To keep Ye Kai from taking his own life, Lin Mo sealed his body with spiritual energy. Aside from breathing and blinking, he could not move at all.

When consciousness returned, Ye Kai could only glare at Lin Mo, his eyes burning with boundless hatred and fury, as though he wished to devour him alive and tear him apart piece by piece. Lin Mo was satisfied with that vicious glare. “I hope that seven days from now, you can still look at me like this.” With that, he vanished, and darkness swallowed everything.

Ye Kai could see nothing, yet he heard and felt everything: the wet gnawing of corpse worms chewing his flesh, the slick motion of them planting eggs inside him, writhing through every part of his body. The torment lasted seven days.

When Lin Mo reappeared, Ye Kai’s face was no longer human. There was no intact flesh—only swollen, festering blood-pockets. The light in his eyes was gone. Lin Mo snapped his fingers, granting him speech.

What came out was not hatred and not begging, but a hoarse plea. “Lin Mo… just kill me. Let me die.” Once he had clung to life, believing there might yet be a future. Now he longed only for death. Each of the past seven days had been worse than dying; his body had become a nest for worms. Better a quick end than this.

Lin Mo smiled. “Junior Brother Ye, have you forgotten what I said at the beginning?” Ye Kai remembered: How could I bear to let you die so easily? Understanding finally dawned—Lin Mo had never intended to kill him, only to torment him until life itself was the cruelest punishment.

Ye Kai tried to bite off his tongue, but Lin Mo’s spiritual energy restrained him again. “What’s the rush, Junior Brother Ye? Death is often the greatest release. Your punishment isn’t over. You don’t even have the right to die.”

He snapped his fingers. The space shifted. From every direction, mirrors appeared—multiplying and locking into a honeycomb that enclosed Ye Kai. The reflections were cruelly clear, forcing him to see his own hideous form: bulging, corrupted flesh, exposed bone, and beneath the swollen skin, tiny, innumerable insects crawling.

He tried to look away but could not escape himself. Mirrors upon mirrors, reflections within reflections—each one showing countless distorted versions of him. As a Soul Splitting stage cultivator his vision was preternaturally sharp, and the drugs Lin Mo had injected had heightened his senses even further. Every crawl, every twitch, every gnaw was magnified until it was unbearable. It was not only pain. It was the deliberate breaking of the mind—forced to confront what he had become, unable to close his eyes, unable to die.

He could clearly see the tens of thousands of hideous reflections of himself in the mirrors—worse, he could see the worms squirming inside his body. “Somehow, your clothes are an eyesore,” Lin Mo said lightly. With a word, Ye Kai was stripped bare.

There was no hiding anymore. Before, clothes had at least confined the horror to his face. Now every inch of him was exposed with merciless clarity. Compared to the few ragged scraps of flesh clinging to his face, the rest of his body was infinitely more terrifying. His skin was a field of dense, festering blisters. Half had already burst, and within them countless tiny black corpse-worms writhed. He could even make out their fangs as they sucked his blood and gnawed his flesh.

He had always known—even clothed, with his senses sharpened by Lin Mo’s drugs—what was happening to him. He had survived by refusing to think about it. But now the vision itself smashed through that last defense. The sheer, overwhelming sight shook his mind.

He could not close his eyes. He could only watch as the swarm rampaged across him, building their nest, and he was helpless to stop it. Even though Lin Mo had fed him high-grade elixirs, he teetered on the verge of collapse. Lin Mo noticed at once. He steadied Ye Kai’s mind with a wash of demonic qi, forcing him back from the brink, keeping him lucid and upright in the torment. “No need to thank me,” he said with gentle mockery. “We’re brothers. This is only proper.”

Ye Kai could no longer speak. He stared blankly at Lin Mo, eyes dull and lifeless. No—what stood before him was a fiend from the Nine Hells. He thought, even if hell truly existed—even if he were cast down through all eighteen levels—it could not be worse than this. Bound by Lin Mo’s restraints, he could do nothing: he could not die, could not shut his eyes, could not even beg for mercy. In that powerlessness, regret crushed him. Why had he provoked Lin Mo? Why hadn’t he killed himself before being captured? Why was he still alive?

“None of that matters anymore,” Lin Mo said, smiling. “I know you want to die. Don’t be so hasty. Hold on a little longer. When I’ve tormented you enough, then we’ll talk.” His tone turned almost cordial. “Since you’re going to die anyway, there’s no point keeping this cultivation.”

He began to draw out Ye Kai’s cultivation. Feeling his hard-won strength unravel, Ye Kai sank into a despair deeper than before. That power had been the only reason he had clung to life; without it, nothing remained. Very soon, he was nothing but a cripple. Yet Lin Mo still would not let him die. He cocooned Ye Kai’s brain in spiritual energy, preserving it. Even if the body were reduced to a single severed head, Ye Kai would live—unless the brain itself were destroyed.

“I’ve heard, Junior Brother Ye, that you’ve always had a taste for pig intestines—original flavor,” Lin Mo mused. “You must be especially fond of that particular aroma. As your senior brother, I should be generous. Let me prepare a gift for you.”

And with Ye Kai’s mind protected and his body laid bare, the torment continued.

Before Ye Kai could even think, a foul stench overwhelmed him. The glass box around him filled with pig dung, seeping into the gaps where corpse worms had already chewed away his flesh. He had become the embodiment of filth itself. Unable to endure it, he vomited—but what spilled from his mouth was not food, only writhing masses of black corpse worms. He retched endlessly for days, and each time, the worms he expelled crawled right back inside, repeating the cycle without end.

At last, under their relentless gnawing, even his brain was destroyed. In that moment, Ye Kai’s soul finally slipped free from his ruined body. “Finally… I’m free. Finally dead. Finally rid of this disgusting body. Finally free from Lin Mo’s torment.”

His spirit trembled with excitement. But the relief lasted only a heartbeat. He realized, with horror, that even as a soul, he could not escape this strange, nightmarish space.

A sharp clap echoed in the void. Lin Mo appeared once more, smiling. “To think you could simply die like this—congratulations, Junior Brother Ye.”

Ye Kai’s very soul quaked in terror, nearly scattering into nothing. “Lin Mo, I’m already dead—what more do you want from me?”

“Do you really think death ends everything?” Lin Mo countered softly. “Do you believe that dying frees you from punishment?” Despair closed in.

“If you don’t taste your own suffering, how could that possibly be fair?” Lin Mo said. He turned to the system and purchased a new ability: “Dream of a Yellow Millet.”

With it, Ye Kai would endure countless cycles of reincarnation, experiencing every kind of ending Lin Mo desired. And in the very first cycle, Lin Mo deliberately placed Ye Kai’s soul together with Shen Ke’er’s.