Nina did what she promised: she made the Jiaguonese pay for every step of their attack. “Fire!” A volley of bullets fired from the castle walls with the Jiaguonese soldiers falling by the dozens. As the musketeers began to reload their weapons, they stepped down and allowed other fresh muskets take their place. “Fire!”

Cannons and muskets dirtied the air with their loudness and their smoke. The muskets targeted the soldiers while the cannons destroyed any and all of the enemy siege towers and rams. The enemy was being torn to shreds as Nina used the power of guns. “Fire!”

Eventually, the enemy soldiers began to climb the walls. “Retreat to the next set of walls! Don’t stand here to fight and die!” The soldiers fired their last sets of volleys before they began to pull back. The cannoneers did the same before throwing the heavy chunks of metal overboard to crush the soldiers below. “Move!” Nina called.

Xiaojun stayed back to ensure everyone successfully retreated. As Jiaoguonese soldiers climbed from below, he cut them down. He sliced their fingers, forcing them to fall to the chasms below. But as they began to populate the walls, he found himself surrounded. “Do you think you can win this?” the soldiers taunted. Xiaojun said nothing.

The soldiers charged at him simultaneously, and he made them regret it. He threw the first soldier off of the wall before jamming his halberd into the second. One by one, he sliced and thrust through them. He turned the stone red as the blood poured out of the bodies. “Xiaojun!” Nina called. “Pull back!” With a nod, he complied.

Within moments, the soldiers rallied around the second set of walls. They had their muskets ready as Nina continued her commands. “Fire!” Another set of armored Jiaguonese soldiers fell as the bullets proved their armor to be useless. “Fire!”

Nina continued to call her commands as she watched the flooding of Jiaguonese soldiers slow down. “Fire!” Her head began to ache as if something were crawling into her mind. “Fire!” It was a strange and disgusting feeling she had never experienced. “Fire…” She felt dizzy as she heard a voice from within call her name. “Nina Wagner… Nina Wagner…” With her last seconds of consciousness, she tugged onto Xiaojun urgently. “Take… command…” Then she fell completely unconscious.

She opened her eyes to find herself in a dark void. Nina gasped and hyperventilated. Something was strange about the air. It was as if the place she was in was nowhere close to home, let alone the world of the living. “Nina Wagner.” It was the same voice that had began to call in her mind. “You have filled the world with much sin and blood Nina.”

Stepping in front of her was an enormous humanoid being, and yet she knew it could never be human. He must’ve stood to a hundred meters high as he wore a deep cloak and a crown of glowing jewels. It was these jewels that provided the only lighting in this abyss. “I have waited a long time to speak to you Nina.”

The ground below her began to rise like a small platform. Slowly, she ascended high as she felt the impossible size of the titan rush into her adrenaline. She believed in God, but she never believed she would see anyone this large or powerful. Eventually, she was brought to the level of the titan’s face, allowing him to properly speak to her.

“Who are you?” Nina asked. Her body remained frozen as she did her best to quell her anxiety. She was a woman who could easily best the nerves of battle, but even a warrior would quake within witnessing such a terrifying being and its greatness. “I am a beast,” the titan replied. “One who represents the corruption within the human spirit.”

Nina sharply gasped as she looked around. Hiding in the shadows and chittering like mindless animals were other titans. One was curled into a ball and darting around. “Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?” It angrily demanded. Another was cutting itself with a knife as it stabbed itself repeatedly. “I need it! I need it! I need it!” The other two titans were shouting at each other with their voices being greater than any thunder. “You cannot have it! I deserve it!” The yells were loud enough to cause Nina to fall to her back in fear.

Then the Beast of Corruption snapped his fingers, and the noises were brought to a quiet muffle. “We are all trapped and sealed within the mind of the God of Purity. Every since then, the Four Beasts and I have been waiting for a chance for escape.” Nina looked the beast in the eyes. “Are you wanting me to make this opening?”

