The first, sickly grey light of dawn was a violation. It filtered through the canopy of the weeping willow, a pale, judgmental eye illuminating a scene from a forgotten, brutalist hell. The punishing rain had softened to a cold, weeping mist, and the air in the secret garden was a foul, stagnant miasma. The cloying perfume of night-blooming jasmine, once a scent of seduction, was now a funeral wreath, unable to mask the raw, metallic tang of shed blood from Zhuoyan's own bitten lip, the alchemical coldness of the Moonpetal Elixir, and the animalistic musk of two supreme beings who had been systematically, physically, and spiritually broken.
They lay as they had fallen, not in repose, but in a tableau of utter defeat.
It was a grotesque and erotic sculpture of degradation. They lay face down in the black, cold mud, their bodies angled towards each other as they had collapsed. Their arms were splayed, their fingers clawed into the earth. The most profound, most humiliating detail of their shared failure was their posture. In their final, agonizing collapse, their bodies had instinctively tried to alleviate the colossal pressure of the objects impaling them. Their hips were raised slightly in the air, their legs parted in a V of forced surrender. They were two goddesses, presented like offerings on an altar of their own making.
Zhuoyan, a creature of ice and will, was a study in ruined alabaster. Her lean, sculpted form, usually a testament to her unyielding discipline, was now a map of her ordeal. Her pale skin was caked in a thick, black layer of mud, streaked clean in rivulets by the mist. Her long, dark hair, usually bound in a severe, intricate crown, was a sodden, tangled mass splayed across her back and shoulders, matted with dirt and broken leaves.
The view from behind was a portrait of her desecration. Her firm, sculpted buttocks, usually held with a tight, disciplined clench, were now forced apart, held in a permanent, splayed posture by the monstrous object wedged between them. The 3-inch, spherical base of the smoky-black crystal plug was starkly visible, a perfect, alien sphere that seemed to have been hammered into her flesh. The skin around it was not bloody, but it was a canvas of terrible, bloodless trauma—an angry, inflamed, deep-red circle, swollen and stretched taut, radiating outwards like a dark, bruised halo. It was the mark of a body stretched past its natural limits, of fascia and ligaments torn by blunt, structural force.
Further down, her Jade Bloom, which she had so brutally wielded in her final, failed assault, was a ruin. The skin was red, chafed raw from the grinding, hateful friction of the Serpent's Embrace, a stark, painful-looking contrast to the pale marble of her inner thighs.
Beside her, a mirror of her shame, lay Wan. Her opulent, creamy curves, a landscape of celebrated softness, were similarly defiled. Her own dark hair was a wet, tangled spill across the mud. Her body, softer and more yielding, had taken the night's abuse differently. Deep, finger-shaped bruises, the ghost of Zhuoyan's furious grip, mottled her hips and thighs.
And she, too, was impaled. Her full, rounded buttocks were held in the same, unnatural, splayed position. The rose-quartz sphere of her own plug was a obscene, beautiful tumor, its pinkish crystal a grotesque mockery of the "Peach Blossom" name. The softer flesh around it was even more swollen than Zhuoyan's, the skin a deep, angry, purplish-red, a testament to the same brutal, internal stretching. Her own Jade Bloom, plump and rosy, was similarly chafed, swollen, and glistening with the residue of their hateful "mapping."
Dangling from the stem of each plug, caked in mud, were the small, delicate chains, each holding the key to the other's damnation. They lay there, two of the most powerful beings in the realm, naked, broken, and breathing in the shallow, ragged gasps of the truly vanquished.
Consciousness returned not as a gentle awakening, but as a cold, blunt instrument, a hammer-blow to the soul.
For Zhuoyan, the first sensation was not the cold mud on her cheek, nor the ache of her torn ligaments, nor the sting of the mist on her raw skin. It was the thrum.
It was a deep, nauseating, and permanent vibration originating from the very core of her being. It was an engine of torment that had been installed while she was unconscious. The five crystalline petals, now bloomed and locked deep within her virgin Abyss Gate, were alive. They pressed. They hummed. They radiated a constant, low-frequency signal that was a perfect, diabolical fusion of profound structural ache and a profane, jangling, electric tingle of physiological arousal. It was a violation of her very spirit, an internal siege that had not paused.
