Chapter 105: Daughter of Foreign Heaven [Interlude]

~~~

Lianshi gasped, her consciousness snapped back to her body. Howls and roars clawed at her eardrums. 

She was back in the cave. The horde was upon her.

On instinct, she tried raising her arms. Numb and broken, she could only make a half-decent guard before a Glacial Hound smashed into her, toppling her back. 

The Spirit Beasts descended upon her, chilling fangs and claws ripping her apart. Lianshi didn’t even have the time or strength to scream before a set of jaws tore her throat open.

Her broken limb reached out of the pile swarming her flesh, grasping towards the unconscious boy lying in the corner. 

Her broken sobs went unheard within the cave tunnels, echoing with snarls and tearing flesh.

No… Please. Feng… 

My… Feng…

… I’m so sorry.

“Rather than being sorry, I think he would much rather you live.”

The Hounds atop her were blown away, reduced to liquified chunks that splattered all over the walls.

Lianshi choked. Her mangled throat made breathing impossible. Her guts were spilt upon the grounds beside her. Half of her face — along with one of her eyes — had been chewed off.

But she could still see him. Faded and translucent he might be, the phantom of the Primate was present.

The growls and howls of the Mountain abruptly ceased, as if every single one of the creatures just realised what manner of monster had just arrived upon their territory.

Lianshi watched the Primate open his mouth, the bestial jaws unhinging far wider than they should. His hand reached deep into his throat, pulling something out.

Pinched between his fingers was a single, crystallised drop of ruby blood.

“If you do not endure, this will kill you, Daemon-possessed or not. You will need his flesh as well, to masticate the essence of the Sanguivore’s Divinity,” the fading Primate said. He held the crimson claret over her mouth. 

“Try not to feast too much on him,” the Immortal warned. “If you claim your love to be anywhere near what you once carried, Daughter of Foreign Heaven, you will defeat that cursed hunger of yours and become worthy of walking by his Path.”

The Primate disappeared. The drop of blood fell.

Lianshi opened her mouth and tasted Primaeval Hunger.

~~~

She was eating something, she thought.

It was hard to tell what it was. Her mouth was moving. There was the taste of… The taste of…

What was it?

It probably did not matter. 

The Hunger was everything. It was her. There was nothing else. Nothing.

Just eat. All will be well.

…

… Feng…

…

What was she eating?

He is dying.

Who was dying?

Stop…

She had to keep eating/STOP.

Eat. STOP. 

