When Qianye returned to Heal, it felt as though someone had scooped every last drop of strength out of him.
It wasn't just physical exhaustion. It was a deeper, nameless weariness—something that rose from the bottom of the soul and left him hollow.
That near-breakdown conversation with Zhu Yuan—so close to a full confession, so full of questioning and sharp dissection—had been like a rusty rasp dragged back and forth across a wound he'd thought had already scabbed over.
Except it hadn't.
The flesh was still raw. Still red. Still painfully sensitive.
He moved on autopilot, rummaging through the storage cabinet, pulling out a few energy bars. He chewed them down with cold water, the way you swallow medicine you don't want.
Even the dragon-fruit-chocolate flavor that used to make him genuinely happy tasted like wax now—like a flower that had withered right in his mouth.
A small, worried sound came from near his feet.
"Mm-nye? (Qianye… what's wrong?)"
It was Xugeya.
The little Bangboo seemed to sense his low, exhausted state. It rubbed its soft body against his pant leg, its round eyes wide with anxious concern.
Something in Qianye loosened—just a fraction.
He crouched and reached out, stroking Xugeya's head again and again, gently, patiently. The Bangboo's cool, smooth metal and its needy little nuzzling gave him a thin thread of real comfort—weak, but real.
"I'm fine, Xugeya…" he said softly, as if he were mostly trying to convince himself. "Just… tired. Go play for a bit. And get some rest early, okay?"
"Mm-nye… (Okay…)"
Xugeya understood. It retreated obediently into its little nest—yet still stared at him without blinking, as if it didn't dare look away.
Qianye exhaled and pushed himself upright, bracing on his knees. It took more effort than it should have.
He didn't have the energy to organize the medicine cabinet or read medical notes. The fatigue came in like a tide, heavy and unstoppable.
He dragged himself up the stairs to the second floor. The wooden steps creaked faintly—each sound too clear in the empty clinic, too lonely.
When he reached his room, he didn't even turn on the light.
He used the blurry neon glow outside—New Eridu's sleepless colors, softened by air still damp after the storm—to fumble off his outer clothes.
Then he threw himself into bed, sinking deep into the soft mattress that, tonight, felt less like comfort and more like a swamp—something that clung and pulled at him.
Every cell in his body screamed for rest. For forgetting.
His head touched the pillow, and his consciousness slid—swiftly, irresistibly—into darkness.
But it wasn't the dreamless sleep he'd wanted.
At first, there was weightlessness.
Like falling from a height. Like floating in nothingness.
Then colors and shapes began to swirl and smear, as if thick oil paint had been spilled and stirred by an unseen brush—twisting, turning, gathering without logic.
Qianye found himself standing on a barren, grotesque land.
He knew at once: this wasn't reality.
It was a dream.
But it was so real it made his skin crawl.
And the backdrop of this dream was a place he knew too well—a place branded into him with fear and instinctive rejection:
Hollow Zero.
Except… it was wrong.
It wasn't like any region of Hollow Zero he'd explored before.
There was no moon.
In fact, the "sky" couldn't contain something as cold and distant as a moon.
Because it wasn't a sky at all.
It was a vast, dark-red membrane—rotting flesh exposed to open air—rolling and pulsing slowly like decayed organs. It hung low, oppressive, as if it might drip warm, corrosive fluid at any moment.
No sun. No stars.
Only pale, swollen "lights" embedded in that flesh—some like gigantic eyeless eyeballs, others like irregular tumors. They cast a cold, warped illumination with no true shadows, staining everything in a sickly, unsettling hue.
The ground was black and cracked. But when he stepped on it, it had an unreal, nauseating softness—like cooled ash mixed with half-decomposed remains of something that should not exist.
In the distance, jagged structures rose at impossible angles: some like the stripped skeletons of enormous beasts, others like rust-twisted metal skyscrapers from a collapsed civilization. They stood as if locked in a silent, eternal scream.
The air stank—so thick it nearly became substance.
Rusty blood-tang. Sharp ozone. Sweet rot. And Ether's high-intensity afterbite—the metallic, electric sting that made the throat tighten.
It was so vivid it made Qianye's throat spasm with the urge to gag.
And then there were the whispers.
Not from one direction.
Not from anything he could point to.
They came from everywhere—through the air itself, from vibrations that shouldn't exist, from deep beneath that soft, cracked ground—pouring straight into his mind.
