Snowlit Reckoning - Chapter 2

Only then did I learn that our old donkey was Lady Zanxue’s reincarnation.

Her fall into the animal realm was the tribulation she had to endure before ascending.

Lady Zanxue was the beloved of Guanlan, the Immortal Emperor, and Shang Yuan’s junior sister in cultivation. In the Ninth Heaven, she was beyond all desecration.

I had killed her just as her trial was about to reach its perfect end.

I had skinned her and stripped out her sinews.

A mortal who slew a god should pay with the utter annihilation of all nine clans of her kin.

But I had only killed a donkey. What had I done to deserve this?

Before exterminating my family, the Immortal Emperor had Lord Siming scrutinize eighteen generations of my ancestors, as well as my past and present lives.

To make certain I wasn’t a reincarnated war god or an ancient deity.

The immortal realm had been washed in blood far too many times already.

Gods and demons with exalted identities were hardly in short supply across the world.

Kill the wrong one, and a bloodbath was inevitable.

Fortunately—

Shen Que. A hunter’s daughter. A worthless life.

And so I watched as my parents and little sister were thrown into a cauldron of oil and fried alive.

Afraid of frightening me, Mother and Father would sooner grind their own teeth to pieces than let out a single cry.

My sister was too little. She screamed until her voice tore.

“It hurts! It hurts! Aaaah! It hurts!”

The sight burned itself into my heart, a torment that would haunt me for a thousand years.

The Immortal Emperor held my head in place and made me watch my dearest kin turn into three charred corpses.

He chuckled. “Does it hurt?”

I couldn’t speak. Two streams of bloody tears were my only answer.

He abruptly released me.

Clutching the donkey hide to his chest, he trembled, lashes quivering, barely able to stand.

“Yet your pain is not one ten-thousandth of the pain in my heart.”

Just then, a brilliant glow filled the sky.

A man in silver armor stepped out of the void.

Spring sunlight shone on his armor, rippling and dazzling.

For all his armor, he had an air of gentle refinement, like a clear moon and a fresh breeze.

The Immortal Emperor called him Shang Yuan, God of War.

Shang Yuan looked at the charred remains of my family. As though that weren’t enough, he pulled out their souls and slowly crushed them to pieces.

Their souls were destroyed. They would never enter the cycle of reincarnation again.

When he was done, Shang Yuan flicked his sleeve and walked over to me.

Compassion softened his face. His words were as venomous as a snake.

“Mortal, shall I grant you a span of eternal life?”

“You have committed a terrible wrong. You deserve to suffer for ten thousand lifetimes and ten thousand generations.”

With a slight lift of his hand, a flower glowing with eerie light sank into my chest.

It sprouted at once, its stems and branches winding around me in an unbreakable grip.

Shang Yuan turned away without another glance. “Your Majesty, let us go.”

Above the Ninth Heaven, the Immortal Emperor and the God of War turned the world upside down searching for Lady Zanxue’s soul.

Below it, heavenly soldiers drove soul-snaring nails through my chest, pinned me inside a wooden coffin, and hurled it into a bottomless abyss.

Falling. Falling. Then being torn apart.

Thousands upon thousands of things, all different shapes, rushed at me from every side.

They shrieked, roared, wailed…

The ghosts swarmed me, ripping at my flesh.

Sharp nails gouged out both my eyes and stuffed them, raw, into mouths.

Fangs slick with foul saliva pierced my skin as they swallowed desperately.

Cracked lips sucked frantically at my blood and marrow.

Skeletal hands hollowed out my organs in their haste. Even my tongue was torn out by the root.

…

Blood and spittle streamed from their mouths. Their eyes were dull and empty.

“So hungry… so hungry…”

“Hungry…”

“Smells so good… so good…”

“More… eat…”

This was the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

They had all died of starvation.

And I?

Neither human nor ghost. Barred from reincarnation. Damned beyond redemption.

Countless times I struggled on the brink of death, only to be dragged back.

Countless times I fought with everything I had, only to be eaten again.

Pain…

Heart ripped apart. Bones broken open. Marrow sucked dry…

But I couldn’t die.

Shang Yuan had planted a Youdu flower in my chest. It could restore the dead and grow flesh on bare bones, keeping a mortal alive forever.

Killing me wasn’t enough. He meant to break me.

He wanted me to endure every torment in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, atoning for what I’d done to his Zanxue.

I died and came back to life, thousands upon thousands of times.

For the first two hundred years, all I thought about was living.

Because I hated.

I hated the Heavenly Dao for its injustice.

I hated that my innocent family had died so horribly.

I hated my own utter helplessness.

Hatred seeped into every organ, every limb, every bone, until I could scarcely breathe beneath its weight.

I drowned in endless nightmares.

Even in dreams, it hurt. Worse than when I was awake. I saw my parents and little sister in their gruesome deaths, then saw them reach for me, telling me to run… But the next instant, starving ghosts clambered over their bodies, flaying them, tearing out sinews, and swallowing them in bloody chunks.

A hungry ghost lifted its head, fangs red with blood, and laughed hideously.

“They suffered in your place! It was you! All your fault!”

But after two hundred years, I began to think about dying.

Time stretched on, vast and ancient, wearing away my will bit by bit.

I saw many cultivators thrown into the realm.

“Kill me…”

“Kill me…”

“Kill me…”

“I was wrong…”

“I was wrong… I was wrong… let me die…”

Their cries resounded from every side like chimes and bells, shaking blood from my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, shattering the membranes around my bones.