Zhuoyan's Internal Monologue: "It is still there. It did not end. This is not the aftermath. This is the beginning. I am… occupied. Permanently. The pressure… it feels like a mountain has been inserted into my core, holding my torn flesh in a state of perpetual violation. And the tingle… it is a tiny, endless, humiliating spark, a nerve she has ignited that will never, ever go out. I can feel the weight of it, a constant, dragging burden, pulling me down, anchoring me to this new reality of shame. She has built a prison inside my body. I am forever unclean. I will never be pure again."
A foot away, Wan's eyes fluttered open. Her experience was identical, a mirror image of the same, inescapable reality. The plug. The weight. The thrum.
Wan's Internal Monologue: "The genius of it. The cruelty. My own design… it is perfect. More perfect than I could have imagined. It is a masterpiece of torment. It is not a simple pain one can meditate past, forcing the mind to a higher plane. It is an event. A constant, low-level climax of agony and sensation that demands attention, that shreds focus, that turns the mind's most sacred sanctuary into a public forum of humiliation. I am impaled. I am anchored. And my key… she has my key. I have chained myself to my own creation."
It was the sound of a distant songbird, a single, cheerful, utterly indifferent trill, that shattered their shared trance.
Morning.
The thought landed with the force of a physical blow, a shared spike of pure, unadulterated panic that eclipsed even the thrum of the plugs.
They must not be found.
If a junior disciple, a gardener, anyone… were to stumble into this garden and find them like this—naked, bleeding from her lip, muddy, and impaled with obscene instruments of torment—it would not be a mere scandal. It would be the end. Their authority, their positions as Elders, their very lives within the sect, would be over. The political war they were waging would become a moot point, their judgment on Ercio an irrelevant footnote. They would be the sect's greatest shame, a story whispered in latrines for the next thousand years.
This shared, desperate, existential terror was their first, unspoken alliance.
"We… must… move." Wan's voice was a ragged croak, a ruin of its former melodic authority. She tried to push herself up, to plant her hands in the mud and engage her core.
The moment her abdominal muscles tensed, the five flared petals of the plug ground against her torn, internal ligaments. The thrum spiked into a jolt of white-hot, blinding agony. A strangled, high-pitched cry tore from her lips, and she collapsed back into the mud, her body convulsing, her face contorted in pain.
"I… I can't…" she whimpered, the words a confession of absolute defeat. The plug was a merciless jailer; it punished any attempt to even use the muscles of her own body.
Zhuoyan watched, her own body rigid with empathetic horror. She knew, with an intimacy that transcended understanding, exactly what Wan had just felt. She tried to move herself, but with more caution. She didn't use her core. She tried to push up, using only her arms, her elbows trembling under the strain.
Slowly, her muscles screaming, her joints protesting, she managed to get her torso off the ground. But now the full, dragging weight of the heavy, spherical plug was pulling directly downwards on her ravaged Abyss Gate. The sensation of her internal flesh, her torn fascia, being dragged by the anchored petals was a new and profound agony. She, too, cried out, a low, guttural sound, and fell back to her elbows, panting.
They were trapped. Trapped by their own bodies, trapped by their mutual torture.
Zhuoyan, her face a mask of cold, hateful despair, twisted her head. She locked eyes with Wan. In that single, shared look, everything was communicated. I hate you. You are the source of my agony. But I cannot escape this without you, and you cannot escape without me. We are bound.
With a strength she did not know she possessed, a strength born of pure, undiluted panic, Zhuoyan extended a trembling, mud-caked hand.
Wan, her face pale and streaked with tears, stared at the offered hand for a long, hateful moment. Then, with a shuddering, broken sigh, she reached out and grasped it. Their grips were weak, pathetic, a parody of their former strength, two mud-slicked hands clinging to each other in a pit of their own making.
"Together," Zhuoyan hissed, the word a venomous command.
"On three," Wan breathed.
"One."
They tensed, their knuckles white.
"Two."
They took a ragged, collective breath, the cold mist filling their lungs.
"THREE!"
With a synchronized, agonized roar that was a perfect, terrible harmony of their shared pain, they pulled. Using each other as anchors, as counterweights, they lurched, stumbled, and fell upwards. They managed to get to their knees, their bodies trembling so violently they could barely hold themselves.
