NOVEL NEXT Chapter 67: Goldworm
~~~
"Embrace Decay. Embrace Eternal life."
— Creed of the Botulvorn
4 years ago…
It hurts.
It always hurts. Yunjin could no longer remember a time when her body did not hurt. Her form was moulded by pain, married to it. She was no longer capable of even begrudging its company.
It was her sole companion. The weight of its torment was never in her power to deny.
She coughed. Blood splattered across the dust-matted floor. Tiny things wriggled and squirmed within the sanguine fluid, but Yunjin could not see them in the pitch darkness of her room.
It mattered little. She already knew they were there. The things were in her mouth, in her eyes, in the very core of her being.
Her entire body was infested.
The cell — no, room. Do not call it a cell, or Father will surely punish — was denied of all light to better accommodate the mass of foulness living inside her. Her confines were small, and the temperature was freezing. Yet her body burned hot as if she were stuck under the sweltering sun. Sweat fell from her head, soaking the front of her blood-stained robes until it stuck to her like a second skin.
She was dying.
Yunjin gritted her teeth. No. No. Father would not— The Divine Viands he gave her, it was to help her, she has to believe that—!
~~~
A few months earlier…
"Swallow this," the man commanded. When she refused to take the blackened, writhing cluster of maggots into her mouth, the shadow of her Father manifested and pried her jaw open.
Yunjin's punches and struggles were pointless against the man's monstrous strength. Her screams and pleas did not stop her father from pushing the pulsating mass of living grubs down her throat. Her desperate chokes and gags failed to vomit the things out, no matter how she tried.
"No child of mine is a worm," he said, turning his back on her. "While I had ascended in isolation, you had instead languished beyond all redemption. Never had I thought something so worthless could be born from my seed. I should have given your mother a slower death earlier for this insult."
Yunjin froze. Mother… Mother was—?
"The Sect has fallen too far in my absence." Something black and horrible filled the room, a pressure so heavy it denied Yunjin even the freedom to breathe. Her father's qi then reached out towards the entire valley of the Purple Bloom Mountain, making his displeasure known to all. "The other monasteries of the Four Mountains laugh at us. They mock us as vermin crawling in the dirt. I shall tolerate this disgrace no longer."
Yunjin could not speak, could not breathe. She wanted to beg for her life, but her heart was barely able to maintain its frantic beats within her Father's presence.
The Young Miss was eighteen years old. She was the daughter of Patriarch Ru, sired during his time in isolation. She was his flesh and blood. Healthy in body, well-educated beyond her peers, and talented in the vaulted art of calligraphy — one of the founding hallmarks of her Sect.
None of that stopped the Patriarch from condemning her, for though Yunjin excelled in many fields, she failed in the only one that truly mattered.
The girl did not possess a single ounce of cultivation.
She was wholly mortal, despite being the child of a Patriarch. And for that insult, she now lay terrified before the god-like presence of her Father — the first Jade Realm cultivator nurtured within the Outer Provinces.
There was no one within the nearby lands who equalled his might.
"You will ascend into the Foundation Realm by the year's end," he declared. When his eyes landed on her, Yunjin's mind blanked with fear. Blood leaked from her eyes and nose. She wanted to scream, to faint, to just look away.
She could not. Her father did not allow it.
"You will ascend," he repeated slowly. "Or the eggs seeded by those maggots would eventually hatch. Their young will eat you from the inside out, and then breed ever more of their kind. They will spread to your flesh, to your organs, to the very root of your heart. If you are so determined to be a worm, then you shall die a worm's death: Slowly. Painfully. With your living carcass used as a seedbed until the day you expire."
He left her then. It took her a very long time before she stopped screaming.
~~~
Pain. Poison. Eggs. Hatch.
Months had already passed. Yunjin could not ascend.
Things moved within her body. Only a few at first, but each passing month saw that number multiply. Her temperature rose as the fever futilely attempted to expel the foreign creatures swimming in the folds of her flesh. They laid more and more eggs. The hatched larvae then grew to maturity, adding ever more of their toxins and young to her system. Yunjin's insides were swollen with mass as her organs and muscles became infested.
