Chapter 153

  Festival of Sins (V)

  Dai Xiu stepped through a seeming nothing, yet she immediately felt her surroundings morph. The trees vanished in the blinding flash of light, and the dark, morose sensation of the orchard was replaced by a spattering of rays from the sky.

  By the time she could see full shapes again, she found herself in a vaguely familiar garden; flowerbeds of roses and lilies decorated the four corners, while concentric squares housed several other forms of flowers, all the way to the center, where a majestic tree arose from the ground.

  Its trunk would require at least three or four grown men to chain their arms together to wrap around it, and it went up for nearly forty feet. Despite having an amazingly thick canopy, rays of gold fell through it like a shower of light, basking everything that ought to have been in its shade.

  Beyond the garden's walls, however, she couldn't quite make out the scenery; it was misty and hazy, like a painting that was never quite finished.

  She stood at the heart of it, somewhat confused, until a garbled voice called out.

  "Little one, you're here again." She spun around, ready to fight, but stopped. What met her was an ordinary-seeming figure, a man from the looks of it, with one exception: he... had no face.

  Rather than the eyes and the nose and the lips, there was just skin.

  She nearly cried out in horror at the sight, as it was perhaps the scariest thing she'd ever seen in her life: a faceless man! Wasn't there a story, she recalled, that her Brother Hua told her a long time ago? About how there existed people without faces who would cut up faces of other people and wear them?

  She trembled at the horror, a surge of Qi detonating throughout her body.

  "AAAAGGHHHH!!!" She yelled and promptly flashed forward, leg extended, pulverizing the figure in front of her.

  By the time she opened her eyes, she found herself back in the orchard.

  And she was more confused than perhaps ever before in her life.

  "... what?"

  **

  As soon as Wan Lan saw the tiny room scantly lit by a single torch, she understood the nature of this illusion.

  She saw Madame sitting by the window, her hands busy sewing a shawl.

  Wan Lan recalled a distant memory with fondness; she must have been eight, perhaps nine, on this day. It was becoming rather cold, with the winter drawing near. She never much minded the cold, however; rather, she preferred it to the scalding warmth of the summer.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  She loved snow, the way the flakes would pool together into tiny little mountains. She'd throw herself at them with glee, often bumping her head as she didn't realize how shallow that 'mountain' truly was.

  One day, she came back home from one of her 'expeditions'. It really meant that she swung by the shops owned by the Madame or her friends, where she'd be spoiled rotten by the owners.

  "Lan'er, you're back." It was... amazing and horrifying how perfectly her voice was replicated. It was as though she really was there, sitting in front of her, smiling with a not-truly-a-smile.

  "I'm back," she replied, indulging herself slightly.

  Though she knew it wasn't real and that indulging even just shallowly was potentially creating a Demon in her heart... she couldn't help herself. She never got a proper goodbye with the Madame; she was ushered through a tunnel and out of town, escaping for her life, with the fading figure slowly closing the door.

  She walked over and sat on the opposite end of the table, taking in the cold air streaming through the open window.

  "Is everything alright? You seem a bit worried," Madame said.

  "The Master you so haphazardly arranged for me," Wan Lan said. "He's... amazing. In more ways than one, even. Part of me wants to attribute it to your foresight, but the other part knows well enough you were desperate for anyone, and you simply thought he was good enough."

  The Madame looked confused, prompting Wan Lan to laugh; ultimately, it was just an illusion, not a real person. That woman would sooner die than be caught looking confused about something.

  Wan Lan stood up and brushed off her robes, glancing out the window one last time. A deeper look revealed so many flaws that she wondered whether the illusion had broken and wasn't functioning properly.

  The tall rises of the town were all seemingly cut in half, with rooftops layered strangely and in odd colors. The central palace was for some reason hovering and was made out of gold--

  She finally understood it, smiling.

  She was a child at the time, and this was simply how she saw the world. All things seemed tiny to her back then in comparison to that overlord at the center.

  It replicated the beautiful memory but failed to fully realize it, at least for her, because this was how she remembered it.

  "You're leaving?" the Madame asked as she headed for the doors.

  "Hm," she nodded briefly, stopping and glancing back, taking one last look at the wrinkled face of the woman who raised her. "I promised you when I was five that I would revive the Demonic Cult," she said. "And I will, one day. I will avenge you and make sure your name and story stand a series of tall tableaux."

  As soon as she left the room, the mirage dissipated, and she was back in the drab, enshadowed orchard. Before she took a step, she saw Dai Xiu emerge from the trees, seeming rather... confused and bewildered.

  Though Wan Lan didn't doubt that any of them would get stuck in the illusion, she once again found her heart knotting to learn that there was another, even faster than her. Well, there was Long Tao--he had probably left the moment he got 'trapped'--but to think she also lost to a twelve-year-old girl...

  "Ah, Junior Sister!" The little girl happily skipped over, and Wan Lan found a sense of self-loathing within her. "Do you think this thing is broken?"

  "Hm? Why do you say so?"

  "I got dragged into some weird garden, and then this faceless guy showed up, so I kicked him, and I was out again! It doesn't make sense!"

  ... Wan Lan smiled lightly. It seemed that Dai Xiu's 'happiest' memory was of so long ago that she couldn't even properly recall it. Just as the town seemed so hazy and strange to Wan Lan, the faceless figure was probably someone from her childhood that she entirely forgot, as was the garden she couldn't recognize.

  "Come on," she reached out and patted the girl's head. "Let's go back to the Master."

  "Hm!" she happily nodded, quickly stepping forward, as though without a care in the world.