For a moment, they simply knelt in the mud, facing each other, hands still clasped, panting like wounded animals. The pain was astronomical. The plugs, now vertical, were a colossal, blunt, stretching pressure, and the thrum of the petals was a deafening roar in their minds.
"The… spring," Wan gasped, her head lolling. She gestured with a faint nod toward a secluded corner of the garden, where a faint plume of steam rose in the cold morning air.
The hot spring. Their only salvation.
"Stand," Zhuoyan commanded.
The process of rising from their knees to their feet was another ten-second eternity of hell. They used each other's shoulders, their arms draped over one another, a grotesque and intimate parody of two lovers supporting each other. They rose, their legs shaking uncontrollably, their knees slick with mud.
And then, they took their first steps.
It was not a walk. It was a grotesque, bow-legged, agonizing shuffle. They could not close their legs. The 3-inch thick, spherical bases of the plugs, now wedged permanently between their buttocks, forced their hips into an unnaturally wide, splayed gait. Their buttocks were physically held apart by the foreign objects. Every step sent a jolt, a new wave of grinding, internal friction as the anchored petals pulled against their ravaged flesh.
"Ah… ah… ah…" A low, rhythmic whimper escaped Wan's lips with every agonizing step.
"Silence!" Zhuoyan snarled, though her own face was a mask of pure, white-lipped agony. "Do you want to be found?"
Leaning on each other, two broken goddesses, they made the slow, terrible pilgrimage across the garden. The thirty feet to the hot spring felt like thirty miles. Every step was a fresh, new, personal hell, a reminder of the permanent, internal violation. Finally, they reached the edge.
It was a small, natural grotto, lined with smooth black stones, the water bubbling gently, a cloud of sulfur-scented steam rising into the grey light. It was a portrait of paradise.
With a shared sigh of desperation, they collapsed more than stepped into the water.
But there was no relief of sitting. They could not. The rigid, intrusive forms of the plugs made that an impossibility. The moment their buttocks touched the stone steps, a jolt of agony would have shot up their spines. Instead, they stumbled to the far wall of the grotto, bracing their hands against the slick, warm stones. They leaned forward, their bodies partially submerged, letting the buoyant, 100-degree water envelop their ravaged lower halves.
The heat was a living thing. It was a pure, shocking, and exquisite relief. The moment it enveloped their cold, brutalized skin, they both cried out, a sound of such profound, desperate release it was almost orgasmic. The agonizing tension in their muscles, which had been clenched into iron knots, began to melt. The sharp, tearing pain of their Abyss Gates and the raw, chafed soreness of their Jade Blooms subsided from a screaming inferno to a dull, manageable throb.
The thrum, however, did not stop.
It was still there, a constant, low-frequency hum deep within them. The heat had not banished it, but it had soothed the raw edges, making it, for a moment, almost bearable.
They stood there, leaning, their arms shaking, their heads bowed, steam rising around them. They existed, two enemies bound by a shared, secret torment, finding a momentary, hateful truce in the healing embrace of the water.
But the morning light was growing stronger. The truce had to end.
"We must… clean ourselves," Wan's voice was stronger now, bolstered by the heat. "We cannot return like this."
Zhuoyan opened her eyes. They were cold and hard, but held a grim, pragmatic assent. "We cannot."
This new task was, in its own way, the final and most profound humiliation. From a hidden alcove in the stones, Wan retrieved a piece of soft, sea-silk sponge and a small bar of cleansing, floral-scented soap, left there for such clandestine visits. She offered the sponge to Zhuoyan.
Zhuoyan took it. This was the unspoken agreement. I will tend to you. You will tend to me. We are each other's keepers.
With a sigh of pure, hateful resignation, Wan turned and presented her back, bracing her hands against the stone wall of the spring. Zhuoyan moved behind her. She could see, even through the steaming water, the state of her rival. The flesh of her buttocks was a canvas of deep, angry, purplish bruises, the skin around the heavy, rose-quartz plug red and inflamed.
With a hand that trembled with a mixture of rage and revulsion, Zhuoyan began to wash her. She lathered the sponge and gently, methodically, washed the mud from Wan's back, her shoulders, her arms. Her touch was clinical, impersonal, and utterly hateful.