The sheer horror of it drove her mad. But that madness only brought temporary relief, for the poisonous pain always somehow brought her back to the cage of sanity. It did not even allow her to lose her mind in peace. The pain was always there. ALWAYS THERE.
Her body was becoming a factory that birthed maggots and poison.
The Young Miss had already lost control of her legs. They twitched without her will. Her skin bulged and creased as fat, squirming lumps of grubs swam near the surface of her body.
Yunjin could not escape. The room was sealed from all sides, with nary an opening or crease she could exploit. Her fingernails were broken from clawing at the walls. Her voice was blood-hoarse from her screams for help. There was never a response.
No one was coming.
She could not die. Yunjin was denied even that final right. She had not had a drop of water or a bite of food for nearly an entire year, yet she still lived. The maggots were keeping their host alive, siphoning qi from the air to keep her mortal frame supplied with just barely enough energy to avoid starvation.
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Countless times, the Young Miss tried to kill herself. It never worked. If she tried to claw her eyes out, or bash her head against the floor, or even just bite off her tongue, the maggot would simply paralyse her body with their venom, then subject her to ever more pain — burning, swimming, toxin-bloated grubs that bite and bite and filled her with caustic poison — until she fell to blissful unconsciousness.
There was no escape. Even death was a refuge withheld from her. How long would a seedbed like hers last? How long could the maggots keep her alive to torment, to grow more of themselves?
Months more? Years? Decades?
What if they kept her alive forever?
No. No! She did not want this! Someone save her! Someone kill her! Anyone, please… Father… Mother!
Mother.
Mother, who read her stories of the outside world as she fell asleep. Mother, whose hand was warm as she held hers and taught her the way of the brush. Mother, who protected her from the words and insults of the other disciples and elders. Mother, who praised her always, and never once blamed her for her inability to cultivate despite her bloodline. Mother, who loved her despite Yunjin being a failure.
Mother, who was now dead. Killed by the Father she had hoped would never emerge from isolation.
The only person who ever loved her. The only person who will ever love her. Her, Yunjin. A worthless sack of flesh, who could not even do something as simple as cultivate.
Mother should not have died for her.
~~~
Every Sect had its own initiation rites.
For most monasteries, the strict physical criteria required of hopeful applicants were the main hurdles one faced when attempting to join a Sect. The actual rites themselves were often simple, merely requiring the newly joined Outer Disciples to gaze upon the Divine Corpus, such that a basic Communion was established.
For the Decaying Greyroots Sect, it was the opposite. Unlike the other Sects, they did not impose a strict requirement for those looking to join the monastery. Whether they be mortal or cultivators, men or women, young or old, sick or healthy, all were permitted to join the yearly initiation of the Sect and attempt their first step towards Immortality.
Few people ever do, save for the truly desperate.
Yunjin had read more than a few books on the subject, procured by her Mother from the monastery's library at her request, to better understand the nature of her Sect and the Dead God they revered.
The putrid Divine Carrion was an effigy to festering rot. She had never met the Corpus before, but she had seen the 'Divine Viands' harvested from its body.
Masses of pinkish maggots and larvae, each as fat as a thumb. They squirmed with unsightly alacrity, and when their mouths opened, Yunjin saw growths of human teeth within them.
Though they appeared individually weak and insignificant, each of those maggots was hatched within the body of the Decaying Greyroots's Corpus. They carried a sliver of its holy divinity: a toxin most foul and dangerous.
Ròu dú (肉毒). A naturally-occurring foodborne neurotoxin found in rotten meat, made all the more deadly by its Divine origin — festered within the flesh-like roots of the Dead God.
Each year, the applicants would gather at the foot of the monastery, and the Sect's Elders would venture into the festering bog at the bottom of the Purple Mountain's valley. There, the body of their Corpse God lay — half-sunken into the bubbling mire, the swamp thick with rancid mud and the air buzzing maddeningly with enormous Corpsefly Beasts the size of horses.
Unlike the other monasteries that guarded their Divine Carrion day and night, the Decaying Greyroots Sect left theirs in the open, free for anyone to plunder the Divine Viands should they so choose.
