Chapter Text
An expansive sky glistened in the distance—each constellation shifting and merging into creations Luo Bingzu couldn’t recognize.
The heavens were no longer whole. The three realms had bled into one another, tearing apart the thin threads of reality—leaving nothing but destruction in its wake.
Mountains floated upside down, roots reached toward the clouds, and rivers spilled into the sky as gravity lost its ironclad hold.
The air hummed low, trembling beneath the weight of all things living and dead.
Creatures crawled where they shouldn’t—half spirit, half flesh, their bodies mutating in rhythm with the trembling earth.
Some screamed in voices that weren’t their own.
Others only watched.
He brushed a hand against a flower, its petals moving toward him as if nodding hello.
It pulsed faintly, veins of light running through it like every pulse was its breath.
His eyes were blank, watching with solemn sadness.
Luo Bingzu simply stared, taking in every fractured detail until it was his time.
He dragged his hand away, looking down at his palm.
His younger self would’ve laughed at how he’s acting, scoffed even—yet now?
All he could show to this broken, fading world was the scars he carried.
Scars that refused to fade, no matter how many centuries passed.
Scars that spoke louder than any words could.
Scars from battles fought for others.
Scars carved by his own hands.
Scars given by those he once trusted.
Each one a memory. Each one proved he had lived.
The grass brushed faintly against his hand as it fell, soft but cold, its tips glowing faintly from the distortion of realms.
He couldn’t feel it—the nerves within his hand had died long ago.
Luo Bingzu stared, this time towards the unreachable heavens.
Stared at the stars.
Stared at their dark and brooding manner, yet shining oh so brightly.
Begging for even an ounce of attention, a simple brush of rays against another.
Isn’t that what we all want?
To feel as though we belong?
To feel as though maybe, somewhere—someone will care for you, as you will in turn care for them?
A small, miserable smile broke free on the demon’s face.
No one in this world could love him. Not his mother, nor his father—not his ‘friends,’ no one.
Luo Bingzu was a creature forced into isolation, forced into a box smaller than his ever-growing mind could comprehend.
And now, over the millions of years of his life, he has learned one thing.
Life does not wait for those who linger in the past, who linger on regrets and ‘what ifs.’
Life moves forward, regardless of whether you dared to stumble. Life moves forward without a care, without even an ounce of mercy to those who suffer.
It moved like the wind, ever twisting in nature—pushing forward those who could succeed, pushing down those who couldn’t bear its turbulent weight.
Luo Bingzu covered his face, simply laying his hand over his eyes.
If he truly, deeply thought about it…he felt lonely.
He felt…unsatisfied, betrayed, even.
He felt as though he was meant for more, meant for glory like no other, meant for…for…
Something vulnerable crept forward, his face falling into a grimace, as his unbound hair flowed with the soft wind.
Luo Bingzu felt, horribly, irreparably, helpless.
He laughed, short, cold—as though he couldn’t believe what his old soul had conjured from so deep within him.
Helpless, him?
Hm.
No, that didn’t feel right.
It felt more weighing than hopelessness, more disappointing, more…
Luo Bingzu felt—regret.
Yes.
That felt…right, in a way.
He regrets it.
He regrets taking the actions of his life as though…as though he, Luo Bingzu, deserved everything.
As though everything around him was meant to kneel to Luo Bingzu, conqueror of the three realms, an overlord with an iron fist—a half-fledgling demon with no remorse for those who wronged him.
Regrets taking the lives of so many, of humans, demons…his own family.
Garbled screams echoed within the chamber of lava, as Luo Bingzu watched with cold, dull eyes as his father screamed for what seemed like an eternity.
He watched, watched as his father sank deeper, his skin melting clean of the bone—his body trying to regenerate, trying to do anything to save itself…but alas, nothing could stop the power of fire.
Not even the Heavenly Demon that had conquered it eons ago.
He regrets it, looking back at it all now. Yet he didn’t feel remorse, as one should. He felt…pitiful.
That a being such as him was allowed to feel such an attachment long burned off, to feel its prickling thorns pierce his flesh until only a dull throb remained.
Luo Bingzu stares once again, watching as the Demon, Human, and Heavenly Realm coincide against one another.
As the ripples of Heavenly Virtues clashed against Demonic wrath, the Human Realm was barely able to withstand the force of the celestial powers atop it.
