CG Chapter 131: A Second Face for a Broken Son
Near the southern border mountain range of the now Great Wu Empire lay a scattered cluster of small villages, clinging to the earth like dying insects in their final days.
In one of these small villages, there was a shabby house with a broken roof that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
This house had only a single room, with a rough straw bed and a rusted cauldron for daily cooking.
The house, which would have otherwise been unworthy of even a glance, had a thin and frail old man nearing sixty years of age sitting cross-legged on the coarse straw bed.
The old man had several balding spots on his head and only a few crooked and rotten teeth left.
His face sagged like melting wax, giving him an appearance so pitiful that even beggars would look away in disgust.
He held a long wooden smoke pipe with a copper end between his lips, smoke lazily coiling out and filling the small room with a stale, suffocating smell.
Clutching the pipe in his mouth, he was completely zoned out, focused entirely on carving a small wooden statue he held in his left hand.
Despite his horrid appearance and slow movements, his hands carried a strange, almost reverent devotion to the statue.
Suddenly, in the middle of his carving, he froze.
The wooden figure slipped from his hand, falling onto the dusty floor, but by some fortune, it remained intact.
However, the pipe dropped onto the straw bed, its burning end searing a deep black hole into the brittle surface, and a faint burnt smell spread through the air, mixing with the heavy smoke.
The scene by itself might have seemed trivial, but together with the smoke, the burn, and the dim light filtering through the cracks, the room took on an eerie atmosphere of decay and death.
At that moment, the old man's pitch-black pupils began to shift into a shade of royal purple.
As his eyes transformed, his face too began to change.
He started to look slightly younger, and a faint demonic charm emerged from beneath his otherwise worthless appearance.
Yet even then, the aura of death still clung stubbornly to his body.
He was nearing the end of his lifespan, and even if fortune favored him, he would only have a few years left.
But that was no surprise to him, as he had long accepted it.
The average person's lifespan in this world was barely forty years.
Only by learning martial arts and stepping into the Jianghu could one extend their life, but even then, death often came suddenly at the tip of a blade or from an arrow flying from behind.
Still, none of that mattered to the old man, as a wide grin stretched across his cracked face, giving him a ghastly appearance.
Ignoring the smell of the burning straw, he clenched his arm and thought internally,
'I had my doubts, but it seems that my choice was correct after all.'
He barely held himself back from laughing aloud.
Even though the plan of creating the bloodline had been thoroughly thought out, it still carried many risks.
His knowledge in this domain was shallow, but somehow, he had succeeded. He had made the bloodline merge with his soul.
Dragging himself out of his fleeting joy, Aretius shifted his focus back to the present, analyzing his next steps and long-term plan.
Although the success of the bloodline was worth celebrating, there were still far more important matters.
The state of his body was miserable. He was an old man nearing death, his vitality drained, and countless hidden injuries accumulated over sixty years left deep scars in his flesh.
His journey through this world's Jianghu would be extremely difficult with such an almost crippled body.
Fortunately, his new bloodline would play an important role.
As he clenched his hand again, he noticed his nails turning partially black. Unfortunately, it was just that.
His nails no longer possessed the terrifying power they once had, when they could rip through the armor of a Grand Knight like butter.
Still, his foundation was intact. Making up for the difference would not be as hard compared to building everything again from scratch.
…
Far beyond the shabby house, across mountains and rivers, under the ruins of forgotten and cursed temples, something else was stirring.
As Aretius silently celebrated his rebirth, so too did ancient and forsaken things awaken from their long slumber.
In a broken temple, under the hollow gaze of a shattered god, another kind of offering was about to be made.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
At the same time, inside a broken and eerie abandoned temple, a smiling middle-aged man was crazily knocking his forehead against the cracked floor in front of a shattered statue.
In front of him lay the thin and small corpse of a young boy, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, his eyes wide open in disbelief as if he was backstabbed by the person he trusted most.
"Oh mighty holy spirit of the Jiang Min Temple," the man whispered hoarsely, "this weak one offers the closest thing to my heart."
"Please accept my sincere sacrifice and bless this humble servant with your divine mercy."
The abandoned temple remained silent for a few long seconds…
If anyone had witnessed the scene, they would have thought the middle-aged man was mad, kneeling before a broken statue beside his son's corpse.
But they would have fled in horror if they stayed to see what came next.
From behind the broken statue, the sound of chuckling and twisted laughter slithered into the room.
From the darkness, a strange creature crawled toward the body.
The creature had snake-like features, an extremely long neck, a warped human face, and a rustling, twitching end at the tip of its tail.
Once the creature stood before the boy's corpse, its tail began to shake violently, creating a strange rattling noise, as if showing its extreme excitement.
In the next instant, the creature lunged at the boy's tender body and started feasting on his organs, beginning with the stomach and tearing through the soft flesh.
As time passed, it finally popped the boy's eyes from his skull, eating them one by one like sweet grapes.
But it did not stop there.
Using the end of its tail, the creature began skinning the boy's face from his skull with grotesque care.
The tail grew longer, wrapping around the peeled face, molding it into what looked like a grotesque second face.
The creature giggled, emitting sounds in the boy's stolen voice, muttering nonsense to itself in deep amusement.
This went on for a few minutes, with the middle-aged man bowing lower and lower, not daring to interrupt its dark musings.
Eventually, the creature turned its two twisted faces toward the man and smiled sinisterly.
The old man, seeing the face of his dead son smiling at him, felt his stomach churn violently. He wanted to puke, to scream, but he forced it all down.
He desperately convinced himself that it was all worth it. That his son had simply shown the highest form of filial piety. That it was his sacred duty to sacrifice himself for his parents.
"Yes, yes, that is right, that is his job," the man muttered, madness gnawing at the edges of his mind.
The snake-like creature noticed his broken spirit. Without a word, its long neck convulsed violently.
After a few seconds of writhing, it vomited up a wet, bile-like mass, covered in yellow and bloody mucus.
Instead of recoiling, the middle-aged man beamed with mad joy.
He crawled forward quickly, grabbed the bile offering, and swallowed it whole without hesitation, his hands trembling from excitement.
Then, he knocked his forehead against the cold ground again and again.
"I thank the great one for his generosity. I shall spread your name throughout the villages and bring you more offerings," he swore.
The snake-like creature seemed satisfied and flicked its tail in dismissal, sending the man sprawling backward.
Once the man left, the creature returned to its spot behind the broken statue. Curling into itself like a bloated worm, it closed its eyes.
Before drifting into a grotesque sleep, it thought lazily to itself,
"Spread my name, little worm. Grow fat. Then come back and join your son… Soon"
A wet, gurgling chuckle echoed softly through the temple.
"Hehaheheee! Haeheehe!"