The two crystalline Peach Blossoms lay on the dark green moss, their exquisite beauty a profound and sickening blasphemy. They caught the faint, weeping light of the overcast sky, glinting with a cold, internal fire. The air in the garden, heavy with the scent of ozone and overturned earth, had grown thin, each breath a conscious effort. A silence, far heavier than any sound, pressed down on them, the silence of a ritual about to begin.
Zhuoyan knelt, her own exhaustion a distant drumbeat against the roaring fire of her focus. She stared at the plugs, her mind—a fortress of ice and logic—finally grasping the full, diabolical architecture of Wan's design. This was not a weapon of simple force like the Serpent's Embrace. This was an instrument of psychological erosion. It was designed to breach the body's most private sanctum and wage a relentless, internal siege against the mind's composure. It would not kill. It would simply make every living second an exercise in controlled agony, turning the very seat of one's spiritual focus into a source of unending, humiliating distraction.
And Wan, her hated rival, had conceived of it. That thought landed with the cold finality of a coffin lid shutting. Wan was not just a spymaster; she was a philosopher of pain, an artist of suffering.
"A stalemate in force requires a trial of will," Wan whispered, her voice a ragged ghost on the air. With a grace that belied the ordeal her body had just endured, she began to push herself up. Her muscles trembled, her skin was a canvas of pale bruises under the grey light, but her eyes held the unnerving calm of a high priestess approaching her own sacrificial altar. "As the challenger with this final instrument, the honor of the first trial is mine."
The words were a binding oath, thick with grim formality. With leaden slowness, Wan maneuvered herself onto her hands and knees, her back to Zhuoyan. It was a posture of supreme, calculated vulnerability, a willing presentation for the next phase of their mutual debasement. Her elegant spine, a perfect, shivering curve in the cold rain, led down to the new frontier of their conflict.
"There is an elixir," Wan said, her voice strained, tight with the effort of holding the position. "A lubricant. It is not a mercy. It is a necessity. Our Abyss Gates are virgin seals. They must be… encouraged… before the final instrument can be seated. You will begin."
The order was explicit. The humiliation was to be methodical.
A cold dread, sharp and acidic, twisted in Zhuoyan's gut. She knelt behind her rival. The space between them, once a battlefield, had become a horrifyingly intimate surgical theater. She picked up the small, iridescent vial of Moonpetal Elixir. The scent of night-blooming jasmine and something colder, something metallic and clean like moonlight on steel, filled the air.
"With your tongue, Zhuoyan," Wan's voice was a low, strained command. "We must be thorough. We must be… intimate. It is the only way."
Zhuoyan felt a surge of revulsion so powerful it made her gag. She, Elder Zhuoyan of the Celestial Blade, was being ordered to perform the most debasing of acts on her mortal enemy. But it was the trial. Wan would have to do the same for her. The symmetry was perfect; the humiliation, mutual. To refuse would be to forfeit. It was a checkmate of pride.
With a jaw clenched so tightly her teeth ached, Zhuoyan leaned forward. The rain dripped from her hair onto Wan's back. She reached out and parted the soft, rain-slicked flesh of Wan's buttocks. Before her lay the tiny, virginal, impossibly tight pucker of the Abyss Gate. It was a perfect, unbroken seal, a testament to centuries of celestial discipline that she was now commanded to defile.
Taking a shuddering breath that felt like swallowing broken glass, Zhuoyan extended her tongue.
The first touch was electric.
Wan's entire body jolted as if struck by lightning. A sharp, involuntary gasp tore from her lips, and the muscle clamped shut with the unthinking, absolute rejection of pure instinct. It was a door slamming shut and bolting itself from the inside.
"Relax, Wan," Zhuoyan hissed, her words a strange, venomous mix of command and mockery. "Your own body betrays your philosophy of yielding. I cannot do this if you fight me."
A violent tremor ran through Wan's frame. Zhuoyan could feel the war raging within her rival—the profound mental will fighting against the body's most primal, instinctual defense. Zhuoyan pressed on, her tongue tracing the tight, resistant ring of muscle, trying to soothe, to coax, to deceive it into yielding. It was like trying to lick open a clamshell. The muscle was iron-hard. The taste was clean, the scent of Wan's skin mixing with rain and the faint, metallic tang of adrenaline.
After a long, humiliating minute that stretched into an eternity for them both, Zhuoyan felt a minuscule shift. A slight lessening of the tension. It wasn't a true yielding; it was a supreme act of will on Wan's part, a conscious overriding of her own screaming nerves. Seizing the opportunity, Zhuoyan pushed the tip of her tongue against the entrance. It dipped inwards by a fraction of an inch, met immediately by a wall of internal resistance.
Wan let out a low, agonized groan, her hips twitching. The sensation was not pleasant. It was acutely invasive, a pointed, wet pressure that her body had no context for, a deep violation that preceded the true assault.
"Not enough," Zhuoyan stated, pulling back. Her lips were numb, her mind reeling. She poured a copious amount of the slick, silvery elixir onto her fingers. "The elixir will help, but your body must be taught to accept what is to come."
She positioned the tip of one lubricated finger against the now-sensitized, weeping entrance. She pushed. Wan's body went rigid again, another choked gasp escaping her as the solid digit slid into the tight passage. It was a violating probe, stretching the powerful, untrained muscles from within. The pressure was immense, focused, and deeply uncomfortable.