He caused this, forcing humans to conform to the higher beings—watch the people he swore to love as an extension of himself become slaves to those with power.
As if he didn’t do the same, becoming the supreme overlord of the realms, turning into a mindless dictator drunk with power.
But…was he truly such a despicable man? He reasoned solemnly.
He always tried his best to find a way to do things correctly—but nothing ever worked out in his favor.
One small misstep led to a catastrophe blamed over his head, one misspoken word resulted in wars that stained the ground in innocent blood—
He caused so much suffering, so much pain, and for what? To fulfill the sick desires within his heart? To feel so though he was something more?!
Something—
His heart throbbed, stopping him in his tracks.
Luo Bingzu sighed, trying to calm the internal fire within him.
As a ruler, he was taught decorum, politics, to know how a single twitch of the brow shows uncertainty, how body language meant the difference between an alliance and a refusal.
Yet even crowned as the most supreme, to the most intelligent, he felt unfulfilled.
Many of his subjects said he was bored, that he should form a harem, to fill his ‘lonesome’ heart with the beauties of the realms…
He always declined, in the end.
It felt.
Wrong.
His heart would bunch into knots, his stomach would do flips with disgust, and putrid acid would encapsulate his throat—
It simply felt. Wrong.
Luo Bingzu sighed, memories flooding his decaying mind as he spiraled deeper into insanity.
—
It was bright, as warmth licked the wounds of frost-covered flowers—as animals and the like came out from hibernation.
It was finally spring, with flowers blooming alongside trees, as magnolias blossomed amongst others.
As a child, Luo Bingzu loved, some might say adored, magnolias.
They always unfurled near the cusp of spring, awaiting the awed gasps of each flower that had long since lost its luster.
Every time Luo Bingzu’s mother gently reached for the lowest branch, a bright smile emerged on her face—it made him feel light.
Made him feel as though each beating, each sneer and spat thrown his way didn’t mean a thing…that with her smile?
Luo Bingzu could do anything, and no one could stop him.
—
Hah, such a foolish mind he had.
A mind filled with hopes and dreams of finding a happier ending, yet only suffering being thrown his way.
Even as a child, barely understanding characters and their meanings, he would always flip to the end—begging with tearful eyes to make his mother read it to him, to let him see the ‘happy’ ending.
Oh, how Luo Bingzu yearned to do just that, to skip every moment of suffrage—simply to see if it was all worth it.
To see if…
He took a breath, the ashen air filling his lungs for one last time.
To see if these millions of years would be worth it.
To see if Luo Bingzu would be given an ending that could satisfy his endlessly greedy heart.
To see. To witness. To taste the ambrosia of history on his tongue and feel the weight of love lay heavy on his bones.
To experience life in a kaleidoscope of color—to finally bring meaning to everything he stood for, as a person, as a demon, as a ruler.
And now, he must be selfish—for one last time.
Because if Luo Bingzu cannot find peace in his ending… then others like him will suffer the same fate, over and over, watching as the world crumbles around them.
And maybe, in the end of it all, he hoped for a better fate for himself. One where he can be truly happy, truly cared for, without the cold infringing on his heart, without the loneliness grasping his bones with each unbearable step his body took.
Watch as millions of years flew by without a care in the world, never even lifting a finger to begin his journey—because Luo Bingzu had given up at the very beginning.
Luo Bingzu knew, deep in his heart, he must now pick himself up and create his happy ending, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Because no one in the world would ever help him again—not his mother, not his servants, not his teachers.
No one.
For Luo Bingzu had to redefine fate in the palm of his hands—to grasp it beneath molten blood and shape it into the life he desired.
Adrenaline flooded his veins, searing through him, forcing his trembling body to stand one last time.
One more time.
Once more—and he can rest. He can finally, finally rest.
His palm felt hot, the incantations learned thousands of years prior on a whim came forth spilling from his mouth in twisted tongues.
Over his lifetime, he had witnessed spells that tore through worlds, spells that could mend even the deepest wounds… and yet none compared to the one he had searched for unknowingly, since the dawn of his birth.
And that spell… would set his fate in stone. It would shatter the chains encasing his soul, and it would free him.
Give him peace like no other luxury ever could.
Passion filled his core, as a bloody smile crept forward—his mouth gushing crimson onto his robes, yet he kept smiling, kept grinning–
“Finally,” he breathed, the taste of iron melting into his very being.
