บท 47: Disgust

*Things like sexism and racism are purely for worldbuilding and to make it more realistic. Thank you for your understanding.*

Da Huan sat within his personal chamber as he started out of the open window and watched the night only get darker as time passed on.

Alone, and with only his thoughts for company, Da Huan couldn't help but get caught up in another stupid fantasy. As all young boys do, he dreamt of a day when he was strong and powerful. He imagined a young damsel who couldn't comprehend his power fall into his lap and feel safe in his arms.

But the cold breeze from the night air took him away from his thoughts, and a self-deprecating smile was worn on his face as he scoffed. After all, such a thing would never happen to someone like him.

He would occasionally look down to the large cobbled courtyard of the Academy. The place was like a castle and he started from one of the hundreds of windows down onto the large area. It was so deep into the night that no one could be seen anymore.

He sat there for a few more minutes before he tired of the same old boring view. He was far too restless to go to sleep right now, and even though his masters told him that rest was essential for his spiritual health, he wanted to take a stroll around the empty corridors to tire himself out.

It was rare that he felt so sentimental, but he was constantly told that he was nearing his spiritual ascension and would finally be able to see the World of Laws. It filled him with nervous excitement but also angst for the future.

He stood up from his wooden chair in the corner of his chambers and put on a loose robe over his tight undershirt, walking to the thick wooden door and opening it.

Making noise this late at night wasn't something he had to worry about. Even if someone saw him wandering about, they would be more concerned than angry with him. It was always the same.

Closing the door behind him, he wandered the stone halls. He was always so admiring of the academy, with its hundreds of intertwining hallways and chambers. The firelight of the torches on the walls spitting redness ever so often as they lit the intricate halls.

However, in the darkness where his face was hidden, he suddenly frowned as he saw a small figure wandering about aimlessly before him. He could see the long combed hair of what seemed to be a little girl looking around constantly like she was lost.

Instantly filled with concern and after a light chuckle and a smile, he called out.

"Hello? All you alright?"

His voice shocked the lost girl as she stared in his direction and gradually saw his figure emerge from within the dark hallway. Da Huan got a better look at her and chuckled even more; she was indeed a cute little girl.

"Ummm..." The girl looked to be nervous at the stranger approaching her and could only nervously stammer in response.

"Are you lost?" Da Huan's voice came again as he was illuminated by the torchlight at last. He figured she was very new in the academy so it was easy for her to lose her way in the huge castle. After all, the academy took in cultivator seeds when they were very young so things like this would always happen.

Seeing the girl nod sheepishly, he smiled and held out his hand as he kneeled to match her height. "Come on, I can show you the way. Do you know where you need to be?"

"Ummm. The girl's dormitory in the left wing I think..." She looked at the friendly boy before her and put her hands behind her back as she looked up into his eyes with nervousness.

"Hahaha. You're in the wrong building completely! Come on, I'll take you there." Da Huan stood back up and motioned for the girl to follow him back the way he came. He figured she needed to be there as the left wing of the castle was for the newer students in the academy and the girl was obviously very new.

She didn't answer him but began to follow as he turned around and led the way. He didn't want to expect her to be too comfortable around him and was fine with her just following along silently. Now that he thought about it, what did he think? That she would instantly ask for a piggyback or something?

"It's just down here and then we need to go into the other tower." He said as he berated his stupid fantasies in his head. Stupid "big brother" complexes were all too common...

Not asking her too many questions or talking much at all, Da Huan led the little girl down many flights of curved stairs and out of the main body of the castle. He would occasionally look behind him to make sure she hadn't wandered off or was falling behind.

He walked out of a doorway and led her out into the large cobbled courtyard that he was looking down on before, the dark night air enveloping the two. He pointed to a large tower with many turrets and spoke.

"That's the left wing of the academy, where we need to go. I'll show you where the girl's dormitory is. Do you know your way if I take you that far?" He spoke while walking and turned his body to look at the small figure following behind.

"Umm, yeah. Thanks." She replied in a small voice.

"Don't worry about it." Da Huan said with a laugh.

The two walked along with the large courtyard until Da Huan suddenly felt the wind get much, much stronger. Feeling cold from the breeze, he felt his nose turning red from the icy wind.

'Brrrr, it's cold...' He thought and looked up to the open sky as he strolled along.

However, it was at this moment.

A huge thud sounded from behind Da Huan as he jerked his body to turn around! But before he could even twist a little bit, he felt a large hand grab him by the face and jerk him backwards, pulling him into darkness!

The strong wind whistled through the night once more, however, the courtyard was now empty, with no sign of Da Huan or the little girl...

