Chapter 62 · The Poison of Faith

  Aurora Ciry · City Hall Conference

  The officials seated along the long conference table were silent as stone.

  Outside the tall windows, the massive plaza-screen continued looping the same footage—

  YiChen instructing citizens in Spirit-Energy circulation,

  his voice—calm, resonant—bleeding faintly through the glass:

  “Feel the Spirit Energy moving between each breath…”

  But on the projection wall behind them, a different image flickered—

  Saint Cecilia Ilena.

  White-gold embroidered cloak.

  Hands raised in benediction.

  A serene smile beneath the cathedral steps.

  At her feet: a sea of kneeling believers.

  Sunlight poured through stained glass, encircling her head in radiant halo—

  so perfect it bordered on divine illusion.

  Then the headline cut in:

  HEAVEN’S CHOSEN MAIDEN BRINGS HOPE AND BLESSING TO AURORA CITY

  Mayor Carter tapped his knuckles against the table—

  slow, deliberate.

  Each dull knock tolled like a funeral bell.

  Leo’s voice drifted across the silence, soft as a razor’s edge.

  “They’re not supporting him anymore,” he said lightly.

  “They’re shifting the city’s center of faith.”

  Deputy Commissioner Howard scanned his datapad.

  “YiChen’s approval is still eighty-seven percent—”

  “Three days,” Leo murmured.

  He slid a chart across the table.

  “Her followers jumped from two hundred to twenty-five hundred.

  They’ve already saturated the entire southeastern quarter.”

  He tapped the final image:

  —A nun teaching orphans to chant.

  —Children copying the Prayer of the Maiden into thin slate notebooks.

  “Next phase: public schools.

  Military housing.

  Food banks.”

  Carter’s jaw tightened.

  “Gray. What’s the Church’s official line?”

  “It comes from Bishop Branden Wood,” Leo replied.

  “He claims it’s simply ‘religious freedom.’”

  A beat of silence.

  Then Leo added, voice thin as silk:

  “They’re manufacturing a controllable god.”

  The room froze.

  Only the low hum of the projector dared move.

  “Can we contact YiChen?” the Agriculture Minister asked, wiping sweat from his temples.

  “The Blackpine Forest is a signal graveyard,” Deputy James said sharply.

  “We send someone in there—we’re handing them a death warrant.”

  Carter rose.

  His shadow cut clean across Cecilia’s glowing image.

  “Before he returns,” he said, voice low, “we cannot lose the people.”

  Leo’s glasses flashed like a blade.

  “Then we initiate Counter-Narrative Protocol.”

  Dozens of heads turned.

  Leo flipped to the next page:

  “Starting tomorrow, we release the documentary series:

  ‘THE FOOTSTEPS OF A GOD.’”

  —Unreleased footage from the hydro plant battle.

  —The full Moonshadow Wheat demonstration.

  —Every Spirit-Energy class.

  —Every recorded save.

  “Core slogan:”

  His finger tapped the screen.

  ‘When gods fall silent, humanity lights its own fire.’

  “Not enough,” Carter said coldly.

  “Find the families he saved. Schedule live testimony events.”

  He strode forward and ripped the projector screen down.

  Cecilia’s face folded—crumpled like discarded parchment.

  “White robes are easy,” he growled.

  “Miracles are not.”

  Leo bowed his head slightly—but behind his lenses, a glint of satisfaction gleamed.

  Outside the conference hall,

  crowds knelt before YiChen’s frozen image on the plaza-screen—

  praying not to saints,

  but to memory.

  ?

  Spirit-Realm Forest · Deep Mist

  Gold-threaded leaves whispered under the dwindling light.

  Bone-white trees rose in silent ranks, mournful sentinels in a drowned cathedral.

  A single brittle leaf brushed YiChen’s shoulder—

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  and disintegrated under the pressure of his Spirit Force.

  Five paces behind him,

  the squad followed in tense, wordless formation.

  Seven days in… and YiChen had changed.

  His Spirit Force no longer flowed.