Luo Bingzu would now dare to challenge the fate of the Heavens his ancestors once fell from, to split his soul into countless fragments—so he would never again suffer, so his spirit could scatter across the realms and find its own way.
To free himself from the shackles that bound him to his immortal flesh.
To defy the very boundaries of the universe.
To claim his true, final happy ending.
The ground trembled beneath him, cracks splintering through the broken earth as light bled from the sky.
The air thickened—heavy with ash, with memory, with the weight of gods watching in silence.
His name echoed faintly, carried by the wind, twisting through the ruins of creation as the realms began to fold inward.
Stars dimmed. The heavens groaned. And Luo Bingzu—burning, unraveling, reborn—stood against it all.
If the universe would not grant him peace, then he would carve it himself.
Even if it meant tearing the world apart.
Luo Bingzu laid a palm against his chest.
Thump thump.
Thump thump.
Thump thump.
Thump—
He pressed, digging his claws deeper, harder.
His robes split into splintered threads, reds and blacks blending into the dirt below in long, haggard strips.
He grinned, feeling a deep satisfaction burrow beneath his skin.
From thread to skin, Lup Bingzu dug deeper, claws mincing skin to shreds—watching with manic glee while his blood mites tried desperately to heal him.
Tsk, if anything he’s struggling more with keeping those damned mites at bay then accomplishing his main task!
The blood beaded into thick droplets as he crept deeper within, the agonizing trill of self-mutilation fueling his veins for more, more!
It growled, thrashed, yowled, a part of him that held his remaining sanity yelled forth into his mind.
Luo Bingzu, how dare you! You were above it all, a being with unparalleled power! Yet you…you dare destroy yourself in a bout of strife?!
Yes, he breathed through gritted teeth, wincing as his blackened hand moved deeper, he dared.
He tore through his skin, his hand nearly engulfed by his flesh—the remaining untorn skin stretched tight around it, trembling, begging to burst under the pressure of his invading hand.
It clung to him, hot and shivering, the skin refusing to yield—like a babe fresh from the womb, its shivering body yearning for warmth, for safety.
He pressed further, gritting his fangs until—
It tore.
A wet, muffled rip echoed through the air as heat spilled across his arm.
Tendons snapped under his skin, bunching up like cysts underneath each bone, pressing into every nerve—it was agonizing, horrifically so.
It’s perfect.
For the first time in over a million years, his heart knows a feeling other than loneliness.
Pain.
It tore through him like sunlight breaking through a forgotten tomb—raw, blinding, real.
A foreign warmth bloomed inside his hollow chest, burning and sharp, yet alive. It ached, it screamed, it hurt—and that hurt was beautiful.
He had forgotten what it meant to feel, to be anything but the echo of a name carved into time.
Yet now, in the throes of agony, he remembered—what it meant to exist, to be.
To be is to exist—to suffer, to burn, to crumble and rise again, even if only to fall once more.
To be is to feel the weight of flesh and the ache of being alive, to bleed and call it proof.
To be is to remember that life was never meant to be kind, only felt.
And in that feeling—however fleeting, however cruel—Luo Bingzu found the truth
And through that truth every nerve within his body sang, every breath seared, and still he welcomed it.
The pain clawed through the endless silence that had consumed him for eons, and in its wake, he found something almost like peace.
For once, the emptiness within his heart was gone.
The layers beneath—gooey fat, intertwining muscle, elastic tissue—all trembled under his claws.
He watched with bloodshot eyes as blisters formed, swelling and splitting as pale clumps of melted fat slipped free, falling onto the floor with soft, obscene plops.
The warmth of his soul raged further, trying to escape the wrath of Luo Bingzu's unbridled power.
Hah, even his own soul south to salvage itself then face a battle of divine will—how pathetic.
His hand sank deeper. The resistance only grew tighter, the flesh trembling as if alive—pulling him inward, desperate to consume him whole.
The smell of iron filled his lungs, thick and sweet, suffocating him in own delirium.
Smooth skin turned to mush, the viscera of crimson made Luo Bingzu’s vision flare white as his razor-sharp claws pressed in.
A cruel sight indeed—a demon lord, debilitating himself to his base instincts of violence and blood, falling from within.
A fitting end to Heavenly Demon—to fall at no hand but his own.
