Chapter 195: Silk Nest
Qiyun House was one of the most renowned pleasure houses in Zhuzhou.
Every year, the mistress of the house made a grand impression at the Blossom Festival, attracting the admiration of nobles and elites alike. The largest and most beautiful pleasure boat on the Zhuo River belonged to her.
Qiyun House was thus more luxurious and refined than other houses, with winding corridors and layered pavilions. The buildings stretched out from the main hall like the flowing silk ribbons of a celestial maiden.
By night, hundreds of lanterns illuminated the structure, turning it into a fairyland. By day, it was one of the few tranquil places in the city.
At this hour, the courtesans were still resting, and the occasional maid moved lightly along the corridors.
A sudden, heavy rainstorm brought a deafening noise, waking one of the courtesans. She shook a bell, summoning her attendants.
The maids quickly set to work, carrying wash basins and trays of food as they hurried across the wooden floors to attend to her.
Those soft, rhythmic footsteps echoed through the floors, reaching the dark recesses below, like the muffled sound of thunder.
Few knew of the basement beneath the building.
In stark contrast to the fragrant warmth and bright elegance above, the basement was narrow, cold, and damp.
Whenever it rained, especially when it poured, mud-laden water would seep in through the half-exposed vent above.
Near the vent, a few low orange trees grew, their blossoms filling the air with a thick, sweet scent. Their delicate white petals drifted in with the rain, softening the earthy staleness that clung to the basement.
In the dark basement, a shadowy figure sat up, tilting his head as he gently sniffed the long-missed scent.
He remembered that before he turned twelve, he had always lived in a basement filled with this scent.
His birth was far from respectable; it seemed he was the child secretly born from the union between a woman from the Qiyun Tower and one of her clients.
For some reason, he wasn’t abandoned to fend for himself outside after birth but was instead raised in secret, like a rat, hidden away in the basement beneath the tower.
He didn’t know who his mother was, nor if she ever visited him. He only knew that she despised him.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have ordered his tongue cut off simply because he had cried and fussed as a child.
Thus, a child born blind became a mute as well.
Of course, not seeing didn’t matter much; the perpetual darkness of the basement hardly required sight.
Not being able to speak didn’t affect him either; before he was twelve, almost no one ever spoke to him.
Then, after he turned twelve, he fell to the dark side and became a demonic creature known as “Silk Nest.” Everyone in Qiyun Tower became his eyes and his voice.
Starting with Qiyun Tower, his threads stretched over the entire southern city and then across Zhuzhou… His web grew wider and wider, enveloping almost everything.
He had countless eyes, tongues, and throats, and his web was littered with puppets that produced his sustenance.
As a fallen demon, he fed on human pain and despair.
And this world was miserable enough that despair and pain were endless, needing no encouragement, making every place his hunting ground.
Even a few foolish, self-proclaimed “good” people who tried to stop and kill him were ultimately killed by him.
Like a spider without predators, he wove a world that pleased him.
So, how was it that he had returned to being twelve years old?
He moved his slender, pale fingers and his weak, feeble legs.
The long-forgotten sense of frailty was rather unpleasant.
Above him, a wooden plank was pushed aside as someone entered.
From his memories, only two women ever came here. One was younger, carrying a strong scent of makeup, and she was always full of complaints and disgust.
She would pour food straight down his throat, regardless of how scalding it was.
She never bothered to clean him properly, just roughly wiped his face and head with a cloth before leaving hastily.
“Disgusting! Such a nuisance, why hasn’t this wretch died yet!” she would always say in a voice filled with contempt.
The other woman was silent, with rougher hands and was older.
Today, it was the silent one who had come, setting down a lamp, a food box, and a wooden basin beside him.
The fragrance of thick porridge wafted through the air, and the boy, lost in thought, felt his senses reawakening, realizing he was incredibly hungry. It wasn’t just his stomach; his entire body ached and burned from hunger.
The weakness he’d felt earlier was due to this hunger.
He remembered now—before he turned twelve, he often went hungry because they didn’t bring him food every day, usually only once every day or two.
The hunger he’d endured in his youth had affected him, making him insatiably greedy after becoming the Silk Nest.
A spoonful of warm porridge was brought to his lips.
He opened his mouth, revealing the red interior and the stump of his tongue.
With most of his tongue gone, his sense of taste had dulled, and he couldn’t detect flavors unless they were strong.
To him, food generally had no taste. But the hungry do not care about flavor.
The silent woman fed him, dampened a cloth to wipe his body, and changed him into fresh clothes.
Her movements were neither gentle nor rough, as though she were handling something lifeless and unbreathing.
Finally, she took away the basin in the corner where waste had been collected and left quietly.
Outside, the rain had stopped.
In the darkness, he rose from the crude little bed, his feet meeting the damp floor.
Blind, he followed the flow of air to the ventilation window.
