Outside Tin’s house, a street away

  The storm had built up - a splash of greyish tint washed down in a moody cascade, as if signalling an ominous encounter.

  The fake Su sized up Zun with a predatory glare. A tingling sense of unknown familiarity nagged him and provoked a sense of turmoil, but he couldn’t understand why. Something strange had invited itself over, and the King was not appeased.

  “Who are you? How dare you invade my hunting ground?”

  “Hush…hush..” The possessed Zun murmured under her breath, head twitching from side to side, like she was fighting off a restless headache. With each word, Zun’s voice flattened and echoed in different pitches.

  King Cobra was triggered. Despite Zun’s limited response, each murmur cushioned his aggression in a delicately restrained manner. It left him restless, chipping away at his patience and tightening his jaw and shoulder. That aura tugged at his nerve and muscles, flipping his repulsion inside out.

  Why am I feeling this way? Why am I becoming paranoid? Is it anger? Is it fear? Or is it…HALLUCINATION? Confusing thoughts galloped through the elite demon’s mind and left a train of human emotions running wild in his mental landscape. But the aching called to him. Slowly but surely, it aroused him and distracted him from his original target.

  “Entertain me then.” The fake Su raised her hand at Zun and gave her an evil grin. “Let me know your real name, stray demon.”

  With her head slightly tilted to the right, Zun looked over at the demonic Su and locked her target. “Little sister... little sister, bring back, need to bring back.”

  The two figures lunged at each other in an explosion of strength that spared no senses from pain. In the exchange of aggressive hits, the possessed Zun was able to tank Su’s monstrous damage, and wear off her body till it started to cripple. All the hits Zun took were almost immediately healed in a matter of seconds.

  “Give back, little sister. Give back, little sister!”” With a menacing voice, Zun echoed her threat like a broken radio.

  Su stepped back to create a distance. “Little sister? Don’t you see I am wearing her corpse? Wait, this isn’t just a corpse. This is a digested food that I spit back out and reassemble piece by piece. Isn’t it fun? Isn’t it EXHILARATING?!”

  Countless snakes exploded from Su’s shoulders and shot through the air like piercing light rays, as their pointed skull-heads slashed Zun’s arms, legs, and torso.

  “Ex.Hi.La.Ra.Ting? ”

  The raindrops slowed down like a glitch dragged by time. In a blinding dash forward, the demonic Zun hurled a kick straight at Su’s torso, breaking her ribs and throwing her across the ground until she hit a distant lamp post.

  The gravitational push sent a ripple of slicing force across the air, shredding all the snakes into pieces.

  Not a single moment was spared. Zun jumped on Su and continued to deliver more hits, but got stopped mid-attack as the fake Su grabbed both of Zun’s fists in her palms and tried to coil Zun’s arm together as if bending snakes.

  Zun’s eyes flashed for a second, and her nails lengthened into long, sharp, bending blades to snap off Su’s fingers, but Su released her grip in time to evade the incoming strike. Unfortunately for her, Zun’s movements were far more calculative than the mindless rage they appeared to be. The relentless frontal assault had left Su exposed from behind. With all the snakes cleared off, Zun shifted tactics, performing fast and wide slashes that bent through the air to reach Su’s blind spots, driving Su further deranged.

  A den of cobras raised up from the shadowy floodwater once again and entwined Zun’s legs. As she retraced her steps, a larger cobra, the size of an oak tree trunk, slammed and threw her into the air. She fell right into its gaping mouth, arms stretched diagonally as she struggled to keep the jaws from snapping shut.

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  The tongue of the snake sneaked in and tightened around her torso before penetrating her ribs to reach for her heart. Zun let out an agonising cry.

  The sight thrilled the elite demon. Fake Su began to laugh with a rumbling intensity that vibrated through her broken cheek muscle and tore it apart. Her bone hidden beneath was restructured to form the shape of a snake skull filled with carnivorous teeth.

  He drove towards Zun in a slithering motion. Zun burst out laughing in a deliberate attempt to copy her opponent.

  As their madness matched in energy, King Cobra’s excitement peaked. He grabbed Zun by the neck and sank his teeth into her flesh.

