Lin Siniang?

Lin Siniang's response raised a storm of confusion in Wei Sha's head.

'She knows my name? Already?' At first, this came off as very weird, but the more he pondered, the more he could see it being a real answer.

'Why couldn't she?' For all he knew, Lin Siniang in the Awakening Pool might be a miniature deity or something even bigger. Moreover, Wei Sha had no reason to question why.

"Do the test continue?" So he didn't and focussed on the immediate situation.

[Yes, b-t the sec-nd test is stil- ong-ing] Lin Siniang said. [Follow me] After those words, she began to float over what Wei Sha knew as the corrupted palace.

Not questioning anything she wanted, he followed.

X

Once again inside the corrupted palace, Wei Sha noticed a stark contrast to last time. For what he had known as a palace where black boxes appeared at random was now complete with nothing resembling a glitch.

'I'm thinking too much about these kinds of things.' Wei Sha put the notion aside, continuing to follow Lin Siniang.

X

[Sit] Lin Siniang in the form of a sign ordered.

"Of course." By now, Wei Sha had an inkling about what would happen very soon.

Still, before anything happened, Wei Sha allowed Lin Siniang to strap him tight.

From there, everything proceeded the way he remembered them to have happened. Lin Siniang brought that crude, cubical, and weird-looking machine with a needle at its front to face him.

A difference came in her words, as when the machine began clicking and the needle reached for his dantian. [This will hurt] she said.

Wei Sha didn't mind being afflicted pain upon before the needle came in contact with his dantian. For he hadn't realised how much pain would hit him.

Just when the tip of the needle penetrated his dantian, Wei Sha's body rocked. In that instant, he almost broke free from the straps holding him in place.

This pain rushing to his mind was as if someone tore his body in half with a certain degree of excruciating slowness.

And to his eternal bad luck, the needle pushed further in, creating a pain shock on a whole other level.

Even before that shock, his body frightened by the intrusion sweat his clothes damp while his face turned red as lava about to gush from the depths of an active volcano.

'What's going on!' he screamed inside his head as he struggled to keep awake.

[Fusion commencing]

'Fusion?' Wei Sha got a thought out before his jaw dropped and a scream followed.

"AAAA!" It was the first of the millions which would follow.

The pain from having his body ripped apart shifted towards the worse. How that was possible, Wei Sha didn't know; nevertheless, the pain he underwent intensified by two folds, if not more.

Between the screams of pain, he attempted to hog every last bit of air around him.

"Stop!" he screamed for Lin Siniang to halt this experiment of hers. "Stop!"

[Can no- sto-p]

"Stop it!" Wei Sha continued, his mind unable to register the words she spoke.

X

"Please!" he begged with every way he was able to conceive while weeping in pain.

[Can not stop] Lin Siniang had stated her words so many times by now that she didn't have a problem in saying them.

The pain that Wei Sha defined as the very origin of the word "pain" continued to shake his body and mind to mush.

"Pleas—" In the middle of a plead number umpteenth, Wei Sha lost consciousness.

X

"Arggggh!"

Wei Sha's eyes shot open an unknown amount of time later.

"AAghhh!"

His conscious state didn't last long. He screamed and shouted, not even begging before the pain shut down him once more.

X

Wake up.

Scream.

Beg.

Lose consciousness.

Repeat after repeat this had become Wei Sha's reality. About the time he spent so he couldn't say. There was never a time to consider such things, nor did he have the will to resist the pain flooding his mind even to start thinking straight.

X

"Please. Stop this."

[Can not stop] she said. [Fusion completed]

Those words "fusion completed" she spoke at the end, made his head speculate what it meant.

At least until he realised something greater.

'Think? I Can think straight again!' he rejoiced. The pain too, it eased! Not anymore did he feel as if a horde of mutants galloped over his head.

[Please wait for the results]

"Don't bullshit me," Wei Sha lashed out. "This wasn't about testing my aptitudes!" Even the Wei Sha who had come here first wouldn't be so stupid to believe in her words!

Lin Siniang didn't respond to him, shouting.