Countless fragments of murmurs: pain, madness, despair… and something else. A strange hunger. A warped longing.
They intertwined into a constant background chorus that stabbed at every nerve—like invisible hands prying at the cracks in his awareness, trying to pour filth directly into him.
But what made his heart seize was this—
Inside that ear-splitting mental choir, inside the sense of billions screaming, crying, praying at once…
he caught a single thread of feeling that shouldn't have been there.
Something like homecoming.
Something like being welcomed back into a mother's body—
a twisted, drowning sense of belonging.
And the moment that thought surfaced, the whispers… changed.
As if filtered.
As if cleansed.
The sharp noise fell away, leaving behind something deep and warm and boundless—like sinking into a vast, heated ocean. Pain and resistance thinned, dissolved, and in their place came a heavy, drowsy peace that seduced him to stop thinking.
To stop struggling.
To sink.
No—this is wrong.
Qianye snapped his head hard, bit down on his tongue until pain flared, and forced his mind to gather itself before it drifted apart.
His emerald eyes sharpened, scanning the nightmare landscape with renewed caution.
His body tensed instinctively.
A premonition curled up his spine like cold vines—
the sense that something huge, something drenched in "love," was watching him.
Then the scene ahead distorted.
The Ether fog—thick with corrosive sweetness—parted like stage curtains pulled by an invisible hand, gliding away to either side.
A figure emerged from the mist.
She wore the same neat, perfectly tailored secretary uniform—clean and immaculate, as if the surrounding filth and frenzy were forcibly repelled by a superior will.
Black hair fell like a midnight river. Not a strand out of place.
And on her face was the same unchanging smile—gentle to the point of maternal tenderness, as if she could forgive any sin in the world.
Sarah.
Qianye's pupils constricted violently.
His blood seemed to freeze and run backward at the same time.
He stepped back without thinking—only to slam into something cold and rough behind him, like a rotten rib bone of some colossal corpse. His retreat ended there.
"Good evening, my beloved Saint Child," Sarah said, her voice like the richest honey-wine—warm, smooth, strangely magnetic. In this dead, whispering dreamscape, it rang with impossible clarity.
"Or should I say… good morning?" She tilted her head. "In the dream that belongs to you and me, time and space have lost their fixed meaning, haven't they?"
Her green eyes studied him with greedy devotion—lingering on every flicker of expression, including his fear and disgust.
And the way she looked at his disgust was the way a mother looked at a sulking child.
"Get out," Qianye said, voice dry and cold, packed with naked rejection. "Get out of my dream, Sarah."
"Oh?" She laughed softly—pleased, indulgent. "Even this stubbornness is so adorable."
Instead of anger, her smile deepened, affectionate and delighted in a way that made the air feel dirtier.
"But this is your dream, my love. It's the reflection of your deepest self." She took a step closer, her high heels making no sound on the soft black ground. "And as your destined home—your only truth—this place is my home as well."
Her tone was explanatory, reasonable—every word twisting intrusion into inevitability.
"It was your soul calling out," she continued, "needing me so profoundly that I found the path into this holy sanctuary of your heart with ease."
"Needing you?" Qianye ground out, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
"Ah—such a fierce emotion!" Sarah clasped her hands as if moved to tears by a love confession. "Hatred is also a form of love, my Saint Child. Often hotter than love, sharper than love—more unforgettable."
"I want to erase you," Qianye snapped, shaking with fury. "Erase you and everything you've done to me."
Sarah only looked more tender.
"Hate, love… it's all proof of the bond between us."
She stopped just a few steps away, eyes deep as warm spring pools that promised drowning.
"You see? Even in this inner landscape you built from fear and resistance, you chose the place of your birth to meet me."
Qianye's breath hitched.
"…What did you say?"
"I said," she repeated softly, raising her hand as if to touch his cheek, "this is where you were born."
As her fingers lifted, the Ether around her—normally chaotic—became obedient, orderly, streaming toward her in graceful spirals. Pink light gathered at her fingertips, warm as skin.
Qianye jerked his head away, eyes blazing with terror and revulsion.
"Don't touch me with that contaminated power."
Her hand paused in midair.
Her smile didn't change.
Her gaze became even softer, full of pity that felt like a trap.
