The Fireball Technique arrived in a flash, detonating with a violent roar.

  But Chen Gensheng was no longer there. He had transformed into a streak of black lightning, shooting toward the gap beneath the door.

  “Junior Sister, Junior Sister, don't be impatient,” Zhao Ping giggled, a delirious smile plastered on his face. “Senior Brother will fetch the medicine for you right now. I won’t let it escape.”

  Gensheng halted at the door, his six legs screeching against the floor. His elytra—the hard wing covers on his back—flared open, emitting a high-frequency drone. In the next instant, he took to the air, performing a short, clumsy low-altitude flight, veering around Zhao Ping toward the weathered window.

  “It can fly?!”

  Zhao Ping’s fanaticism reached a fever pitch. He began muttering to himself: “Junior Sister, look! Its legs are harder than refined iron, and its wings... they are miraculous! With this, you can stand again. You could even fly in the heavens! Junior Sister! I will secure this medicine for you!”

  Seeing Gensheng about to shatter the window and escape, a look of grim resolve crossed Zhao Ping’s face. He bit his tongue and sprayed a mist of Essence Blood.

  His hunched frame suddenly snapped straight. A sickly, unnatural flush rushed to his sallow face, and his aura surged violently.

  Gensheng’s vision blurred. Before he could react, a figure blocked his path. Zhao Ping’s withered hand snatched him out of the air, pinning him ruthlessly to the ground. From his sleeve, Zhao Ping shook out a small cloth bag.

  A mass of black, writhing, twisted parasites tumbled out. The moment they caught Gensheng’s scent, they lunged like starving predators, coiling around his legs and thorax. No matter how much Gensheng struggled, he could not budge an inch.

  Zhao Ping watched the Horsehair Worms bind Gensheng completely and let out a series of cackling laughs.

  “Give up. These are Horsehair Worms extracted from a Blood Mantis. To get them to emerge, I spent three full hours licking the mantis’s tail.”

  He carried the bound cockroach out of the hut, weaving through the Laborer Courtyard into a desolate, overgrown path. At the end stood an abandoned alchemy hall.

  Inside, the air was thick with the suffocating stench of medicinal rot. Zhao Ping moved with practiced ease to the deepest part of the hall, where a stone bed sat.

  Lying there was a person. Or rather, a torso.

  It had no limbs. The body was shriveled, and a pair of eyes stared blankly at the ceiling beams—hollow and dead.

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  “Junior Sister,” Zhao Ping’s voice turned so tender it was sickening. “In the end, I couldn't get the Qi Recovery Pill from that Foundation Establishment cultivator. Don't blame your brother’s incompetence.”

  Guilt and obsession flickered across his face as he reached out to stroke the withered cheek of the torso. “But look! See what I’ve brought you?”

  He hoisted the bound Chen Gensheng into the air.

  “Junior Sister, don't worry. I know you dislike killing your own kind, but this creature fed on the flesh and blood of our fellow disciples. It is not innocent. I will take it, graft its limbs onto you, and you will stand again. Won't you be happy?”

  His voice echoed through the empty hall, hauntingly eerie.

  Chen Gensheng was struck with shock. This maddened supervisor claimed the limb-less, ghost-like husk on the bed was his own kind?

  Was there another awakened cockroach in this world?

  Zhao Ping clearly knew the truth. Instead of fearing her, he worshipped her like a deity, nursing her day and night, even hunting down his own kind to graft new limbs onto her.

  “Junior Sister, do you smell it?” Zhao Ping pressed Gensheng close to the torso’s face. “Take a breath. How is it?”

  He watched the husk with desperate anticipation. For years, no matter what he did, she had remained a silent, lifeless vessel.

  But today, something changed.

  As Chen Gensheng drew near, something flickered within the hollow sockets of the torso.

  Zhao Ping’s eyes went wide. He saw it! He actually saw it!

  Her eyes moved!

  For the first time since the Great Calamity had reduced her to this state, she had reacted!

  “Junior Sister! You...” Zhao Ping trembled so violently he couldn't finish his sentence. Only his ragged breathing and the overflowing obsession in his eyes remained. All his sacrifices—the endurance, the licking, the madness—had been rewarded!

  He could almost see it: his Junior Sister standing on the variant cockroach's legs, spreading her wings to fly. He leaned in closer, wanting to etch this once-in-a-million-years reaction into his very soul.

  Puchi.

  A soft sound.

  Zhao Ping slowly lowered his head. A translucent object, shaped like a hair-pin and clear as crystal, had pierced through his chest. Warm blood dripped from its tip.

  From beginning to end, Chen Gensheng saw everything with crystalline clarity.

  A hand—delicate as jade, flawless and pale—had reached out from the center of the shriveled torso’s chest. It was this hand that held the murderous hairpin.

  The light in Zhao Ping’s eyes began to fade rapidly. He opened his mouth, but even at the brink of death, his face was filled with joy. He coughed up a spray of bloody froth.

  The jade hand gave a gentle tug, withdrawing the hairpin. Zhao Ping collapsed softly beside the stone bed. He managed one final whisper before falling silent forever.

  “Do... whatever you wish to do... Junior Sister... as long as you are... safe...”

  His eyes remained wide open in death, reflecting the image of the torso, though the obsession had finally turned into a hollow void.

  Silence returned to the alchemy hall.

  Gensheng did not move.

  The torso on the stone bed began to emit sharp, cracking sounds. Fractures spread from the hole where the jade hand had emerged, spider-webbing across the shriveled skin. The yellowed, leathery flesh sloughed off like shards of ancient mud.

  First, a second hand emerged. Then, a pair of snow-white wrists and slender arms. Finally, a head pushed its way out from the ruptured chest.

  This was a rebirth.

  The withered husk Zhao Ping had cherished was nothing more than a pupa, a nest. A vessel used for gestation.

  Chen Gensheng watched as a complete, pristine young woman sat up from the heap of shattered flesh and bone. She was naked, yet untainted by the filth around her. It was as if she hadn't crawled out of a rotting corpse, but had been born from a blooming lotus.

  The girl sat up and looked down at Zhao Ping’s body. There was no joy, nor was there any disgust.

  Finally, she turned her gaze toward Gensheng.