  In an instant, Zun released her hands from the giant Cobra’s jaws, letting its bite fall and crushed into both of their spines, trapping their upper bodies in its jaws.

  Oh my, how careless can I be with my own snake?!

  Su’s fragile body split from waist down and dropped to the flooded ground, while Zun remained intact – her whole body kept on regenerating from all the fresh wounds.

  “Ex.hi.la.ra.ting! Tell me!! Exhilarating!!” Zun roared with laughter as she held onto Su’s body, caressing it with a pair of bottomless eyes soaked with emotions.

  The giant cobra’s head inflated and ruptured into thousands of sharp, venomous teeth drenched in the hue of silver moonlight. They aimed at Zun from all directions and shot rapidly in rows like tiny daggers. A paralytic shock struck down her spine and disabled her at seconds' intervals.

  Zun stared at the unceasing attack, in pain and in awe. At that very moment, time seemed to stretch in her mind once again. The spell attack advanced like a theatrical display of a meteor shower; each tooth leaving traces of glittering raindrop as it pierced through the air towards her.

  Amid this dramatic scene, a soft voice dropped from the swollen sky and hit the top of her head, “...your eyes are flickering. It’s like a shower of stars streaming down the sky. Is that…a sign of hope?”

  Waves of pain kicked in again as the teeth dug through every fibre of her nerves and awakened her senses tenfold. Zun twirled irresistibly, claws wide apart as she tore through the air mindlessly.

  No more, no more!

  The aimless slashes cut through random objects before ultimately ripping the fake Su’s chest and ribcage to reveal her heart.

  “That thing…” Zun fixed her eyes on the seal, “…should be removed! Little sister, be saved!”

  Those words recounted like an overclocked machine. Zun threw herself at Su’s upper half, hands stretched forward to reach for the heart. But the action was proven to be a careless mistake.

  The fake Su snapped awake, intercepting Zun’s approaching hand head-on and with both palms, squashing her bladed nails to splinters.

  The tide had turned at that instant. What appeared to be a little girl’s arms a moment ago were now twirling without a solid bone structure, while her skin was gleaming with the reflection of her scales that now cover her surface from head to toe.

  Upon the explosion of shattered blades, Zun shut her eyes, leaving a careless opening in her front. The fake Su immediately followed up with a focused attack and punctured a hole through Zun’s diaphragm, while also sending tiny snakes into her bloodstream.

  “I will see how long you can continue to resist my poison.” The fake Su whispered in Zun’s ear. Zun let out an agonising shriek and tried to reach for her opponent’s hand, but every movement added weight to her pain.

  “Stray demon should behave like a stray dog! Know your place when the King is here!”

  “King…” Zun uttered the words in a breathy tone, “…or SLAVE” The last word dropped like a warning, cold and detached as a corpse.

  Pushing through the excruciating pain, Zun grabbed the demon by the neck, and with the final remnant of demonic consciousness in her core, she tore it apart. Blood splattered like rain from the dismantled neck, as the corpse fell lifelessly to the floor. It appeared the snakes' poison wasn’t strong enough to overpower the stray demon.

  But this didn’t end her pursuit. Zun crawled down and pulled the body apart one by one, until the heart lay bare in her palm.

  “Little sister, will save.” A distorted smile stretched across Zun’s face as she beheld the cobra seal, which symbolised an elite mark that had claimed Su’s life.

  However, before she could rip it apart, an enhanced dark energy dispersed across the floor like a smoke screen and gripped her by the nerves.

  The heart fell off her cramped hand and merged with the child’s body once again. In between blinding minutes, the corpse began to shape-shift with new layers of muscle and flesh extending out to revamp the whole figure.

  What?

  Zun struggled to move, as she felt her nerves were all pulled into a tight knot. The chilling heat pressed against the air and zoned out all the noises until every breath and movement became painfully clear.

  King Cobra was finally showing his true form, unrestrained by the limits of the child’s body.

  Suddenly, a loud command came crashing in.

  “Now is the chance!!! Seal both of them!”