11 Monster (1/2)

The man took his hands off my shoulders and sat back down opposite me.

”If I chose a successor, I wouldn't pick you. But you put on the Band of Trial, and now I'm stuck with you.”

He sighed, then leaned back and crossed his arms.

”In your current state, your aptitude is too low to receive my inheritance. But I have a way to change that.”

I was captivated by his words. Could he make me strong?

”What's your plan?” I asked. My voice sounded weak. Was everything about me weak?

”I see that your soul is in pieces. For you, this may be a problem, but for me, this opens up a pathway.”

”You can fix my soul?”

The man leaned across the table and lowered his voice.

”I can re-form it. I will send my consciousness into your soul and integrate my qi with yours. That will grant you access to some of my talent.”

The prospect excited me. If I had better talent, I could accomplish greater things! I could be strong. But there was a niggling feeling in the back of my head. A feeling that this wasn't right.

”This will be a dangerous process,” he continued, ”you can't put up any resistance while I'm doing this.”

He seemed excited when he spoke, and the uneasy feeling grew. He was asking me to surrender my soul. I wanted power, but this didn't seem like the way to get it.

The man leaned even closer to me, a few inches away from my face. He grabbed my jaw and spoke in a sinister voice.

”Remember. You are weak. But I will make you strong. Are you willing?”

I was deep in thought, and I nodded almost out of instinct.

”Good choice,” he said, and an eerie smile crept across his face.

I realised too late that I had made a mistake.

I didn't care if some cultivator I had just met thought I was weak. Who was he anyway? I didn't sense any power coming from him. In fact, he didn't even seem human.

This world seemed off too. The promise of an inheritance had blinded me. I hadn't made the obvious connections.

The blood red colours? The thorny, so called ”Band of Trial?” It was all bullshit. This man was some kind of demonic creature, and he probably came from the bracelet.

The worlds he had shown me weren't meant to teach me anything, they were meant to make me feel helpless. Re-forming my soul? Integrating my qi? He just wanted to control me.

I was dragged back to the real world and felt a disturbance in my core. I drew my attention to my soul and saw a red wisp slip through the fragments.

I cursed myself for being so naive. I had to think fast. How could I stop him from taking me over?

Earlier, he told me not to resist. And he wouldn't have taken the time to break my will for no reason. Did I just have to resist him? Could it really be that simple?

No. There had to be a good reason why Crow put this bracelet on me. Father didn't even seem surprised when he saw it tear away at my flesh.

I watched my soul for a bit, thinking and biding my time. The vines were shrinking, but my soul wasn't falling apart. Red qi had seeped into the cracks. It was holding the pieces together.

Of course! This demon wouldn't inhabit a broken soul. He had to fix me before that.

I came up with a plan. I would let this demon have a taste of his own medicine.

He had access to some of my memories. He knew about Sirius, and that I desired cultivation. But he didn't seem to be able to read my thoughts.

Perhaps he wasn't powerful enough to see everything. Because if he had seen that I knew the Mind Integration Technique, he wouldn't have dared to come anywhere near my soul.