...

Da Huan's eyes shot open and were bloodshot with pain!

Light assaulted his senses as he could instantly feel pain from all over, especially on his back. He felt like he had just fallen from a height and smashed to the ground, the wind pushed out of his body and making him breathless!

He looked around with fright and could only see muddy walls of brown rock all around him. His mind raced with fear as he thought he was in some sort of huge hole and had fallen to the bottom of it.

The light of a room came from up above him and illuminated the hole, however, it was quite dark at the bottom. Just from looking, he could tell it was several meters deep and he would never be able to climb out of the steep walls surrounding him.

He lay on his back, staring up, and was about to get up before he froze in terror.

His pupils shrank to pin-size as the whites of his eyes were all that seemed visible, watching an absolutely massive white arm reach over from the top of the hole and lower itself downwards. His breaths immediately became short and muffled as he watched the huge hand as big as his chest drop a small girl from a height of two meters down to the cold, hard earth right beside him!

The small body was released harshly and dropped downwards, hitting the ground with a dull thud.

"Uefff!" A high-pitched and childish grunt of pain came from the small girl and she burst awake from being dropped, just like he was...

The girl looked around her and saw Da Huan, but he just lay there lifelessly and watched the huge arm recede to the top of the hole.

'What...is...' He struggled to think as he started to breathe heavy, his body not in his own control due to the sheer fear he was feeling at this moment. The cries of the girl sounded from before him, but he just lay there dazedly for half a second before he jolted upright and looked around.

It was just them in the hole. Just him and this familiar-looking girl...

He suddenly started to scramble, pushing himself against the wall of the hold under the horrified gaze of the little girl. He looked at her as he breathed heavily, the terror in his eyes matching hers.

Seeing him, she just started to cry even louder and that made Da Huan's hairs stand on end.

"Shush!! Shush!!" He clambered over to her and put his hand over her mouth hurriedly as he dragged her over to the wall of the hole and just sat there. She started to struggle madly in his arms but he held her so tightly that she eventually lost strength and only had her nails still weakly scratching and pulling his hand that was over her mouth.

"Oh my god, oh my god..." He muttered quietly as his empty eyes stared without direction. He was terrified.

'Why is this happening to meeee-!' He thought pleadingly as he started to whimper under his breath while still holding the girl who seemed lifeless.

...

'Test subjects acquired.' Qing Fang thought plainly as he crawled away from the hole under the low ceiling.

'But now, I need some blood. Just half a dozen bodies should do just fine.' The red light of his devilish eyes pulsed as he creepily crawled to the door of the house at a terrifying speed. The door opened and closed with a slam as a huge figure shot out between the crack.

He spiralled out onto the street while low to the ground and kicked himself a few meters off the floor before his massive wings flapped and he vanished high into the dark sky in an instant.

He would take a few people from the other side of the city, otherwise, it would just attract too much attention with people disappearing from the same place all the time.

His wings carried him through the air as the fleshly things carried him along the outskirts of the slums and tens of kilometres away in an instant. Lazily setting his eyes on an ordinary row of shacks down below him, his huge body started falling and dived down towards the unlucky inhabitants.

He didn't waste time and grabbed six mortals from two shacks next to each other, rushing in and piercing all of their brains with a claw before grabbing their bodies and rushing away at a creepy speed.

Within only a couple of minutes, he was already back within the house and threw the six bodies into the corner in a heap. He targetted the head to keep the wounds as clean as possible, not letting their blood flow out and mix with the dirt on the ground.

After all, the blood flowing through their recently deceased bodies was a resource for his experiments.

'And now, I have all I need.' Qing Fang thought before reaching his hand down into the hole and grabbing the wide-eyed Da Huan. Cries from the little girl came but she was quickly silenced by a needle of blood stabbing through her eye and nestling itself in her brain.

Qing Fang had only taken the useless thing because she happened to be walking with his prized target. And it was not that he didn't want her cries to be heard, the sound of it was just annoying and painful to listen to. His open cat-like ears would twitch at the sound of it.

The giant Qing Fang creepily hunkered down to the earth as he held Da Huan and lay him down on the earth, bringing his massive head to inspect the small human and nodding with satisfaction. He was only a step away from ascension, a cultivator ready to be born, and this was just what he needed.

And then, Qing Fang took a large hand and rested it on the small human's chest. And instantly, the boy's eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Even though Qing Fang's soul was injured and his divine sense couldn't be used, he could still mobilise his soul by making direct contact, as all cultivators could.

