CHAPTER 53: CHAPTER 53 - THE PAIN OF CHOICES

The choice hung before me, as heavy as the void pressing in. My arms trembled, sweat dripping onto the black stone.

I looked at Feng—her icy mask shattered, raw desperation in her eyes. At Mei—tears streaking down her face even as she forced her qi into me. At Lin—calm but resolute, ready to end me if I fell.

"Essence Bond Override..." I muttered, tasting blood in my mouth. "We’re in this together, or not at all."

The system flared.

[Group Sync Initiated: Fragment of Eternal Woe]

[Warning: High Risk – Corruption Exposure May Become Permanent]

The chamber erupted in light—gold, green, and blue intertwining with crimson corruption as our energies collided with the fragment’s will.

The whispers screamed louder, then broke into laughter before a eeree silnece....

The silence stretched for exactly three heartbeats.

Then reality screamed.

The chamber didn’t just shake—it convulsed, stone walls rippling like water as dimensional barriers began to tear. The floating crystal shards shattered in unison, their destruction releasing waves of pure malevolence that made our previous encounters with corruption feel like gentle breezes.

And from the Fragment of Eternal Woe came a voice that bypassed our ears entirely, speaking directly into our souls with the weight of eons:

"FINALLY... AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF SLUMBER... MORTALS HAVE DELIVERED THEMSELVES TO ME."

The fragment exploded.

Not into pieces—into absence. Where it had floated, a tear in reality opened like a wound in the world’s flesh. Through that gap, something vast beyond comprehension began to push through, and my mind recoiled from trying to process what I was seeing.

[System Alert: CRITICAL ERROR - THREAT LEVEL EXCEEDING PARAMETERS]

[Entity Detected: Primal Demon Emperor - Original Creator of Abyssal Demon Realm]

[Threat Assessment: INCALCULABLE]

[Recommended Action: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION - SURVIVAL CHANCE: 0.003%]

The thing that emerged defied description. It was shadow and flame, ice and lightning, pleasure and pain—every contradiction made manifest. Its form shifted constantly: now a towering humanoid wreathed in dark fire, now a writhing mass of tentacles and eyes, now something that hurt to perceive directly. What remained constant was its presence—a crushing weight that made the air itself scream.

Feng collapsed to her knees, blood streaming from her nose as her Mid-Nascent Soul cultivation simply broke under the pressure. "Impossible," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the reality-tearing static. "The seals... they were supposed to hold for another millennium..."

Mei Ling’s nature affinity went haywire, vines erupting from every surface only to wither and die instantly, their corruption spreading back through her meridians. She doubled over, retching black ichor as her Core Formation began to destabilize.

Lin Yue’s bow snapped in her hands—not the string, but the entire weapon, spirit-forged wood cracking under forces it was never meant to endure. She staggered backward, her bronze skin going pale as marble.

And I... I felt the Horny God’s Legacy being examined by something that made its power seem like a child’s toy.

"INTERESTING," the Primal Demon Emperor mused, its attention settling on me like the weight of mountains. "ANOTHER GOD’S REMNANT. HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE I TASTED DIVINE ESSENCE? YOUR PREDECESSOR’S SCREAMS WERE... EXQUISITE."

The chamber continued to collapse around us, chunks of stone falling upward into swirling voids, gravity twisting into impossible geometries. The walls began to bleed—literally bleed—thick crimson streams that moved against physics.

"BUT ENOUGH NOSTALGIA. I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU, LITTLE EMPEROR."

The entity’s form solidified slightly, taking on the appearance of a perfect human male—if humans were carved from living obsidian and had eyes like collapsed stars. When it spoke, reality rippled around the words.

"I REQUIRE A VESSEL TO FULLY MANIFEST IN YOUR PATHETIC MORTAL REALM. YOUR BODY, ENHANCED AS IT IS BY STOLEN DIVINITY, WOULD SERVE ADMIRABLY. IN EXCHANGE..."

Its gaze swept over my three women, and where that attention touched, they began to scream.

"I WILL GRANT THESE FEMALES A CLEAN DEATH. NO TORTURE. NO CORRUPTION. NO ETERNAL SUFFERING AS PLAYTHINGS FOR MY LEGIONS. A MERCY BEYOND PRICE, CONSIDERING THEIR FATE OTHERWISE."

"Go fuck yourself," I snarled, my voice somehow carrying over the dimensional chaos. The Horny God’s Legacy flared golden around me, pushing back against the crushing presence. "You want my body? Come and take it."

The Primal Demon Emperor laughed, and the sound shattered three more dimensional barriers.

