before...
"You're curious about me?" The demon twisted into a horrible grin as it stared right through Qing Fang. "Lowly beings like you aren't even worthy to know my name, scum. Just know that the pathetic creator of this runic inheritance could never create something like me with runes; the thought is pathetic. The only reason I'm even here is because of misfortune..."
Qing Fang was stunned. This wasn't a creature created from runes like the remnant consciousness was? Only here because of misfortune? Was it captured by Da Shi Fu Wen luckily when it was weakened? And then bound into servitude in the inheritance?
However, Qing Fang knew he would never get those answers even if he asked. And there was no point to understand; what was the use? It was just another wandering cultivator that had found itself here on its journey.
Fortune, misfortune? Fate.
"On with the trial. Now, face true aimlessness."
And once again, Qing Fang felt as though he was falling away into an abyss...
*3,085/3,000 words*
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