Owl

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Xie Yi sat down on it, face distorted unhappily even as he took the tiny black pill from Shi Yue and swallowed it.

It was supposed to work fast.

Within a couple of minutes, Xie Yi felt that his limbs were like paralyzed and his brain was like a swamp. He could barely keep his eyes open, but his instinct resisted.

“I’m here”, Shi Yue murmured and quietly pressed his hands.

The youth breathed out once more, then relaxed.

The pill was more on the lines of making a person lose consciousness than let them fall asleep. The young man had stopped moving excluding the shallow rise and fall of his chest. 

It was unnatural and discomforting - he liked the playful, fidgety Xie Yi.

“Would you kindly activate the array?”, one of the elders asked in a voice that barely fulfilled the requirements of being polite.

Shi Yue huffed and closed his eyes.

The strain came immediately, as did the blackness rising around them.

The men twitched at their unexpected surroundings. Xie Yi was nowhere to be seen and below their feet splashed water of unknown colour.

Shi Yue shuddered in the cold.

This time, he felt it.

The rejection of a mind towards an intruder.

The group grew rigid as the hostile air around them solidified and the water below their feet began to crawl up in an attempt to hold them in place. Shi Yue alone could still move, but he could sense the violent struggle of Xie Yi’s mind.

Even asleep, the youth vehemently refused to let anyone other than Shi Yue take a look at his mind.

“This boy sure is rude”, one of the elders cursed, breaking free of the hold.

Shi Yue didn’t respond. Believing that you could freely wander around someone’s head was ridiculous and they knew it.

“Let’s go”, he said instead, leading them to where Xie Yi would be.

This time, everything was warily quiet. The world was dark enough that you couldn’t make out your surroundings and only the sounds reminded Shi Yue of the fact that there was water beneath his feet - or maybe blood.

He almost hurried the group towards Xie Yi. He wanted them out as soon as possible.

And when they finally reached his sleeping figure, curled up on the ground, his heart stung.

Compared to the emptiness of the last time, the area was now showing signs of life.

Fine lines on the ground under Xie Yi were like a protective ward - Shi Yue realized with a touched heart that they were the boundaries of the sect.

A shadow of a dog-like beast was curled around Xie Yi like a guardian and countless runes from arrays were drawn without rhyme or reason, some of them looking like they weren’t finished yet. They looked playful in how they were drawn, not aggressive.

Just like these, there were various smaller things around his area.

Shi Yue bent down, leaning on one knee, and carefully stroked the boy’s head. The shadow of the beast moved, then settled again.

The sect elders were intelligent enough to know that they were unwanted. They looked around.

“How is it so empty here?”, the youngest one asked suspiciously.

“He has a hard time integrating himself into society”, Shi Yue explained, looking over the markings. “He is very indifferent about a lot of things. The first few years of his life were on the street so he is only now finding things he truly enjoys.”

“This is?”, another asked, moving to stand behind Shi Yue and watching the shadow with interest. It was hard to tell from the perspective but it appeared to be growling at him.

“Mingtian, his beast partner. He’s not half this size yet, though.”

“I do not like this here”, he said, dipping his finger into the water. It came up tinted red, the fluid dripping down with a higher viscosity than water.

“Bad childhood”, Shi Yue repeated emotionlessly.

“Does that truly explain a sea of blood? Or this vast nothingness? This is unnatural”, the elder declared, shaking his head. “You really took him as your disciple?”

“Have you taken a look at your own mind before?”, the white-haired cultivator countered with a roll of his eyes.

A mind was not a beautiful thing. If you wanted a beautiful mind, you would have to take a look at one of a young child growing up pampered and spoiled.

Everyone else was bound to have the ugliness of their inner selves on full display.

Negative emotions, bad memories, insecurities and fears would taint a mind. In this world of theirs, blood was not weird to see.

Even a sea of blood was nothing but a sad reality.

“There are better candidates for your disciple-”

“He is my only one.” His voice never wavered. “I might take another one, one day. Not now. I intend to place my full attention on him.”

