The silk bindings on Nanya came from Youjin Fuqiang's strange arts. The abomination of a cultivator had used techniques similar to Youjin Yetu and Tiantian to manipulate the threads into magical shackles.

To top it off, it was probably being augmented by the fear qi and void qi the old patriarch commanded. At this point, they were more akin to magical artefacts than spiritual arts.

The current Yung, with the light weight of his qi and the paltry firepower he had, was all too weak to snap it.

But what if he could kill the source? Youjin Fuqiang was guarded by his cultist brethren. It would be hard. Yung had no idea if his cracked sphere could even damage the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realmer.

Still, he could not sense Yung.

And Yung had certainly ‘damaged’ the Dusk Valley Lion King.

It was time for round two, and this time, Yung chose not to care about consequences. He had four minutes of his stealth remaining.

Realisticly, even if he could strike Youjin Fuqiang’s vitals, Yung did not have the illusion that he would have enough time to run out of the cultist coterie.

The boy ran. Spear in hand. The last of his faith qi burning into it like liquid oxygen, true qi stirring as though it was the core of a reactor.

His figure was reflected in Nanya’s golden pupils. She bit her lips with her fangs, complicated feelings rose with her breaths, threatening to make her cry again, "In a world where the goal is immortality, to outlive is to conquer, dear one. A boy of such timidity as yourself needn't risk your life when flight is an option. You know that, do you not? Yet, behold, here you are still. You claim not to trust, but you are dimwitted enough to throw away your life for us. Why must you be so… endearing?”

“Because I don’t want to regret anything. Not again. Ever.” Yung roared. He did his best to avoid the bumping into the cultists who were now in high alert. Would they still think that the ‘hidden devil’ would be foolish enough to approach their leader again?

Yung fired a Pink Heart Beam in random directions.

“The devil is there!” The cultists roared when one of their members collapsed in the far end of their circle. Subconsciously, more of their members would head that way, seeking the invisible enemy.

He fired a second Pink Heart beam in another direction.

More cultists followed, trying to find him.

And soon, the area around Youjin Fuqiang revealed wider gaps.

“I thought living was the most important thing. I lived once, but with bones for a body, was I really alive? I could not enjoy the pleasures of life or do anything that was meaningful enough to convince me when I died that someone named Jung had indeed lived! In this life, I want to truly live. For my life to mean something, to someone. So if I am to die again, I will choose where, when, and how!” Yung said.

He tripped on a protruding stone and tumbled, his knee bashing the floor with a dull thud. He tried to use his hand to stop the fall. He did, but with a loud crack, something broke.

Still, Yung didn’t let go of his spear.

"How utterly foolish. Listen to us, for we decree, your life, it holds immeasurable value," Nanya spoke, her voice a blend of authority and tenderness. "To your past kin, undoubtedly, and now, to us, to all of us here who witness your deed and appreciate it. You aware of this, are you not?"

All of you? Other then you and the cultists, who else are here?

“Vixen, what gibberish are you muttering? I see! So you are talking to the invisible devil. Where is he?” Youjin Fuqiang asked with gritted teeth, his voice was broken by unconscious groans. Perhaps the effects of the previous Pink Heart Beam still had not fully subsided.

Nanya feigned panic. Her pupils ‘involuntarily’ looked in a direction. Not the one where Yung was limping.

“There!” Youjin Fuqiang took the bait. Tens more melee cultists ran out, and with hundreds long-ranged attacks following.

“See how cheap life is here? So the only real value it can have is value to myself, not others. If I think it’s worth it to risk my life to save your pink butt, then that’s up to me to decide and not you.” Yung said, carefully stepping over Youjin Yetu’s body. The headless corpse was only recognisable by the old man’s unique accessories.

Nanya giggled, “How crude, your mind still remain under the blankets of that night.”

“Men are such creatures.”

“Do you regret abiding by our selfish whims?”

“I don’t know.” Yung replied, “I regret forcing you to bring the others with you. And I don’t know…when a random magical insect or offended cultivator grandfather will kill me. I regret being so complacent in the past months. Maybe I might become a civilian casualty in some great power’s schemes?”

“Like right now?” Nanya had to smile.

“Like right now,” Yung smiled back.