Yet even through the pain, through the agony, through that creeping, unrelenting fear of the what if’s clawing at the back of his mind—he pressed on.
The wind battered against his face as he stumbled forward, the world spinning in his periphery, the air cold and biting.
He moved without care, without thought—only the instinct to continue.
His chest burst with a sound that wasn’t quite a pop, nor a tear—but both, all at once, echoing across the merged realms.
A sudden gush of blood erupted from within him, violent and bright, like a volcano in mid-eruption.
Dazzling. Horrifying. Beautiful in its ruin, a passionate end to a creature as vile as him.
His life now danced on the frayed threads between life and death, yet Luo Bingzu smiled, his trembling hands grasping the ever-beating flesh within him. It pulsed wildly—warm, defiant, alive.
Luo Bingzu’s eyes spun;his knees buckled. He fell forward with a harsh crack, his shins splintering, his palms sinking into the earth, leaving behind crescent-shaped craters overflowing with crimson.
His hair, once a magnificent ivory black, now streaked with white—the only pure thing left upon his body.
A white so blinding that the creatures lurking in the shadows turned and fled, unable to bear its light.
His eyes blinked sluggishly, the coagulating blood staining his skin as that crimson blood now ran from his mouth, his eyes, his ears.
The whispers in his skull grew louder—pressing, starving, unholy.
“Yes,” he yelled to no one, a grin twisting through the ruin of his face, “yes—finally!”
More blood, venerable one. Give us more blood. More!
Yesyesyesyesyes—more! More, more, more!
Venerable one… The voices hissed, reverent, trembling.
You speak the words of the ancient tongue, invoking the sacred laws beneath the veil of evernight—a trial no man, nor demon, shall ever survive.
The air thickened, humming with something old and furious. Shadows convulsed at the edge of the dim, twisting like veins through the dark.
Each voice no longer echoed from afar—they pressed closer, whispering over one another, breaking apart and reforming until the sound became a single, trembling note.
And then they sprung forward, growing ever so closer to Luo Bingzu’s convulsing body—yet they stopped a mere few feet away, observing, watching
Shapes somehow bled through the air, bending the edges of reality as they tore through the unseen.
They had no form, yet every form—stretching, coiling, unfolding into impossible geometry. Flesh that rippled like water, colors that shouldn’t exist sliding across translucent skin.
Their bodies split and stitched themselves anew beneath the gleaming stars, each tear birthing something hungrier, older.
Their eyes—or what he thought were eyes—burned like dying suns.
Limbs shuddered and fused; tendrils scraped across the earth, leaving behind trails that steamed and hissed.
The world itself seemed to recoil, the ground trembling as their presence folded space around them.
And in their glow, Luo Bingzu stood bathed in crimson and starlight, the last remnants of his body unraveling into dust and devotion.
And through it all, Luo Bingzu only grinned. His teeth were stained red, his vision a haze of white and gold and blood.
The voices echoed like hymns. The stars above pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He laughed—a sound brittle and fractured, yet spitefully fighting to stay conscious.
“So this… this is what waits beyond,” he whispered, voice trembling between awe and delirium. “How beautiful.”
The spirits writhed closer, their watchful eye gaining a glint of mischief.
Their forms shimmered, rippling between bone and light, smoke and silence. The air quaked around them, trembling with hunger.
Then came the sound—low, guttural, endless. A thousand whispers speaking as one.
Ahh… a feast.
How long it has been since one such as you has bled for us, venerable one.
Their words slithered through his mind, wrapping around his heart like chains.
Their bodies swelled, consuming the light around them, mouths splitting open where no mouths should be.
Strong. So strong.
Your body sings, your soul trembles. What flavor, what depth—what sorrow! A banquet of power, despair, and longing… a dish never before offered.
They pressed closer, and he could feel them sinking into him—into his veins, his marrow, the fragments of his soul.
His skin rippled, veins igniting in violet light as his body shuddered from the inside out.
And yet—he didn’t resist. His smile widened, cracked and bloody.
“My wish,” he whispered, “you know it.”
We do. The spirits’ voices were honey and venom, delight and dread intertwined. A happy ending, is it not? Such a fragile thing to ask for… so human. So utterly sweet.
They laughed—it felt horrid, a screaming cackle which echoed beneath the splitting the sky, tearing the stars from their thrones.
Very well, venerable one. We shall indulge your wish.
