Copyrights by JaehaJack
This is my original work. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews - without permission in writing from its author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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"Grandma, tell me. No, please elaborate. How did I die again? It's so unbecoming of me!"
A woman clad in blue hospital scrubs asked in disbelief, half shouting and half asking, because just a few minutes ago she had reached her home after a long day of overtime work. It was as clear as day, no, it was just real and coming home actually smothered her senses with every single thing in her house. Especially her bedroom. Her bedroom that was designed for extreme comfort from most-recommended by therapists type of mattress, egyptian silk recommended by dermatologists and celebrities alike, lavender and rose scented aroma from a Sage boutique, calm acoustics from the speakers playing at a very calming volume and a double-door window that was cracked open to allow the cold and fresh summer air into the have. Yet such ridiculous lie just managed to make a successful disturbance. It did not make sense, this did not make sense!
The moment she plopped down, she did not feel the warmth and coziness of her soft quilts, but felt as if her body was floating. Worse when she fluttered her heavy eyelids open, it was an endlessly white, empty space that only had her esteemed grandmother to be counted into the population.
Her sharp, fiery eyes narrowed. As a girl with a mean-looking expression deemed to be her natural face, simply narrowing her eyes alone could make the whole world feel chills running down their spines.
The said grandma could not help but murmur underneath her breath, "Smile dear, smile and save the world."
Yet the young woman's lips only started twitching at the corners, revealing a pair of unusually long canines. Honey-brown eyes that should display the warmth of summer stared blankly at the woman who shared the same pair of irises. "Grandma, do you know? No, did you have a single clue about how close I was? I have yet to enjoy that world to its fullest!"
Unlike regular young women, this granddaughter was a big contradiction. Not that she opposed femininity but her interests did not include anything prioritized by most. Neither love nor success, but rather a straightforward satisfaction of her curiosities and theories. Sometimes, it's just about neutralizing her little psychopathic tendencies.
"The modern weapons, the breath-taking technology, the internet, the tamed pets, the ease of access for any goods- organs are never lacking, anything, anything! Why?" She continued to express her disappointment. Fortunately yet uncomfortably, her voice and tone sounded calm but persistent while uttering such words that began to grow darker. "That eco-friendly premier and annoying minister, I almost had them! The death certificates were ready! I paid a thousand dollars for the premium Nara wood in order to make those look pristine and grand! Aaaahhhhh! The plans have been laid out!"
But as the elder who resembled a magnanimous saintess while dressed exquisitely in a silky white dress and stood quietly on the side for the whole time, her face did not drop any expression nor her mouth moved to spill any words that could aggravate an already pitiable being. An awe inspiring calmness surrounded her entire body.
The young woman took her silence as a permission to keep grieving for her loss. Even her eyes began to sting and tears filled the brims.
However, that was not what the elder meant. Unable to delay her plans any longer, the queen mother-like woman waved her hand. Luckily, the young lady was a bit unstable yet could maintain her filial behavior. She immediately shuts her mouth and looked away towards an empty direction as if it was the most beautiful view in this 'world' she transported to.
The grandmother said, "Such a fiery girl, so full of life but so many lives passed and yet this one is finally about to be damned for eternity. Oh this silly girl."
The young woman growls in displeasure.
Unaffected, the elder continued, "Celes Fallon de Lin, I love how you look right now. Why didn't you stop at that point? Why get tempted? What happened?"
"Thanks, I feel flattered," the young woman smiled beautifully with no visible traces of anger. Her tone of voice was even high pitched and happy that such switch always made the grandmother feel unsettled deep inside. Nevertheless she continued and rather than a happy, delighted tone, her voice dropped into her husky but feminine pitch. "Just Fallon, Nana. It's been too long since anyone knew my full name you know."
The grandmother understood. "Very well, if it weren't for your countless acts of 'justified' murders, someone could have called you that everyday."
"No, you're wrong Nana. It's their fault for being too much. Imagine my cousin tried to court me?!"
"That's--"
"Disgusting I know."
"But you killed him and his supportive friends then his sister then the witness then your aunty and uncle then your other cousins! Celes! You even hunted down distant relatives!"
"Well, like it or not, they also had committed unspeakable atrocities to mankind. It just runs in the blood grandma!" Fallon scratches her head and breaks into a chilly laughter. (JaehaJack) "Your saintly genes have been shut out entirely, they all were completely recessive."
