Wei Wuyin basked in the immersive environment that contained the faceless yet exquisite beauties before him. He swiftly concluded that this so-called memory was relative to his thinking, a variant of visual, auditory, and olfactory reality based on his greatest desires and wants. Even his sensations of touch were shaped by his innermost desires, be it what he felt or wanted to feel.
He glanced at one of these beauties that coiled on his arm. He felt a perky set of large breasts wrapped around his arm, moving up and down in a vigorous and seductive fashion. It reminded him of his mental image of Qing Qiumu's own proud twin peaks.
"Interesting," Wei Wuyin remarked. It seemed his interests were evolving as he thought of them, conjuring the ideal pair of breasts for this exact situation, and reflecting them in terms of touch and sight. In front of him, sitting on his lap with alluring eyes staring lovingly within his own, he noted the hazel color with navy blue flecks. They originated from Xue Yifei, almost exact copies.
He turned to his left and observed another heavenly beauty that danced at the edge of the bed for his amusement, displaying her every curve with her slim waist and flexible body. She twirled and spun with an enchanting glimmer flowing from her skin, glistening with fragrant sweat..
"Na Xinyi?" He found this even more intriguing. He could only observe her bodily shape and her enchanting aura. It was extremely odd after obtaining awareness of these changes. "No, not just Na Xinyi. Jiang Feilan and Lian Yu? Must be their special Yin Physiques and Lian Yu's draconic aura. Quite peculiar that even body types and characteristics can be perfectly merged to my liking."
As he swept his gaze to each of the ten heavenly beauties, they were doing various things, from kissing his exposed skin to gazing at him loving in suggestive poses that called out to him.
This elaborately designed reality was truly perfect. Whenever he focused on a single aspect of theirs, it would morph into various body parts. There were even distinct changes of their faces, ranging from elven, demonic, beastwoman, and human in appearance. It conjured the best aspects of these women's races, completely according to his preferences and innermost desires.
However, he was disinterested. These weren't real women, but literal projections of his ideal women in various scenarios with various body parts and appearances. They were as fake as can be.
"Can you guys hear me?" Wei Wuyin called out to his Astral Souls. He hoped that they could follow him into this strange world, yet when he tried to connect with them, he discovered no response.
With a faint frown forming on his expression, he stood up. The women crawled towards him, seeking all sorts of pleasures. One of them had her pink tongue out, mouth wide, while sitting on all fours and begged for a mouthful with utter glee, yet Wei Wuyin directly ignored her.
"King!" Wei Wuyin held out his hand, using his explosive voice, he called for King, not Element. A flash of brilliance emitted from his hand as bits of light gathered rapidly at his palm. The light continued to gather until it condensed in the shape of a saber. The blade had an edge that seemed to have been sharpened to the maximum, and the hilt had saber scars that marked it.
With a fierce clutch, a saber howl roared!
"Tch?" A confused and utterly shocked sound echoed from the newly conjured saber. It was King's signature voice!
Wei Wuyin breathed out a sigh of relief. With a swipe of his saber, a beauty that touched his leg lovingly met her end. With a lightning streak-like line of saber light, her head was removed from her shoulders.
"Die for me," Wei Wuyin danced, with saber in hand, he killed each beauty with keen precision. They didn't even scream or shout, even begged to be killed because this was what Wei Wuyin wanted.
"Kill me, Lord Wei!"
"Wuyin, I want to taste your blade. To the neck, swift and easy. Please!"
This confirmed Wei Wuyin's theory; these women were all products of his desires and manifested solely to appease his evolving wants in the greatest way possible. As the last of these heavenly beauties lost her life, Wei Wuyin thought for a moment.
He wanted ten heavenly beauties once again, so that he could kill them again. In seconds, the ten heavenly beauties emerged from the door, stepping over the recently deceased corpses of the other heavenly corpses. They kneeled, begged, and exposed their necks with a readiness for death. They spoke with extremely sincere exhortations.
"Your blade. Let it take my life away. I want it so bad, Lord Wei. I need it!"
