[Devoured Emotion: Pity (Zhan Ma) – Obtained 1 Emotion Point.]
[Devoured Emotion: Shock (Xu Miyami) – Obtained 1 Emotion Point.]
[Devoured Emotion: Disdain (Mu Jung) – Obtained 1 Emotion Point.]
…
Fang Rui felt the weight of countless eyes locked upon him. It was prying, judging… dissecting his misery like vultures circling the carrion. Yet he knew that their reactions were just fleeting, as transient as morning mist. Their pity, their scorn—none of it mattered.
What did matter was… the strange, glowing text hovering before his eyes.
'What the hell… is this?'
He rubbed his eyes, half-expecting the illusion to vanish. When it didn't, he swiped a hand through the air, fingers grasping at nothing. The panel remained, stubbornly suspended in his vision like a specter.
Then the panel vanished automatically. But later it again appeared, and vanished. The process kept happening.
'Am I hallucinating?'
After a moment of silent contemplation, he dismissed it. There was no point dwelling on mysteries when reality was far more pressing.
"What's he doing? Has he gone mad?" A voice cut through the murmurs.
"Look at him—he's covered in blood! Did he hit his head? Or… is he fighting a ghost? Bahaha"
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
However, Fang Rui just ignored them.
Then, as the adrenaline ebbed, the sharp pain surged in its wake—like a fire licking through his bones. So again unable to bear it, he doubled over, coughing violently, one hand pressed to his mouth, the other clawing at the damp earth beneath him.
"Cough… Cough…"
Blood speckled his palm.
Still, compared to the humiliation he had endured, the physical agony was nothing.
Then–
He wiped the blood from his chin. But still, he could feel the warm crimson trickling from a gash on his forehead, seeping into his eyes, staining his vision red.
The world blurred into a haze of scarlet.
And then—memories.
His parents' faces surfaced unbidden, their voices echoing in the hollow chambers of his mind.
He had thought the past was buried. That the wounds had scarred over.
He was wrong. It didn't.
The pain was still fresh, raw—a festering wound that had never truly healed.
His chest tightened, as if his heart might rupture.
'How did they die? Why did they die?'
He didn't know. He had tried to uncover the truth, chasing whispers and shadows, but every lead had crumbled to dust. The mystery remained, as impenetrable now as it had been then.
Rumors had spread like wildfire—suicide, murder, something worse?
But the cruelest twist?
He never even get to see their bodies.
Were they given proper rites? Or had they simply vanished, swallowed by the same merciless world that now sought to break him?
A bitter thought slithered through his mind:
'Maybe they escaped. Maybe death was the only freedom this world allows.'
[Devoured Emotion: Disgust (Lao Li) – Obtained 1 Emotion Point.]
…
'Disgust?'
Fang Rui almost laughed.
'How ironic.'
If anyone deserved disgust, it was them—the onlookers, the cowards, the ones who feigned ignorance while stepping over the fallen.
As expected, though a few passersby spared him a glance, none stopped.
Help?
They recognized him—the womanizer, the pathetic low class prick, the boy who had long since been branded as nothing… nothing but a total disgrace to society.
Thus, they didn't even think about helping; their footsteps faded, leaving him alone in the dirt.
"Haha…"
His laughter was hollow, a sound devoid of warmth.
"What a joke." His voice was a whisper, yet it carried the weight of a lifetime of bitterness.
"This world… these people… they're all just as worthless as I am."
In the filth-strewn alleyway, Fang Rui's broken body lay motionless. His only objective now was simple - gather enough strength to stand.
To walk. To reach home.
The alley fell silent as the last of the onlookers dispersed, their footsteps fading into the urban hum. Left alone with his pain, Fang Rui became acutely aware of the vermin investigating his prone form. Their tiny claws skittered across his bruised flesh, their whiskers twitching as they sniffed at his wounds.
Nearby, a pack of rats fought viciously among themselves over some morsel. Their high-pitched squeaks were cutting through the damp air.
The sight would have been pitiful if it weren't so familiar.
"Tch." Fang Rui's dry lips twisted in a humorless smirk.
"Even these vermin is treating me like I'm already a carrion."
With agonizing effort, he rolled onto his back, each movement sending fresh waves of pain radiating through his battered frame. His breath came in ragged gasps as he stared upward with his one functional eye - the other swollen shut - watching murky clouds drift across the ashen sky.
He then lower his vision little be down, only to see,
A flickering streetlight… casting erratic shadows across his face. Its dying sputters mirroring his own faltering vitality.
"Broken," he croaked.
"Just like me. How poetic."
"Haha… Ughh… Cough, Cough!"
His attempt at laughter turned into a violent coughing fit, bringing up another mixture of bile and blood again, which splattered all over the ground. The coppery tang filled his mouth gave him a visceral reminder of his own mortality.
'Am I dying?' The thought floated through his pain-fogged mind.
"Die here? Me?" he whispered hoarsely, the words dripping with self-mockery.
"Not a chance. Get up, you worthless fool. You're not done yet."
Trembling fingers pressed into the cold concrete as he willed his body upward. Every muscle screamed in protest, his vision swimming with black spots. The pain was all-consuming, yet he felt so uneasy about going unconsciousness more than the agony - he felt to black out here might mean never waking again.
But deeper than his fear of death was the terror of dying with regrets. Of never knowing what true freedom is.
Especially… Of leaving questions unanswered.
...
The deterioration had begun days earlier.
At first, Fang Rui had dismissed the creeping fatigue as simple exhaustion. But as the symptoms worsened - the unrelenting heaviness in his limbs, the way his breath came shorter with each passing day - he could no longer ignore the truth.
The Gu mark on his wrist pulsed faintly, its intricate patterns seeming to drink in his vitality. His research had revealed the terrible reality: the Dawnbringer Curse was consuming him, draining his innate energy to prepare for what came next.
It felt like being devoured alive by invisible leeches. The more he struggled against the fatigue, the quicker it seemed to sap his strength. In theory, supplements could help - pills or elixirs to replenish what the curse stole. But theory meant nothing when you couldn't afford a meal, let alone rare cultivation aids.
"Less than one day left," Fang Rui muttered through gritted teeth as he finally managed to sit upright.
"The Trial might begins at any moment..."
The Trial. A phrase whispered with dread in the slums where he'd grown up. Those marked by the curse were dragged into some nightmarish proving ground - a crucible where only the strongest emerged. The survivors called themselves Paragons, though few ever returned whole.
Those who failed? They didn't just die. Their very existence was erased so completely that not even ashes remained. And their failure came with not just with their death but also with a terrible price - the barriers between worlds being weakened, allowing creatures of the Ominous to slip through.
Void Demons, they were called. Harbingers of destruction.
What exactly awaited in the Trial? Was the curse truly a heavenly gift or mankind's doom? Fang Rui hadn't cared to learn the answers - not until the mark had appeared on his own wrist, not until the choice had been stolen from him.
Now, with his back against the alley wall and blood drying on his lips, he understood one truth with crystalline clarity: the Trial wouldn't just test his broken strength.
It would decide whether he gonna erase completely or make him rise again completely as a new.