The room swam back into focus, the familiar scent of perfume and dust making my head spin. "Yinuo,"a voice chimed, the edges laced with a chilling glee. "Lin Jian died."
My heart, already a hollow echo in my chest, simply acknowledged the news. "Is that so?" I managed, my voice as flat as the stone floor beneath me. I had predicted this, this inevitable outcome, and yet, my body felt like a brittle puppet, devoid of any genuine emotion.
"But, who are you?" I asked, the question hanging heavy in the air. The voice, the way he moved, it was all so familiar. Yet, there was a dissonance, a subtle shift in the rhythm of his being that felt profoundly wrong.
"Guess," he chuckled, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "If you guess right, I'll tell you...everything. How's that? Don't you want to know?"He leaned closer, his fingers ghosting across my hair, tugging a stray strand away.
My breath hitched. This demeanor, this unsettling playfulness - it was Lin Jian.
"Lin Jian," I whispered, taking his hands away, tracing the delicate lines of his fingertips as if to confirm the impossible. "You are...Lin Jian."
His grip tightened on mine,I can feel his eyes burning into mine. "Yes, it's Lin Jian." He untied my bandage. "I hate it. You're eyes looks just like his. This body isn't even yours." Then, in a swift, brutal movement, he clamped his hand around my throat. "It's Lin Jian, don't be afraid. You'll be with them soon."
His fingers dug deeper my neck, constricting my airways. I clawed at his hand, desperate for air, but my movements were pathetically weak.
"I really want to kill you," he hissed, his voice a cold whisper. "Not yet, though. I can't be impatient." He released me, leaving me gasping for breath, the taste of metal filling my mouth.
"Have you gone mad!" I croaked, my voice trembling. "You're unbelievable! Why are you doing this?"
His features twisted into something bitter and cruel. Yes we were not friends but we weren't enemies. How could he do this, at one point I thought the relationship between us was becoming genuine, turns out not.
"It was all my conspiracy. I was a spy, sent by my kingdom to infiltrate your sect. You see, Zhang Li, your master, he's a monster. He's done terrible things." He paused, his eyes hard and cold. "My sister, she was a victim of his cruelty. The city she lived in, wiped out. My kingdom, they want revenge."
He paused, his voice a low growl as he continued, "Zhang Li, your master, is a monster, and he needs to pay for his crimes." as he held the back of my head.
He leaned closer, his fury palpable. "He collected mortals' energy threads, their very life force, to unlock the immortal's crafted item," the words laced with hatred. "He used them, consumed them, like a ravenous beast. My kingdom yearns for retribution, and you, his sister, is the key."
The truth slammed into me like a physical blow. A spy? My master, Zhang Li? The weight of it all threatened to crush me. The memory of a loving, mischievous guardian flickering in my mind.
Lin Jian's lips curled into a cold smile. "We've longed hated each other too, it's perfect." he said, his voice dripping with venomous satisfaction.
Master... or Zhang Li, my brother didn't died. He survived. Lin Jian used me as a hostage against him.
"Coward," Lin Jian spat, the word a venomous seed planted in the fertile ground of my fear. "He's a coward, that brother of yours. But he loves you, so he'll be back."
Lin Jian was like clockwork. Every seven days, without fail, he'd arrive, a wolf in sheep's clothing. He'd come bearing a smile, a charming facade that crumbled the moment he saw the fear in my eyes. The torture would begin, he would interrogate me about things I didn't have any ideas of: "Where is Zhang Li?", "Did Zhang Li even loved her?" to which I wouldn't answer and it would infuriate him. The needle, piercing my veins, a slow, agonizing burn that spread through my body. Every time, I'd grit my teeth, endure the pain, remain silent. His anger, I knew, was the fuel to his actions. And it was my silence that nurtured the inferno.
He was convinced that I knew something, that I was hiding something.
He'd press the needle against my arm, his thumb pressing down, the small metal cool against my skin.
I endured, I stayed silent, a prisoner of my own fear. It was a strange, perverse bond we had, him and I. Each week, I'd wait for him, the monster, who I knew once was..... a companion.
But that night, something cracked. "You'll rot in hell!" The pain, always a constant thrumming, grew into a roar, drowning out my reason. A primal fear, the fear of the hunted, gripped me. My mind, already at the edges, began to break. I felt the edges of sanity slipping away, each breath a desperate struggle. I was losing myself, piece by piece, and he, the architect of my demise, seemed oblivious.
Perhaps he saw the fear in my eyes, the desperate flicker of sanity, or perhaps he was simply tired of the game. He stopped coming for a while, and a glimmer of hope, fragile, bloomed in the wasteland of my heart. Maybe Lin Jian had finally seen what he had done. Maybe, just maybe, he still cared.
But then he returned, his smile brighter, his eyes colder. He carried a new device, a thing of metal and glass, a promise of even more agonizing pain. It was then, as I saw his smug satisfaction, his cruelty magnified in the sharp gleam of the device, that I knew. He didn't care. "You should have shown up earlier, I was bored." I said.
Lin Jian was a monster, and I was his captive, his puppet, strung up on the threads of his pain and my broken hope.
"Don't blame me, Yinuo. My sister endured worst in your bastard brother's hand." he gritted his teeth, reminiscing his sister's pain. "Zhang Li used my sister to awake you from your slumber. He pretended to love her, stripped her off her primordial spirit. I'm just paying him back! My sister endured more that this!" he said performing the torture.
I clenched my teeth, closed my hand,trying not to make noise that'll feed his satisfaction. I can't say I'm immune to the pain. I can feel it all. I feel pain. A lot of pain. I can vividly feel it in my skin. But by now it was just like eating. A common occurrence.