Then, she reached the true source of their shared shame. Her fingers, slick with soap, had to work around the solid, crystalline base of the plug. She had to lift the heavy, spherical orb slightly—a movement that caused Wan to hiss in pain—to wash the ravaged, swollen skin beneath it. The act was so profoundly, terribly intimate that it made her own stomach clench with nausea. She was tending to the very wound she had so desperately wanted to inflict, a wound that was now her own. Her fingers gently, clinically, washed the delicate, ravaged folds of Wan's Abyss Gate, cleansing the grime from the epicenter of her torment.
Wan, for her part, stood rigid, her eyes squeezed shut, her head pressed against the stone. A low, continuous moan escaped her lips, a sound of profound humiliation as her rival's fingers were forced to perform this most debasing, intimate service.
"Turn around," Zhuoyan commanded, her voice flat.
Wan turned slowly, her face a mask of shame. She now faced Zhuoyan, her body exposed. Zhuoyan's gaze was cold, but it did not waver. She took the sponge and began to wash Wan's front. She washed the mud from Wan's full, heavy breasts, her fingers brushing over the rosy-brown nipples that were pebbled from the cold and her own internal arousal. She scrubbed Wan's soft stomach and rounded hips, her touch leaving no patch of skin unclean.
Finally, she moved the sponge lower, into the water. She washed Wan's thighs, and then, with a final, hateful intimacy, she cleansed Wan's Jade Bloom. The flesh was plump, swollen, and chafed from the "mapping" trial, a testament to Wan's "yielding" nature that Zhuoyan had so brutally tested. She cleaned the area with a few quick, efficient, and degrading scrubs.
When it was done, Zhuoyan threw the sponge into the water. "Your turn."
Wan's entire body was shaking as she turned and took the sponge. Zhuoyan presented her back, her own body a rigid pillar of ice, her mind retreating to its frozen fortress. She felt Wan's trembling, clumsy fingers begin the same, hateful ritual. She felt the sponge gently washing her back. She felt the hesitant, clinical touch as Wan's fingers were forced to wash her brutalized, bleeding flesh, to work around the base of her plug. The water around them was now cloudy with mud and soap.
Then, Wan's trembling voice said, "Turn."
Zhuoyan turned, her face a mask of stone. She endured Wan's clumsy, hateful ministration as the sponge washed her own lean, alabaster form. She felt the brush of soap against her smaller, taut breasts, her pale, hard nipples. She felt the sponge move down her stomach, and finally, to her own Jade Bloom. The area was a brutalized ruin from the Serpent's Embrace, the skin an angry, inflamed red, chafed raw but not bleeding. Wan's touch, no matter how gentle, was a fresh agony, a reminder of the violation she had inflicted and received.
When the ritual was complete, they stood apart, exhausted, but clean. The worst of the physical agony had subsided, replaced by the now-permanent, dull, structural ache and the inescapable, nauseating, electric thrum. They rested for another long moment, their arms braced against the stone, gathering what little strength they had left. The sun was truly rising now. They were out of time.
"We must go," Zhuoyan said, her voice flat.
One more time, they used each other for support, their movements pained and stiff as they climbed from the healing water. The cold morning air was a shock, and the pain spiked anew, the thrum seeming to intensify as the comforting heat receded, leaving their skin prickling with goosebumps. They stood, naked, shivering, and violated, on the mossy bank.
With a flick of her wrist and a pulse of qi, Zhuoyan summoned her undergarments from her storage ring. They appeared in a shimmer of light: a simple, sleeveless chemise of the palest ice-blue silk, and a pair of matching, whisper-thin silk trousers. They were the garments she wore beneath her formal robes every day, designed for comfort and invisibility.
She braced herself against a cold stone, her movements stiff. She could not sit. She had to lift one leg, her whole body trembling from the effort and the spike of pain, and thread it through the trousers. She hissed as the fabric brushed against her raw, chafed Jade Bloom. She repeated the process with the other leg. She stood, and as she pulled the waistband up, a new, cold dread seized her.
The trousers were tight. The fine, pale silk was designed to cling to every line of her body. But now, it was a liability. The silk stretched taut over her buttocks, and in the center, at the base of her spine, the spherical base of the Peach Blossom Plug was unmistakable. It was a perfect, 3-inch, unnatural sphere, a "monstrous contour" that ruined the smooth lines of her body. It looked like a cannonball was trying to push its way out of her.
