Immortal Paladin

285 Hell's My Burden

[POV: Lu Gao]

Lu Gao didn't know what he was expecting exactly when he was told to experience hell. The warning had carried weight, but when his consciousness settled into the strange foreign memory, what greeted him was not tormenting fire or chains, but a boy's life. It felt oddly mundane and almost deceptively so.

A warm kitchen, the smell of rice and stir-fry, and the gentle voice of a woman calling out, "David, have you done your homework?" She smiled as she set plates down, eyes bright but heavy with expectation. A man sat across, face lined from long hours, tapping his newspaper before peering over it, "Son, you hear your mother? Don't waste your time. Excellence now means success later."

David… No, Lu Gao living through David, nodded obediently. His hands moved on their own, clutching a pen and workbook, though his mind was far away. "Yes, Mom. Yes, Dad. I'll do it." The words came easily, as if rehearsed a thousand times.

At first, it felt like comfort. A stable home, meals always on the table, two parents present. It wasn't so bad. The cat that clawed at his sheets every time he left homework unattended was annoying, but bearable. The classmates who shoved him in hallways, scribbled curses on his desk, and laughed when his voice cracked… They were kids being kids, surely. The parents who frowned when he brought home a ninety instead of a hundred… It was just tough love, surely. All of it seemed tolerable. It was a life with quirks and rough edges, but not hell.

Lu Gao thought so, and David believed it too. They endured.

But as the days blended, Lu Gao began to see the cracks widening into canyons. His mother's questions about homework weren't really questions but interrogations. "David, have you done your homework?" became, "David, why are you so slow? Why can't you be like the neighbor's son?" His father's encouragement was a lecture sharpened into a blade. "Excellence now means success later" became, "Do you want to live like a beggar? Is this what you want your life to be?" The warmth of meals soured into rituals of judgment.

The cat was no loyal companion but a lunatic beast that shredded his clothes, bit his ankles, and left droppings in his bed. His classmates' "naughtiness" wasn't playful jabs but relentless torment from tripping him in gym, stealing his notebooks, and spitting in his lunch. His parents' "wanting the best" for him wasn't nurturing but suffocating, their hands pressing down on his shoulders until he bent under their vision of who he must become.

And yet, Lu Gao's heart did not recoil. Experiencing it through David's young eyes, he felt how normal it all seemed. A child rationalized pain as life, cruelty as discipline, and neglect as love. David never screamed. He smiled, he nodded, and he endured. That was his hell, subtle, insidious, and made invisible by familiarity.

It was only later, as the years advanced and David's body grew taller, that understanding crept in. High school sharpened him with new awareness. He began to see the falseness of it all from the laughter that wasn't laughter, the love that came with conditions, and the acceptance that was never there. He realized, painfully, that his normal wasn't normal. That others lived without cats ripping their homework apart, without bruises hidden under long sleeves, and without parents who measured their worth in numbers on a report card.

Still, even as that maturity dawned, he was no sage. His mind wrestled with identity, rebellion, curiosity, and desire. The truths of pain did not stop the pull of youth. Lu Gao could not help but smirk as David's thoughts turned less to survival and more to impulses that came with his changing body.

Well, not mature enough to resist porn. Puberty had its own claws, and David like any boy succumbed with all the awkwardness of a teenager fumbling through his first tastes of freedom.

Life moved forward for David, and Lu Gao lived every step of it as if it were his own skin. High school slipped past with nothing particularly remarkable. He won a handful of poster-making contests, though the awards gathered dust on the shelves. He played well enough in intramurals, scoring here, winning there, but never so grand that his name was remembered. A few medals, a few claps on the back, and nothing legendary. Still, he told himself, "That's fine. At least I did something."

There was also the sweetness of a girlfriend, that tentative hand-holding that blossomed into late-night texts and, eventually, awkward fumblings that took them both across the line of innocence. He lost his virginity with her, celebrated graduation together, then just as quickly saw it all unravel. The breakup wasn't violent, just hollow. A slow erosion until she wasn't there anymore. He tried to shrug it off, telling himself he still had other things.