The beast laughed with every huff of his breath being an echoing and terrifying reminder to Nina of her insignificance. “No. You overestimate yourself. After all, I am but showing you a minor fraction of my strength and size,” the Beast of Corruption said. “Humanity was the one who provided this weakness. For every sin that humanity causes, the God of Purity cracks. Centuries of avarice. Centuries of jealousy. Centuries of lust. And centuries of hate.”

The titan reached his hand under the platform Nina was sitting on. “It will be any moment until the God fractures, and we will be free.” His hand began to grow like a black plague of disgust as it rose and formed a cage around Nina. “That is why I choose you to be the one I shall possess, Afterward, I shall create my domain in the world of the living.”

Nina screamed as the black hand covered the world around her.”No! Please! Why do you choose me?” The Beast of Corruption swallowed her whole as he gave his answer. “In order to create a world of corruption, I must cull the one who is most pure.”

Meanwhile, in the world of the living, Xiaojun continued to make the calls as he paid attention to Nina’s unconscious body. “Fire!” he commanded. Another volley thundered from the muskets. The Jiaguonese began to climb the walls as their numbers proved to simply be too much. “Keep fighting!” he called. “Whatever you do, keep—”

Within a blink, the sky turned black. It wasn’t like they were clouded, but more like the sky itself was stolen. No sun. No light. No hope. “Fools of your own creation,” a voice without origin spoke. “Men of sin find only hell to await them.” Then it was all black.

Xiaojun woke up to find the sounds of screams everywhere. His head hurt as he struggled to find himself onto his feet. “What happened? Where am I?” Then he turned to find a large centipede-like creature crawling towards him. The insect had a mask-like structure on its fa which attempted to fix onto Xiaojun’s head. “What in the hell?” He jumped back and sliced the thing in half. He immedately turned to find more and more swarms which attacked the many other soldiers.

Jiaguonese and Vesterlandish soldiers were attacked equally, as both were sinful. Xiaojun watched as one of the centipedes latched itself onto one of the people’s mouths. The man screamed in fear as blood flowed from his mouth. The creature then latched off as the man attempted to form words only to find that his tongue had been completely eaten off.

“Push forward! We have to get out of here!” Xiaojun called. Wherever he was, he surely didn’t know. He just knew that sitting in this one spot would lead to all of their deaths. Slicing through troves of centipedes, he continued to mosh his way through. Eventually, he found himself descending lower as he continued to move. “Hurry!”

Thoughts invaded his head as he traversed the unearthly place. With the ground and earth being constructed of hardened blood, he knew that this plane had to be a place of impossible and terrifying fantasy. “I’m afraid.” It was the fear of monsters he had dreaded since he was a boy. “I’m truly afraid.”

Naked and brutalized bodies moaned as they remained chained to the sides. “Save… us… please…” they begged. Their fingers had been cut off as the stubbing things bled endless rivers of blood. “Kill… us…” Xiaojun just continued to run as he knew that stopping here would mean dying to some other demon. It was at this moment that he began to descend further.

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The roars and moans of the dead and dying began to thunder as Xiaojun froze in place. Before him, like a garden, were orchards upon orchards of iron trees abundant with bodies which bled from its branches. They reached and cried as they wriggled like mutilated worms. “Come closer! Come to us!” they begged. “We need to eat!”

Xiaojun watched as his fellow soldiers blindly charged forward. Suddenly, a large misshapened beast grabbed the soldiers and threw them to the trees. “No! Please!” There was an audible cut as the branches crucified their flesh. The other bodies, starving for meat, began to grab and tear at their flesh as they force fed themselves. “Meat… finally… meat…” The soldiers cried and shrieked, though their screams would only blend to the already thunderous moans of the damned.