Still, he kept on calling out her bullshit as he sought to release himself from the straps by rocking and swindling his arms. This produced nothing; however, after a few flexes of his hand, he discerned them acting different, much weaker than before.

'My arms?' He studied at his forearms locked in place with metal straps. 'Why are they so small?' The girth and muscularity of his forearms had shrunk to half.

'As if. . .'

"Lin Siniang, what's going on?" He decided to ask for confirmation.

[You have completed the second test]

"Well, thank you." Good news, but her answer didn't explain his question all that much. "The second test. What was it about?"

Lin Sininang made the needle withdraw out of him before pushing the machine itself to the spot where it had been.

She did not answer Wei Sha.

[The third test awaits you, aspirant] When she had handled the machine, she came to him and released him.

Her secretiveness and unwillingness to explain herself did produce a certain ire in Wei Sha's mind, yet he didn't dare to push the matter any further.

With a sigh, he put away the notion of crushing the blob.

"Sure." Then, as he stood up from the chair, a pain hit his neck.

This pain didn't face Wei Sha. Minutes ago, he had experienced much worse, so this mosquito bite went somewhat unnoticed by his pain receptors. On the other hand, the inclination Wei Sha took from the origin of the pain made him swing his arm around in a second and touch his neck.

There, on his neck, was a familiar injury, or a hole.

'Sure enough,' he confirmed. 'That's one wicked machine.' He glanced at the machine pushed into the shadows by Lin Siniang while following her.

Another confirmation for what he believed to have occurred arrived soon. The black boxes which had been everywhere in the original palace now once again emerged in numbers.

Wei Sha did not need more proof; three points of undeniable evidence was enough.

'So, I came back from the flashback. . .'

As he walked behind Lin Sininang, he, using the information gained in the flashback, calculated his plans for the future and what actions he could and would take.

'Finding a cure for mother is still my top priority.' The fundamental point of his life didn't change, though now he knew he needed something above the Wei Family's immediate reach. 'Stronger, so much stronger.' The lust for power he had grew to a new height.

'Father?' Not only did wishes he held prior to the flashback strengthen, but new ones also emerged. 'I want to have the best relationship possible with him,' he decided he would work on his family issues, the family he had in the flashback tempted his young mind way too much.

Ideas and ideals popped in his head like flies on a dunghill.

[Please sit] Lin Siniang turned into that form where she looked like a sign.

What more, the order she presented gave Wei Sha the chills.

The very last thing he wanted to do was sit on another chair, even less so if the chair in question happened to be identical to the last one.

[Please] she repeated [Sit]

Wei Sha sighed, shrugged his shoulders, saying to himself, 'It can't be worse.'

[Thank you] Lin Siniang spoke as he sat into the chair.

'Then again, what did I expect? A free meal?' The more hardship he suffered, the more rational or cynical he became.

'Everything will be just fine if I can save mother,' he reasoned while Lin Sininang put him on hold.

"Raww."

Wei Sha looked at what produced this roar. "Is that a Darken Mafu?" he questioned, though not believing in those words himself. Yet as a creature with the body of a tiger that had the head of a grotesque human came out of the shadows, he couldn't deny reality.

[It i-] Lin Siniang confirmed him even.

"So this is the actual aptitude test?" Darken Mafus a particular use for which demons hunted them to literal extinction, aptitude testing. Wei Sha, himself wouldn't have known about the race if not for an ancient plaque he stumbled upon in the flashback. So rare were these creatures that he was certain Wei Dai didn't know of them.

[Correct]

"Can I do the rites?"

Lin Siniang, holding onto the Darken Mafu's collar, stopped any movement.

She took five seconds to answer [Yes]

"Thank you for your kindness," he said as he felt the bindings on him loosen enough for him to get out of them.

[Both of you are my creations, so go ahead]

His head in a downward angle, he approached the Darken Mafu.

Within arm's reach, he sliced open one of his wrists horizontally.

Not letting any of it go to waste, Wei Sha shoved the wrist right in front of the Darken Mafu's sabre teeth.

"Feast old one," he beckoned, using the exact words the old text he read used. "I will offer my blood for good luck."

The Darken Mafu's human eyes glared at him with contempt.