One of those things was Lost Legends Online, the game that had long since become his second home. It filled the gaps of loneliness, gave him companions he never met in real life, and achievements that glowed brighter than any dusty medal. But soon, high school faded into the rearview mirror and college arrived with its own twisted hellscape.

Professors loomed like demons at the lectern, their voices harsh, and their expectations impossible. Some were tyrants with smiles, others cold bureaucrats with grades as weapons. Friend groups were no better, cliques forming poisonous circles, and drama dripping like venom. Worst of all were the fraternities, packs of wolves playing hide-and-seek with his sanity, chasing him through hallways with invitations that felt more like threats.

He laughed it off when he could, cursed when he couldn't, and survived. That was all David could do. Survive.

Then adulthood came, and Lu Gao felt the crushing weight of it through David's soul. The world wasn't the same anymore, not after the first bills arrived like vultures at his door. Student loans, unpaid fees, and endless reminders. His landlord was another kind of tormentor, demanding rent with threats of eviction, while nosy neighbors inserted themselves into his business, never leaving him a moment of peace.

But David clung to the one solace he had. Lost Legends Online remained, glowing on the screen like a sanctuary. And somehow, amidst that chaos, he found her, the librarian. She had that aura of quiet allure, her body curving beneath sweaters and skirts that made David stammer. Against all odds, she smiled at him. She touched him. They dated. For a moment, life felt good, almost too good.

"A hot librarian girlfriend," David muttered once, laughing at his own luck. "With a really hot body. Damn, maybe things are finally turning around."

But Lu Gao felt the dread tightening in his chest, because hell never gave gifts without cruelty to match. The truth came one night, sharp and brutal. David walked into the library and found her there, not alone, but bent over a desk beneath the weight of the principal, her moans not of love but of betrayal.

She looked back, eyes wide, and didn't even flinch. Instead, she let it happen. She let him watch.

The sound broke him more than the sight, the rhythm of flesh against flesh, the mocking grunts, the shame and humiliation smothering his heart. Lu Gao screamed with David's voice, the agony twisting inside his veins, but it changed nothing. She had chosen. He was discarded, left hollow, a fool in love's cruel theater.

What followed was not recovery but collapse. Days blurred into nights, bottles emptying into his gut, bitterness sloshing in his veins. He wandered through alleys, slept on floors, and drank until his soul felt like ash. The game no longer saved him. Nothing did. His heart had been torn apart, every beat echoing with the image of betrayal.

It was hell. Not fire, not brimstone, but heartbreak so consuming it suffocated him. A prison built from his own memories, and Lu Gao could not wake from it.

But everything was still fine, or so Lu Gao thought as he sank deeper into David's life. He wasn't dead yet, after all. Pain, heartbreak, debts, humiliation… none of it had killed him. And besides, he still had Lost Legends Online, the one constant. Even better, he had a girlfriend there… an online one, sure, but she was kind, empathetic, and listened to him when no one else did. She cared, or at least David believed she did. That was enough.

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Then he died.

Yep. Just like that. The PC sparked, smoke hissed, the screen exploded in his face, and everything turned black. Lu Gao almost laughed in disbelief. "The world sure hates him," he thought, though the bitterness carried no humor.

When he opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else. A strange world, so vastly different from the one he had just lived. The skies stretched impossibly wide, the air humming with power, and the people spoke in ways that felt half familiar, half alien. That was when his new life began. He met his first disciple, who became his daughter. He raised a goldfish, cared for a little ghost boy, and even guided a demon-possessed wretch who, in time, became another disciple.

And then there was a name, his own. "Lu Gao…? Huh?"

For a moment he staggered in thought, unsure of where he ended and where David began. His voice cracked inside his mind. "This is weird. No… this is not me. This is Master's life. These are his memories. Distorted in a way, yes. But his, and not mine."

The realization swept through him, heavy as iron. He wasn't just reliving scenes. Instead, he was reconciling with the truth of his master's thorny road. His heart ached as he endured the memories, each trial sharper than the last. Hei Mao's fall, Gu Jie's sacrifice, and Ren Xun's tragic end. Xin Yune slipping away like smoke in the wind. Faces blurred together in loss, piling upon his chest until the weight became unbearable.

