Chapter 217: Poison Taking Over Me
The second the wooden bar dropped into place, my knees buckled.
I hit the stained, damp floorboards hard, completely unable to brace my fall with my crushed left hand. My fractured collarbone ground violently together, but the physical pain of the broken bones was entirely eclipsed by the absolute horror unfolding inside my chest.
The Demonic venom didn't just freeze my core. It began to actively, aggressively putrefy it.
I writhed on the wet floor, my back arching violently. My mouth fell open, but my lungs were completely paralyzed. I couldn't draw a single breath of the ammonia-laced air.
"Mu-Kang!" Jin-Woo dropped to his knees beside me, his wet, muddy hands grabbing my shoulders.
I couldn't hear him properly. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well. The freezing, necrotic sludge flooded the hollow cavern of my Foundation Establishment core. I could literally feel the delicate, golden energy network I had cultivated completely dissolving. It was a sensation of profound, absolute loss—like feeling a piece of my own soul being torn out and thrown into a furnace.
I forced my single working eye open.
The blue system window floating above me didn't look like a helpful interface anymore. It was flashing a blinding, violent blood-red, the text glitching and vibrating erratically.
\[CRITICAL FAILURE.\]
\[Foundation Core structural integrity: 12%... 9%... 4%...\]
\[Irreversible Demonic Corruption detected.\]
"Breathe!" Jin-Woo shouted, his hands frantically pressing against my chest, trying to manually force the air into my locked lungs. "You don't die here! Do you hear me? You don't die in the dark!"
I stared up at the rotting wooden ceiling of the dye factory.
I could see the thick, black veins bulging beneath the pale skin of my own arms. The poison was moving outward from my heart, creeping up my neck like a web of necrotic vines. The pain was so absolute, so entirely encompassing, that it bypassed agony and became a terrifying, suffocating numbness.
A small, trembling hand touched my right arm.
I weakly shifted my gaze. It was the little girl from the iron cage. She was kneeling in the dirt beside Jin-Woo, her clothes soaked in rain and mud. She held out her shredded rag doll, pressing it gently against my bloody tunic, tears silently streaming down her dirty face.
I tried to smile to comfort her, but my facial muscles wouldn't obey. Another thick wave of black foam bubbled past my lips, spilling onto my chin.
The system window violently shattered into a cascade of red static.
\[Foundation Core: ERASED.\]
\[Vitality: 1%.\]
\[System Intervention Protocol Initiated. Foreign Demonic Qi exceeds host capacity.\]
The red text vanished.
For five agonizing seconds, the interface was completely blank. The freezing cold in my chest reached absolute zero. I couldn't feel Jin-Woo shaking me. I couldn't feel the hard floor beneath my back. I was completely unanchored, drifting into the cold, empty void of my past life's death.
Then, the system window slowly reappeared.
It wasn't blue. It wasn't red.
It was a deep, abyssal, glowing purple.
\[Warning. The Host has absorbed a lethal concentration of pure Demonic Qi without an active Foundation Core to reject it.\]
\[Adaptation required for immediate survival.\]
\[Initiating Forced Meridian Reversal.\]
\[Path Change: Demonic Cultivation.\]
My single working eye shot wide open.
A sudden, terrifyingly violent explosion of heat detonated in the empty void where my golden core used to be. It wasn't the warm, life-giving heat of orthodox Qi. It was a jagged, burning, chaotic fire that tasted of ash and blood.
The black, corrupted veins bulging on my arms suddenly flared with a sickly purple light beneath my skin.
My spine arched off the floor with such violent force my head cracked against the wood. My locked lungs suddenly expanded, dragging in a massive, ragged breath of air that sounded like tearing canvas.
"Mu-Kang?" Jin-Woo whispered, pulling his hands back in shock as the ambient temperature in the damp room rapidly began to drop.
The aura leaking from my pores wasn't human. It was heavy, necrotic, and overwhelmingly dark. It was the exact same sickening energy that Elder Vane had used on the stage, only raw and entirely unrefined. The system was forcibly adapting my ruined body to the poison, turning the venom into my new foundation just to keep my heart beating.
I lay gasping on the floorboards, my body trembling uncontrollably as the dark Qi violently flooded my empty meridians. The pain was excruciating, like boiling water being poured directly into my veins.
I turned my head, locking my eye onto Jin-Woo.
He was staring at me, his face pale, his grip tightening instinctively on the hilt of his straight sword. The man who had sworn his life to protect me was an Orthodox master. He had been trained since childhood to exterminate the exact Demonic energy that was currently keeping me alive.
Before either of us could speak, a sound cut cleanly through the howling rain outside.
It was a deep, synchronized, terrifying baying.
The villagers huddled in the corners whimpered, covering their ears. Jin-Woo instantly spun toward the heavy wooden doors, his sword drawn, the chaotic blue Qi flaring around the blade.
The baying grew louder, echoing through the narrow, muddy alleyways surrounding the dye factory. It wasn't the sound of ordinary street dogs. It was the heavy, rhythmic howling of massive beasts bred specifically for hunting martial artists.
"The Blood Hounds," Jin-Woo breathed, stepping between me and the barricaded doors.
The Orthodox Alliance trackers hadn't waited at the borders. They had entered the lawless zone. And they had followed the scent of my black blood straight to our door.