"Wan," she breathed, her voice filled with a new, sharper panic.
Wan, who had just finished her own agonizing, one-legged balancing act to pull on her undergarments—a cream-colored chemise edged in violet lace and matching thin trousers—turned. Her face went pale. "By the Ancestors…"
Zhuoyan looked at Wan and saw the exact same, horrifying deformity. Wan's opulent, generous curves were marred by the same, perfectly spherical, alien bulge. It was impossible to hide.
This was the new challenge. This was the true, public face of the trial.
"We cannot be seen," Zhuoyan whispered, her mind racing. "A single glance… they will know."
"The robes," Wan said, her voice strained. "Our heavy Elder robes will cover it."
"They will not," Zhuoyan countered, her voice sharp. "Not fully. The fabric will drape over it. It will create a bustle, an unnatural shape. Anyone with eyes will see. We will be a laughingstock before we are even condemned." She thought of the Council, of having to stand and walk before the other Elders, before Ercio, with this… thing protruding from her. The humiliation was so profound it was paralyzing.
For a moment, they stood there, two of the most powerful women in the realm, frozen by the problem of a visible panty line from hell.
It was Wan, the eternal strategist, whose mind recovered first. "Layers," she rasped. "We must use layers. We must obscure the shape."
Her movements pained and stiff, she stripped off the revealing cream-colored silk trousers, a process that was its own fresh, hissing agony. She stood naked from the waist down, shivering, her body a map of bruises. Then, she summoned a new set of garments from her ring. Not one pair of undergarments, but three.
"First," she explained, her voice the pained, meticulous rasp of a field surgeon, "the binding." She held up a pair of thick, tight-fitting shorts, made of black, reinforced martial silk. They were high-waisted and looked brutally constricting, like a girdle.
She began the agonizing process of pulling them on. She had to brace herself against a tree, her breath coming in short, sharp pants, as she worked the tight fabric up her thighs. The moment the waistband began to cover her buttocks, she had to stand and force the material up and over the spherical plug. The garment was designed to compress, and it pressed the 3-inch orb harder against her ravaged flesh, cinching it tightly to her body.
Wan gasped, her hand flying to the wall as the internal thrum spiked into a jolt of pure, nauseating agony. Her legs trembled, and for a moment, Zhuoyan thought she might collapse.
"It… it presses it in," Wan panted, her face beaded with new sweat. "It makes the bulge flatter." It was no longer a perfect sphere, but a more diffused, unnatural swelling at the base of her spine.
She did not stop. She then pulled on a second, looser pair of deep violet silk trousers over the binding shorts. Finally, she put on her original form-fitting outer chemise and pants over that. She turned.
Zhuoyan assessed her with a critical eye. It was… better. Much better. The hard, perfect, spherical line was gone, diffused by the multiple, tight layers. It was no longer an obvious, alien object. Instead, it just looked as though Wan's tailbone was strangely, unnaturally pronounced, her buttocks held in a permanent, clenched, and slightly spread posture.
"It will have to do," Zhuoyan said, her voice grim. She immediately began to mirror the process.
She stripped her own ice-blue trousers, her every movement a study in controlled agony. She, too, stood naked from the waist down, her lean form trembling in the cold. She summoned her own solution from her storage ring: a set of binding shorts similar to Wan's, but made of a stiff, glacial-white linen-silk, a fabric with almost no stretch.
The agony of pulling them on was extraordinary. Zhuoyan was not soft and yielding like Wan; her body was lean, hard muscle, with less flesh to absorb the pressure. When she pulled the tight, ungiving fabric up, it felt like a band of steel, cinching down on her bruised hips and pressing the hard, cold crystal sphere against her torn, inflamed skin with brutal, unforgiving force.
The internal thrum exploded. It was a jangling, nauseating wave of pain and unwanted pleasure so intense it made her vision go white for a second. She choked back a scream, her hands gripping a tree for support, her knuckles white. She had traded one problem for another. The plug was now less visible, but it was more present, the pressure now a constant, grinding, claustrophobic reality.
Panting, she forced herself to continue. She pulled on a second, looser pair of ice-blue trousers over the binding, and then her original outer chemise and trousers.