Lu Gao clenched his fists, trembling. The emotions weren't muted or faded by time. They were raw, unfiltered, and relentless. They carved into him, forcing him to feel every sorrow David had swallowed, every betrayal, and every hollow night. He thought of his master's smile, his stubborn courage, and realized that behind it had been an ocean of scars.

"So this is hell," Lu Gao thought. "Not fire. Not demons. Just living and losing, over and over. Master… you really walked this path?"

His body shuddered as the memory world shifted again, pulling him into the heart of another storm. He was standing against a goddess draped in radiance, Aixin, her divine eyes burning with malice as she wore Joan's stolen body like a mockery. Every strike she unleashed carried despair; every breath from her lips smothered hope.

Lu Gao felt terror claw at his ribs, despair gnawing at his resolve. His sword shook in his hands as the heavens themselves split with her laughter. And still, he stood. He endured. For that was all David, his master, had ever done.

Lu Gao died.

The sensation was not an end but a transition. He opened his eyes again in the False Earth, reborn into a land soaked in blood and resentment. War thundered all around him. He was thrust into the ranks of frightened conscripts and forced to clash against rebels who wielded nothing but farm tools. Their faces blurred in his memory, some too young to even bear the weight of their weapons, yet he was commanded to cut them down. He obeyed. He killed. Each strike hollowed him further.

Comrades fell beside him, their screams torn from their throats and lost in the cacophony. The stench of burning flesh filled the air. There was no honor in that war, no victory, only survival. And yet war followed war. The Ascension Games came, pitting Ancient Souls against one another like beasts for sport and dominance. Lu Gao lived them as David had, over and over, winning nothing but scars. Then more war followed, as if conflict were the only language this world could speak.

And then the cruelest choice, saving his sister or resisting the Supreme Void. That moment shattered him. He felt his heart break as David's had, torn between love and duty, neither path righteous, both unforgivable.

Yet David made the third choice, forcing a path open in front of him, costing 'himself' again and again.

"Hell was the sum of wrong choices you had to live with," Lu Gao realized. Every breath carried the weight of regret. Every day replayed decisions that could not be undone. He understood now why his master called it hell.

The cycle did not end. Again and again, Lu Gao lived through David's lives from Earth, Hollowed World, False Earth, and then back again. One moment, he was seated at a school desk, hearing the nagging of his parents. The next, he was trudging through corpses in battlefields that stretched beyond sight. The next, he was cast into the void of Ascension, clawing against impossible odds. Each life blurred into the next, each death feeding into the cycle.

But it was not only David's lives. Nongmin's countless versions of himself bled into the cycle. A thousand Nongmins stretched before him like mirrors of a broken road. Some ruled their entire lives, the Empire torn again and again, never once seeing peace. Some led armies and died screaming in rebellion to the heavens. Some lived in despair, their children starving, and their dreams rotting in the dirt. Others turned cruel, killing neighbor and kin just to fill their agendas. Lu Gao walked each life, felt each breath, died each death, until the weight pressed his soul flat.

Then came the alternate Da Weis, fractured through timelines. Some rose as tyrants, carving their will upon nations, drowning in blood. Some lived hidden, bitter and forgotten, clinging to scraps of meaning. Others ascended to heavens only to be chained as slaves to higher beings. And some never left Earth at all, dying anonymous deaths, choking on food, stabbed in alleys, or alone in rooms lit only by the glow of a computer screen. Each version whispered the same agony: "This is hell, this is what you must endure."

And the visions spread wider still. Lives of cultivators, countless and varied, poured through him. He saw the righteous drown in betrayal, their sects burned while their disciples cried for help that never came. He felt the despair of a mediocre cultivator who never broke through, watching peers ascend while his bones rotted with age. He bore the memories of wicked lords who died to the very blades they once commanded, begging for mercy they had never given. He carried the burden of rulers who watched their empires crumble, powerless to save even their children from slaughter. Each life was a shard of torment, pressed into him until he thought his soul would fracture.

