Chapter : 23
So delicious!!
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How long had it been? No one knew.
Time lost all meaning at the southernmost pole of the Desolate Mystic World.
The snowstorm attacked without relent, wrapping everything in white mist.
Even the jagged peaks of ice mountains had long since eroded to vague mounds.
In that infinite whiteout, one indistinct form knelt.
Qing Tian.
He had not moved. Stuck in the same pose from the after his mother sealed him in the formation, kneeling, head down, a child shattered from betrayal, he stayed frozen in place as if carved into the land.
Storm after storm clawed at his body, yet for some reason his small small body, did not froze in cold desert and become a corpse.
Frost clawed at his body but for no logical reason had his tiny form not become an icy corpse.
His breath was shallow as if it barely existed. His chest scarcely lifted from the pile of snow and storm that cocooned him.
All that showed was the dim outline of his head.
His hair was that once was inky black of the dark night sky, and now it was rigid and colorless, the hair trapped painfully like fragile needles encased in brittle frost.
His eyebrows had now become icicles with the moisture, and his lips with a bluish white polished edged with frostbite.
Even his lips had a bluish white but it had been pale, edged with jagged frostbite.
He looked considerably less like a living child and far more like a derelict statue, sitting in place propped up in a choking veil of ice forever.
However... there was a pulse.
"It was no heartbeat, but something older, a hum, low and cold, like the whisper of a dead god beneath the frost."
And, still, Qing Tian did not move an inch from his position, as if he was eternal sleep.
His little hands, pressed against the frozen earth, were firmly stuck, bonded with layers of freezing frost.
His knees, situated in that thoroughly degrading kneeling position, had sunk into the ice as though the world itself had decided to bury him alive.
He became one with the blizzard of the snow.
A curse, maybe. A fate, maybe. Or the will to survive, even in the hardest situation.
The young boy remained unconscious, but only his body, not the soul and brain.
His soul drifted in an empty, barren space, a void without light or warmth.
His memories amounted to disconnected thoughts of sparks shudder burning glass, shattered memories chasing after those memories unbeknown as to the reason.
He could not remember who he was, why he suffered, or why he lived and specially what are the reason. It seems like, he has lost his common sense.
But there was only one thing in his heart, that he could remember, even with the unimaginable pain was...
"Aunt... or better to call mother.!!"
Those dead pair of eyes, who always looked at him like he was a treasure for her, and from her only, he could get the warmth that he always wanted.
But... unable to remember anything, there was a painful expression on the face of Qing Tian, even his heartbeat had almost stopped.
"Aunt... mother...!!" These words coming out from the lips of Qing Tian, even when he was unconscious and with his pale bluish lips.
The blizzard howled more fiercely, wind shrieking as if it were a host of devils. Razor blades of ice shot over the sterile fields, however, the tiny kneeling Qing Tian still persisted.
His frozen needle hair swayed in just the same manner. Frost-covered eyelashes twitched as if the invisible hand beckoned him to get up.
Like this unknown time passed!!!
At the southern pole, the storm never ended
But then… something arrived.
At first, it was weak, like the noise of flesh tearing beneath flesh, or the slurp of blood falling down from a wound.
The howling winds of the storm did not cover it; they carried it instead, as if even nature was afraid of whatever arrived.
The snow twisted.
The blizzard slowed. The air thickened with a stench so heavy, it seemed to enter the lung and cut off the breath.
Step.
A foot mark landed within the snow land, and not leaving the indent of a mortal boot, but rather a charred, burned black-red mark that steamed and hissed even within this frozen land.
Step.
Another step followed , measured, deliberate. Each step dripped a blood-red mist that flowed out, staining the white snow in blood streaks.
The storm would seek to sweep it away, but the blood mist only thickened, devoured the whiteness, left a choking crimson haze.
The figure emerged.
He didn't wear a robe like pious sect men would.
He wore a robe were stitched from human skins and flesh, and the joints pulled tight with force.
With every step he took, his legs get twisted unnaturally, as if the stolen flesh remembered pain of the owner of the skins.
