The Tai He Hall sank into an eerie stillness.
Tan Yin watched in disbelief as Han Nü’s spirit transformed into a semi-transparent, human-shaped mist. Meanwhile, a layer of faint, shimmering blood-red light began to emanate from her fallen body. The red light was drawn to Han Nü’s spirit, enveloping her broken and disfigured form.
As the red light floated, her body disappeared faster and faster, and the part below her knees had already completely vanished. Han Nü's semi-transparent spirit gradually became clearer, and Tan Yin could faintly make out the contours of her face.
Suddenly, it was as though Tan Yin woke from a dream. She stumbled backward several steps. This was not unfamiliar—demons grow stronger by devouring souls, and the bodies of gods and goddesses, imbued with divine essence, were even more powerful sustenance. During the ancient war between gods and demons, the gods suffered heavy losses, as many of them had been devoured by demons.
“You...” Tan Yin was dumbfounded. This absurd, unbelievable scene was unfolding right before her eyes—was this a nightmare? Han Nü’s spirit had turned into a demon, and she was devouring her own divine body?!
While horrified, Tan Yin also felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It seemed as though she had seen this demon before—on that day, in the imperial tomb on Wanlan Mountain... Tan Yin clutched her forehead. Her head was spinning—why couldn't she remember?
“I will never let you go again!”
Han Nü’s voice became deeply sinister, like a mournful wail. Her semi-transparent spirit thrashed madly within the golden thorns, which could no longer hold her. Moments later, the thorns shattered, bursting into countless golden fragments.
The shockwave sent Tan Yin sprawling to the ground. In her daze, she felt a figure lunging toward her. Instinctively, she raised her arms to protect her face, but soon felt a sharp, excruciating pain in her right arm, as if several steel knives had been plunged into her bones. She shuddered from the agony and looked up to see Han Nü’s claw-like fingers embedded in her arm.
Han Nü’s eyes were blood-red, staring at her with a deep hatred.
Tan Yin took a deep breath, her voice dry. “You... you... a demon...” She was at a loss for words, the shock in her heart too great, her tongue tied as if in knots.
Han Nü suddenly laughed. “A demon?”
She looked down at her mockingly, towering over her. “I should never have become a goddess. I live in constant agony and regret! Every day! Every hour! Every moment! I hate myself for not having the heart to kill you back then!”
Tan Yin was confused. “...What?”
“Don’t think I didn’t have the nerve to kill you!” Han Nü withdrew her fingers and yanked Tan Yin up from the ground. Her sharp nails scraped against Tan Yin’s neck, and faint golden light seeped from the wound.
“...Han Nü.” Tan Yin locked eyes with her. “Have you mistaken me for someone else? I’ve never harmed you—in fact, I once liked you! But everything you’ve done—only a madwoman could be capable of such things! If you have some great grievance, you never spoke of it, and I don’t know it. But now that you've fallen to the level of a demon, not even the heavens will tolerate you!”
Han Nü suddenly smiled. “Liked me? She said those same words once. But your affection is nothing more than trampling on my soul! The heavens won’t tolerate me? The heavens never tolerated me! Wu Shuang, don’t you want to kill me? I’ll kill you first!”
She suddenly squeezed Tan Yin’s neck with great force, her sharp nails piercing deep into her flesh. Her face twisted with rage, as if she wanted to choke the life out of her.
Tan Yin mustered all her strength to break free, but Han Nü’s grip was unrelenting. The strange, sinister energy that emanated from her, typical of demons, filled Tan Yin with dread. In desperation, Tan Yin raised her hand and slapped Han Nü hard across the face.
“Let go of me!”
Han Nü instantly loosened her grip, lightly touching her slapped left cheek, her expression strange.
“Am I the one you hate?” Tan Yin asked, cutting straight to the point.
Han Nü’s crazed, fevered eyes gradually cleared, and her expression slowly calmed. After a long pause, she took several steps back and whispered, “That’s right! I hate you! I hate everyone!”
She suddenly floated over to her half-dissolved body and lay on top of it. In an instant, the missing parts of her body were fully restored. She opened her eyes and slowly stood up, her expression strange as she looked at Tan Yin.
“Wu Shuang, I took Tai He from you. Do you hate me? I wanted to kill that monk—do you hate me for that? In your heart, you hate me so deeply, but you pretend to be magnanimous on the outside. You’re terrifying, absolutely terrifying...”
A peculiar smile spread across Han Nü’s face. “Wu Shuang, you must also have a terrifying heart. Everyone in this world does. I put all my effort, all my heart into giving her the best of everything. In the end, I became a goddess. I descended to the mortal world to find her, afraid she wasn’t living well or that she was being bullied. But what I saw was the most frightening, the most disgusting human heart!”
Her eyes once again held that burning star, intense yet cold. “Why did I become a goddess? I never should have! I didn’t have the heart to kill her. Killing her would have made my divinity crumble. But what about my hatred?! Wu Shuang, what about my hatred?!”