  It crackled—

  veined with black filaments that crawled through his golden aura like contamination.

  And his eyes—

  Bloodshot.

  Pupils sharp as razors.

  He no longer observed the forest.

  He measured it—

  calculating threat trajectories,

  kill intervals,

  probability of death.

  The patient mentor who had guided them through the early days was gone.

  Only the commander remained.

  Cold.

  Flawless.

  Dangerous to friend and enemy alike.

  “Left.”

  “Right.”

  “Kill.”

  His orders were clipped, surgical—each one an incision.

  “What’s happening to him…?” Ryan mouthed toward Han Yue.

  Soulwhisper trembled against Han Yue’s Pact Mark, its whiskers bristling.

  Han Yue’s fingers tightened on his bowstring; sweat slicked the tips.

  His Spirit Sight confirmed the fear none dared voice:

  YiChen’s meridians weren’t circulating.

  They were surging—

  a cyclone of unstable faith-force laced with raw, weaponized Spirit Energy.

  A poison of belief.

  ?

  They all remembered yesterday.

  The wolves had lunged from the fog—

  YiChen didn’t draw his axe.

  He didn’t need to.

  Both hands erupted in golden-black blaze.

  Five Spirit claws extended from each fingertip—

  not the clean silver arcs they knew,

  but volatile, serrated flame-blades that screamed through the air.

  SHNK.

  The first wolf split mid-leap—

  organs spilling only after the corpse hit the ground.

  CRACK.

  The second lost its head—

  the body running three more steps before collapsing.

  The third turned to flee—

  YiChen was already in front of it.

  One strike.

  A sonic boom.

  The beast fell in perfect cross-sections, carved with divine precision.

  YiChen stood alone in the clearing.

  Blood everywhere.

  None of it on him.

  “…Is he even still—”

  David didn’t finish.

  ?

  YiChen stopped.

  Han Yue immediately swept the area—

  Nothing.

  No threat.

  Only trees, breath, wind.

  But YiChen was shaking.

  Not from exhaustion—

  from the effort of holding something back.

  The forest itself recoiled from him.

  “Camp,” he said.

  The single word chilled more than any scream.

  From his pack, the pink Light beast poked its head out—

  then flinched violently.

  Its fur puffed in distress.

  It tried to climb his shoulder—

  but the moment its paw brushed his skin, it cried out softly and recoiled.

  His Spirit Energy… hurt him.

  Ryan and David exchanged a look.

  Max’s hand rose unconsciously to his neck—

  where Phantom Chime’s Pact Mark burned faintly…

  as if reacting

  to YiChen’s spiraling, unstable aura.

  —————

  Nightfall · In the Tent

  The sun had not yet vanished behind the trees when they made camp.

  YiChen assigned Han Yue and Max to the outer wards—

  Then he stepped inside his tent without a word.

  He lowered himself onto the mat, legs folding neatly beneath him.

  The posture held—

  but his body trembled, flickering like the last inch of a dying candle.

  A dull ache pulsed at his Baihui point.

  Slow.

  Relentless.

  War drums pounding inside his skull.

  People had taken all their fear, all their despair, all their desperate will to live—

  and hurled it into him.

  This was not Spirit Energy.

  It was faith—polluted and fraying, threaded with obsession and grief.

  It scraped down his meridians like barbed wire.

  Worse—

  it no longer waited for night.

  The pressure came in waves now.

  Day and night.

  Unceasing.

  Every breath dragged in another plea,

  another projection,

  another soul trying to anchor its hope inside him.

  He couldn’t keep up.

  He couldn’t cleanse it fast enough.

  What he purged each night returned double by morning.

  And yesterday—

  when he butchered the wolves—

  Something inside had shifted.

  A flash.

  Sharp, intoxicating.

  Wrong.

  They don’t understand joy or rage… but they swarm toward pleasure.

  His stomach twisted.

  No.

  That wasn’t him.

  That was their faith.

  Corrupting. Shaping. Twisting him into the thing they wanted to believe he was.