"Celes Fallon de Lin," the elder spoke calmly, "I did not pull you here for your amusement and venting."
"Well, let's consider it as girl's night. Grandma, I got work tomorrow and two blinddates the coming night! Plus I have to pull all-nighters again to finish the job."
"You're already dead. You cannot go back."
"What? No, impossible. You're just trying to scare me again!"
"You died from exhaustion. You did it yourself."
From head to toe, Fallon was dressed professionally for the job. She wore dark blue scrubs, a blue gown, a face mask, goggles, a bouffant, a pair of blue gloves and shoe covers. She was not supposed to take it home but who can tell that to the face of the hospital's owner? Anyway, with such a small stature that barely passed five feet two inches, she should look like a child but her back was straight and her cold, solemn face completely turned tables. Unfortunately, that would all be left behind now that Fallon stood in a white room that not a shadow casted any darkness. Her feet did not touch any ground either but floated instead. Currently, the grandchild has become a spirit and possessed no shadow at all.
"Oh, really? Ha-ha!"
"Celes Fallon de Lin!"
But the named woman shakes her head. "I know. That lovable Yaoi anime from Japan really blew my mind. And then the huge accident that forced this president to work overtime. Ha! What a life!"
"Celes Fallon de Lin!"
The elderly lady narrows her brows together because her grandchild, her great granddaughter who suffered so much was starting to become transparent! Unknown to Fallon, her feet has become transparent which was a symptom of a dying soul. At this point, the elder's mind has come to a major decision even if it was the last string holding them together - anything can happen but the loss of Celes' repentance.
Her magnanimous, tolerating nerves have reached the point of utter desperation. Her blood boiled and so, she had resorted to a way that she believed she would never do if it is not her husband! In the blink of an eye, Celes' grandmother casually kicked a foot up to release her wooden flip-flop and skillfully caught them with a grip that could smash the wood into brittle pieces.
"I said, Celes Fallon de Lin get a grip of yourself!" As amazing as how her calmed facade turned into a fiery and imposing demeanor in the blink of an eye, the wooden slippers have been thrown like a javelin straight to Celes' head at the speed of light!
KLAAKK!
"Ow! Grandma!" Luckily, the target was a head forged from the hardest material in the world and inherited the Amazonian genes of the female elder.
"It seems that I can't really get through that thick skull of yours! I called you so many times, how dare you ignore your grandmother like this?!"
The psycho suddenly knelt down and lowered her head, eyes on the ground and voice humbled to a pleasing tone. It was the routine once the empress dowager flipped. "This granddaughter was a big retard, please punish me well." No matter how many lifetimes she lived and came back from was useless toward appeasing her two-faced grandmother. She can act patient, calm and nice but she was also the reason why evil was in her DNA, not the good one. The elder herself was the one who initiated Celes' twisted outcome back at her first life.
Unknown to her, it was the elder's biggest regret. Even accepting many punishments was not enough. It drove her to the edge that no matter what, Celes remained unchanged no matter how many lives she was reborn into.
Celes Fallon de Lin feigned a sigh and began to reason out once more. "You see gran'ma, I cannot just accept my ending!"
"Silly girl, do you know that you are about to be swimming in lava for all eternity?"
Two pairs of fiery, honey-brown eyes widened in bewilderment, supposedly. Yet both tried to remain calm. Because the grandmother had become impatient, she spilled the truth while the receiver gawked in horror.
"So he was right. Huh? Well, I knew that for a long time grandma. I am irredeemable."
"Fallon, no that is not-
"Hmm, it is true. Who would want to save me? They say that that place will eat you alive and yet you never die. I went to church services every Sunday Grandma, a friend of mine convinced me so, that is why I know that." Celes also tried to picture the venue as she speaks hard to act and sound casual. "It is already so terrifying.But I cannot help it."
For a second, her grandmother's face lit up but it seemed like an illusion because it was as if it never happened just by looking at that granny's grim expression.
"That is why I brought you here." Though deep inside, the queen mother actually felt ecstatic. 'Celes, no Fallon, made a friend who can actually convince her? And to church? No way!'
