Well, there's really only one item that would fit, no? Those whatchamacallit robes that I got way, way, way back in the day and that I tossed into the corner of one of the spatial rings. They'd been gathering dust ever since, as have many other things, admittedly. One of these days, I'll really have to go through all of my rings with a fine comb and just give EVERYTHING away.
I mean, I have had a pair of Demonic Crystals in my satchel for years now, and all they've done is be part of the clutter. I'm sure I even have some older shit, but there's a good chance I'm just straight up forgetting them.
"UGHA!" I was snapped back to reality by the most vile and revolting sound I'd heard in years; the man's throat had bulged like a balloon for a moment before his mouth opened, and black-colored pus came shooting like as though from a jet.
The... uh, I wanna say liquid? Yeah, let's go with that--the liquid chewed through the brick floor below as though it were acid, sizzling and melting away the stone. I stood up and stepped away as the woman dispersed all the chairs and the table, clearing the area around.
I so desperately wanted to go back in time and claim unto death that I had no means of curing a Heart Demon. Just watching it is enough to scar me mentally for years... which begged the question: what the hell was that kid enduring? And, more importantly than that, was it even worth it?
If I temporarily put myself into a role of a netizen of this world, discard the fact that I have a system 'grooming' me for something, I can't quite understand this borderline psychotic obsession that cultivators here have with progressing. As far as I know, reaching Sovereign Realm granted one just shy of 30,000 years of natural lifespan, not even taking into account special ways to extend it.
Thirty. Fucking. Thousand. Years.
That's, like, almost five times the length of settled civilizations back on Earth. In that span, there were pyramids, hanging gardens, there was the Silk Road, the unending number of dynasties in China, so many wars in Europe that the climax was not one, but two World Wars, the entire freakin' Sahara changing its geography, and a billion-million more things that my pea-sized forgetful brain had already erased... he could live the length of that and then die.
He could eat, drink, and fuck whatever damned well he pleased, and instead he's choosing this. Agony doesn't even begin to sum it up. Perhaps, when people were writing about hell back on Earth, they got high like a kite and dreamed of this guy, right here, undergoing this.
And for what? To wrestle away a psychological problem that was manifested into reality. Geez, if I were a therapist, I'd kill in this world.
... okay, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Best I can tell, while Heart Demons do begin as your standard-fare psychological issues, that's literally just their 'pod' stage. They are like cancer, in reality--slowly eating the body from inside out, consuming it, until only madness and death remained. There are no known cures, no remedies, and even if that 'psychological issue' gets resolved, the Heart Demon remains.
A big reason why cultivators seem so apathetic to death and pain and suffering is mostly because they have to be. If they let themselves be weathered against the human anguish, literally all of them would be working around with cancer equivalents in their Hearts.
About fifteen minutes into the whole ordeal, I could scarcely make out a person in the amalgamation of melted skin, rotted organs, and black pus. The only reason I even knew the boy was alive were the subsided screams. How he was screaming? I have no idea. He had no throat, he had no mouth, and he had no tongue. It was like the misery was so overcoming, that his mind was screaming so loudly that parts of it got out, somehow.
"Do you think you could endure it?" the woman asked.
"No," I replied simply. I'd have died--either by my brain frying itself or doing it myself--somewhere around the time his eyeballs became melted cheese. "You?"
"Yes," she said as I looked over at her. "Anyone truly pursuing Dao would."
"..." I stayed my lips; I've already gotten in enough trouble due to my loose tongue. It's sort of like faith, I figure--some people have it, some people have it, and some people don't.
"No comment?" I could hear her lips turn up into a grin even though my eyes were turned toward the boy.
"To each their own," I said.
"How sagacious. Or cowardly."
"..." there were many things I couldn't wrap my head around when it came to Dao and this world, but I wasn't about to start running my mouth about them. Even Long Tao, all else notwithstanding, held a reverence for Dao so deep it was at the depth of the planetary core. "Looks like it's ending," I said as the most magical thing happened.
The mixture of horrors and nightmares began to clear up as a low hum swept through. It was the familiar hum, one I'd heard a few times by now--hum of Dao. As it approached me, it swerved and went past me, though it swept directly through the woman who had her eyes closed, her lips curling up into a beaming smile.
"How can you not endure the pain to seek that?" she asked, and I almost blurted out, 'That what?'
I think part of the reason I can't put myself in their shoes is that I've never felt it--that bond, connection, hum, whatever it was, that would relate Dao to me.
The man's body slowly began to reconstruct itself until it was whole; he lied on his front, buck-naked, twitching occasionally.
[--Lu Naǒ is annoyed that you are spending so much time on a human child. She demands you give her the promised method now or she will make you bald]
... wow. That actually kind of... working? One of the few things that went my way in my life back on Earth was the fact I had pretty nice hair even when I died. Yes, I got that classic widow's peak, but the top wasn't thinning out or disappearing or anything. It was lush, in fact. I'd never known myself with a bald head, so the threat of it made me kinda wince.
"Ugh," Han Yimu groaned as he slowly opened his eyes, sitting up with the help of his arms, clearly still disoriented as he remained fully naked. Luckily, the woman didn't seem to care--then again, why the hell would she?
"Welcome back," I said. "I didn't think this is what you liked, Yimu."
"H-huh?" he seemed uncertain for a second longer before it dawned on him. "Ah!!" a flutter of clothes later, he was wearing quite luxurious, cyan-colored robes as he was kneeling in front of me. "Forgive me, Master! I have sullied your divine eyes with such a horrid sight--"
"--ugh, I was just making a joke," I groaned. "Seriously. Haah."
"Little Yimu," the woman said. "Could you step out for a moment? You can use my chamber nearby to slowly adjust yourself to your new body."
"Ah, I, uh..."
"Don't worry," she smiled. "I've no intentions of harming your new Master. Rather," she glanced at me. "I wouldn't dare."
Aaaaand... yup.
There's that look. The look I'd seen in Dai Xiu, in Xi Zhao, in Light, in Xing Feng--shit, even in Lao Shun--the look of reverence. He immediately shot to his feet, bowed to me, and then left.
"I changed my mind," I suddenly said, growing annoyed with about 200 screen notifications.
"H-huh? About what?"
"Keep it," I reached up and grabbed the bird on my head, palming it and shoving it toward the woman. "Seriously, just keep it. She will drive me absolutely insane."
[--Lu Naǒ panics and starts crying. She calls you a meanie and says that you are a bad guy who breaks promises]
And then the bird... started crying. Except, it wasn't a bird cry.
It was a baby cry.
A human baby cry.
Haah.
Oh, hell.