He twisted around inside the head of the human and seemed to clutch his brain within the palm of his hand. Things like this could only be done with measly mortals, like the boy right before him.

What Qing Fang wanted to do was rush him along to complete ascension and open his mind to the World of Laws. It was something that was, in concept, very easy for someone like Qing Fang to achieve with his unlocked soul. However, mingling with the spirituality of another being and forcing them to ascend would be sentencing their death. This boy would only enjoy a short moment of power before his mind collapsed on itself.

The heavens couldn't just simply allow people to cheat now, could they?

He sat the youth up and distorted his mind to his whims, opening it up to concepts that suddenly appeared in the mind of the human. Things, beliefs, truths of the dao were suddenly known to him. But they were not his truths but Qing Fang's, and it would act like a poison that would take his life and destroy his spirit.

And when Qing Fang allowed the boy to open his eyes finally, they seemed to glimmer with spiritual radiance like a cultivator's. Seeing this, Qing Fang was satisfied. The hard part was over, now the easy part.

Reaching a clawed hand over to the bodies in the corner, blood poured out of their orifices and formed into a sphere of floating blood that was placed right before the numb human. His mind was no longer his and he was just a puppet. It wouldn't be long before he suddenly died because of what Qing Fang had done to his spirit.

Whispering sweet nothings in the mind of the human, Qing Fang's large eyes stared hard at his dazed face before the human reached out with his head and submerged it into the blood. His throat heaved massive gulps as pints of blood flowed down his throat until he was so full it poured from his nostrils and ears...

And then, Qing Fang sat down and took the human onto his lap, holding him there and containing to influence his mind with ease. What he was doing now was something only Stage 7 cultivators with an unlocked soul could do. To the average cultivator, they would watch on in horror as he seemed to twist lives around his fingers.

And then, after but a moment, Qing Fang saw the strongly swirling Law of Blood start to flow throughout the body of the cultivator and paint his image in the World of Laws. And this was when Qing Fang placed a large hand and gripped the head of the human tightly before waiting patiently.

Minutes passed as Qing Fang started to frown until he felt a twitch...

The human body suddenly started to convulse massively! His limbs would flail about in extreme pain as he clawed at Qing Fang with all his might! However, no sound was made at all as the large white hand covered his face like a steel vice.

'Just as I expected... Blood path is not a path meant for humans. They will be transformed into grotesque monsters amidst unimaginable pain...' Qing Fang summarised as he saw the unnatural events occur. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen from cultivating a new path before. And knowing that the same effects happened to others and not just him, he felt slightly more at ease with his situation. Not that it was a bad one...

The body trapped within Qing Fang's arms continued to shift and change freakishly from the effects of the Blood path cultivation. The spasms of the human flesh told Qing Fang of the immense pain he was suffering, but he couldn't help but have a weird expression.

After all, it was nothing like the transformation that he had undergone...

The body stayed small compared to Qing Fang and barely grew a few inches taller within his arms. And instead of becoming thin and malnourished like him, he felt the flesh of the human bulge with muscle that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Qing Fang felt the vibrations of the silent screams from his hands that were wrapped around the face of the human wildly. And he was not sure if his hair falling out was due to the transformation or because of the force he was expecting upon the human's skull.

And before long, Qing Fang saw the dao body of blood start to solidify and become corporeal. But at the same time, the shrieks of pain he felt from the human started to recede and its body only shook horribly in what seemed to be terror.

Knowing that it was time, Qing Fang released the thing and put it before him, getting a good look at it.

However, what he saw made him frown.

The weird thing stood below two meters tall and was completely hairless with coal-black skin. Its ears were long and pointy on either side of its disgusting face. All that Qing Fang took solace from was the bulging fangs and red eyes that did not dare meet his gaze. The feeling he got from the weird creature was similar to himself except...extremely inferior.

And looking down on the thing that had sprawled itself on the ground in submissive terror of him, Qing Fang could only feel naturally superior and looked down on the thing as overwhelmingly disgusting.

And before he realised, Qing Fang muttered.

"I see."

Qing Fang had a feeling that this was the result of the transformation simply because it was a simple human. The difference was that he had no blood affinity like he had when he transformed...

'If that's the case, then all the other subjects of this calibre would just end up the same as this inferior being. I guess to advance my knowledge, I need to find a human with some affinity to Blood path like me...'

'Hmmm.' Qing Fang pondered. Are the results completely dependent on the amount of affinity? Does that mean someone with a lower affinity than him, but at least some, would turn into something different?

A smile crept up his face. He was eager to learn more and acquire a test subject with at least some blood affinity...

*3,184/3,000 words*