Chapter : 25
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Qing Tian's scream ripped from his throat as the vile vine burrowed into his arm, echoing in the hall.
Its barbed tip shredded sinew and splintered bone, drawing up thick, hot streams of blood into its hungry body, with each pulse.
Cold fire raced up his arm with each heartbeat.
The misery was endless, inescapable.
He jerked, rattling the chains above him, only to be struck with lances of pain for the slightest movement.
The stone slab beneath him was slick with blood.
He began to feel warmth drain from his extremities as the taste of iron mixed with bile slid into his throat with every heartbeat carrying away droplets of life and spirit.
The demon cultivator straightened and bent in close, his eyes glowing reflectively like coals. He laughed quietly while Qing Tian's narrowing world became one of pain, "You little stubborn worm," the demon uneasy while cold as ice, while looking at the screaming Qing Tian from for his life.
"Your blood is… surprisingly rich. Each curse that escapes your lips makes this total experience even more delightful."
The demon leaned back, savoring every scream of Qing Tian's.
"Your hatred is flawless, bitter, but also sharp. I taste it on my tongue, pretty much."
The evil man can feel the huge amount of the hatred in the heart of the Qing Tian, but he seems to enjoying it.
A second vine, it was larger, A vine burst from the chest of a hanging corpse and slithered toward Qing Tian.
Soon, it wrapped itself around him like a snake, jagged thorns caught in his ribs, making it painful to take a breath.
The vine crushed his ribs, each breath a strangled gasp.
With every pulse thunderously relaxing, every consumed breath pressured like a blade in his chest.
Each heartbeat pumped the venom through his veins, and a metallic taste flooding mouth of Qing Tian's.
The cultivator watched closely, leaning back against a pillar of blood-black stone. He spoke low so only Qing Tian could hear, "So much Spirit… so potent. Yet wasted on a mortal husk."
He rasped like dead leaves, "But it doesn't matter. I will celebrate my ascension from your pain. You are the perfect seed."
With the last of his strength remaining, Qing Tian fumbled at his storage ring and took out his sword.
However, Qing Tian's fingers shook on the hilt of his sword and tried to stab toward the demon cultivator, but he was too weak to raise it.
He stared into the demon's eyes, eyes that filled with rage that could no longer be suppressed but not released to .
The word fled him, and all that came from cracked lips was a sound of vacuous panic. The coils around him constricted.
A white-hot incineration ripped through his chest, the press of his full lungs was beyond his control. A hundred bloody tears formed in his eyes as he fought to remain conscious.
"I would hurry if I were you, boy," the sorrowful cultivator said, voice like nails on stone. The observed words were a cooling rasp to Qing Tian's bleeding ears, almost lost in a seizing breath.
"All of this is just an overture."
Then the nightmares crashed down.
The demon cultivator began to chant an incantation in dialect he did not know.
The blood pool behind him trembled as if alive.
From its depths, a tall, contorted black vine erupted forward and rocketed straight toward Qing Tian like a spear.
Seeing those weird vines coming toward himself, he didn't get a chance to scream.
The massive vine pierced his back and erupted from his chest with a wet, with a cracking burst explosion.
His back and body twisted as he gargled in protest. The air rushed back to his lungs. An icy grip wrapped around him and grew tighter, like the victor's vise of frost around his heart.
Warm, black bile pooled and oozed from the wound, where the vine had torn him open, shattering his ribs.
With clenched teeth he squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on forcing the pain away; the roof and walls wrapped around him began to roll; and the thump of His pulse thundered in his ears.
From the giant tendril sticking out of his chest came an even darker thing. All the muscles in Qing Tian's limbs lost their strength.
A deep terror that no physical pain could convey pierced his very spirit. It felt like a dark claw ripped into his soul and snatched the flame from it.
In horror, he realized that the vine was tearing his soul away.
The last warmth of life seems drained from him, and leaving only freezing emptiness.
With a kneel and a smile from above him, that smile!.
Soft and loving, one like you might expect when feeding a pet dying in his jaws.
"Sleep now, little one," he said, each minute syllable dripping with venom.
"You will soon awaken in my world."
Qing Tian's eyes fluttered. It was the first respite in a long time, even the bone-white pain had paused. In the waning light of consciousness, he sensed something very deep within, a single, tiny ember of defiance and resistance, rising up from the dark. It was weak, nearly extinguished, but it was there. He clung to that tiny ember.
While the vines pulsed and sucked the remaining blood and spirit in him, that ember fired and glowed.
He made a tacit promise to himself, I will live. I will return.
There were forms twisting at the periphery of his vision.
Faceless corpses drifted in still air, tangled up in a lattice of crimson vines.
Silent, soulless eyes watched him suffer his torment. Each breath became colder, each heartbeat weaker.
The darkness above was whispering to him,
"Give up."
He answered with that quiet promise.
Frozen beneath the murky blood pool, the air was heavy with weightlessness.
The blood coloured lanterns flickered and extinguished.
The demon cultivator raised himself up and drew out a curved blade from the sleeve of his robe.
With precise measures, he sliced through the ropes which thwarted Qing Tian's limbs upon the stone slate and the barbed tendrils fell, relinquishing their clutch and Qing Tian's body slumped around the slick slab of stone.
Qing Tian lay there like a doll that had been tossed.
The specter of the cultivator moved out of the way to inspect his work, and he said,
"The appetizer is complete." The finality in his statement resonated as,
"Now sleep... and dream of hell, because you will transform into nourishment to grow God..."
He turned on his heel and vanished back into the shadows of the Blood Prison, leaving silence in his wake.
The thick stillness in air was only broken by the slow drip of blood from Qing Tian's wounds.
It was impossible at the moment in that stillness to perceive whether he had check-out or remained alive.
Everything felt nebulous to Qing Tian as he hanged between a threshold, his body limped, spirit battered, and yet.
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End of the chapter!!!