No one ever does, of course, save for the Elders. Why bother stealing something that was freely given?
After a few hours of waiting, the Elders would emerge from the swamp, their arms laden down with hundreds of those wiggling larvae.
The maggots were consolidated into a bowl, which was then offered to the applicants. Those still mad enough to proceed would collect their desired share of this rancid, living harvest...
And swallow them.
It was horror beyond what one might witness in a mortal life. The larvae would swim within the flesh of the applicant, causing horrendous pain. Over the course of a year, the individual must attempt to use their budding meridians to corral and trap the venomous maggots into the confines of their unawakened Dantian, where the vermin would be forced to consume each other.
Should the applicant prove successful in this task, the final surviving maggot would then starve within the Dantian. Upon its death, it would release its concentrated bounty of Divine venom, awakening the mortal into the Foundation Realm in the process.
The ritual was exceedingly dangerous, with the chances of success further reduced with each additional maggot ingested. Yet, there lies another key variable to this challenge that demands the consumption of more, rather than less.
Swallow too few, and even should one succeed, the mediocre toxin produced at the end of the ritual might give birth to a middling Dantian, one unsuited for proper cultivation. Worse, it might not awaken the mortal at all, and instead cripple the sleeping spirit of the applicant forever in eternal paralysis.
Too many, and the applicant ran the risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of maggots running wild in their body. Those they fail to enclose within their Dantian would soon spread their venom and eggs, leading to ever more grubs for the host to direct while the toxin weakens their spiritual systems. Eventually, the strain would prove too much, and the poor applicant would succumb to paralysis, forever turning into a seedbed of vile larvae.
Success, however, would see them reborn with a more vibrant poison Dantian — the product of a greater volume of toxins merged into a single extract — allowing them to more easily master the Sect's Divine Arts and ascend the ranks.
Five maggots were typically thought to be the minimum a supplicant needed to awaken their spirit, albeit one of paltry strength. Ten would give rise to a Dantian of average poison compatibility — acceptable, for a disciple of the Outer Provinces, anyway.
Twenty held great risk, but most that rose to the ranks of Inner or Core Disciples did so only with their Dantian forged from such numbers of devoured maggots. Fifty was madness, for the terrible pain and duration one must endure to finalise the venom would likely drive the applicant insane, yet those few who succeed were rightfully revered, and most eventually became Elders.
Yunjin, the mortal daughter of the Patriarch, had just been fed over a hundred Divine maggots by her father at the start of the year.
And they just kept breeding more within her.
~~~
How long has it been?
Another month? Maybe two? She did not know.
The maggots were starting to burrow into her brain. She had gone blind in one eye and lost control of the other.
Her world was pain. Pain, and toxin, and squirming maggots that roiled freely around her body.
She was theirs now. The only thing Yunjin had left were her thoughts. Soon, even that would be lost.
The end… At long last. She would soon lose herself, and there would be nothing after that. No more pain, no more maggots, no more thoughts… She would be free. She… She…
She would never see the places Mother told her about in her bedtime stories. Places where water stretched as far as the eye could see. Mountains whose peaks roiled with golden thunderstorms and silver rain. Tranquil forests of mythic and peaceful creatures, where even someone like her could frolic without fear.
Yunjin would never enjoy those things. She had not even seen the outside of her Sect in all her years, for her Mother was forced to confine her to a single room for nearly her entire life to protect her.
The Young Miss would never live the life afforded to common mortals, who tasted the same freedom day after day, when she could not even afford one.
It was unfair. It was unfair.
Tears fell from her clouded eyes, having lost their vibrant colours to the milk-white of blindness. Her cheeks could not move. Her body was paralysed. The mangled sob choked from her lips was all that indicated she was still alive.
"I…"
She wanted to live.
"... don't want this. Someone…"
Save her.
"... kill me. Please."
I don't want to die.
But there was no one, of course. No one to kill her. No one to save her. Her pleas go unheard. Her existence forgotten.
And so Yunjin, unloved and unfit for life, died—
*CRACK*