"Breathe," Zhuoyan commanded, her voice flat. She began to rotate her finger, a slow, grinding circle designed to stretch the tissue.
Wan's breath came in ragged, painful pants. A low, continuous moan began in her throat, a sound of pure, invasive discomfort. Zhuoyan ignored it, her focus absolute. With cold determination, she forced a second finger alongside the first.
This time, Wan cried out. A sharp, pained sound, no longer muffled. Her hips bucked, a desperate, instinctual attempt to dislodge the invading presence. Zhuoyan slammed a heavy palm onto the small of her back, pinning her in place.
"Hold still!" she snarled, the frustration and her own simmering dread boiling over. She worked her two fingers deeper, stretching, forcing, preparing the way. The muscles fought her, trembling and spasming violently around her hand. It was a hateful, intimate struggle. After a moment that stretched into an eternity, she withdrew her fingers. The opening was red, swollen, weeping. It was a brutalized ruin.
And it was woefully, pitifully insufficient for what came next.
She picked up the heavily lubricated Peach Blossom. Its 3-inch thick, spherical base seemed like a monstrous impossibility, a cruel joke compared to the small, ravaged opening she had just created. She positioned its rounded, 5-petaled tip.
"I am ready," Wan breathed, the words a lie they both had to accept as truth.
Zhuoyan didn't hesitate. She placed her palm on the heavy, spherical base of the plug and began to lean, putting the steady, undeniable pressure of her body weight into the insertion.
For a long moment, nothing happened. The plug's head pressed against the tight ring of muscle, stretching the skin to a translucent, pale sheen, but not entering. It was like trying to force a cannonball through a keyhole.
Then, with a slow, wet, splitting sound that seemed to echo in the dead air, the head of the plug began its horrifying journey.
Wan's body convulsed. A sound tore from her throat, a high, keening cry of pure, structural violation that was swallowed by the indifferent rain. This was not the sharp cry of her climax with the serpent; this was the sound of a body being fundamentally, architecturally unmade. Her back arched violently, her hips lifting off the ground as her body tried to escape the unbearable, expanding pressure.
Zhuoyan held her down, her face a mask of cold concentration, and kept pushing. Slow. Inexorable.
She felt the moment the widest point of the petals—the full 3-inch diameter—breached the outer gate. It wasn't a single tear, but a series of deep, sickening *pops* from within Wan's body. It was the sound of stout ligaments, which had held her pelvic structure in perfect alignment for centuries, being stretched to their absolute breaking point. It was the sound of deep muscle fascia being violently torn apart. It was the sound of a perfect vessel being broken.
Wan's scream dissolved into a series of strangled, guttural sobs. Her entire body was shaking, a leaf in a hurricane. Zhuoyan could see the muscles of her buttocks, physically forced apart, stretched taut and pale around the obscene mass of the invading crystal.
Then, the resistance gave way. The rest of the plug's length slid home with a final, deep, wet squelch, seating itself fully within her.
It was in.
Wan collapsed, her arms giving out, her face planting into the cold mud. She lay there, limp and boneless, a broken doll impaled on a beautiful flower. The heavy, spherical base of the plug was a perfect, hard, round mound pressed against her, creating a new, monstrous contour right in the middle of her now-spread buttocks. Her form was permanently, visibly altered.
Zhuoyan knelt, her own body trembling with a mixture of cold triumph and empathetic horror. The keyhole on the plug's stem dangled, waiting. She reached for the small, silver key that had been on the plug she just inserted, her fingers slick with rain and elixir.
"Lock it," Wan's voice was a barely-there rasp from the mud. It was her last act of command in this phase.
Zhuoyan took a deep breath. She inserted the key. She channeled a minuscule, precise pulse of her qi.
***CLICK.***
The sound was a tiny, internal whisper, almost inaudible. But its effect on Wan was a cataclysm.
Zhuoyan watched, mesmerized with horror, as Wan's body went absolutely rigid. A deep, soul-shaking groan rumbled up from her chest, a sound of such profound, bewildered agony it made Zhuoyan's blood run cold. Her back arched again, lifting her torso from the mud, her limbs locked and trembling. Her hands clawed at the moss, tearing out clumps of green and black earth.
Inside her, the five smooth, rounded petals had bloomed.
The initial, acute pain of being torn open was now gone, replaced by something far more insidious. It was the sensation Zhuoyan herself would soon know. The immense, overwhelming fullness. The deep, structural ache of her re-formed flesh being held in its new, broken position. The constant, dragging weight of the heavy crystal pulling downwards, a burden her muscles would now have to fight every second.
And worst of all, the new pressure. The five rounded petals, now flared open, were pressing firmly, deeply, into nerves that had never known such a thing. A wave of agonizing, confusing sensation flooded Wan's system. It was a deep, nauseating throb of pain, inextricably mixed with a jangling, electric hum of physiological arousal. A fire of torment with a core of unwanted, humiliating pleasure. Her body was screaming in pain while simultaneously being forced to react with the basest of physical responses.
The groan deepened, her head thrashing from side to side in the mud. This was a torment that couldn't be fought, a violation that couldn't be expelled. It was a permanent, internal state. The garden, the rain, her rival—it all faded away. There was only the plug. Only the weight. Only the pressure. Only the agonizing, endless, confusing thrum. The First Gate had fallen, and hell had been installed within its walls....
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