The morning light didn't reach the interior of the Alchemy Laboratory. Here, time was measured only by the dripping of condensation from the bronze pipes and the rhythmic scratching of Elder Han's quill against parchment.
Jiang Chen sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor. He hadn't moved in four hours.
His body was vibrating. The energy from the fifteen failed pills he had consumed the night before was still settling into his marrow, making his bones feel like heavy lead bars wrapped in hot wire. He wasn't meditating in the traditional sense; he was digesting. Every breath was a conscious effort to keep the volatile Qi from tearing his newly reinforced meridians apart.
"Open your eyes," Elder Han's voice cut through the silence.
Jiang Chen obeyed. His vision was sharp, the low-light vision granted by the Predator's Instinct picking out the dust motes dancing in the stagnant air.
Elder Han stood over him, holding a small jade box with a reverence that made Jiang Chen's skin crawl. The Elder wore a heavy apron stained with fluids that had dried into a crusty, brownish-black map of his failures.
"Yesterday, you proved your gut is made of iron," Han said, his voice trembling with suppressed excitement. "You digested the Fire Poison and the Heavy Metal residue. A physical furnace."
He clicked the latch on the jade box.
"But the body is just a vessel. The pilot is the soul."
The lid opened.
There was no sulfur smell this time. No acrid chemical stench.
Inside the box sat a pill the size of a pearl, but it wasn't solid. It was a swirling sphere of translucent gray mist, held together by a fragile surface tension. It pulsed, shrinking and expanding like a dying heart.
"The Soul-Rot Pill," Han whispered. "Derived from the Ghost-Face Mushroom and the tears of a Spirit Widow. It doesn't burn the flesh, Jiang Chen. It dissolves the ego."
Jiang Chen looked at the gray sphere. His instincts, usually screaming Hunger, were silent. This didn't look like food. It looked like a trap.
[Scan: Soul-Rot Pill (Experimental).]
[Class: Neuro-Hallucinogen / Soul Poison.]
[Lethality: Mental Collapse.]
[Venom Heart (Level 2): Chance of Resistance - 60%.]
"Sixty percent," Jiang Chen thought. "Better than zero."
"Eat," Elder Han commanded, his eyes wide and unblinking. "If you survive, your Spirit will be tempered like steel. If you fail... well, I have always wanted a vegetable to test my new needles on."
Jiang Chen stood up. He didn't tremble. He couldn't afford to show weakness.
He reached into the box. The pill was cold—ice cold. It felt like touching a winter draft solidified into a marble.
"For the Elder's research," Jiang Chen said, his voice flat.
He popped the pill into his mouth.
It didn't crunch. It popped like a bubble of water.
Instantly, a sensation of absolute zero washed over his tongue, shooting up through the roof of his mouth and directly into his brain stem.
"Ghh—"
Jiang Chen fell to his knees.
The laboratory vanished.
POV SHIFT: The Gray Void
There was no floor. No ceiling. Just an endless, swirling gray fog that smelled of old memories and wet ash.
Jiang Chen looked at his hands. They were rotting.
The flesh was sloughing off the bone, turning into gray dust and blowing away in a wind he couldn't feel.
"You are nothing," a voice whispered. It sounded like Senior Disciple Wang.
"You are a rat," another voice laughed. It was Liu Ming.
"You are just food," the voice of the Corpse Rat screeched.
Jiang Chen tried to speak, but his jaw unhinged and fell away, turning to dust.
Panic.
Real, primal panic set in. This wasn't pain; this was erasure. He felt his memories fading. He couldn't remember his mother's face. He couldn't remember why he wanted to live.
Why do I struggle? The thought floated through the dissolving remnants of his mind. It's so quiet here. I should just sleep.
The gray fog wrapped around his exposed ribs, caressing his heart. It felt comfortable. It felt like surrendering.
Yes. Sleep. Just let go.
Deep in the abyss of his consciousness, beneath the fear and the rotting human ego, something opened an eye.
It wasn't the human Jiang Chen.
It was the Thing in the black water.
[Unauthorized Intrusion Detected.]
The System's voice boomed through the gray fog, sounding like a god speaking through a broken speaker.
[Defense Protocol: Venom Heart Lvl 2.]
[Status: INSULTED.]
The gray fog recoiled.
The Void Serpent didn't roar. It laughed. A low, tectonic rumble that shook the gray void.
You try to rot Me? The Serpent's thought-wave crashed against the hallucination. I am the Rot. I am the End.
Jiang Chen felt a surge of heat in his chest—not the warm, cozy heat of a hearth, but the searing, radioactive heat of a reactor breach.
The gray fog wasn't dissolving him anymore. He was inhaling it.
His rotting hands snapped back together, the flesh knitting with violent speed. His jaw reattached.
He opened his mouth and inhaled the hallucination. The "ghosts" of Wang and Liu Ming shrieked as they were sucked into his maw.
