The wet squelch of mud beneath my boots echoed through the silence as I trudged toward the mill. The night sky hung heavy, with the faint crescent moon barely piercing the thick shroud above. Everything felt still, as though sothing unseen was watching .
As I reached the mill's base, I froze. A suffocating realization hit ; the night was utterly silent. No chirp of crickets, no rustling of wind through the trees, not even the distant hoot of an owl. The usual life of the night had vanished, swallowed whole, leaving behind an unnatural stillness that clung to the air like a predator's breath, waiting.
The windmill towered before , its stone walls cold and unfeeling. The great wheel hung motionless. Small windows dotted the mill's surface, their dark glass like blind eyes watching .
I pushed open the weathered wooden door, and it let out a long, drawn-out creak that pierced the oppressive silence. The sound echoed as though the building itself was announcing my intrusion. The stillness felt alive inside—thick, heavy, pressing down on . The beams overhead groaned faintly as if they carried a weight that wasn't there. Was soone moving above?
The air was thick with the faint scent of old flour and dust, mingling with sothing sinister. Weak and sickly moonlight seeped through gri-sared windows, casting long, twisted shadows that writhed across the stone floor. The massive gears and wooden chanisms stood still.
Outside, the wind howled faintly, yet the wheel above remained frozen. Sothing was wrong. Why wasn't it spinning? No, I was outside not even a minute ago, and there was no wind.
I moved cautiously, each footstep disturbingly loud against the stone floor. The gears and machinery on the lower floor appeared intact, but a foul, decaying stench lingered in the air. Despite everything seeming in place, a sense of wrongness gnawed at this. It felt as if the mill itself was holding its breath, waiting.
I didn't linger on the lower floor for long. Pulling in strange Qi, sothing about the top of the mill drew my attention.
After pacing in contemplation, I finally ascended the wooden stairs. Each step groaned under my weight, the sound unnervingly loud, cutting through the heavy silence. The noise reverberated in the emptiness as though the mill was alive, amplifying my every movent as if it were listening.
At the top of the windmill, a strange sight greeted . The space was small, barely larger than a cramped balcony. In one corner lay a straw bed, its coarse fibers scattered haphazardly as if disturbed by sothing, or soone. It looked more like a crude nest than a bed, the kind of place an animal might sleep, though the eerie stillness made doubt that anything living had been here for a long ti.
The air up here was colder, sharper.
My senses sharpened, every nerve on edge as I searched for the source of the suffocating sensation. It was like a black hole pulling at the air, draining it of Qi. There was nothing visible, just empty space. Yet the chill crawling up my spine was unmistakable like icy fingers trailing across my skin. Sothing was there, sothing wrong.
I reached out instinctively, my hand trembling as I sought to touch the invisible force. If sight was useless, I had to rely on sothing else. But when my fingers t resistance, it wasn't air I felt, it was hair. Cold, tangled strands slipped through my fingers like silk spun in nightmares.
I froze, my eyes wide. Slowly, I closed them, letting the darkness settle over . When I opened them again, my heart lurched.
My hand rested atop the head of a child, long hair hanging limp, its face a horrifying blank slate. A faceless thing stared up at , motionless. My pulse thundered in my ears as fear coiled tight in my chest.
Holy fucking shit! Was this the faceless child that rat-like guy had spoken about?
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to slow my racing heart, though my pulse still pounded in my ears. Steadying my breath, I pulled myself together. I was a cultivator, not a sniveling child. I plastered on a smile, trying to ease the rising panic.
This thing... it was exciting in its own way.
"Hey there, little girl," I said, keeping my voice steady and casual as if this was just an ordinary child I was speaking to. "What are you doing all the way up here? Did you get lost?"
'No.'
The voice pierced directly into my mind, a chorus of a thousand won, young and old, speaking in unison. The sensation sent a shiver down my spine, a mix of pure terror and twisted excitent.
Telepathy. Holy shit, it actually existed!
I crouched down and stared at her faceless face.
"Can you see anything?" I asked.
She had no eyes, so how could she see? Yet, she was clearly aware of my presence.
I gently pushed her hair aside, revealing small, empty spaces where her ears should have been. Though they weren't conventional, sothing had to function, allowing her to hear , at least in so way.
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Her face was a smooth expanse of skin, devoid of features. No eyes, no nose, no hint of where they should have been. It was as though her face had been wiped clean, leaving nothing behind. Just a blank, unsettling surface.
The Qi inside her moved strangely in ways I had never seen before.
'Are you afraid of ?'
Once again, that strange voice echoed in my head. Of course, I was scared, but I wasn't about to admit it. There was no point in hurting a little girl's feelings, if she even was a little girl. In a world full of strange, inexplicable things, she might be just that— a misunderstood, defenseless child.
Or perhaps she was so eldritch horror. I had no idea.
"I'm more curious than afraid," I said half-truthfully.