  “I won’t be rewritten by you,” he rasped.

  “Get. Out.”

  ?

  A Voice From Memory

  A low, steady voice whispered inside his mind:

  “Not all those voices are yours.

  Keep the ones you choose.

  Let the rest go.”

  His breath caught.

  A memory—

  his Grandmaster’s forbidden detox method.

  One he had never dared to attempt.

  Until now.

  YiChen reached for his short blade.

  Stripped off his shirt.

  The main meridian down his chest—usually faint gold—

  had darkened to a gray-black web of corrosion,

  like iron rotting from the inside.

  He gathered every foreign thread,

  every corrupt whisper,

  every fragment of parasitic faith—

  herding it toward the Lao Gong point in his left palm.

  Spirit Force ignited there—

  burning, screaming—

  a furnace crammed full of other people’s grief.

  Click.

  The blade left its sheath.

  And without hesitation—

  He cut.

  “—Tsshhh!”

  Blood burst out like pressure venting from a faultline—

  not red,

  but gold streaked with violet, with sickly black,

  thick as spilled ink.

  Soul-tainted.

  His veins bulged.

  His jaw locked.

  But worse than the pain—

  were the voices.

  “You’re our only hope…”

  “If you fall—we’re finished…”

  “You’re not human. You’re light. You’re eternal…”

  “SAVE US.”

  Not prayers.

  Hunger.

  Expectation sharpened into demand.

  They weren’t asking for salvation—

  they were consuming it.

  Faith had become poison,

  and it had roots.

  The more he resisted, the deeper it clawed.

  His vision warped.

  ?

  The Hallucination

  Through the whirlpool of agony, a shape flickered—

  Small hands gripping his jacket.

  Knuckles white.

  “Brother… why are you leaving me…”

  YiChen froze.

  “Xiao Yu…?”

  “You said… if the world ended, I could still count on you…”

  His breath broke.

  “No.

  You’re not him.

  You’re not real.”

  “Brother… save me…”

  “Shut. UP!”

  YiChen roared.

  His will—ignited.

  He forced his Spirit Force forward,

  even as it tore his meridians open.

  “I’m not your god!”

  “I only want to save the people I love!”

  ?

  The Break

  The mass shattered.

  Like fire striking dry bone,

  the parasitic faith recoiled—

  unraveling, writhing,

  ripping free as glowing black threads

  that tore from his palm into the dark.

  “GHH—!”

  A mouthful of blackened blood surged from his throat.

  His arm went numb.

  His meridians spasmed—

  twisting, convulsing,

  as if nails were being driven into his spine.

  And then—

  Silence.

  YiChen collapsed to one elbow,

  a ragged breath scraping out of him.

  Blood stained his lips.

  But his eyes—

  Clearer than they had been in days.

  ?

  The Light

  New voices rose.

  Soft.

  Light.

  No longer parasitic.

  “YiChen… thank you. May you live in peace.”

  “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known…”

  “We ask not for salvation—only blessings.”

  And then—the most familiar of all:

  “YiChen, come home safe. Dad will always believe in you…”

  “Mom would trade her life for yours…”

  “Hey… I’m sorry I got mad. Please just come home…”

  Tears slipped down his face.

  These weren’t chains.

  These were light.

  Warm.

  Steady.

  Real.

  Slowly,

  his meridians began to glow.

  The twisted channels softened.

  The golden mainline re-emerged—

  clearer, sharper, like star-maps etched beneath his skin.

  Not imposed.

  Reborn.

  ?

  The Others Arrive

  The tent flap burst open—

  The team froze.

  A pool of corrupted blood spread across the floor.

  And in its center:

  YiChen lay pale as frost,

  skin shimmering faintly with emerging constellations.

  On his chest, the pink Light beast trembled—

  its tiny body curled protectively over his Pact Mark,

  whimpering softly,

  as if trying to lend him warmth from its small, trembling heart.

  YiChen exhaled.

  Long.

  Slow.

  As if finally—

  waking from a nightmare.