“So, you really do not have any trust in us, have you? Do not talk as if we are martyrs. We have centuries yet to live, to laugh and make love!” Nanya mewled with protruding lips. The cultists gasped. Youjin Fuqiang looked scandalised.

The vixen, her body was now leaning forward, still bound to the pillar with thighs and buxom revealed for all to see. She was fully healed, but the silk bindings tightened around her supple skin in pink, sore lines where the bondage touched her skin.

Yung wondered, did he regret falling in love with such a manic pixie dream girl? A manic foxy dream girl? She did say she could see daydreams…

Actually, maybe it was a typical virgin move, thinking he could ‘fix’ her.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Does it matter?” Yung took more tired steps forward. Youjin Fuqiang had moved a bit, slightly shifting towards the direction Yung had fired the second Pink Heart Beam. “Look at what’s happening. Even when you say you have absolute confidence in keeping me safe, I am bleeding and dying.”

“Mayhap there is still more to my means we have yet to show—”

“Then show your tricks before everyone has died!”

“… We are a vixen. Testing men is part of our nature…. And they are not mere tricks! Only means of modesty!”

“I suppose you’re right. Dammit, why did you have to seduce me?” Yung now stood ten steps away from Youjin Fuqiang. The patriarch was hatefully looking at the vixen in her supposed mad mutterings. His robes had reformed as were the cracks on his carapaced skin mending into a scale-mail like armour. The area around the occultic foxball healed the slowest. Perhaps whatever it is that Nanya did to him was slowing his recovery, even though the recovery process was augmented by Yung’s Pink Heart Beam.

“We did, indeed.” Nanya's words floated to Yung's ear, like a gentle kiss upon his earlobe. It was ticklish, and he caught the scent of a sweet, honey-like aroma. Nanya's voice was bratty, tinged with pride! “And how spectacularly you fell for our ruse, you foolish man! You, with such a cowardly heart, are now willing to lay down your life for us, even when you believe all hope is lost. When you had the chance to flee like a rat, you returned like a lion. Even after our actions led to the demise of your comrades, you still dream about taking us to bed savaging us from neck to toe. Even though we made it so hard for you to maintain your love after losing your trust, you decided that saving our pink butt is, by your words, meaningful. Oh dear me, how pitiful, how endearing, how profound is the power of our seduction. How we have enchanted you into such a brainless worm that seeks only to breed.”

“You did.”

"What a fool you are, truly. Stupid, idiotic, brainless, senseless, dim-witted. How adorable, how utterly naive, so guileless and childlike in your simplicity. Your innocence is so touching, an endearing display of unworldly naivety, a charming spectacle of artless love and foolish, yet sweet, credulity. Are you a loyal man, or are you merely, what was it that you said once, a ‘simp’?"

“You are being so mean.” Yung’s lips twitched. He should not have explained to her toxic net lingo where there was nothing interesting to talk about.

The Pink Heart Ring charged up one last time.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Nanya asked, looking downwards.

“Something crazy and heroic.”

“Why?”

“To make you swoon!” Yung grinned.

The Pink Heart Beam hit Youjin Fuqiang in the chest from five steps away, right on the Occultic Foxball.

“Cuuuuuuuuuurs—” The old patriarch screamed with madness.

Yung didn’t let him finish. He raised the broken spear and thrust it forward with all the strength his scrawny arms could hope to muster.

It hit the Occultic foxball with the sound of glass shattering.

It was as if time had stopped. The spear tip was cracked, it no longer had a sharp edge at the top. So rather than piercing, it hit the foxball like a ram.

A pulse of reality-bending wave spread out.

“Who, are—” Youjin Fuqiang gasped, his joints locking up.

The last of the heart qi emptied from Yung’s dantian.

His true qi boiled like magma.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!” Yung screamed. It felt as if his soul was being sucked into the foxball with the last of his qi, drained down a dark hole from which he could never emerge again.

The surrounding twisted and melted into a long, narrow road, to someplace beyond.

From in front, a rainbow light so bright exploded at the contact point between the spear and the foxball. The screech was like a thousand dead cherubs singing. The scorching winds howled, the heat burning Yung’s skin away from his fingertips and grilling his flesh to the spear shaft.

The light totally blinded Yung’s vision.

White.

Pure whiteness.

The white was disturbed, as if a stone had been dropped on a tranquil lake.