"Take your saber and stab me in the heart, split me in half! IN HALF, I WANT TO TASTE THE METAL IN MY BRAIN!"
Their terrifying desire to seek death was all brought about by Wei Wuyin's ever-changing wants. However, he found this quite intriguing as he experimented a little bit more. He didn't have any ill-emotions from slaughtering these lifeless creatures that only took characteristics he wanted them to take.
A few turned into age-old hags, pitch-black skeletons without a shred of flesh, or even Jiu Lang from the Scarlet Solaris Sect. They morphed into anything he wished. They were like autonomous existences with predetermined orders.
"Then, let's see." Wei Wuyin soon grew tired of this, realizing that he had lost himself a little. He inspected the time and felt that he had wasted a few days just performing these feats.
"My sense of time is strange here. I've only killed eighty of them yet I feel like it took days. This should've taken a few minutes at most, a few seconds at least. Unless the propulsion of my sense of time correlates to my appeased desire." Wei Wuyin quickly discovered a core aspect of this particular environment and its distortion of sense of time.
No wonder he felt that he experienced years, even decades, in this environment. He had to say, the time in this world was likely the best, but the sinking feeling that it'll all end by Long Chen's hand only allowed him to enjoy the first, the next periods of time felt more like he was hiding from the truth, treating it as a dream.
Yet he couldn't indulge as much as before, but his desires were still fulfilled so it accelerated the time nevertheless.
"King, can you hear me?" The saber in his hand continued to howl, but besides the first sound of confusion and surprise, King was silent. "I see. So while I can bring aspects of my soul into this world, I'm still caged. I can't communicate with any of you, no wonder you never interfered.
"But in this case, I need to find the principle that Long Chen's manifestation functions by…but why do I have this eerie feeling like this is my one and only chance to complete this Calamity? That I won't be able to get another chance to absolve myself of any regrets again?" This feeling kept emerging within his thoughts, but he didn't know where it originated from.
This wasn't his instincts talking. It was as if someone told him this, warned him explicitly to ensure success on the first try.
"Long Chen has to run on the function of revenge? Neglect? Just centered around regret? No, none of those seem right. Think Wuyin, think! There must be something you're missing." As Wei Wuyin pondered, the sinking feeling grew.
Back in the world of endless darkness, Wei Wuyin's body was being surrounded by the cleansing mist of Endless Regret. It crawled around him like slithering snakes, but slowly and at a much easier pace. It continued to erode his outer shell.
While Wei Wuyin wasn't feeling regret, he had immersed himself in the World of Regret, and the cleansing mist seemed to be ready to pounce. There were several gushing waves of cleansing mist all around him, be it above, below, surrounding. The slithering serpents of mist was only a very small portion of what seemed ready to crush against Wei Wuyin with merciless rage.
Three Astral Souls communicated in ferocious alarm.
"What's happening?! What happened to King?" Ori couldn't help but seek answers from Eden and Kratos, her uneasiness grew even greater. Without warning, Wei Wuyin had gone completely silent and a rushing wave of cleansing mist surrounded them, with some encroaching around Wei Wuyin. While they couldn't perceive anything, they felt the slow erosion of Wei Wuyin's outer shell, of their slow and approaching death.
"Eden!" Kratos demanded.
"I…I don't know! I can't connect with either of them. It's like he's in an entirely different world." Eden was helpless and anxious. For the first time, it was disconnected from Wei Wuyin. This had never happened since it was born.
King had vanished without warning, but they had lost connection with him also. As Astral Souls, they were always, ALWAYS, connected. They communicated and kept in contact religiously, only weakening that connection when they externalized. However, this severing caused them to panic like never before. It was as if they just lost their father and brother at sea, unable to reach them or learn of their status.
"But I trust him. If there's anyone that can overcome this, it's him." Despite the cleansing mist slowly corroding the outer shell, already down to seventy percent, Eden remained optimistic. This optimism calmed Kratos and Ori, especially the latter who trusted Wei Wuyin the most out of the four. As the original Spirit of Cultivation, the oldest, it had been with Wei Wuyin the longest and seen the most.