Xiaojun continued to charge through as he cut straight through the demons. He had to move. He had to run. “Nina!” he cried. “I need to find Nina!” That was the only name and face he could imagine. The only person that could save him. She was the reason he became a warrior. She would be the reason he could survive. Little did he knew that she had already been forced into a pact with the Beast of Corruption.

He continued to descend further into the realms of hell as more and more of the soldiers were killed in the most brutal of ways. Some were grabbed and pulled into vats of boiling oil, perpetually burning and killing them as boils formed upon boils of their flesh. Others were cut into pieces as a demon butchered them apart piece by peace. In the end, only Xiaojun managed to continue his descent into hell.

Butchering his way through demons and monsters, Xiaojun was in the fiercest of battles he could’ve ever imagined. In Vesterland, he had gotten used to using dirty tactics and plain fighting to win against humans. But here in this hell, demons and monsters played with the same rules that ruled Xiaojun’s childhood: the crueler survive. The monster inside Xiaojun had been revived.

“Die!” the warrior cried. He grabbed a demon by his horns and slowly turned it. The demon resisted with all he could, but it wasn’t enough. With a hard movement, Xiaojun snapped the monster’s neck. He moved on just as he was forced to dodge the blade of a hulking monster.

The monster, with his head incased into a forever burning box of red metal, clumsily lugged a large and heavy blade which looked more like a slab of metal than a sword. Xiaojun dodged the next strike as he jammed his halberd into the monster’s phallus. The beast screamed within his forever melting helmet as Xiaojun left the monster to bleed.

Step by step, he released his sense of humanity and embraced the inhumanity within him. He grew a smile as he felt the joy of terror and fear. “I’ll kill every last one of you, do you believe me? I’ll do it!” Plunging into hell by himself, he continued to cut anyone in his way. His weapon had become dull due to his bloodlust, but in the end it was still a weapon.

More and more monsters of unbelievable size and shape continued to hunt him down as he monstrously continued to cut them to pieces. Every muscle of his body ached, but the power of his adrenaline and bloodlust continued to fuel his rampage. “More! I need more!”

Suddenly, a bull the size of a hill charged through the wall. It rammed right into Xiaojun who spewed a mouthful of blood as he recovered. The bull roared a howl which reverberated throughout all of hell. Xiaojun just smiled as he held onto his weapon. “I’ll show you what pain feels like.”

The bull charged once more, but Xiaojun jumped to the side. Moving fast, he climbed onto the beast and sprinted to the face of the being. He landed onto the bull’s nose. Then, with a grin, he looked into its large eyes. “Pain.” He thrust his weapon into the giant eye, laughing as it shrieked in pain. Xiaojun ignored the copious amounts of blood which flowed out as he continued to cut. As if he were digging through dirt, he cut through deeper into the bull until he finally reached its stomach. Forming a tunnel of meat, he cut out of the monster. The bull was dead.

He turned to move, but then he heard a voice. “You have fought well human. But it is time for you to admit your weakness to deities.” Rising around him, a large cloaked titan stared him down as other titans exuded their strange emotions as well. “Why do you even resist? You have been fighting a battle you will eventually lose.”

“Who are you?” Xiaojun demanded. He watched as the hand of the titan reached to grab him. “Get away from me!” Xiaojun slashed against the hand only for his steel weapon to shatter upon impact. The warrior stumbled back as the titan looked at his hand and laughed. “You couldn’t even break the cells of my flesh, and yet you still wish to make demands?”

The Beast of Corruption chuckled as the mere mortal continued to scamper in front of him. “You are nothing but a mere pin in the framework of this world. It is almost entertaining to see a human fight like this. Don’t you know that all of your other comrades have been killed and destroyed?”

The Beast of Corruption laughed as Xiaojun shook with every decibel. His adrenaline was waning, and the fear which he hid inside his bones had returned. His minuscule presence was simply being overpowered by the mere existence of the deities around him. He felt that even touching one of them meant his death. “What is this?” he uttered.