The canvas rippled, soon turning into an alien scenery.

A giant ocean, everywhere the eyes could reach.

In it swam monsters with abnormally large heads.

The sky was always covered in swirling storm clouds, the swirls looking like eye-holes of dead giants.

It rained. The drizzle was gentle, but sometimes the winds would pick up.

The whole world was tainted in a dark blue shade.

And through the slightest gap of between the clouds, the faintest moonlight could ray through.

It was silvery, yet made the moonlight blue colour of the world all the more profound.

On the infinite ocean, the foams of the waves reflected the light up again, creating a mysterious picture. Their light revealed strange figures on the waters.

Islands!

There were islands. On these islands, more monsters. No! These were... Renyao?

They had their own cities, towns and villages. They numbered in the millions.

Billions.

They had wrong heads.

The body of Renyao, the head of voidfiends.

On the infinite ocean, there were also large ships sailing silently. Fleets of them, but still too few compared to the monsters with wrong heads.

Finally, actual renyao!

Prey!

In the hundreds, maybe thousands per fleet.

Too few, but still too many.

They had normal heads, how hateful. With no guillotine marks on their necks, how crude. They stayed in their ships like the last remnants of a plague refusing to die.

How evil.

As soon as the being noticed them, the fleets disappeared. As if hidden from his divine eyes by accursed native magic.

But it’s fine.

They can stay hidden like the rats they were.

When the being’s offshoots returned triumphantly from one of the unconquered plague worlds with renyao magic to locate the last remaining sapient plagues, it would be his victory.

But the being still had to be careful.

The war was not over.

If the nine divine planes of pestilence sniffed out its location—

"Whence comes this intrusion upon mine blue depths?"

The being said. Its voice rang out from under the infinite ocean. Tsunamis hit the islands, killing thousands. Storms rose up to the clouds, and the sky itself rained down blue tears.

At the ocean bed, a giant, headless thing wearing the skulls of a million other tortured souls churned, its voice coming from every head in its possession, its thousands of feelers spreading far and wide to locate the intrusion.

Its language was strange. Inaudible, screeching, shaped by void qi of impossible geometric shapes.

But comprehensible.

That’s why it corrupted. For the words were not meant to be heard by a puny renyao boy in the Imperfect Heaven 1st Realm but a being of equal madness.

"Vanish, creature of ossified remnants. Thine overlord hath succumbed to the eternal darkness between verses. This plane is now the domain of minds unawakened, lost in the shadowed labyrinth of unknowing, oh hosted unenlightenment of souls shrouded—"

Yung saw Youjin Fuqiang’s panicked face.

“W-What, was that…” The scared teen forgot his pain, the primal feeling replaced by fear. No answer came, and only confusion remained.

The old patriarch’s compound eyes swam.

Then they stopped, snapping focused on Yung’s own.

“Ah, the stealth wore off,” Yung spoke out loud.

“Devil!” Youjin Fuqiang roared. The outburst of his qi sent Yung flying until he crashed against the cavern floor. More bones broke.

Creature of ossified remnants? What?

“You are… Youjin Bao’s grandson?” Youjin Fuqiang said with gritted foxmoth mandibles that served as his teech. His ‘body’ was still convulsing in a way too shameful for someone of his apparent status.

But he was fine otherwise. Even looking chipper.

The Pink Heart Beam healed.

The occultic foxball at his core was unscratched. Pristine, glowing with the sickly light of the void.

Green, purple.

And moonlight blue.

“It was useless, huh… sorry Nanya,” Yung sighed. He’d made peace with his death, or so he tried to convince himself.

The cultists swarmed him like moths to a flame, but unlike moths, they had poisonous needles like killer wasps.

Yung could see it in their beady eyes and read it in their Empathic Links.

His death would be painful. Soon, his head would no longer be attached to his body.

Yes, he was afraid. But at least—

“The devil is mine to kill,” Youjin Fuqiang declared with a broken voice.

The cultists stopped. How obedient.

Yung looked up. His temples ached, and a stream of blood turned his vision red.

But it was beautiful, wasn’t it? That world of blue. The moonlight, the rain, the waves.

It felt like home.

Alas, he would never be able to go back. His second life was to end now, in the hands of a mad cultivator bent on immortality.