"Contaminated? No, my love. This is the purest manifestation of 'love.' The bridge linking our souls. A mother's comfort."
The pink light pulsed gently, like a tiny beating heart.
"Even in your own dream, your instincts respond to it. You're drawn to it. Aren't you?"
Then her voice dipped, sweet and poisonous:
"After all… this comes from you. Like your own child. You put your essence into my body, my love."
A warmth flooded Qianye's mind—thick, soothing, terrifying.
It wrapped his awareness like warm water, gentle but relentless, dissolving edges, softening resistance—inviting him to stop fighting.
He forced himself to resist, like a fly trying to tear free from honey.
"This isn't love," he rasped, voice hoarse with the strain. "It's distortion. It's swallowing. It's suffocating possession."
"You're like Hollow Zero itself—disguised as warmth, but inside you only assimilate and erase!"
Sarah shook her head slowly, indulgently—like a patient adult correcting a child's mistake.
"No," she whispered. "I am cleansing the world's filth. I'm bringing you back to your true home."
"Stripping you away from those vulgar beings who cannot understand your greatness… returning you to the purest, most real state—where you and I are one."
Then she said a name.
"Carlos Arna…"
Qianye's face went white.
Sarah watched it, calm and almost bored.
"She may have given you shallow knowledge and temporary shelter. But she could never give you absolute understanding. Absolute fusion."
"She bound you with responsibility and morality—chains disguised as kindness."
"But I can give you eternity. Power beyond everything. And love that holds nothing back."
"Shut up," Qianye hissed, fury tearing through him. "Don't you dare speak my teacher's name!"
Your love is poison!"
And still, Sarah didn't look angry.
If anything, she looked… heartbroken.
"My poor child," she murmured. "You've been poisoned so deeply by that false 'order' that you mistake your mother's embrace for a cage."
A tear slipped from her eye.
When it fell to the cracked earth, the filth beneath her feet briefly bloomed with a strange pink vitality.
Qianye's entire body tightened. His instincts screamed that this was performance—another layer of manipulation.
But the moment she cried, his senses blurred.
Sarah seemed to change—not in shape, but in presence.
Her green eyes took on a gold sheen, as if angelic choirs were singing inside them. A vast, ancient atmosphere spread outward through her like light through water.
It felt as though something far greater than Sarah had turned its gaze upon him through her body—
a will that loved with the weight of galaxies, and suffocated with the same immensity.
She stepped closer.
The air around her carried a blend of sweet floral perfume and the Hollow's rotten tang, so intense it made Qianye feel faint.
"Beloved… my blood… my other half…" Her voice layered into echoes, turning hollow and heavy. Words broke apart as if multiple mouths spoke through one throat:
"Only… Saint Child… waiting… endless… other half… you… embrace… love… return… womb…"
She opened her arms in slow, solemn invitation, as if embracing the entire nightmare world—and welcoming him into it.
Then, abruptly, her eyes shifted again.
Sarah coughed blood.
The gold light shattered into drifting particles and died.
She dropped to one knee, panting.
In that instant, an invisible sigh swept through the space—wordless, immense, filled with disappointment and faint regret—before dissolving like it had never been.
"Ah… this filthy flesh of mine really can't bear the Primordial Lord's grace directly…" Sarah forced herself upright, smiling as if nothing had happened. "But this is enough."
She pointed at the world around them.
"Look," she said softly, almost tender. "The scenery you call despair… the whispers you call madness… the laws you call distortion…"
"This is the true, warm foundation."
"This is the home where you and I will become one."
"We can rise above every petty pain and divide. We can merge into eternity."
"All you have to do is stop resisting. Accept me. Accept what already belongs to you—power, and love."
The oppressive atmosphere didn't sharpen into violence.
It softened.
And that made it worse.
The pale "lights" in the flesh-sky pulsed like breathing. Pink liquid seeped from the cracked ground, warm like amniotic fluid. The whispers harmonized into a single grand hymn—seductive, gentle—praising fusion and return.
Qianye swayed.
Dizziness and sleepiness rolled over him in waves. It felt like his soul was melting.
He pinched his arm hard to hold onto the last shred of clarity, but his body still wobbled.
"Do you feel it?" Sarah asked, voice full of delighted reassurance. "This is 'home' calling you."
"The Primordial Lord desires your return, just as I do."
"Let go, my love… stop struggling… come back to our world."