Back in the strange world, Wei Wuyin was still thinking of how to overcome this Calamity. He started to experiment. He first tried to cultivate, yet he found that his cultivation base was stagnate. Next, he tried to escape the room but found it in a strange displacement loop.
When he tried to leave, he would just reappear within the room somewhere at random. This room was the entirety of this world, and there was no outside even if his spiritual sense could inspect the spacious halls outside or the guards. This made him realize that his cultivation base was false and so was his senses, spiritual or otherwise.
He tried to conjure Long Chen, yet this didn't work. Which meant Long Chen was an existence that was outside of his ability to manifest, likely due to him being the core factor of his regret inducement.
"I'm thinking about this wrong. If there was an alternative solution to this Calamity and it originates from this world, then it must be seeded not in the eventual outcome but my own belief. Long Chen's arrival is predestined. I won't be able to stop him without being able to change myself, so his arrival means my absolute failure. That's a solid assumption, and I have to consider it as fact.
"I can't claim victory over Long Chen and I can't escape. With these two foundations settled within this problem, then there must be a way to overcome this world and its purpose, finding a solution. Regret…regret…regret…What can I do to avoid regretting the eventual outcome of an enemy killing me?"
He thought for what seemed like several weeks. After a long while, his eyes glowed with silver brilliance.
"I can't!"
That was his conclusion.
He couldn't avoid dying to Long Chen, humiliated and tortured. It would still induce regret out of his negligence, even if its only an involuntary reaction. While he could convince himself that he didn't mind dying to Long Chen, even an illusion of him, the truth would still leak through his heart.
Wei Wuyin didn't want to die to someone he bested.
And he especially didn't want to meet death by Long Chen's hands. From the beginning, he had never considered Long Chen a threat or worthy of his attention. Besides being protected by the Founding Monarch's Spirit, he had never viewed Long Chen with any relevance. That's why this room and its inherent design was utterly genius.
Wei Wuyin didn't fear dying, especially if it meant dying a worthy death. Whether it involved living a complete life after his cultivation stagnated and his lifespan ending or at the hands of a powerful enemy, he wouldn't regret such things. But he was a warrior at heart and cultivator in spirit, so this made sense.
"If I can't avoid dying by Long Chen's hands, forced to feel regret in the end, then I'll have to meet my end without an ounce of reason to regret; to die by my own terms." Wei Wuyin didn't hesitate after this thought, flipping King to bring its edge to his neck. The saber kept howling and seemed desirous of carnage and death. The blade's tip pointed towards Wei Wuyin's throat, not his heart or head.
He would regret purposefully bringing harm or pain to his Astral Souls, even if this wasn't his actual body, but just the thought would produce a sliver of hesitation and regret.
SHIING!
The blade dragged across his throat, sliced and penetrated through it mercilessly. The edge was so sharp that there was a clean cut from neck to neck. The silver radiance within Wei Wuyin left his eyes as his head slowly tilted to the side. With a soft breeze, his head slid off his shoulders and smacked into the ground.
Several decades later, Long Chen's figure burst through the door with a triumphant and villainous sneer, yet he was met with numerous corpses and Wei Wuyin's headless corpse.
For a long moment, Long Chen was frozen. There was an indescribable emotion within his eyes as it instantly became twisted and savage!
"NO! NO! RESET! AGAIN!!!" With a vicious snarl, Long Chen screamed to the ceiling. Yet the scenario did not reset, it did not play again. An encroaching darkness started to consume the designed reality, from the walls to the bed to the beauties that laid strewn across the floor carelessly.
"NO!! THIS IS MY HEAVEN, MY HEAVEN! YOU CAN'T TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME!!!" Long Chen's figure went wild as he rushed towards Wei Wuyin's headless body, using his sword to stab into the corpse's flesh that spurted out grey-colored blood. As the darkness was about to reach him, he swung his sword one last time at Wei Wuyin's decapitated head, splitting it in two before it vanished with the darkness.
"No…" A despondent sound echoed out before all went dark.