“That’s needed”, he heard a grumbled whisper from another corner.

“Well, in my opinion, this is far from the worst I’ve seen before”, the youngest commented with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s bloody and dark and oppressive, that’s correct, but I am not covered in guts, burning, being torn apart, standing in the middle of a torture chamber, seeing body parts forming a wall-”

They all fell quiet.

It was easy to identify the sect leader who mostly dealt with captive Demonic Sect members.

“I don’t think we can take your comparison as standard”, the one beside Shi Yue humpfed.

“At least it’s easy to look around. This is the only area that has anything at all and it isn’t large.”

Shi Yue refused to correct him. His eyes stayed on the fixed area, not straying elsewhere. The misunderstanding was perfectly normal considering that he, too, had never seen a mind where things were not directly centred around the owner. If he had not heard the crying, he would not believe that there might be something else around.

“I believe there are walls here”, he heard the quiet elder number five speak. “Filled with defensive arrays. This place is like a child’s fortress. That also explains his rejection of us.”

“Yes”, Shi Yue confirmed. “He is easily unsettled. We have once spent a night in a room that would adjust to show your perfect environment and his was over and over with mechanisms to defend himself. He is not dangerous, only frightened.”

Alright. He was dangerous but he wasn’t going to tell that to the elders. It would be a hassle to explain.

“Then how does he know about the cores? That kind of knowledge is something you would gain at the Demonic Sect-”

The words were barely spoken when the world rumbled and groaned. The water splashed up like during an earthquake, beginning to resemble mud that wanted to swallow them up.

The centre of it all was around the youngest member who tried to escape in shock.

The water reached weakly after him but ultimately lost its life before it could.

“He does not like it”, Shi Yue reminded them. “He despises anything associated with it, including the name. I believe we should not speak it inside his mind.”

“I believe this is enough”, the quiet fifth elder declared. “We have stayed here long enough.”

“Only a few minutes”, one huffed.

“That is long enough”, the most experienced one agreed.

“I will stay for another minute and make sure that he calms down”, Shi Yue commented when he saw them walk back towards where they had come from.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It will be fine. Please do not mind me, I will approach you tomorrow.”

They nodded one by one. “Tomorrow, then.”

Flourishing their sleeves, they left, leaving Shi Yue behind. Soon the blackness swallowed them and the cultivator felt the weight on his shoulders lightening.

Not only was the consumption of spiritual energy much lower, the rejection had also vanished.

Shi Yue looked back at them, then turned into the opposite direction and walked past Xie Yi. Slowly, quietly, sobs began to echo around.

He walked back into the darkness until there was nothing around him. He could only see his own body, softly illuminated, and the bloody water beneath his feet. With every step, it splashed up.

The darkness tugged at his own sanity, along with the worry whether you could actually lose yourself in someone else's mind. What would happen if he deactivated the array from here? Under normal circumstances, deactivating it without leaving left a heavy backlash on the user, but what if it was this far into the darkness?

He shuddered at the thought, praying he would find the way back again.

In the darkness, he lost all sense of time until nothingness became only a dark room; bright enough to let him see.

The figure was crouched on the ground, slumped together without strength.

Shi Yue swallowed and slowed his steps until he was only a few away from the person.

The figure swayed, then slowly leaned their head into their neck.

The messy, long black hair had half fallen out of its original state, covering his body and now slipping back when he moved.

Shi Yue’s stomach churned.

Tiankong’s body was torn open; his ribs were broken, lying on the floor or still half attached to his ribcage, his lungs were crushed. His heart was still lying in the man’s hand, torn apart.

And from the open cavity of his chest and the eclipse-like eyes, blood flowed to the ground in an endless stream.

Tiankong looked up at him emptily, continuing to weep painfully. His bloody lips moved, mouthing I’m sorry over and over again.

Owl

We all know a mind isn't that easy, but I won't spend forever to write out anything other than the mainpoints... I like how this scene continues in the next chapter