“This is the coming of the Four Beasts,” the large titan finally answered. His voice boomed and echoed throughout all of the Diyu as Xiaojun could only listen. “The Beast of Avarice. The Beast of Jealousy. The Beast of Hatred. And the Beast of Lust. As for me,” the deity said, “I am the Beast of Corruption. I am a being beyond their power and scope. The shadow within the God of Purity.”

Then, rising from the depths, was a figure that caused Xiaojun to gasp upon seeing. “Nina!” he exclaimed. The blonde girl remained motionless as she floated in the air as if she had been crucified. “Nina! Tell me what’s going on! Please!” But he didn’t get a single reply. Instead, the Beast of Corruption would be the one to speak. “She shall be my portal to the world of the living. The one you knew as ‘Nina’ is now gone.”

Xiaojun began to sprint forward, but with a snap, the ground grabbed him into place. With his feet and torso being gripped by the disgusting earth, Xiaojun could only watch as the Beast of Corruption placed his titanic and grotesque finger into Nina’s head. “Nina!” Xiaojun cried.

The floating body began to seizure as the Beast of Corruption possessed her. Xiaojun could only watch as the Beast of Corruption phased his titanic body into her. “Get away from her!” he demanded. “Please!” Tears fell down his face as he struggled fruitlessly. His one and only friend was being destroyed in front of him.

Eventually, the scene ended as the transformation completed. Nina’s eyes opened as if she were a corpse. Descending onto the earth, she walked about as she understood her new body. Even the way she breathed was different from the way the real Nina would breathe. “You bastard!” Xiaojun cried. “I’ll kill you!”

“That will not be happening.” The false Nina spoke in a strange and demonic way which conjoined her real voice with the thousands of other voices trapped within the Beast of Corruption. “Since you are such an interesting specimen, you shall be the host of the Beast of Lust. You are his opposite, and therefore his corruption of your soul shall be most worthwhile.”

The other titans laughed as one of them reached his hand to grab the trapped warrior. Xiaojun attempted to kick and wriggle his way out off the earth’s grip only for all attempts to prove completely futile. “I won’t let you get away with this! You’re dead!” But he only heard continued laughter from each of the titans, as if the deities were only mocking his little efforts of resistance. “You have fought well human. But it is now time for you to die.”

“No. It is not.” It was a new voice. Sprinting forward, a strange and mysterious figure appeared as he slashed against the Beast of Lust’s hand. This strike, unlike Xiaojun’s, was actually harmful as the laughter stopped and the beast seethed in pain. Cutting the earth’s grip away, the stranger freed Xiaojun from his restraints.

“It’s you,” the Beast of Corruption growled within Nina’s body. “It seems that in any time, it shall always be you.” The stranger helped Xiaojun onto his feet. Cataphract armor. A guandao. And a voice Xiaojun could always remember. “This man is humanity’s envoy against you,” the stranger said. “As a result, I cannot allow you to kill him.”

The four beasts began to speak amongst themselves as they looked at Xiaojun with growing unease. “Him? He’s the envoy?” “That can’t possibly be true!” “We must kill him now!” Xiaojun coughed as he stood to his feet. Looking at the mysterious warrior, he knew it was the same man who rescued him from Dajing. However, there was something different: the man wasn’t wearing a mask.

The man’s mouth had lips, and yet one could see dozens upon dozens of teeth as his cheeks were virtually nonexistent. There was only one conclusion one could make: this man was either a monster or a demon. “The envoy will return to the world of the living,” the demon said.

“So we shall meet again,” the Beast of Corruption growled. “Very well, Jin the Half-Man. But when I shall meet with the envoy, I will tear him and humanity limb from limb.” The demon said nothing as he lifted the weakened Xiaojun onto his back. A portal opened in front of them as he began to walk towards it. “When that day comes,” he said to the Beast of Corruption, “he shall bring peace with him.” They walked through the portal, finally exiting the Diyu.