Qianye gathered every last atom of will he had left and raised his head.
His face was paper-white. His mind was cracking.
But his eyes—his emerald eyes—burned like frozen jade.
"Your world…" he said, each word carved out with pain, "…has no freedom."
"Only… gentle extinction."
He stared into Sarah's deep green gaze and forced the final truth out through trembling lips:
"I'd rather suffer in a real world full of thorns—and keep myself—than drown in your false eternity woven from 'love.'"
"Your 'love' is the gentlest destruction I can imagine."
It was the last shout of a drowning man.
A blade of selfhood thrust into warm, devouring dark.
Sarah's expression didn't change.
No rage. No distortion.
Only deeper pity, as if he were a child finally tiring himself out.
"You'll understand," she whispered like a lullaby. "No matter how many times… no matter how much your consciousness resists… your nature will guide you home."
"I will wait."
"Forever."
Qianye stopped listening.
With the last thread of his "self," he tore at the connection to the dream—ripping his mind away from this warm hell.
He didn't look at Sarah's face. Didn't listen to the hymn.
He wrenched himself out—
—
And then Sarah appeared right in front of him.
No warning. No hesitation.
She seized his face and kissed him.
It wasn't lust.
It was a ritual.
A brand.
A claim.
Pink power—pink warmth—surged like a predator scenting blood. It slammed into his defenses, punching deeper, searching for his core.
Qianye tried to shove her away.
His body felt bound by invisible chains, weak and heavy.
The pink current flooded through him, igniting something strange—heat, a foreign tremor, an unfamiliar pulse.
His consciousness dimmed. The world turned pink at the edges.
And in the final instant before he sank—
he saw Sarah's expression change.
The bliss on her face shattered.
Her eyes flew wide with pure, animal terror.
She recoiled as if burned, trembling violently, then looked up at the flesh-sky above them.
Her voice warped into desperate pleading.
"No… Primordial Lord! Please—please don't be angry! I… I didn't mean to monopolize him! I only… I only wanted to welcome the Saint Child back better! I—"
Her words cut off.
Not interrupted by sound—by force.
Golden lines erupted from inside her body, too bright, too pure—burning patterns that spread across her skin like heated brands.
Then her form began to break apart from the fingertips.
Like sand blown away.
Like ice evaporating under sun.
She disintegrated into countless tiny glittering particles—gold mixed with pink.
No blood.
No flesh.
Only a precise, merciless erasure—as if her existence had been wiped clean from the dream itself.
Qianye stood inches away and felt no shockwave. No debris.
As though Sarah had never been allowed to touch him at all.
In the moment she vanished completely, a vast, ancient, indifferent intent swept through the dream—like a bell struck across the universe.
Punishment for an upstart.
A faint, displeased regret that something about "return" had been disturbed.
Then darkness swallowed Qianye whole.
In the real world—on the second floor of Heal—Qianye shot upright in bed, heart hammering, lungs dragging in huge, ragged breaths.
Cold sweat soaked his sleep shirt.
Outside, New Eridu's neon bled through the window, flickering across his bloodless face.
The dream was gone.
Sarah's suffocating, warm pressure had retreated.
But what remained was worse:
the chill of being watched by something older, higher, and utterly uncaring—
and the image of Sarah being erased without a sound.
He hugged his trembling arms, staring at the city lights as if they were foreign.
A sick understanding settled in his gut:
Even here—inside Heal—something "loving" and invisible had already seeped into his world like fog.
And behind that fog… there was an even deeper will, ancient and unknowable.
He raised a hand to wipe his sweat—
and froze.
His gaze locked onto his own fingers.
In his palm, a thin pink glow—Sarah's same seductive light—flickered between his fingertips, shining with an eerie, impossible warmth.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 150)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter190)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter105)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter222)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 190
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 170
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/5
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 215
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 200
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/30
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 115
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 130
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 105
I Can Copy Unique Skills 100
Summoning an Evil God, but the 70
Supernatural Multiverse 90
My Harem Is Indescribable 85
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 90
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 68
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 81
Still playing traditional Honk 69
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 65
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 60
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 61
Checking In in Demon Slayer 65
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 80
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 66
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 58
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 65
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 63
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 59
Why did they assign me to Uma 55
MYGO Beauties 56
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 45
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 49
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 36
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 15
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