Suddenly, she pulled a large embroidered tapestry from her sleeve. The patterns on it were shadowy and dense, impossible to discern clearly. The blacks of smoke and reds of blood intertwined.
“Come, spend the rest of your wretched life with me.” Her voice became eerily seductive. “My human tribulation—rest forever here with me.”
Tan Yin felt the scenery around her distort in an instant. A strange force seemed to pull her toward the embroidered tapestry. Although she knew that Han Nü had become a goddess through her unparalleled embroidery skills, Tan Yin had never seen her use them before. Now, seeing this enormous, eerie tapestry filled with ghostly figures and endless wailing, it seemed as though it had transformed into a real scene. She could even smell the blood and gunpowder.
Shocked, Tan Yin’s eyes glowed with clear light as she struggled to resist. Suddenly, she waved her long sleeve, sending out several beams of light. However, they disappeared into the tapestry like pebbles sinking into the sea, without a trace.
Han Nü's voice lingered, low and mournful, “I have already become a demon. I should have become one long ago. She has been dead for countless lifetimes, her reincarnations endless, and this hatred remains. I am not willing, I cannot accept it…”
This woman was beyond reason! Tan Yin’s eyes hardened, and divine light shot out from her sleeve, transforming into a giant pair of scissors that slashed toward the strange tapestry. Caught off guard, Han Nü hadn’t expected such a bizarre move. The scissors cut the tapestry cleanly in two, and the strange, pulling force vanished instantly.
Golden light flashed in Tan Yin’s palm once again, and without hesitation, she slapped a glowing talisman onto Han Nü’s shoulder. Immediately, enormous golden thorns erupted from the ground, trapping her once more.
“…Save your words for the other gods,” Tan Yin said coldly.
She tossed a talisman into the air, and it transformed into countless blue birds that silently flew out of Tai He Hall.
Han Nü suddenly burst into laughter, and the entire hall trembled violently. Tan Yin looked on in shock as Han Nü’s body gradually dissipated like green smoke, even the golden thorns were unable to contain her anymore?!
“Wu Shuang, you are truly terrifying…” Her voice, too, began to fade, becoming softer and softer until it was barely audible. “I no longer fear any terrifying human heart! I will watch you as your soul is torn apart!”
Finally, both her voice and her body disappeared completely. A long time passed before the other gods arrived in a rush, responding to the emergency signal.
“What happened?! You used the emergency summons?” they asked urgently.
Tan Yin, exhausted, slumped her shoulders and softly replied, “Han Nü… has fallen into demonhood.”
Ignoring the stunned expressions of the gods, she slowly walked to the divine crystal in the center of the hall, looking up at the slumbering Tai He. If Tai He were to awaken and learn that Han Nü had become a demon, how heartbroken would he be? Would he be able to destroy her with the same calmness as when he fought other demons in the past?
And as for herself… what was she supposed to do next?
She was a craftsman who provided support from the rear, and the task of tracking Han Nü’s whereabouts didn’t fall to her. The gods had already made arrangements. Some of them knew that she had descended to the mortal realm to retrieve Tai He’s left hand, and they urged her to bring back both the hand and the soul lantern as quickly as possible to revive Tai He. With his strength and the power of the soul lantern, they could at least hope to scrape through another war between gods and demons.
Tan Yin said nothing more. She left the vast divine realm in silence and made her way to Yuan City. There, she restored the mortal body she had borrowed for only a few short months and buried it beside the graves of the girl’s parents.
It had been a stroke of fate that allowed her to borrow this body in the first place. She needed someone whose birthdate and age were close to hers, who also had to be a native of Yuan City. As a goddess, she couldn’t forcibly possess a living mortal body, so the best option was someone who had recently died. After meeting all these strict conditions, she had found this girl, who had died of illness.
But to suppress the power of the divine crystal, she had drunk large amounts of water to force the crystal's energy into her limbs. Now, this body, with every organ infiltrated by the divine crystal’s power, was no longer usable.
With a wave of her sleeve, a gentle breeze lifted the Qiankun bag from the body’s waist. It floated before her, and the bag slowly opened, releasing a delicate, jade-like house that grew larger upon contact with the wind, transforming into a simple wooden cottage.
Tan Yin’s spirit slowly drifted into the house, where she saw the body of a goddess lying on the bed as though in peaceful slumber—her true body.
Just as she was about to re-enter her body, she suddenly froze, staring blankly at the exposed hand—the fingertips of both hands had turned semi-transparent, a sign that her divine power was beginning to dissipate, signaling her impending fall.
She remembered that less than two months ago, when she last came to check on her body, everything had been intact.
Tan Yin stared at her body, at the translucent fingertips, and felt as though her entire being had been hollowed out.
Finally, it was her turn—her turn to begin falling.
0 Comments