CG Chapter 174: Dao Seeding in the Hearts of the Desperate
Away from Tianxing Peak and the oppressive gaze of the Grand Overseer and his plots and schemes, the scene returned to Black Cloud City, where Aretius was quietly placing his own Go piece upon the board of the world.
Within the suffocating gloom of that subterranean cavern, Aretius sat in absolute stillness.
During the time Aretius was passing the Celestial Fiend Canon to Manager Li, his sense enveloped him, dissecting every slight tremor of his Ki channels, as he attempted to root out any flaws and perfect his demonic technique.
Naturally, Manager Li was blissfully ignorant. He believed he was glancing at a Heavenly manual, unaware that he was practicing the lesser son scripture. While Aretius commanded the mother supreme scripture, holding the man's very soul in his palm.
Looking at Manager Li's struggling facial expressions and sweating forehead, Aretius judged internally, 'The Celestial Fiend lays his Dao-seeds in the hearts of those who follow. Thus, a supreme is born, and the lives of those who follow shall fall into his hands.'
'With this, the canon will be split into halves from henceforth. The Celestial Fiend's Origin Scripture, and the Ghost Orchid Dao-Seeding Art.'
Aretius remained motionless; to him, those who practiced this art would willingly give themselves over to him, acting as the fertile soil that would provide the necessary fertilizer and nutrients for his orchids to bloom.
The trickiest hurdle was yet to be answered. How would an old man with no background spread a suspicious technique that no one had heard about in a short period? How would the seeds of the Ghost Orchid take root?
To that, Aretius had a simple answer. To grow in the cracks in between. A power that is not gifted to the mighty, but to the desperate. A power that is given to the mistreated, the nobodies, the wannabes.
When one was helpless, with nowhere to turn, they would hunger for any sight of power and belonging. To those, he would offer a generous hand of hope and light.
At this very moment, he peered into Manager Li's soul, seeing a hunger, a sense of gnawing desperation. He decided to grant him one more chance to become something infinitely more terrifying than what his origins had decreed him to be.
Just as Manager Li had completed a full major cycle of his Ki, Aretius spoke. His voice was laced with an otherworldly temptation, sounding like an ancient demonic fiend making a proposal.
"The Ghost Orchid will bloom once more. I will give you a chance to choose which path to walk..."
Aretius paused for a second, allowing Manager Li to absorb what he was saying before continuing.
"You being able to reach this far is already impressive; you can be satisfied with what you are given, leading the Black Cloud branch. Or... you can pick a more difficult one. You might not survive, but if you do... You may have the opportunity to become my right-hand person. A Celestial Envoy answering only to me."
As the final words of Aretius fell, Manager Li's eyes shone with a bright light of realization, as if he began to understand something. He sensed that his next words would determine the trajectory of his entire life.
'The Ghost Orchid will bloom once more.' His mind raced as he tried to recall all the organizations he knew of, yet none had a name or connection like that.
He naturally wondered about the trustworthiness of Aretius's words. Yet, despite how difficult it might seem to believe, everything Aretius had shown him, from the techniques to his ability to suppress the venom of the Wedding Wine, left him no choice but to believe.
More importantly, he wanted to believe. From the moment he was ostracized by the Li Clan, all he wanted was to find a sense of belonging.
These were the same fertile soils that the Ghost Orchid was going to bloom on.
Lies, all I want to hear are lies. Lies of a better world, a better life, a more meaningful reality, rather than this inescapable existence, the sensation of non-being while being.
"I do! I swear my life to you, to the Ghost Orchid..."
Hearing this vow, Aretius did not speak. A simple, chilling grin crossed his face for a breath, in the next, his hand flickered like a bolt of violet heavenly tribulation lightning, mercilessly plunging straight into Manager Li's greasy abdomen.
Flesh parted as if it had never been there. His fingers ignored the thick layers of fat, ruthlessly locking into a single, pulsing, slimy green organ within. With a horrifyingly masterful motion, he violently ripped it free from the body's internal roots.
Manager Li couldn't detect any initial movement. He was left with his mouth wide open in shock while gazing down at the hole in his stomach.
Before he could plead for mercy or even scream in agony, Aretius' bloody hand flickered once more, but this time he flung that slimy organ into Manager Li's wide-open mouth.
"Swallow!" A single-word order, with no explanation.
Yet, Manager Li, for some unknown reason, couldn't help but follow this maddening order.
A breath passed as Manager Li swallowed his own bile; his body started to heat up, and he seemed as if he was going to pass out at any moment if this continued.
Aretius kept his gaze locked on Manager Li's ever-changing facial expressions.
Manager Li's heartbeat skyrocketed at an alarming rate. He struggled to keep himself from falling apart or bursting from within... Unfortunately, it seemed no matter how much a mortal toiled, they could not change their fate. He felt as though he were burning alive.
Every single organ awakened with a mind of its own, desperate to tear free. It was a sensation of being sliced open from the inside out while engulfed in flames.
The only thing keeping him fighting was his unresolved hatred. He refused to remain in this place any longer. He was tired of being under someone else's boot just because they had powerful backing. It had been like that in the Li Clan, and it was exactly the same here in the Wuthering Shadow Hall.
The corpse oil he had labored so hard to gather was casually scooped up by privileged brats with no sense of struggle. As for him, he had to bleed for every single drop.
What was this world? Why was it so unfair? Why was he born as a bastard? Those born with a golden spoon got to rule, while he had to beg for every crumb.
Time moved slowly; every second felt like a year to the burning Manger Li.
Regrettably, Aretius noticed that Manager Li couldn't do it on his own, and a disappointed sensation crossed his mind for less than a second.
Aretius' pitch-black nail suddenly stretched, casually slicing his own wrist.
The moment the blood touched his tongue, Manager Li looked repulsed for a second. But as the agonizing, burning pain was instantly suppressed by an eerie, soothing chill, primal instinct took over. Manager Li realized this blood was his sole lifeline in this accursed place.
He began to frantically suck at Aretius's open skin, swallowing as many of the violet droplets as he humanly could. At that moment, he looked more like a hungry, bizarre ghost than a human.
Moments passed, and as Manager Li regained consciousness, he looked at what he was doing, confused.
He only heard, "Good, good, good!"
"From henceforth, you shall be appointed as my right envoy. You are to spread the Ghost Orchid to every land, to every corner where light doesn't shine."
Manager Li knelt in front of Aretius, feeling that he had truly escaped death by a thread.
Upon hearing those words, the benevolent aura that appeared on Aretius intensified. The demonic grin was replaced by a smile so warm that Manager Li felt like he was looking at his true grandfather after a harsh, rainy day. In that breath, he no longer resembled a demon who could pierce flesh without care.
Still, as he looked at Manager Li's devoted expression, his gaze shifted, piercing through the thick stone of the cavern toward the distance. It was as if his eyes held the entirety of the continent at once.
...
If a supreme being were there to witness the continent in its entirety from above, their gaze would shift as they glimpsed the karmic strings being forced and twisted against each other.
Their gaze would then fall onto two particular strings. The mortals to whom these strings belonged were far from each other; they hadn't even met, but were interlinked by a more profound layer that was hard to describe.
The first was a pitch-black string akin to the darkness of the void itself; it was attempting to shine with light from its current state, which it would, if no one tried to snuff it out.
The second, however, was bright from the very beginning, and though it might appear a bit dark to the filth of the mortal world, even that filth wasn't able to hide its brilliance, but instead only amplified it.
Yet, even that being wouldn't be able to notice the string of the mortal who seemed to exist outside karmic laws. A mortal who was attempting to push and pull at these same strings. A being that didn't belong to this world.