The villagers of Phù Trúc had lost their minds.
Their eyes flushed pink as they lunged at the monks and nuns, coupling like rabid beasts. Their movements were frenzied, consumed entirely by lust. What words they managed were dripping with condescension - vile, mocking. Some abandoned speech altogether, reduced to guttural moans as the fire of Lust danced across their skin and soaked into their bones.
The eerie warnings from the Pagoda were ignored without hesitation.
Moans and the wet slap of flesh echoed through the courtyard. From the villagers' mouths poured a pink mist, drifting toward the four who had yet to fall. And as they inhaled it, their descent into madness deepened - more primal, more savage.
The lust-crazed villagers tore through the young monks and nuns, peeling away skin, stripping flesh clean from bone, leaving behind only skeletons.
But these skeletons were not ordinary. Their bones glowed faintly pink, and from their hollow sockets wriggled fine, hair-thin worms. Blind, twitching like serpents.
The villagers caressed, kissed the skeletons with great enthusiasm. The worms wiggled their way into the villagers' bodies. Some through mouths, other through various open wounds left by the skeletal spurs.
The villagers grinned through it all, grotesque and gleeful, their torn lips bleeding but their joy unshaken. They clung to the pink skeletons in delirious congress, bone spurs ripping through skin and muscle, staining the stone red.
And still - they smiled.
Tô Mạc Tà no longer dared to provoke the village chief. She steadied herself, eyes sweeping the scene in search of an exit.
The voice in the courtyard declared this as the first of the Eight Monastic Disciplines: Lust. In theory, resisting temptation, avoiding the pink skeletons and those mad villagers should suffice to pass.
But she didn't trust the integrity of this Thunderclap Pagoda, which had already proven its malevolence.
Relying on a killer's sense of morality was a fool's gamble.
Fortunately, the others - Kim Giác Tử, Ngân Giác Tử, and the village chief - all shared her sentiment. With a glance, they reached an unspoken agreement:
"Truce!"
The village chief bolted for the left door. Since the young monks had come from that direction, he assumed the exit lay there.
Kim Giác Tử shared the same thought, but he was slower. Seeing the entrance to the left had already been taken, he went for the one on the right instead.
Ngân Giác Tử instead leapt atop a nearby half-dead, half-living tree, carefully eyeing the hellish scene in the courtyard.
Tô Mạc Tà took the most cautious approach. She stepped back, careful to avoid the drifting mist, yet still maintained a respectful distance from the bell.
She had no intention of revealing that the courtyard was trapped in a spatial loop. Better to let others test the mystery behind this trial—any of the remaining three would do the same in her position.
Then, both doors creaked open.
Kim Giác Tử stumbled out. His eyes were wide, face twisted in horror, as if he had witnessed something beyond reason.
He was now clad in the same kasaya as the novice monks, a talisman slapped onto his forehead, and his hand clutched the Golden Coins Sword in a death grip. Panting, he glanced around, only to meet the eyes of the villagers.
They snapped.
Their pink eyes glinted with hunger. Blind, hair-thin worms writhed frantically from every crevice of their bodies. With crazed lust, they charged him, saliva and blood trailing with every step.
Kim Giác Tử gritted his teeth, remembering that violence was forbidden within the Thunderclap Pagoda. Imitating Ngân Giác Tử, he sprang onto a half-living tree and stripped off the kasaya. The moment it hit the ground, the sexually crazed villagers tore it to shreds.
The village chief wasn't so lucky.
He had chosen the left door, unaware that, due to the spatial loop, it led down the path meant for the nuns.
Now draped in a nun's robe - loosely tied at the chest, a white scarf fluttering behind him. He looked every bit the seductress. His eyes were still lucid, but his body moved with the practiced allure of a courtesan offering herself.
This man - a pseudo-Imperial, once near-invincible at Phù Trúc village - couldn't even command his own limbs.
Tô Mạc Tà's heart clenched.
She hadn't expected the Thunderclap Pagoda to be this terrifying.
If it could seize control of a half-step Imperial so easily… what hope did the rest of them have?
The male villagers spotted the chief. Their eyes ignited crimson, and they pounced with ravenous hunger. They ripped away his robes, pinning him beneath a writhing pile of bodies.
At the brink of despair, the chief let out a roar and unleashed a burst of chi, blasting the drooling villagers in all directions. He rose to his feet, drenched in saliva, and worse.
But the helpless fear had jolted him from the Pagoda's grasp. For a moment, he was himself again.
Then the bell tolled.
