Chapter 9 : Ally in the Darkness
1798 Words
"Get your hand away from me, Han Ye! Fight him!" Mo Ran gasped, her voice barely a whisper as the oxygen left her lungs.
Han Ye's black claws twitched against her skin. His fingers were digging into her chest, right above her heart. A low, distorted growl came from his throat, but his eyes were flickering. The solid black was breaking, showing flashes of his original brown irises.
"I can't... stop... him," Han Ye groaned. His entire body was shaking. The black veins on his neck pulsed with a sickly light.
"Yes, you can! You're stronger than a parasite!" Mo Ran reached up, her own hands trembling as she grabbed his wrists. She didn't use her power to push him away. She just held him. "Look at what you've done for six months, Han Ye. You survived the abyss. You survived the betrayal. Don't let him take your soul now."
A sudden, sharp cry erupted from Han Ye's lips. He threw his head back, his teeth bared in agony. With a violent surge of will, he wrenched his hand away from Mo Ran's chest. He pivoted, slamming his own fist into the stone wall beside her head. The rock shattered into dust under the force of the Void energy.
"Go! Get away from me!" Han Ye screamed.
He fell to his knees, his forehead hitting the cold floor. The dark aura that had been suffocating the room began to recede, flowing back into his skin like receding tide water. He was gasping for air, his chest heaving as if he had just run for miles.
Mo Ran slid down the wall, clutching her throat. She coughed, taking in deep breaths of the dusty air. After a moment, she crawled toward him. She didn't look afraid anymore. She looked devastated.
"He's quiet now," Han Ye whispered, his voice cracking. "But he's still there. He's waiting."
"I know," Mo Ran said. She reached out and touched his shoulder. This time, he didn't pull away.
Han Ye looked up at her. Tears were streaming down his face, leaving tracks through the dirt and dried blood. "I killed them, Mo Ran. The monk at the peak. The father in the desert. The girl in the forest. I didn't save anyone. I was just clearing the table for him to eat."
"You didn't know," she replied.
"I should have known! I was so blinded by Lin Xue and Mu Chen. I wanted them to suffer so much that I didn't care who else got hurt. I'm not a cultivator. I'm just a murderer with a god's excuses."
Han Ye buried his face in his hands. "Every person I erased... I can feel them. Their memories are stuck in my head. The monk had a cat he loved. The father wanted to see his daughter get married. I took it all. I'm the villain, Mo Ran. I'm the one who started the end of the world."
Mo Ran pulled him into a hug. It was the first time someone had held him with genuine compassion since the night of the betrayal. "Then you're the only one who can stop it. The Light Sect won't do it. They're part of the harvest. If we give up now, those deaths really will be for nothing."
Han Ye pulled back, looking at her with hollow eyes. "What can I do? I'm full of his energy. Every time I use it, I get closer to disappearing."
"We go to my sect," Mo Ran said firmly. "We have archives. Ancient texts that the Light Sect tried to burn. There might be a way to use the Ketiadaan against the Emperor himself. We change the destiny, Han Ye. We stop being his architects and start being his cage."
*
Five days later, the air grew heavy and smelled of sulfur. They stood before the gates of the Demon Sect, a fortress built into the side of a jagged, black mountain. The guards at the entrance lowered their spears, their eyes wide as they saw Han Ye's blackened skin and ashen hair.
"Saintess! You brought the Architect here?" one of the guards shouted, his voice full of terror.
"Step aside," Mo Ran commanded. Her voice held a sharp authority that Han Ye hadn't heard before. "He is under my protection."
"The Elders will have your head for this!"
They ignored the murmurs and walked through the dark corridors. The Demon Sect wasn't the den of evil Han Ye had expected. He saw families, elderly people cooking, and young students practicing techniques that focused on the soul rather than raw power. It was a place of outcasts, people who didn't fit into the Light Sect's perfect, harvested world.
They reached the Great Hall. Three Elders sat on high stone chairs. They looked ancient, their skin like wrinkled parchment. The moment Han Ye stepped into the room, the temperature dropped.
"Mo Ran, have you lost your mind?" the eldest Elder asked. His name was Elder Vane, and his eyes were milky white with age. "You bring the vessel of the Cosmic Parasite into our sanctuary?"
"He is the only one who can fight the Grandmaster," Mo Ran replied, stepping in front of Han Ye.
