Back to the Gorge of Thousand Venoms, Xinzi did what he did best: mind-fucking. Zi Yao lay against a stone wall, her hands tied to adamantine chains that coiled around a long stalactite while her hips swayed left and right, and her elongated snake tail dragged on the ground.
"Bastard! Let go of me!"
"Oh, sweet little Yao'er, coming from you, I suppose the word 'bastard' is a compliment. After all, I have yet to create an army of over 10,000 mutant abominations—a feat that you accomplished with remarkable efficiency—given your resources, of course.
I wonder, when Dong Ling and Chun Xu realize what you've been up to, will they clap in a mix of shock and admiration, or outright cut all ties with you? Mhm...I think there's a world where Chun Xu just praises your wits. Dong Ling, however, I'm not so sure. Do you even care? Probably not. Hence why never being able to stand in your daughter's vicinity again is likely not much of a punishment for you."
"Shut up!" Zi Yao tried to whip her tail at Xinzi, but the chains and demonic wound still festering her chest and core drained all her energy, preventing her from mustering a serious counter-attack. Still, she refused to give in, desperately swaying and thrashing in her bounds.
"I have all the power here. No amount of rage is going to change that fact. So go ahead, thrash in your bounds, shake those hips, delight my eyes as you've been doing till now. If that makes you feel better about your powerlessness, I don't mind indulging you. This...is the type of show that I'd gladly pay for. Thank you for giving it for free."
Xinzi's words slammed Zi Yao in the face. The matriarch fumed with rage, but unwilling to let that hateful demonic patriarch feast on her body, she stopped struggling.
"Oh, you don't wanna shake anymore? What a letdown. Alright. I understand. You feel guilty about your husband. He never got to see you work so hard to please a man's eyes—probably praising the heavens whenever you held his hand. Yeah, it's not fair to him.
"You see Yao'er, I'm going to harvest your cultivation, enslave your soul, and make you my plaything. I will never give you the antidote. In fact, I'm considering creating a poison that will make you release lethal pollen towards all those you care for. The list must not be long. After all, you didn't mind letting Hanxing reduce your aunt into a sacrificial offering. Do you even care for the individual people of the Zi clan, or is it just the name—the clan—that you hold dear? "
"SHUT UP! Ziyun was a good-for-nothing piece of trash and deserved to be damned! The mortal world is harsh, the cultivation world harsher. Both set up no end of barriers against women's growth, independence and self-fulfillment! But in that type of environment, women like Ziyun have the nerve to be weak. To fall so hard for one man that, even when confronted with death and betrayal, they still help him accomplish all his goals!
I may not be a Lianist monk, but my understanding of the faith is not inferior to anyone's. The Golden Lotus would have never allowed Ziyun to use the Mantra of Sacrifice while under Hanxing's thrall. On the contrary, she could have used the opportunity to turn against Hanxing and deal him a fatal blow! But what did she do? WHAT DID SHE DO?!
Any choice that she made, she made of her own free will—knowing full well all that he did to her—TO US! And you want me to sympathize? To hell with all of you!
Centuries! I took my father's dreams as my own, neglected my cultivation, neglected my opportunities, MY LIFE, and devoted centuries of my existence to the growth and dominance of the Zi clan! No one can stand in my way of restoring my clan's glory! No one—and especially not a brain-damaged clan elder! May she forever rot in the Bitter Sea!" Boiling with rage, Zi Yao rattled off.
Intrigued, Xinzi leaned over, stroking his blood mask while peering into Zi Yao's eyes. The proximity made her regain her senses. Forcing her to consider what Xinzi had in store for her.
"Well, that's not a fair thing to say. Just because Dongli follows extreme patriarchal norms, doesn't mean that all across the globe, the female gender suffers oppression. Anyue and the Dark Moon Cult, for example, are the polar opposite. Heck, over there, it's men that have been reduced into cucks, dogs and slaves—with some matriarchs keeping slave harems to play with as they see fit.
In the western continent that your Zi clan hailed from, certain tribes follow similar principles.
The dominant will always try to keep the dominated in bondage. Such is the law of life. If what you wanted was a place, a world where your gender wouldn't be an impediment to your growth, why did you not abandon the White Immortal Sect to join your neighbors in Anyue? There, with your talents and looks, you could have accomplished all that you did here and more. Instead, you chose to stay. Chose to toil, chose to brave the dangers of attempting to develop this doomsday plan under Hanxing's nose.
Let me venture a guess. Hanxing knew about the plan, but not the speed at which you progressed. You somehow managed to falsify your results and convince him that the step you'd reached already wouldn't be possible before another 1,000 years. This made him relax his guard, and focus on more pressing matters," Xinzi said, and as Zi Yao's face flushed at his words, he realized that he was right.
Indeed, Hanxing would have never allowed Zi Yao to go so far in her project. At least not unless he enslaved her soul and turned her into a puppet. Enslaving a talent's soul was no different from crippling their ceiling. Hanxing likely wished to wait until the project reached a point of enough self-sufficiency that, even a puppet Zi Yao could carry on with the development. Perhaps he also imagined that, by then, he'd have a lot more alchemical talents under his belt, and could use them to drive the project forward.
What a fatal mistake.
Underground tunnels connected Zi Yao's laboratories to various cities of the Dongli state—including the two most important cities: Purple Wind City, capital of the state, and Chrysanthemum City, capital of its wealthiest prefecture. Using these tunnels, Zi Yao's beast mutants captured a plethora of Dongli cultivators and citizens, not only using them as cauldrons for her Withered Wood Abominations but also as experiment tools for her to develop more freaks.
After studying and experimenting on various species' anatomies, constitutions, and spiritual plants of righteous or heretical origins, Zi Yao refined the root of her Evil Blood Tree—true purpose of her experiments.
The tree root had only been refined 60 years ago, and since then, Zi Yao's project had been progressing at a meteoric speed. By the time it reached completion, she expected the Evil Blood Tree to not only be a formidable sentient goon, capable of obliterating all experts under the Void Tribulant realm, but also a self-operating factory that could devour lives to generate fruits that'd enhance Evil Qi and Blood Energy simultaneously.
The roots would then spread throughout Yanzhou, refining all the spirit clans and enemy sects. Then Zi Yao would refine the tree's root, giving her body one last transformation, and directly breaking through to the Integration Realm—with formidable battle power to back her up.
With such a foundation, how could she not restore the Zi clan's glory, and go beyond all that her ancestor had accomplished?
A pity that Xinzi now had the tree stored in his Klesha Heart, waiting for the monk-body to refine it in the Void Spiritual Root, alongside other commodities.