Stop? But… why…

Stop… Because…

YOU ARE KILLING HIM!

~~~

Lianshi screamed.

She pulled her head out of the guts of Hei Feng. She threw her head back, drenched in gore.

She screamed as her hand clawed at her mouth and eyes, tearing the regenerated flesh of her face in massive chunks. Even then, they kept growing back.

Her body fought against her — Hunger incarnate, seeking to wrench back control as it sought to devour Feng whole. 

The boy… No ordinary boy at all… This taste, this scent! There is no doubt!

“This Sanguivore demands a Dragon’s BLOOD!”

Lianshi screamed in horror. Her mind was swarmed with the noise of horrid buzzing — an ear-eating frequency that left her brain leaking from her facial orifices. Lianshi's fingers desperately dug into her own eyes, as if trying to claw at the foreign entity manifesting in her head.

All the while, her body shifted and tore. Her limbs moved in uncontrollable spasms, knees knocking, and arms twisting in contorted motion. Lianshi vomited, bloody pus and bone matter passing her lips as a great seizure took hold of her, causing her to arch her back so violently her spine snapped with a loud, wet crack.

Her lower body folded into itself, almost perfectly in half. Shards of bones, wet with pink flesh, pushed themselves past her skin, forming extra limbs and wings.

She should be dead. No one, not even a cultivator of the lower Realms, could survive such wounds. The pain itself would drive a person dead with shock. But something else was now nestled in Lianshi’s soul, and so she experienced the full, horrific agony of what was happening to her.

Her body elongated. Her jaw dislocated. What was once a human mouth grew wider and more fearsome than any natural creature could possess.

They split, forming mandibles of scything death.

Lianshi fought against the transformation, but her will was but a drop of rain against an ocean. Her mind was lost to pain and madness. Skin tearing, bones breaking, flesh peeling off her form into writhing slug-things that grew teeth and eyes.

That monster within her… Lianshi knew what it was; what that presence infesting her mind represented.

The Dead God of the Split-headed Carnivore was trying to force its resurrection through her body. The Blood was the key. It was the Ancient Vitae returned.

“At long last… AT LONG LAST! Blood and flesh! The boy…  The Dragon! GIVE HIM TO ME!”

The mandible of Lianshi’s transformed face reared back, ready to plunge into the prize before her.

Lianshi, trapped in her mind… 

Heard a foreign woman's voice.

“My breath is death. My steps bring fever.”

“Born of Anu, and drinker of fetal blood. ”

“My Dragon, Zhong… I feel you near.”

“I will never leave you again.”

Lianshi broke.

And the girl screamed.

In rage, in power. She howled against pain and terror with a fury that halted even the impossible Hunger. 

The glacial walls cracked and shuddered from the high-pitched screech. Unseen by them, the mountain outside was breaking apart.

An ounce of control returned; a mere precious second of will wrestled from the Dead God’s domination. Lianshi did not waste it. She raised her clawed hands and ripped off her split jaws, tearing with a force that saw her entire head and neck bisected from crown to collarbone.

Her rampaging mouth was destroyed; prevented from feasting on the boy.

“No! I will not be denied… Not again… NEVER AGAIN!”

Lianshi’s back exploded, her spine disintegrating into a plum of bloody mists and bone shards. Her ribs arched backwards and out into the opening of her back. 

Once freed, the pieces of her broken spine grew their own limbs, wings, and mouths — shapes reminiscent of long-extinct beasts — before breaking off, rapidly consolidating flesh and mass even as they took their first shaky steps.

A dozen such creatures — all born from Lianshi’s endlessly regenerating bones and meat — were already scuttling around in and outside the cave, hunting every ounce of fleeing flesh upon the glacial peak in loping gaits and drunken flights.

Her spine regrew, the ivory bones turning fang-like and ossifying with prehistoric mutations. More limbs. More bones. More flesh. Lianshi barely resembled a human, her biology gone mad as her spiritual energy wrestled with the corruptive genome of primaeval blood gestated for countless millions of years.

It was hungry. It needed Yang flesh. The boy… suited its palate. What Divine taste he possessed. Such depth of flavour, impossible to fully assimilate. A Morning Star’s pride. More, more, more—!

“ENOUGH!” Lianshi screamed from a dozen mouths. All of her ‘children’ on the mountain were screaming. “OUT OF MY HEAD!”

The Thing in her brain seethed. An insolent host. Yet what did the child’s opinion matter? She was the Ancient Sanguivore. With the flesh of the Dragon devoured, she would be reborn!

“I WILL BE REBORN!”

“You are already dead!” Lianshi howled. “Dead! This body is mine! HE IS MINE! NO ONE WILL EVER TAKE ME FROM HIM AGAIN!”

Because… She was…!

~~~

“When this is over… I will go back with you, Captain.”

“Over the Ridge again and back to the Carmine War again? I thought you liked it here, Lamashtu. You made your home here.”

“I do. But only because you were here, Captain.”

“Are you sure? You could build a better life in this place than with the UEC, Lieutenant. Start a family. Have children. Enjoy the peace you always wanted. Even a Greater Daemon like yourself would be able to settle down in Qiangyu after the gods are all dead.”

“As long as you keep a place for me by your side… I will keep walking with you. No matter how far. No matter where you go. Because… A Daemon I may be, but still…”

I love you, Zhong.

~~~

“Now and forever… I will always love you.”

Lianshi sobbed the last words out. Her extended flesh and limbs were retreating inside her body. The crawling things birthed from her person began liquifying back into hissing nothingness, similar to the expelled mist her Sect’s transformed disciples would undergo once expired.

All around the glacier, hundreds of torn Spirit Beasts lay — most ripped limb from limb, others dying from sheer fright upon witnessing the horrors that exited the cave.

Lianshi cried. Her tears would not stop. The sorrow within her heart stood at the brink of killing her, one born over a millennium ago. What pain… What horrid, wretched pain…

How could love be this painful?

She barely understood it. The child could barely comprehend the half-snippets of memories that flared through her brain moments ago. And as she struggled to pull her mind back together…

A trembling hand reached up and brushed aside her tears.

Lianshi’s eyes opened, and she beheld the feeble, smiling face of Feng.

“Welcome back.”

~~~

The Daemon could hear the keening winds over the fjord; tasted sharp mountain streams lapping over young rock. The morning light grew, and as if through a mist, she perceived a titan of silver hope, defiant against the uncaring heavens.

Lamashtu / Lianshi looked to her side. She saw him smiling with her.

“Welcome back,” the Morning Star said.

Her home called.