"He is the one who will eat us all!" another Elder shrieked, pointing a skeletal finger at Han Ye. "Look at him! He is more Void than man now! The energy is leaking from his pores!"
Han Ye stepped forward, dropping to his knees. He didn't use his power. He just lowered his head. "I don't want to eat the world. I want to save it. I was a fool. I let a monster talk me into killing the innocent. I don't ask for your forgiveness. I only ask for your knowledge."
The hall went silent. The Elders looked at each other, confused by the humility of a man who could erase them with a thought.
"The seventh relic is in the Capital," Elder Vane said after a long pause. "The Grandmaster has held it for centuries. He is waiting for the other six to be brought to him. He is waiting for you, Han Ye."
"I know," Han Ye said.
"If you go there, the Emperor will try to take over again," Vane warned. "The closer you are to the final relic, the stronger his influence becomes. You will be a bomb walking into a crowded room."
"Then teach me how to be a cage," Han Ye said, looking up.
*
For three days, Han Ye didn't sleep. He sat in the deepest vault of the Demon Sect, surrounded by scrolls that crumbled at the touch. Mo Ran stayed by his side, translating the old tongue.
"The technique is called Soul Binding Ketiadaan," Mo Ran explained, pointing to a diagram of a human body with seven points of light. "Instead of letting the energy flow through your meridian, you trap it in your soul. You turn your own spirit into a seal."
"It will hurt, won't it?" Han Ye asked.
"More than the ritual that took your root," she whispered. "It will feel like your soul is being sanded down to nothing. And if you fail, you won't just die. You'll become the Emperor instantly."
Han Ye looked at his hands. The black lines had stopped moving for now, but he could feel the hunger beneath the surface. I have to do this. For the father. For the girl. For me.
"Let's start," he said.
The process was a nightmare of internal screaming. Han Ye had to manually move the cold, biting energy of the Void into the center of his being. It felt like swallowing broken glass and keeping it in his chest. Every few hours, he would vomit black blood, but he didn't stop.
Mo Ran sat across from him, her hands on his knees, feeding him her life essence to keep his heart beating.
By the fourth morning, Han Ye stood up. He looked different. The black markings hadn't disappeared, but they were no longer pulsing. They were static, like a tattoo. His eyes were brown again, though the pupils were unnaturally large.
"I can't feel him," Han Ye said, touching his chest. "He's still there, but he's muffled. It's like he's behind a thick wall."
"It's working," Mo Ran said, her face pale with exhaustion. "But the wall will break if you stay near the Grandmaster for too long."
"Then I'll have to be fast."
They walked to the balcony of the fortress, looking out toward the horizon where the Capital of Light glowed with an artificial, blinding radiance.
"The Grandmaster isn't just a man, Han Ye," Mo Ran said. "He's lived for five hundred years on those pills. He's fast, and he has the seventh relic. He can control the space around him."
"I don't care about his speed," Han Ye said. He gripped the hilt of a new sword the sect had given him, a blade made of soul-tempered iron. "I'm going to take back what he stole from me. Not just the root. I'm taking back the world's future."
Suddenly, a massive boom echoed from the sky. A pillar of white light descended from the clouds, striking the plains just a few miles away from the Demon Sect's mountain.
Han Ye's eyes narrowed. He could feel a familiar, arrogant aura.
"He's not waiting for me to come to the Capital," Han Ye said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low.
"Who is it?" Mo Ran asked, her hand going to her dagger.
Han Ye didn't answer. He jumped from the balcony, his body surrounded by a thin, controlled veil of black energy. He landed on the rocky ground below and began to run toward the light.
In the center of the scorched earth stood a man in golden armor. He was holding a spear that hummed with the power of a thousand harvested souls. Beside him stood Mu Chen, his face twisted in a smug, victorious grin.
"Did you really think you could hide in a hole like a rat, Han Ye?" Mu Chen shouted, his voice amplified by the light. "The Grandmaster is bored. He decided to finish the harvest today."
Han Ye stopped twenty paces away. He didn't look at Mu Chen. He looked at the golden-armored man, the Grandmaster himself.
"The seventh relic," Han Ye said, pointing his iron sword at the Grandmaster's chest. "Give it to me, or I'll erase this entire continent just to make sure you're gone."
The Grandmaster laughed, a sound like grinding metal. "You speak of erasing, boy? You can't even keep your own skin from rotting. Look at your shadow."
Han Ye looked down. His shadow wasn't on the ground. It was standing up behind him, its hands reaching for his throat.
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