She nodded, still "staring" straight at my face.
'When I'm sad, people don't usually find . How did you find ?'
For a mont, I considered lying but quickly dismissed the idea. Whether she was a harmless child or sothing far more sinister, I wasn't about to lie to her. Besides, I was curious about what she truly was. Her Qi felt nothing like a human's.
"I sensed your presence," I explained. "I used sothing called Qi, an invisible energy that's all around us. It's hard to explain in words, but it's like holding your hand near a fire—you can feel the heat even if you can't see it. Except this doesn't burn."
'So, you don't need your eyes to see?' she inquired.
It was an odd leap for her to make, especially since I hadn't ntioned anything like that.
'Then, can you give your eyes?'
I sighed, keeping the nervousness from my face. "Sadly, I can't give you my eyes. But there might be so bad people out there who don't need theirs. Maybe try taking theirs instead."
'Oh…' she sounded disappointed. 'Then, can I see as well as you if I try really hard?'
Her questions were getting weirder, and I chuckled nervously. "If you want to try sensing, you can spread your Qi like a ripple in water. It'll feel anything that interrupts its flow."
A better analogy would've been a radar, but that concept wouldn't make sense in this world.
She nodded, then looked down. Suddenly, I felt a disruption in the Qi around us; a wave washing over . With each pulse, her energy beca smoother.
What? How?
She wasn't using her own Qi to do this. Instead, she was drawing in the natural Qi around her. Just as it touched her skin and entered her, she pushed it out before it could cause harm. Each ti, the process grew more efficient, and she instinctively avoided bringing the Qi too far into her body, as though she already knew that doing so without Body Tempering was dangerous.
The whole process happened in an instant. She was using Qi like it was second nature.
What crazy talent! She might be even more gifted than Song Song!
‘It burns a little when the Qi enters ,’ she said.
“You need a lot more training to strengthen your body so the Qi doesn’t hurt you as it enters,” I replied, pulling my hand away from her head. The Qi swirling around her felt unstable, and the last thing I needed was to lose a hand if things got reckless.
‘Oh,’ she responded telepathically, her voice suddenly growing deeper. Her hair shortened, and she began drawing in vast amounts of Qi, far too much for anyone to safely handle.
Then her body twitched a sudden, unnatural movent. The unsettling sound of bones cracking echoed through the still air as her form began to contort before my eyes. Her limbs elongated, her posture shifting in ways no human body should. The transformation was srizing yet horrifying in its grotesque precision.
But the tamorphosis wasn’t the only disturbing thing. She surged through Qi Gathering—one-star, two-star, three-star—and continued, pushing to nine-star without stopping. And still, she kept pulling in Qi, even as her cultivation reached a bottleneck.
After a few seconds, she winced in pain.
‘I can’t strengthen my body to handle more Qi,’ she said, her voice now a chilling blend of many. It ranged from the fragile, faltering speech of a toddler to the deep, gravelly growl of an old man. Each voice layered over the next, creating a discordant chorus that sent chills down my spine.
What the hell had I stumbled into? This thing couldn’t be human.
‘There’s a strange heat just below my spine, and my head feels all woozy!’ one voice howled inside my head, pained and frantic.
Suddenly, the smooth skin where her eyes should have been split open, parting in a clean, surgical line. Blood poured out in thin streams, cascading like tears down her face. The crimson streaks contrasted sharply with her pale, featureless skin.
‘Why does it hurt so much?’ she asked, her voice desperate.
I wondered the sa. As her body swayed and she began to collapse, I caught her, lowering her gently onto the cold wooden floor. I placed my hand over her chest, trying to feel her pulse. Instead of a normal heartbeat, there was a strange, irregular rhythm like two hearts beating out of sync, like the gallop of a trotting horse.
“Don’t fight this,” I said, trying to calm my voice. “I’m just going to check your condition.”
I gathered a small amount of Qi at my fingertips. I’d run Qi through my own body many tis before to assess my stats, a habit I hadn’t indulged in lately. But now, I’d have to do it on soone else.
My Qi spread softly through her, like a gentle wave. To my surprise, she didn’t resist the injection. As I probed her body, the first thing that caught my attention was the shattered remnants of her spiritual roots, and the second was the violent Qi coursing through her.
Had she crushed her own cultivation? Was it even possible to absorb too much Qi at once?
Theoretically, yes. But to actually witness soone pulling in so much Qi that they destroyed their own cultivation and spiritual roots was unheard of.
I worked quickly, using my Qi to stabilize her body, locking down the most critical injuries. I siphoned off the excess Qi, creating a funnel with my own energy to drain it safely before it could cause more damage, releasing the Qi into the outside. It stopped the imdiate danger, but internal injuries were inevitable.
Yet, even as the Qi drained away, her body was still changing. Her organs…
What the hell? Her organs were shifting inside her, morphing effortlessly into other organs.
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