It wasn’t often that Feng Zhiming found himself at a loss for words. Yet, as Anissa's question hung in the air, he simply stared at her, his expression blank, his mind elsewhere.
Anissa shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of his gaze, her confidence waning. It felt as if he was peering into her very soul, but in truth, Feng Zhiming was using her eyes as a mirror.
What he saw disturbed him. His left eye, once sharp and clear, had become a swirling vortex of darkness. It should have been terrifying, yet his vision remained unaltered, as if the eye was still whole. The contradiction gnawed at him, confusing and unsettling.
Realizing how long he had been staring, Feng Zhiming quickly broke eye contact, looking straight ahead instead. "I'm fine," he finally said, his voice lacking conviction as he tried to mask his unease.
Anissa, unconvinced, glanced down at her hands, which were trembling ever so slightly. Her eyes widened in surprise. "Why am I so disturbed by this?" she wondered, staring at her shaking hands. She, who had once harbored thoughts of vengeance against a Dao Lord, was now rattled by a mere look from Feng Zhiming.
"You don’t look fine," she blurted out, her voice betraying her own uncertainty.
Feng Zhiming, sensing her doubt, knelt in front of her bed and gently cupped her hands in his. He looked up at her, deliberately closing his left eye as he spoke. "I am truly fine. My life is secure. This eye… it's a blessing. I was pulled into the Astral Realm by the Forgotten One. He bestowed this upon me."
As his words sank in, Anissa’s trembling subsided, though her mind remained troubled.
Feng Zhiming stood, placing a reassuring hand on her head. "Don’t worry. Do you think the Vessel of a God would die so easily?"
She nodded, but her gaze remained fixed on the floor, her expression hidden from him.
"I just need some time to acclimate to this eye," he continued, his tone calm and measured. "Could you leave the room?"
She nodded again and rose to her feet. But just as she turned to leave, she suddenly threw her arms around him, holding him tightly.
Feng Zhiming’s eyebrows lifted in surprise as he returned the embrace, patting her back gently as if comforting a younger sibling. He had not expected his carefully chosen words to elicit such a response. "Her growth must have been even more stunted than I originally imagined," he mused, realizing that her dependency on him had grown far beyond his expectations.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
After a few moments, Anissa pulled away and left the room, avoiding his gaze as she did. Feng Zhiming sat back down, deploying his spiritual sense, his mind returning to the pressing matter at hand.
"I need to figure out what this eye is," he muttered to himself.
Spiritual sense, an extension of one's consciousness, allowed for a deeper perception of the world. Feng Zhiming directed it towards the vortex in his eye, cautiously probing the dark energy swirling within. The black vortex spun clockwise, and the veins and arteries surrounding his eye had begun to darken, almost as if they were struggling to supply blood to this foreign entity.
As his spiritual sense approached the vortex, a sudden sensation of suffocation gripped him. Instinctively, his eye reacted, shattering his spiritual sense before it could make contact. The backlash reverberated through his mind, and he blacked out for a few seconds before regaining consciousness.
"Did I shatter my own spiritual sense?" Feng Zhiming thought, piecing together the fragments of what had just occurred. It had been an instinctual response, much like flinching when faced with an imminent threat.
He made a mental note to never probe the eye with his spiritual sense again. It was clear that this was linked to the Scholar of Black and his Lord. Somehow, in his interactions with them, he had been tricked, manipulated into accepting something foreign, something dangerous.
"This shouldn't be here," he whispered, frustration seeping into his voice as he reprimanded himself. "That cannot stay here."
Summoning all his willpower, Feng Zhiming resisted his instincts and slowly moved his hand towards his eye. "Even if I lose an eye, I will not be tainted by the machinations of another," he vowed, determined to rid himself of this curse.
As his fingers touched the eye, they didn't meet resistance. Instead, they passed through it, as if his eye was a gateway to another dimension. His entire forearm sank into his skull, yet he felt nothing.
He quickly withdrew his hand, horrified to see that from his elbow to his fingertips, his arm had been infected with the same black veins that surrounded his eye. The nerves in his arm were dead, robbed of sensation by the mere touch of the vortex.
Without hesitation, Feng Zhiming severed his arm, his face remaining stoic. But his resolve wavered as the arm began to regrow, the black veins and dead nerves returning with it.
His frown deepened, his brows furrowing as he tried to recall every detail of his encounter with the Scholar. Somewhere along the way, he had consented to something, unknowingly allowing this corruption to take root.
[You have been corrupted by external forces.]
[The external force has been identified as the corruption of the Acaritas.]
[This is a breach of the Assembly of Absolution.]
[The administrator shall be inf—]
{You don’t need to inform the administrator.}
[The administrator sha—]
{This is no external force.}
Feng Zhiming's confusion deepened. The shadow, which had always been a steady presence, was now arguing with itself, cutting off mid-sentence.
"Corrupted by external forces? External to what, to who?" he muttered, his mind racing to make sense of it all.
[The administrator shall not not not not—]
The message dissolved into static, leaving Feng Zhiming with more questions than answers. Whatever had taken root within him was far more sinister than he had anticipated, and now it was intertwining itself with the very fabric of his being, threatening to consume him entirely.