Third Daoist Aperture: Artificial Node → Underworld Merchant Characteristics
Fourth Daoist Aperture: Artificial Node → Mad Jester Characteristics
Total Negative Karma: 1,618 / 31,000
Fourth Spirit Core: Artificial Node → Chrono Death Characteristics
Total Refinement Qi: 2,367 / 52,410
(Due to your outstanding performance, you have awakened. You have advanced into the characterization stage of demonic evaluation, making your future world-crossing easier.)
He felt his Taijitu pieces shifting.
One piece turned purple, reflecting his actions—his role as a jester growing more pronounced.
Then came his dealings. His murders. His games and contracts.
His spirit core hardened, becoming jade-like.
The final Taijitu piece glowed bright gold, gears fanning out in a radiant array.
He could feel it—
the flow of time around everything.
Mad Jester → Demonic Aspect 9
Underworld Merchant → Demonic Aspect 9
Chrono Death (Time Death) → Demonic Aspect 9
He saw gears turning in the air as the words floated within his scythe.
Qiren stared at the man before him as a new line of text surfaced.
Physical Age: 77
Qiren clenched his fists, feeling the faint residue of time clinging to his bones.
For a fraction of a moment—
he saw what he had stolen from Devy.
Him returning home to his wife.
Speaking with his second-born, struggling through college.
Working endless shifts at the scrapyard.
Day by day.
Year by year.
He lived it.
He saw the pride as his son graduated with an engineering degree.
The family gatherings they held every few years.
The birth of his granddaughter.
And finally—
a hospital bed.
Surrounded by loved ones.
Taking his last breath.
That was what he had stripped away from the man before him.
His future.
And it felt amazing.
"Hahahahahahaha, " he laughed holding his mask with one hand, his attire ruffling without wind.
He disaligned the theater prop, his teeth chittering—bones clacking against each other—as his skin stretched into a twisted, half-chuckling grin beneath his hood.
"Our deal is complete," he said, swinging his scythe.
"Leave now, before I change my mind." Qiren's voice was calm, but the scene around him already began to erase the memories leading up to this moment.
His half-undead appearance made Devy recoil further.
To Devy, he looked eerily human—his skin a pale peach, his eyes a soft ember-red—but only until he noticed the exposed trachea.
His left cheek was fleshless, jawbone bare, held together by visible muscles, as if skin and hair had refused to grow on that side of his face.
The sight horrified him.
Devy clenched his head but forced himself to stand. "I—I'm leaving now. I'm leaving."
He cast one last glance at his friends' corpses, steeling himself, before running out the door. His eyes landed on the rows of cars parked outside the booth. He stumbled toward the gate, memories of the room already fading from his mind
After Devy left the room was left in silence, "what a show," till Missy broke it with her aplouse, "you really know how to make a girl cherish the moment."
He turned to looked at her as his cherubs flew back after there meals.
"It seems so~" he cooed back.
Driving his fingers into his robes, breaking his sturnum, as he searched for what was inside. He pulled out the pocket watch that had formed inside him holding it as he took a better looked at her.
Name: Missy Stormhill
Age: 24
Remaining Time:
67 years, 73 days, 12 hours, 7 minutes, 8 seconds
He felt his watch resonate.
His iris marked with golden numarales as he stared at the corpsese.
Though there souls had explade from there bodies some fragments clung to their shadows—he eared through there shadows, and saw somthing was born from one of them carrying the same aura as the souls above.
He saw a sparrow fly out and swirl around before landing on the corpses sacked head.
It twitched it's head then turned to him, three eyes met and he bowed to its presence. The bird was confused tilting it's head, and twited, "Pew!" it sounded like a gun, and flew into the air imitating a silenced gun over and over.
He razed his head again looking towards another body, a wet sloshing came from his head, as a bullet fell out of his skull and onto the floor, clink... Clink... Clink...
Like a broken fountain more bullets fell out.
He clicked the watches dials his brain sped, along with his body, the clock hands spun faster and faster. Neurons, blood flow, and his inteire being felt as one sole content in the slowing world.
The anomalies he had seen soon came back, appearing as he could finally meet there wave length and surpassed it making the world feel like it was frozen still.
Name: Qìrén Vhal'Zerath
Age: 1 month, 7 day's (45 mental)
Physical Age: Nonexistent
Remaining time: 21 years, 257 days, 20 hours, 16 minutes, 57 seconds ↓↓↓
In three seconds he had already lost five minutes with the number continuing to drop as the clock spun.
Blink.
Just like before he saw what he thought was a ox chewing grass growing straight from the floor.
A diced rabbit hung mid-hop, its body sliced into sections. Insects. Humanoid blurs.
Twisted cables coming from the monitors, now frozen writhing closer to a corpse—the monitor itself, depicting a blue screen filled with mouth, "what the hell have I stumbled my way into,"
He smiled remembering a scene just like this before becoming a wraith, before being reborn, before he tried to get rid of his luck.
He walked down the street, and saw the true predictors of his world.
He spread his arm out to the oxen covered in sacrificial markings dating back to native times.
it shock it's ear.