With the rain gone, the scent of orange blossoms was stronger, and a cool droplet fell from the window onto his face.
Reaching up to touch it, he found it was a wet petal.
As he held the petal to his nose, breathing in its fragrance, an unfamiliar voice came from outside the window.
“There you are. Step back a little.”
The stone-framed window creaked as someone opened it.
A large hole appeared above, and the low orange tree outside rustled as its branches shook, sending a fresh shower of droplets down onto him.
He lifted his head toward the opening.
Blind from birth, he had always seen what others couldn’t—the force or essence emanating from people.
Most people had faint, blurry gray shadows. Those “cultivators” had faint golden hues.
The brightest he’d ever seen was from that group who had sworn to vanquish demons and uphold the righteous path. That man and his comrades had shone with a light as brilliant as lanterns.
And this person before him…
A blindingly radiant, flowing light burned in the shape of a person.
It had appeared before him, sudden and sharp.
It reminded him of the first time he had turned someone into a puppet, using their eyes to see the world anew.
—It was too bright.
The thing he hated most was this kind of blinding brilliance.
Whenever he saw such brightness, he wanted to extinguish it, just like he had extinguished the “lamps” of that team.
This world should be submerged in darkness, just like him. How could there be light?
“Hello,” the blinding light greeted him cheerfully, then announced, “From now on, you’re my little brother!”
“Hm?” Dragging his weak legs, he retreated toward the depths of the basement, emitting a questioning sound through his nose.
This scene wasn’t in his memory, was it?
When he had first left this basement, it had been because a distinguished guest had accidentally dropped a precious pearl down the ventilation shaft.
To retrieve it for the guest, the “rat” in the basement had finally been noticed and, to everyone’s amazement, was dragged out.
At that time, a crowd had gathered to watch. It wasn’t like now, in this hidden moment, where a strange person had lifted the ventilation window and claimed he was to be his brother.
‘Ah, isn’t this almost laughably absurd?’ he thought.
The strange, radiant person jumped down into the basement, lifted him up, and held him as if he were a child.
Then, with ease, he carried him out through that opening and back to the surface.
In an instant, the basement’s damp, earthy stench was replaced by the fresh fragrance of flowers after rain.
“Ah…” The frail figure in his arms stirred slightly.
Yu Guang, accustomed to carrying little ones he’d “adopted” as younger brothers, adjusted his hold and said, “Your voice is quite nice, so from now on, you’ll be called Yu Yin. How does that sound?”
Confident in his naming abilities, Yu Guang proudly thought of the names he’d given to each of his “little brothers,” and they had all approved!
The one given this new name wore an expression like a clay doll, his face pale from years without sunlight, seeming shadowed even in the light.
His pitch-black eyes “looked” through his darkness at the blinding light so close before him.
A soft laugh escaped his mouth as he slowly parted his lips, a “ha” sound lingering in the air.
“Ah, sorry, I forgot you can’t speak. Well, then, it’s settled,” Yu Guang said, hugging him and retracing his steps out of Qiyun Tower.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
By evening, the Qiyun Tower behind them was coming to life, flower-shaped lanterns lighting up one by one.
Voices of women echoed from the pavilions, gate attendants called out for guests, and a sweet, winding melody played in the background.
It was filled with so many false sounds of joy.
These familiar sounds gradually faded as Yu Guang carried him further and further away, replaced only by Yu Guang’s own light footsteps.
He had been born and raised in Qiyun Tower, transformed into a demon there, weaving his first web within its walls.
Since then, it had become his nest, and he had never left.
But now, he was being taken away.
‘Blinding light, where did you come from, and what kind of person are you?’
“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Yu Guang, your big brother,” Yu Guang declared confidently.
In the days to come, he would continue repeating this claim of brotherhood.
In his experience, if he didn’t say it often enough, children wouldn’t understand or remember.
Like their fifth brother, who, when he first came to the house, was still young and often yelled things like, “Who are you?! My big brother? Hmph, I don’t have a brother!”
“Think you’re my brother? Hahaha, you can go die!”
Of course, in time, even Fifth Brother accepted him as his big brother and eventually behaved much better.
Fifth Brother had been mischievous and hard to teach.
Luckily, this new sixth little brother seemed a bit more obedient than Fifth.
Suddenly, Yu Guang lifted his new brother up by the armpits, holding him up for a closer look. “You look so small—are you really twelve?”
The one suspended in the air raised his hand and gave this strange “brother” a light slap. “Smack.”
“Oh?” The golden figure of light exclaimed in surprise. “You don’t have much strength, do you?”
This feeble attempt at a slap was no stronger than the paw swipe of a kitten. Even little Yu Le, their Fifth Brother, had slapped harder when he was just four.
“Tomorrow, you’re going to start training with me.” Yu Guang pulled him back into his arms and squeezed his thin arm as he made the declaration.