Little did she know, that 'friend' was someone that her grandchild have tried courting until death. That information shall never ever fall into her geriatric hearing. Fallon swore to that for a long time already. She vigorously shook her head, forgetting what left her elder's mouth just a few seconds ago. "But I am not dead yet! I can't."
"You jest, my dear." The woman in her late fifties clicked her tongue then explained once again. "In your last life time, you died because of stress, as simple, humanly and normal that sounds. It is the truth, you lucky criminal."
"I escaped bullets, bombs, arrows, poison and a lot more but to think that I lost my life because of work?"
The girl was a big believer of, "If you wield the sword, you die by the sword," and almost quite literally. The most recent life was a perfect life. Celes Fallon de Lin owned a hospital after killing her aunty and stealing the contract of ownership and deeds to the land. While the owner and president in the shadows, though every single employee knows her true identity, she also continued her work as a permanent night-shift pharmacy employee. It was a convenient position because while the pharmacy was located near the morgue, her small part-time series of murders cannot be immediately linked to an overworked employee. Sometimes, going around and playing the merciful killer to fulfill dying patient requests was her hobby too. It's just that there were no take-backs. Pleads fall into deaf ears as she swiftly turns off the machine, suffocate the patient or simply make a small 'accident' occur. Her rule was tight, such as when she chooses her targets outside. It was another hobby to pass time. If no patients have asked, it was easy to fill it with dirty people who can be so stupid as to lock themselves in VIP suites of her hospital.
Therefore, the murderous person expected a mangled corpse from a torturous death as revenge from some possible survivors.
"Grandma, I guess I was too meticulous. I left no one out, haha!"
Those dirty people were and will always be her favorite. First process was a thorough research, analysis and observation. Even making direct contact with them was great too as it makes their reactions more amusing once the victim finds out about her nature. Then after investigation was making death certificates while making her plans. The surgery rooms provided the best equipments. The morgue gave the best privacy and disposal. The incineration room seemed like the cleanest way to get rid of the evidence. Celes has her own playground which she laments about.
However heinous it was, Celes Fallon de Lin's doting grandmother was aware yet her heart just slowly breaks at the thought of her grand-daughter perishing for all eternity. So, if Celes Fallon de Lin cannot change her ways and repent, her soul will burn and get tortured eternally! It was one thing to beg for her grandchild's fifth chance but another thing to ask for transmigration instead of reincarnation!
She steeled her gaze at the young woman and spoke, voice losing its warmth and replaced by warning, "Last chance Celes Fallon de Lin."
At such tone, Fallon wore a grim face. "What do you mean, Nana?"
"Save your self!"
'Save me?'
Yet Celes Fallon de Lin did not get enough time to think! As if her grandmother's last words were a go signal, a black pit opened under Celes' feet sending her falling downwards at a rapid rate! One thing she could not bear for long was the misfortune of falling with nothing to hold onto for safety! Her organs felt like they were floating. Vile rose to her throat but she could not puke for some reason resulting to life-threatening coughs that with just a little more effort, Celes may be able to cough out her lungs.
It reminded Celes Fallon de Lin of her first and last time bungee jumping in her recent life and also, the extreme thrill rides she goes to for 'training' that made her feel so sick from deep inside. Chills crawled down her spine and goose skin replaced hers.
"AAAhhhhhhh!"
After several minutes of free falling in a void, empty space, she was starting to get used to it but all these said thoughts were slashed to death and dragged into a garbage can for burning as soon as the image of a dense forest appeared below her. Celes have realized that she was now falling from the sky!
"F*** my life!" Celes Fallon de Lin cursed and closed her eyes, expecting an impending doom. Darkness gladly engulfed her 20/20 vision as she mentally prepared herself for the impact. But physically? Not much because the modern girl who lived in a bustling city for the entirety of her life only thought of crossing her slender, lightly tanned arms over her chest as if Celes was only expecting a kick, not a bone breaking fall.
One second passed.
Two seconds.
Three, four, five. . . a minute has passed. Two minutes. Three minutes. Four minutes. Five minutes! One second.
Yet there was no fall! It was just that Celes Fallon de Lin's skin instantly felt ice-cold, wet and sticky sensation all around herself. Her eyes flew open.
The more that Celes remained still and quiet, the colder and suffocating it felt! 'What just happened?' she exclaimed in her head.