Hell was not fire or chains. Hell was living every sorrow, every regret, and every failure of countless lives and knowing none of it could be undone.

Lu Gao staggered through the flames of memory, his skin peeling, his breath a rasp, every nerve screaming. Yet even as he faltered, he saw the shape of his soul. It stretched forward, a high road paved with fire and blood, endless and steep. The road was hell itself, yet it did not end.

It spanned from an instant to an eternity. He laughed, he screamed, he wept, and then he stopped altogether. His soul distorted with every iteration, stripped and reshaped by relentless torment. Until finally, there was only fire.

Flames swallowed him. His skin peeled away, burns covering every inch of his body. Each breath was molten agony. And in that crucible of torment, a figure stood before him.

Da Wei.

Not just his master, but the reborn David, eyes burning with sorrow and resolve.

"I'm sorry," Lu Gao choked, his voice cracked and raw.

Above them hung a suspended world. It was Earth, glowing faintly like a lantern in the dark. Its presence stirred something inside him, a longing not his own. He understood in a trembling breath. "Y-you miss home."

"I do," Da Wei admitted, his voice quiet.

The flames seemed to flicker gentler for a moment. Da Wei's gaze pierced into him, heavy with trust. "Can you keep my memories of Earth for me?"

Lu Gao faltered. "I'll do what I can."

Da Wei's lips curved, not into a smile, but a weary acknowledgment. "It seems Meng Po's work was not enough. I have to rely on you."

The weight of that trust pressed on Lu Gao's shoulders, heavier than any battlefield. He dared to ask, voice weak, "Is… is the Hollowed World hell to you?"

Da Wei shrugged, a motion at once casual and burdened. "Well, I have you guys. So it doesn't matter. Hell, heaven, earth… They're just labels we put on things to make sense of them."

Lu Gao's heart clenched. Through the bond of memory, he felt his master's confusion, the ache of displacement, and the pain of belonging nowhere.

Da Wei stepped forward. His presence filled the inferno until the flames bent around him. He lifted his hand, and ancient power swirled. "Lu Gao," he intoned, voice steady and divine. "I appoint you my Faithful."

The Immortal Art flared, the Divine Appointment of the Faithful!

Lu Gao knelt, the flames licking his body without consuming him. His soul rose before him, its shape revealed! It was a high road stretching endlessly into the horizon. The path was steep, jagged, and cloaked in fire, yet it was unbroken, leading ever forward.

He spoke the words that had welled up from lifetimes of torment:

"I swear upon my soul, upon this road that stretches without end. Hell is my burden, and I will carry it without fear as I walk. I will endure the flames, for they are not punishment but tempering. I will shoulder the sorrows of the fallen, even if they crush me, for they are not chains but duty."

The fire surged, coiling around him like serpents of judgment.

"I shall not flee from despair, for despair is my forge. I shall not curse my suffering, for suffering is my oath. I shall not abandon the lost, for their cries are my summons. Where hope is shattered, I will bear it. Where light is dim, I will kindle it. Where hell takes root, I will walk it."

The suspended world above him quivered, shedding motes of pale light that sank into his skin.

"Hell is eternal, and so shall be my resolve. I am Lu Gao, disciple of Da Wei, bound as his Paladin. Let heaven, earth, and hell bear witness: my oath is my chain, my burden, and my strength."

The inferno collapsed inward, not as destruction but as consecration.

When Lu Gao opened his eyes, the world was drowned in violet haze. His master's voice cut through it like a decree.

"Rise, my Paladin."

Dark wings burst from his back, flames licked his skin, and horns of fire hardened on his brow. Pain carved through him, yet instead of breaking, it forged him anew. His cultivation surged, stabilizing at the Seventh Realm, Bloodline Refinement.

Lu Gao's hair lengthened, his eyes blazed with purple fire, and qi and mana twined together in harmony. He stood tall, wings stretched wide, horns gleaming, reborn in shadow and flame.

The Divine Transformation was complete.