It's spicy, Jiang Chen realized, his mind sharpening with clarity that bordered on mania. It tastes like fear.
[Filtering Neurotoxin...]
[Converting Psychotropic Energy to Spirit...]
Scene Return: The Laboratory
"GAAAAH!"
Jiang Chen slammed his forehead into the stone floor, cracking the slab.
He gasped, sucking in the stale air of the lab. He was back. He was whole.
Sweat pooled around him, but his eyes... his eyes were wide open. The pupils were dilated to the point where his irises were almost invisible, black pits swallowing the light.
Elder Han was leaning over him, a silver needle poised to strike a pressure point. He froze.
"You..." Han whispered. "You're awake? It's been thirty seconds."
Jiang Chen pushed himself up. His head felt light, balloon-like, yet incredibly dense. He could hear the blood rushing through Elder Han's carotid artery. He could smell the Elder's surprise—it smelled like ozone.
DING!
[Crisis Averted.]
[Spirit Attribute Increased: 2.5 -> 3.2]
[New Mental Resistance Acquired: Minor Illusion Immunity.]
Jiang Chen looked at the Elder. For a split second, the human mask slipped, and Han saw something ancient looking back at him. Then, Jiang Chen blinked, and the "loyal servant" returned.
"That was... vivid, Elder," Jiang Chen rasped, wiping a line of blood from his nose. "I saw my ancestors."
Elder Han dropped the needle. He started pacing, his hands wringing together.
"Thirty seconds. The pill dissolves the mind of a normal cultivator in five minutes. You... you processed it in seconds."
He spun around, grabbing Jiang Chen's shoulders.
"Do you know what this means? It means your Spirit Root is mutated. It feeds on trauma! It feeds on chaos!"
"Is that good?" Jiang Chen asked, playing the fool.
"Good? It's revolutionary!" Han cackled. "I can feed you the Forbidden Pills. The ones that drive men mad with power! We can skip the purification process entirely!"
Han ran to his desk, frantically unlocking a heavy iron drawer.
"I need to prepare the Vat. Yes, the Blood-Refining Vat. We need to soak your body to stabilize this mutation."
He turned to Jiang Chen, his face flushed.
"I have to go to the Herb Hall to get the Star-Fire roots. You stay here. Do not touch anything. Do not die."
Elder Han grabbed his cloak and sprinted out of the lab, the heavy iron doors slamming shut behind him. The locking runes flared red.
Click.
Jiang Chen stood alone in the center of the room.
The silence returned.
"He thinks I'm his prize pig," Jiang Chen whispered, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.
"He doesn't know he's fattening up a tiger."
He checked the System clock.
[Time: 22:00 Hours.]
[Elder Han Estimated Return: 2 Hours.]
Jiang Chen approached the iron door. He touched the glowing red rune. It zapped his finger, a sharp sting of warning.
"Locked tight," he muttered. "But he left the keys inside."
He turned back to the lab.
Rows and rows of shelves. Ingredients worth thousands of Spirit Stones.
But Jiang Chen wasn't interested in the herbs. He was interested in the heavy iron drawer Elder Han had just unlocked but failed to close in his haste.
He walked over to the desk.
Inside the drawer was a single, leather-bound book and a ring of keys.
"Jackpot."
He picked up the book.
Log of Experiments – Subject 449 to 500.
He flipped it open.
Subject 448: Failed. Exploded upon ingestion of Fire Pill. Remains fed to the Spirit Hounds.
Subject 449 (Jiang Chen): Anomaly. Furnace Body. Proceed with accelerated testing.
Jiang Chen closed the book. No remorse. No pity. Just data.
He picked up the keys.
There were three. One for the front door, one for the supply closet... and one made of black bone that felt heavy and cold.
"Where do you go?" he asked the black key.
He looked around the room. His eyes, enhanced by the Spirit increase, scanned the walls for irregularities.
Behind a large shelf of preserved organs, he saw it.
A faint seam in the stone wall. A concealed door.
He walked over and pushed the shelf aside. The jars rattled, the preserved eyes of beasts sloshing in their formaldehyde prisons.
There was a keyhole in the stone, surrounded by black soot.
He inserted the bone key.
Click-Clack.
The stone wall ground open, revealing a spiral staircase descending into the darkness.
A smell wafted up.
It wasn't chemicals. It wasn't herbs.
It was the smell of old blood, excrement, and something... sweet.
"The sweet smell," Jiang Chen realized, his stomach giving a familiar lurch. "It's high-grade biomass."
[Alert: High Concentration of Spirit Energy Detected.]
[Source: Biological.]
Jiang Chen pulled the Mask of the Faceless from his robe.
He pressed it to his face.
Shift.
His features melted and reformed. He became the scarred, thug-faced man he had designed the night before.
"Let's see what you're hiding, Han."
He descended into the dark.
The Lower Level: The Battery Farm
The stairs ended in a large, circular chamber carved directly into the mountain's rock.
