Jian Long's fingers closed around the petrified cultivator's wrist. The stone was colder than death, yet something within it pulsed—a trapped scream, sealed like an insect in amber.
"The Queen lies."
The voice slithered into his mind, brittle with ancient bitterness. "The marks are not gifts. They are shackles."
Golden system text flickered in his vision:
[Memory Fragment Recovered: The First Betrayal]
A wave of nausea struck him as the hive's pheromones thickened, sweet and cloying like rotting fruit. Jian Long's new venom glands itched beneath his jaw, and his tongue buzzed with the taste of gold and iron.
Behind him, Mei's fingers clamped on his shoulder—no longer just Mei. Her claws dug through flesh. Her voice vibrated with layers, hive-queen harmonics woven into something heartbreakingly familiar.
"The Queen is waiting."
Her voice warbled between identities.
Jian Long managed a grin through clenched teeth. "Tell her I'm fashionably late."
At his feet, larvae chirped. Their glossy black eyes mirrored his distorted face—left iris fully hexagonal, and the dragon birthmark on his collarbone writhed like it was alive.
His fingers brushed the hive throne.
And the world collapsed.
Memory 1: The Founding Pact
Darkness. Candles. A dozen kneeling disciples.
Throats bared in reverence.
A towering Queen leaned forward. Her stinger pierced the first volunteer—a woman with Su Ling's eyes.
"You will become divine," the Queen crooned.
Golden flame crawled across her skin, burning the mark into her spine. She screamed—and then laughed, eyes hardening into glimmering chitin.
"I hear her now," she whispered. "She sings inside my bones."
Memory 2: Elder Lian's Defiance
Smoke. Amber pods cracked open. Lian, younger and feral, wielded a rusted blade.
"They're not disciples! They're incubators!"
Mu Rong emerged from the shadows. Once human, now twisted—his jaw unhinged to reveal larval mandibles.
"You'll join them, Lian. Or feed them."
He surged forward. Lian screamed. Memory bled red.
Memory 3: Mu Rong's Truth
Centuries later. Mu Rong stood before the throne, skin split—not from age, but from what squirmed beneath.
"Twelve generations," he murmured. "When do I get to die?"
The Queen's answer was a kiss of pheromones.
[WARNING: MEMORY CORRUPTION]
The system screamed in Jian Long's mind.
"Host is forgetting Earth. Replacement in progress."
He gasped and tore away from the throne.
Mei's—no, Su Ling's—claw tightened.
"You see now."
Her voice trembled, breaking beneath the hive-song.
"We were never meant to win."
The Queen loomed above them, all stingers and perfume. Her limb arched, stabbing toward Mei—no, toward Su Ling—whose lone human eye widened with primal fear.
Jian Long moved.
Not with refined qi.
Not with technique.
With stupid, raw, human rage.
He drove his fingers into his own birthmark. Skin tore. Golden venom surged up his throat.
"SYSTEM! OVERRIDE!"
[Yin-Yang Reversal Core: EMERGENCY ACTIVATION]
Cost: Bodily crystallization in 60 seconds.
He hurled the venom.
The Queen screamed.
Her connection to the hive snapped.
The pheromones soured. Larvae wailed. In the throne's walls, embedded memories cracked.
Somewhere behind him, Su Ling whispered:
"You idiot."
Jian Long grinned, veins glowing like golden glass.
"Yeah."
Then his arteries turned to crystal.
His heart became a frozen sun.
And everything went white.