A deep, sonorous note rang out, straight through the marrow of their bones.
"A precept has been broken. Violence is forbidden. Retribution begins!"
From a sealed chamber, a golden chain shot forth and pinned the chief to the ground.
Both doors flew open. Eighteen monks stepped out, encased from head to toe in polished brass. In the eerie green candlelight, their metal forms gleamed, footsteps clanging in perfect unison.
They said nothing.
Forming a circle around the village chief, they began the punishment.
Though the brass monks bore no chi, every blow landed with the weight of a half-step Imperial. Hammers of flesh and metal. The chief screamed, begged, struggled. But his cries were swallowed by the pounding rhythm of iron against bone.
When it was over, only a broken, bloodied corpse remained.
Then, the pink skeletons stirred.
No longer still, they moved with malevolent hunger. Their jaws creaked open far wider than any living mouth should. And then they lunged.
With the sound of tearing silk, bone teeth bit deep into human flesh. Clawed hands raked skin like it was soaked parchment, peeling it away to expose the raw white skeleton beneath.
The villagers didn't scream. They moaned.
They smiled.
Even as their blood fountained, even as muscle was stripped from bone, they continued rutting like animals in heat, pressing against the very monsters tearing them apart.
Prey embraced predator.
Predator devoured prey.
And the air was filled with cries of obscene delight, as the villagers climaxed through agony, grinning with fleshless mouths.
It was no longer a massacre. It was desecration. Worship of pain. An orgy in the pit of hell.
And the worst part - the most dreadful truth of all - was that nothing could stop it.
Even a half-step Imperial had been powerless.
For Tô Mạc Tà, Kim Giác Tử, and Ngân Giác Tử - mere masters and a Venerated - resistance would be suicide.
Then some of the skeletons caught the scent of Kim Giác Tử. Their empty sockets turned toward his hiding place. They had remembered the smell of the kasaya he'd worn.
Slowly, they crept toward his tree.
Tô Mạc Tà and Ngân Giác Tử, for now, went untouched.
But when the skeletons touched the bark, something shifted.
Flesh began to grow on their bones, lopsided and partial, an arm here, a face there, skin bubbling like rotten dough. Yet the transformation never completed.
The hair-thin worms inside their sockets and bones went berserk. They devoured the new flesh just as quickly, chewing it off in tufts and ribbons.
The skeletons wailed, shrieks like grinding bone, and fled from the trees, retreating into the mist.
Ngân Giác Tử shouted across the courtyard:
"Saintess! These trees are safe! Climb and wait for dawn!"
Tô Mạc Tà eyed the four half-living trees.
Yes, they were safe. For now.
But this was only the first trial: Lust. Seven more Monastic Disciplines awaited. She doubted these trees would remain sanctuaries for long.
Her gaze turned to the great bell at the rear of the courtyard.
She remembered Godfell Ridge; her time with skinny Hoàng, and the unwavering Little Tathāgata.
That bald roach had a rule: no food after noon. Even after bitter battles, even when hunger gnawed at them, he would not eat until dawn.
She nodded to herself. Then strode toward the bell.
And struck it.
BONG.
The sound was not loud, but absolute. It didn't echo. It ended sound. The courtyard fell still.
The skeletons froze.
Then, as one, they turned to her.
Their skulls creaked on rusted joints. The worms in their eyes spilled forth like endless threads, writhing toward her, reaching without end.
Unfazed, she spoke:
"One of the Eight Monastic Disciplines forbids eating after noon. These creatures have violated that precept. Punish them."
The pagoda answered in a flat, inhuman monotone:
"Affirmed."
And the brass monks returned.
Without warning or chant, they descended upon the skeletons. Fists like hammers. Feet like iron mallets. Bone exploded under every strike.
The courtyard became a slaughterhouse of shattered limbs, snapped spines, and pink mist rising from crumbling remains.
And when the carnage was done, only Tô Mạc Tà, Kim Giác Tử, and Ngân Giác Tử remained upright. Trembling, blood-soaked, but alive.
The rest lay twisted on the ground, twitching in ruin.
Then the pagoda's voice rang again:
"You have passed the disciplines of non-killing, chastity, and dietary restraint. Proceed through the right door."
It creaked open with the sound of ancient wood breaking free of a thousand-year slumber.
Tô Mạc Tà exhaled, long and slow. Her heart still thundered in her chest.
But a cold thought wormed into her mind:
If Lạc Trần had been dragged into the pagoda by those skeletons at Star Fell Lake…
Then where was he now?