Finally, they were both dressed in their complex, painful layers. They looked at each other, their faces pale and haunted. The final concealment was needed.
Together, they summoned their heavy, formal Elder robes. Zhuoyan's materialized in a shimmer of icy light: multiple, cascading layers of glacial-white heavy silk, the outer layer embroidered with intricate silver moon-peonies. She fastened the wide, intricate belt of polished jade slats around her waist, the structured, heavy garment finally falling into place.
Wan summoned hers: flowing layers of deep, amethyst-colored velvet-silk, embroidered with subtle, golden cloud patterns. She fastened her own belt of dark, carved spirit-wood.
The multiple, heavy, flowing layers of their formal attire at last provided the final, crucial layer of concealment. They looked at each other. They were no longer naked, brutalized victims. They were Elders of the Jade Serenity Sect. But their posture was stiff, unnatural, their faces drawn and pale beneath a mask of command.
"We must walk," Wan stated.
They moved out of the garden, their steps no longer the bow-legged shuffle of a cripple, but a new, stilted, and terrible gait. They had to walk with their backs ramrod straight, their buttocks permanently clenched to manage the internal thrum, their steps short and mincing. To bend, to stride, to even sit, was an impossibility.
They moved through the pre-dawn shadows, two ghosts of their former selves, sticking to hidden paths and covered walkways, their journey a silent symphony of shared agony. They parted at the central nexus without a word, without a look. Two enemies, now bound by a single, terrible, and identical secret, went their separate ways.
Zhuoyan took the eastern path, her mind a cold, empty void, focusing only on left foot, right foot, clench, breathe.
Wan, however, took the path toward her own dwellings, a new layer of challenge awaiting her. Her face was a mask of placid calm, but beneath the layers of silk and velvet, her body was a warzone. The binding shorts were grinding the plug's base into her raw flesh, and the internal thrum was a constant, deafening roar. She did not approach her cave from the main entrance. She knew her guards were still there, maintaining her alibi, just as she had instructed.
Instead, she veered off the main path, behind a large, decorative spirit-stone. Obscured by a thicket of weeping moon-willows, a small, nearly invisible fissure was set into the rock face. It was a secret passage, known only to her and the Sect Leader. She placed her palm upon it, channeling a faint pulse of qi. The stone slid open with a soundless, grinding motion, revealing a dark, narrow tunnel.
She slipped inside. The tunnel was damp and sloped upwards, and the journey was a new, private hell. She had to walk bent over, a posture that sent fresh spikes of agony through her as the plug's petals ground against her torn insides. She whimpered, but there was no one to hear.
After a long, agonizing minute, she emerged through a disguised panel at the back of her own opulent, empty chambers. She was in. She was safe.
She staggered to the center of her room and listened. From the main entrance, far across the chamber, she could hear the faint, muffled voices of her guards.
"...No, disciple, I have told you three times," said her most trusted guard, her voice a perfect imitation of polite boredom. "Elder Wan is in deep seclusion. She is not to be disturbed by anyone, least of all for a simple matter of herb allotments."
A younger voice mumbled an apology and retreated.
Wan allowed herself a single, grim, and utterly joyless smile. Her alibi was intact. Her strategy, though costly, was holding. She had won the night's war of secrecy.
She staggered to her meditation platform—a large, plush cushion of deep velvet—and looked at it with a kind of bitter, ironic despair. She could not sit. She would not be able to sit for days, perhaps weeks.
Instead, with a groan of pure, soul-deep weariness, she collapsed onto her knees, bracing her arms and forehead against the cushion, her buttocks raised in the air in the same, humiliating posture she had awoken in. She was alone, victorious in her subterfuge, and utterly, profoundly miserable.
At the same moment, across the sect, Zhuoyan reached the cold, silent sanctuary of her own dwelling cave. She sealed the great stone door, the sound of it locking into place echoing the CLICK of the plug's petals.
She leaned her forehead against the cold stone, her entire body trembling with the aftershocks of the night. The thrum was her only companion. A constant, nauseating, electric hum.
A single, weary, and utterly broken thought surfaced in her mind.
"Well," she breathed, the words a puff of mist in her own cold sanctum. "At least one stage is over."