"DEFIANCE. HOW... QUAINT. VERY WELL. LET ME SHOW YOU THE CONSEQUENCES OF REFUSING MY GENEROUS OFFER."

It raised one perfect hand, fingers spread wide. Reality broke.

The chamber exploded outward into a maze of twisted space, walls stretching into infinity while simultaneously crushing inward. Gravity became a suggestion, time flowing backward and forward simultaneously. And in the chaos, dimensional tears opened like hungry mouths.

"Tianlong!" Mei Ling’s scream dopplered as she was sucked toward a crystalline void that sparked with malevolent energy. I lunged for her, but space twisted, making each step carry me further away instead of closer.

She slammed into the crystal formation, and it sealed around her like living amber. Through the translucent walls, I could see her pounding against the barrier, her mouth open in silent screams as threads of pure life force began to drain from her body, flowing into the crystal’s hungry depths.

[System Alert: Mei Ling - Life Force Drain Detected]

[Estimated Time Until Death: 4 minutes 17 seconds]

"Lin!" I spun, seeing the archer caught in another tear—this one opening onto an inverted void where gravity flowed upward. She was fighting the pull, her enhanced strength barely keeping her anchored to a floating chunk of debris, but her grip was slipping.

"Don’t you dare!" she shouted at me, even as she was slowly pulled toward the hungry darkness above. "Don’t you dare try to save me first! Save the others!"

But even as she spoke, I could see her qi flickering, the strain of fighting inverted physics draining her rapidly.

[System Alert: Lin Yue - Gravitational Distortion Exposure]

[Estimated Time Until Spatial Dispersal: 3 minutes 52 seconds]

The third tear opened beneath Feng’s feet, and she plunged into it with a strangled cry. When I saw her next, she was suspended in a web of pure demonic energy—chains of crystallized malice that wrapped around her limbs and torso, burning through her robes to sear her pale skin.

"The corruption," she gasped, her icy composure finally shattered completely as the chains began to pulse with dark qi. "It’s... changing me... I can feel it rewriting my cultivation base..."

Already, her pale blue eyes were flickering with crimson light, her pristine features beginning to shift into something more angular, more inhuman.

[System Alert: Elder Feng - Demonic Corruption Saturation]

[Estimated Time Until Irreversible Transformation: 3 minutes 33 seconds]

Three women. Three deaths. Three impossible choices.

The Primal Demon Emperor materialized beside me, its perfect face wearing an expression of mock sympathy.

"SUCH A TRAGIC DILEMMA. YOU HAVE PERHAPS ENOUGH POWER TO SAVE ONE—IF YOU ACT IMMEDIATELY. BUT THE OTHER TWO WILL DIE SCREAMING, AND THEIR SOULS WILL JOIN MY COLLECTION. CHOOSE QUICKLY, LITTLE EMPEROR. TIME IS A LUXURY YOU NO LONGER POSSESS."

I stood in the center of the chaos, my reformed body trembling as I watched all three women—my wives, my bonds, my heart—crying out for salvation I couldn’t give them all.

Mei Ling, her life force visibly dimming as the crystal prison fed on her essence, her nature affinity being perverted into something twisted and wrong.

Lin Yue, her warrior’s strength failing as the inverted void pulled her toward dissolution, her fierce green eyes never leaving mine even as she fought the inevitable.

Feng, her cultivation being rewritten into demonic channels, her perfect features already beginning to shift as the corruption took hold, transforming her into something that would serve the Demon Emperor for eternity.

The system was going haywire, alerts flooding my vision:

[CRITICAL DECISION POINT DETECTED]

[WARNING: SAVING ONE WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT LOSS OF OTHER TWO]

[NO OPTIMAL SOLUTION AVAILABLE]

[RECOMMENDATION: ERROR - UNABLE TO PROCESS]

"THREE MINUTES," the Primal Demon Emperor announced with relish. "THEN THE CHOICE IS MADE FOR YOU, AND ALL THREE BECOME MINE. CHOOSE, ZHAO TIANLONG. CHOOSE AND LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES."

I looked at each of them in turn—Mei, who had given me her complete devotion; Lin, who had challenged me to be worthy of love; Feng, who had awakened to passion in my arms—and realized that no matter what I chose, I would be damning two of them to fates worse than death.

The weight of that knowledge should have broken me.

Instead, something else entirely began to burn in my chest.

Something that made the Primal Demon Emperor’s perfect face flicker with the first expression of uncertainty I’d seen from it.

"You know what?" I said, my voice carrying a strange calm as power began to flow through me—not from the system, not from the inheritance, but from something deeper. Something that belonged to me alone.

"I choose all three."