The air here was hot and humid, thick with a red mist.
Jiang Chen stepped onto the floor and froze.
The room was filled with vats.
Ten glass cylinders, each ten feet tall, filled with a bubbling green liquid.
Inside the vats were people.
They were suspended in the fluid, tubes running into their mouths, chests, and dants.
Some were missing limbs. Some were swollen, their skin translucent.
They were alive. Jiang Chen could see their chests rising and falling in shallow, forced breaths.
The tubes weren't feeding them. They were draining them.
The liquid in the vats glowed with a soft pulse, drawing Qi from their bodies and funneling it into a central collection tank in the middle of the room.
"Human batteries," Jiang Chen whispered. The horror of it washed over him, but it was quickly suppressed by the cold logic of the Void.
"He uses them to filter the ambient Qi, purifies it through their bodies, and collects the essence."
[Analysis: Bio-Refinery.]
[Efficiency: Low.]
[Waste Product: Suffering.]
Jiang Chen walked up to the nearest vat.
Inside was a girl, no older than sixteen. Her eyes were open, but they were white, blind. She scratched feebly at the glass.
Her mouth moved. Kill me.
Jiang Chen placed his hand on the glass.
He didn't feel sadness. He felt... waste.
"He's using them inefficiently," Jiang Chen critiqued. "Draining them slowly ruins the flavor of the Qi. It makes it bitter."
He looked at the central tank.
It was filled with a thick, golden liquid.
[Item: Distilled Human Essence.]
[Purity: High.]
[Quantity: 5 Liters.]
[Estimated EV: 500+.]
500 EV.
Jiang Chen's jaw tightened.
That was enough to push him to Layer 3. Maybe Layer 4.
It was enough to upgrade his skills.
It was enough to buy a real weapon.
"If I take it," Jiang Chen thought, "Han will know. He will kill me."
[Advisory: The blame must be shifted.]
Jiang Chen looked at the scarring on the girl in the tank.
"The righteous sects," he mused. "They hate blood magic. If a 'righteous spy' were to sabotage this lab... stole the essence to 'save' the victims... Han would be too busy covering his tracks to look for a servant."
He needed to create chaos.
But first, he needed to eat.
He approached the central tank.
The spigot was locked, but Jiang Chen didn't need a key.
He activated [Rending Claw].
His fingers turned into jagged hooks.
Slash.
He sheared the lock off the metal tank.
He opened the valve.
The golden liquid poured out.
Jiang Chen didn't use a cup. He cupped his hands and drank.
It was sweet. Sickeningly sweet. It tasted like honey mixed with iron.
As it hit his stomach, the Venom Heart roared to life, not filtering toxin, but refining pure power.
DING!
[Consumed: Distilled Human Essence.]
[EV +10]
[EV +10]
[EV +10]
He drank frantically, gulping down the life force of the prisoners.
He wasn't saving them. He was stealing their pain for himself.
"More," he growled, the red aura of the Predator's Instinct flaring around him.
Suddenly, a sound echoed from the far side of the room.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Jiang Chen froze, golden liquid dripping from his chin.
He wiped his mouth and spun around.
In the shadows of the furthest corner, there was a cage.
It wasn't a glass vat. It was a cage made of black meteoric iron.
And inside, something was watching him.
It wasn't human.
It was a lump of flesh, covered in eyes. Dozens of eyes.
And it had a mouth that was stitched shut with gold wire.
Tap. Tap.
One of its tentacles tapped against the bars.
[Warning: Unknown Entity Detected.]
[Threat Level: Extreme.]
[Status: Sealed.]
The creature transmitted a thought, bypassing Jiang Chen's ears and drilling directly into his skull.
You... eat... like... Him.
Jiang Chen stepped back. "Him?"
The... Serpent...
The creature's many eyes narrowed in unison.
Free... me... and... I... kill... Han.
Jiang Chen looked at the tank of essence, then at the creature, then at the dying prisoners.
Chaos.
He needed chaos.
"If I free you," Jiang Chen whispered, his voice distorted by the Mask, "You don't kill Han. You burn this whole mountain down."
The creature's stitched mouth stretched, tearing the gold wire. A jagged, toothless smile formed.
Burn... yes... burn.
Jiang Chen grabbed a heavy iron bar from a workbench.
He looked at the central tank—he had drunk about half. 250 EV gained.
He looked at the creature.
"System," Jiang Chen commanded. "Spend 200 EV. Buy [Shadow Step] and [Concealment Cloak] from the Shop."
[Purchase Confirmed.]
[Skills Acquired.]
"Good."
He walked toward the black cage.
"Tonight, the Alchemy Peak holds a barbecue."
He raised the iron bar.
He wasn't a hero saving the captives.
He was just opening the door for a bigger monster, so the little monster could get away with the cheese.
CLANG.
The lock on the black cage shattered.