His black hair, stiff with frozen clotted blood, hung in ragged clumps like shadows.
And oh, he smirked.
There were too many, and too sharp, teeth, all shining wet though he had not eaten in quite some time.
The storm that had screamed at them had fallen completely silent.
The wind didn't even dare to pass this man. The entire world held its breath.
His eyes, two burning lanterns of forbidden red, cut through the snow, the storm, the white that went on forever, and landed upon a single, frozen child.
Qing Tian.
Buried under storms, sealed in ice, kneeling with his head bowed low and frozen hair pointed like brittle needles.
He looked far less like a boy, and much more like a corpse, the statue that had been abandoned by gods and mortals alike.
But to the bloody man...
He appeared as a food in a banquet.
A rasping laugh escaped him, like bones grinding together.
The laugh was insufficiently loud and echoed in the entire area; and it was rasping, a scraping sound akin to bones grinding against one another.
"What is this...?" He was putting extra length on all the words and licking up each syllable while advancing.
"A child… left to rot in this abyss? How cruel… how beautiful. Who would waste such fine flesh? Mmm… no, no, you're not just meat. You reek of fate, of power. Hehehe… I must taste it."
He took a deep breath, while looking at Qing Tian, who was kneeling in front of him.
The blood mist swirled around the man violently, and it was writhing like snakes and curling down towards Qing Tian.
He seemed frozen in position.
The man's tongue was blackened and forked, like a snake, as it licked along his lips.
"Hah… not a child, but a treasure. My charm of fortune, kneeling and waiting for me" He was laughing manically, his laughter thin and shrill in resonance, smashing against the spread of silence.
"Hahahaha! Who would leave such a thing... for me?"
Who left such a gift for me? Strong blood, rich with medicine… hah, a tonic fit for this king
"So this is what heaven casts aside? A boy, frozen and forgotten… yet still breathing. Hehehe… how exquisite."
He slicked his tongue.
"Don't worry, little corpse… I'll drag you into a new world. My world, where you could survive little long."
"But before, I need to break this restriction!!"
When the man in blood looked at the Qing Tian, but he noticed, there was frowning on his face.
As if he was pitying the Qing Tian.
He gradually approached, taking slow steps, encircling the boy.
He had an overwhelming aura, specially suffocating and thick, feeling like he was drowning in a swamp of blood.
As he knelt down to the frozen form of Qing Tian, he extended one long, bony hand.
Black claws dripped with a fluid darker than ink.
"So small...so delicious..!!"
The words dripping with hunger.
There was a violent flicker in his aura behind him, while illusions formed in the storm, rivers of blood, mountains of flesh, corpses writhing in perpetual screams of agony.
In the snow, the visions painted everything red, transforming the land into a nightmare.
And covering the enitre area where, Qing Tian was.
He chuckled again, quietly at first, then it was loud, it didn't until he ripped the fabric of the space around it.
"Delicious..."
However, inside that frozen abyss, Qing Tian knelt, his body still entangled in the ice crystalline chains of snow and frost with the formations, his hair and brows frozen like needles, his chest rising so feebly you could almost hardly tell if he was even alive.
A monument of despair.
But despair was nothing to the man standing before him.
The blood-soaked cultivator knelt effortlessly, jawbone exposed, twitching, as the acid red of his eyes blazed light from the inside like lanterns burning into the world.
He opened a hand and it pulsed something into being.
This was a treasure.
From his palm, a black sphere emerged, it was beating like a freshly torn heart.
Each throb released blood mist, heavy with distorted whispers: cries and pleas from the devoured souls of the being, twisted together.
"With this, you could be free and forever."
The storm shuddered. The ground cracked. The world recoiled.
But the man only smiled wider, lifting the heart shaped orb toward the frozen boy.
"Open your eyes, child. Let despair be your cradle."
His laughter tore through the sky, ripping the blizzard apart.
The sphere's beat quickened, heavy, violent, like war drums echoing in the dark.
And Qing Tian's eyelids twitched.
Haha...!
A twisted laugh came out from him.
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End of the chapter!!!