The internal battle with the child-specter, the Observer Node: 03, had left Wushuang with a hollow victory. They had crushed the echo-self, forcing it back into the silent depths of their System, but its accusation of tyranny lingered, a haunting reminder of their fractured past and the potential for their own soul to turn against them. The cultivation world, meanwhile, continued its descent into chaos, further destabilized by the Saint's Maw and the lingering fear of Wushuang's unpredictable power.
Wushuang, now fully embracing their fused identity, turned their attention to Qianci Yuan. The sect, once a bastion of sensual dominance, was now a smoldering husk, a testament to the disciples' revolt and Wushuang's earlier, brutal intervention. This was where Mistress Zhao Hansu, stripped of her power and blinded, awaited her fate.
Wushuang arrived at the ruins, the air thick with the acrid scent of burnt silk and charred wood. The once-vibrant gardens were now desolate, their luminous flora reduced to ash. The elegant pavilions stood as skeletal remains, their polished jade floors cracked and stained. It was a landscape of decay, a perfect reflection of the old order crumbling.
Following the faint, lingering signature of the qi seed they had implanted, Wushuang found Mistress Hansu in her personal shrine. It was a small, untouched sanctuary amidst the chaos, a testament to her desperate attempt to preserve a sliver of her former life. She sat amidst shattered jade and smoldering silk, her face burned and blinded, her once-regal robes torn and singed.
Around her, arranged on low, soot-stained pedestals, were dozens of perfectly preserved faces. They were not real, but crafted from rare spirit-silk and infused with qi, each one a hauntingly lifelike replica of a disciple Hansu had once "cultivated," a trophy of her control. It was her "Garden of Faces," a testament to her obsession with beauty and dominance.
She looked up, her sightless eyes fixed on Wushuang, sensing their presence. Her voice, once a silken caress, was now hoarse, broken. "You… you came," she whispered, a profound weariness in her tone. "The fire… the betrayal… it all came from within. I deserve this. Kill me. End it."
Wushuang stood over her, their fused eyes cold with contemplation. Kill her? No. Death was too simple, too quick. It offered escape, a release from the consequences of her actions. Wushuang's new policy was punishment by rebirth, a far more insidious form of vengeance.
They knelt, their hand reaching out, their Root Aspect flaring. They touched Hansu's face, tracing the contours of her burned skin. With a silent command, Wushuang began to heal her. Not just her physical wounds, but her spiritual ones. They meticulously erased all traces of her cultivation, stripping her of her power, her authority, her very identity as a cultivator. They made her whole, but empty. Her meridians withered, her spiritual core became a dull, inert stone. She was a mortal again, forever bound to the limitations she had once scorned.
"Live," Wushuang's voice echoed, a symphony of male and female tones, cold and clear. "And remember everything you were. Every ambition. Every cruelty. Every loss. You will walk among the mortals you despised, a ghost of your former self, remembering the power you wielded, and the price you paid."
Hansu gasped, her eyes clearing, her vision returning. She stared at her unblemished hands, then at Wushuang, a profound horror dawning in her eyes. She was alive, whole, but a mortal. A ghost of her former self, forever haunted by the memory of her lost power.
Wushuang rose, leaving Hansu to grapple with her new, terrifying reality. This was a new form of dominance, a new kind of cruelty. They had gained a formidable, if unwilling, ally, one broken and remade by their will. Hansu would serve them, not out of power, but out of a desperate, terrifying gratitude, a living testament to Wushuang's chilling vision of justice.