Your flesh shall be our altar. Your bones our vessel. Your sorrow our feast.
They coiled tighter as the ground beneath him broke apart in large chunks.
Light spilled through every crack of his body, each pulse a heartbeat, each heartbeat a prayer.
You have given us a banquet fit for eternity, they whispered, their tone almost tender. And in return, we will grant you what you crave most.
Your happy ending.
The words sank into him like a blade—silent, deep, precise. Then? Then the spirits moved.
They poured into him—liquid and light and shadow all at once—sliding through the open seams of his body, through his wounds, his mouth, the corners of his eyes.
The air screamed with his voice, grasping at his skin, digging his bloodied claws to somehow alleviate the itch.
Every inch of his flesh convulsed, trembling as the weight of their existence forced itself into his mortal frame.
The sky dimmed, the ground shuddered, and still the spirits pressed forward, forcing their existence into a vessel not built to contain them.
His body arched back, cracking, splitting at the seams.
His skin strained, too thin, too human to bear what lingered beneath him.
Veins bulged in jagged lines of light, twisting like serpents beneath translucent flesh.
He looked wrong—his shape no longer his own, stretched over something vast and ravenous, something older than the stars that had witnessed his birth.
His spine curved at unnatural angles, his shoulders jutting like the roots of some ancient, withered tree.
The outline of him rippled, warping with every breath.
His bones pulsed, visible beneath the paper-thin skin that barely clung to him.
His face, once human, now seemed borrowed—his features melting and reforming between moments.
A smile too wide.
Eyes too bright.
Skin too pale, too cold, too alive.
As though he was a creature with skin too small for its body.
Just…not right.
A fledgling balancing between the lines of humanity and beast—a thing with no right to live.
Lup Bingzu clasped his hands into fists, trying with whatever will that renowned within him to survive the plight upon his soul.
He could feel them writhing beneath his surface—pressing, clawing, shifting.
The spirits whispering, laughing, devouring.
Every motion left trails of light and darkness bleeding from his form, flickering like the heartbeat of a dying star.
Then came the heat.
It started in his chest—a spark, small and pulsing. Then it spread. Slow at first, crawling along his veins, devouring the blood within them.
The light turned molten, searing through every artery, every bone.
His skin blistered, splitting in places where the light pressed too hard.
Steam rose from his body, thick and white, curling into the air like smoke from a dying fire.
His flesh blackened, cracked, peeled away in sheets, and still he did not scream.
He could smell himself burning—the scent of ash and iron, sweet and terrible.
His heart thrashed in his chest, desperate, radiant, dying.
The spirits’ laughter echoed through the flames consuming him, unbothered, euphoric.
Ahh, the taste! The purity! Never has a mortal burned so… so beautifully!
His vision faltered, turning white at the edges.
He felt himself hollowing—his body collapsing inward as his bones glowed like dying embers.
The light inside him flared one last time, a star born only to die mere moments later.
Through the ruin, Luo Bingzu grinned
Not because it was painless—
But because, for once, he felt whole, more complete and fulfilled than ever before.
He smiled, his face softening, the hard edges which followed since childhood smoothing out one final time.
Not a grin of victory, not a scowl of solitude—a pure, innocent thing.
He looked young.
Free.
A savage beast no more, but simply a white lotus blooming from the mud, waiting with dew dusting its petal to be plucked.
He breathed in the smell of ash, of freedom.
He closed his eyes, letting the souls destroy him
And then the flames consumed him fully.
Luo Bingzu's body collapsed inward, a hollow shell of molten light and charred bone.
Steam rose in thick curls, carrying the scent of iron and ash into the still air, dissipating across the land.
His Qi warbled, erupting as his mixed core broke clean—a ricocheting ring of pure energy a holistic the ground around him, leaving a small patch of grass as his casket.
The spirits lingered for a heartbeat, murmuring in delight, savoring what he had given them.
And then—they withdrew, fading into the void, leaving nothing but silence in their wake.
A fine rain of ash drifted down, settling over the world like snow—quiet, mournful, and final.
The stars above blinked once, as they then continued their eternal dance of loneliness.
A gentle wind picked up, blowing the ashes astray into the merged realm below.
It glinted within the red hued sunlight, dancing under each gentle swish and turn.
The Heavenly Demon, Master of the Three Realms, Luo Bingzu—was dead.
…Right?
—