She tried to fight it by squirming and trying to move her pressed head, her trapped arms and her legs that were stuck but they felt so heavy! Just to set things straight, an earthquake had not happened. Celes Fallon de Lin's sense of survival still sent her into panic mode and fought push those cold ice away in order to climb up!
In a deep pit that barely allowed any moonlight into it had a ton of dead, dismembered humans laying atop each other. For a second, there was a heavy stillness but time passed quite a bit and a hand has managed to reach out throught the gaps.
Celes Fallon de Lin gasps and heaves heavily for air. Her heart pumps loudly in her ears. The putrid stench of rotting assaults her nose, much to her displeasure. And her vision is still muddled as her eyes slowly adjusted to her surroundings.
Fine, thick brows knitted. The air carried a heavy, stench of rotting and death sending vile in her throat once again. Those cold logs, she realized, were actually dead bodies. The stickiness were either goo, blood and some other unwanted liquid mixed together. Celes glanced around once her eyes have adjusted to the darkness but such thing only made her wish that she did not see anything!
Mutilated bodies, chopped body pieces, frozen babies, scattered organs and many frozen faces filled with heavy expressions. It was a horrifying, illegal dumping site of human bodies! Someone once told Celes that eyes were the windows of the soul. His voice chimed in her ears but the faces made her guts cold.
As Celes Falon de Lin inevitably catches some stares from the cold faces, she disliked that those souls left their bodies with their very expressions upon death. Some were of anguish, some were fear, some were frozen cries, some were raged, some were laughing and rarely was there some faces with closed eyes and screamed acceptance. She dreaded to see those so she kicks a decapitated head which belongs to that category, far away from her.
The modern, city girl closes her eyes for an attempt to comfort herself of her circumstance. For someone who woke up stark naked, this was more than disastrous! She shivers. Celes wraps her arms around herself to try and create warmth. Life just really don't go so well if it is hers.
'Come to think of it. . .'
In every lifetime, she carried the same name but never did she remember anything at every reincarnation. Only when she was a spirit would she recall all memories from all lifetimes. She realized what a horrible, deranged person she was but she could not do anything about it, she thought. Now a transmigrator, the memories of the new body starts showing relapses to help Celes Fallon de Lin.
Laughters, not from typical childhood but laughters from the sinful pleasure of victory in the bloody battlefield echoed past her memories and into her ears. The warmth of blood splattered on her skin sent Celes shaking in cold. Because she is naked, she began wishing for any possible warmth.
At the same time, Celes' brain's coping mechanism functioned to its maximum capacity to help the owner. This life was from the second lifetime where it was all about power through cultivation and achieving immortality in the world called Hua Xia Realm. As a cultivator, her previous self was one of the highest bounties: dead or alive, as she was also a heinous criminal in this world. Her terrifying acts have condemned her irredeemable.
Celes Fallon de Lin was one of the highest ranking general-commanders who possessed a vast spiritual ocean and competitively strong spiritual force that could render an entire empire helpless! Her given type of cultivation cheat was Devour and that of course came hand in hand with Greed. Wars became her kitchen and dining table in order to satisfy the drawbacks of the cultivation. Celes Fallon de Lin was a monster to make it brief. Countless atrocities occurred wherever she was that every single soul wished for her end. It did not matter how she dies, an instant death was enough as long as a calamity like her was to disappear!
In the second life time, she did die at the hands of a friend who she pledged to be sisters with under the heavens. She pledged and held onto that promise yet unfortunately, her sworn sister had other plans.
Celes laughs bitterly to herself. 'No matter what, I was a lonely being huh? How could I have fallen to such tactic?'
When she - her previous self- have fallen to death, she was thrown down an unmarked, mass grave.
Celes Falon de Lin stands stark naked atop the dead as she came to realize that she has not also lost any memory unlike her past four lives. "I just transmigrated. Is this what gran'ma meant?"
Thinking of her past self and the other after that, Celes Fallon de Lin bites her rosy, plump lower lip and felt bitter but guilty. 'How could I do all these? Was I really this strong? But this is too much! How can I clean up all this atrocities?!'
To answer her question, more memories of her past life rushed into her head making the newly reborn woman weak on her knees. "Blood, chaos, exhausting hunts." A beast's roar dramatically thundered at the back of her mind. 'That beast too.' Her hands curled into fists.
"I have to get out of here first!" Suddenly, wind blew pass her. "Clothes too."