A Dream Within a Dream (Part Four)

Fourth generation:

After Xu Family Village was inexplicably wiped out, Lin Shi returned to the village alone as usual. Unfortunately, rather than die, the beautiful woman was directly refined into a half-puppet, and any resistance would result in utter destruction. Not only did she tragically become a concubine for the evil cultivator Long Tian, ​​but she was also offered by Long Tian to other evil cultivators for torture.

It was a time shrouded in darkness. The three-headed evil cultivator Long Tian, ​​like a greedy and savage beast, set his sights on Lin Shi, a beautiful but defenseless woman. He didn't kill her outright, but instead acted with far greater cruelty: he used extremely evil cultivation techniques to cruelly turn Lin Shi into a half-puppet. Whenever even the slightest thought of resistance arose in Lin Shi's mind, a tidal wave of pain would instantly engulf her entire body. This pain was beyond the endurance of ordinary people; it felt as if countless fine steel needles were piercing every inch of her skin, or as if raging fire was burning wildly in her meridians, bringing her to the brink of unconsciousness, yet preventing her from truly losing consciousness, leaving her struggling in endless torment. Truly, she was tormented by the inability to live or die!

Lin Shi's tragic ordeal didn't end there. In that dark, damp, and stench-filled cave of evil cultivators, she was forced to become Long Tian's concubine, a vessel for his cultivation. Every day, she endured Long Tian's greedy gaze and brutal treatment, her dignity trampled upon, her body growing thinner and more haggard under the torment of pain. However, this was far from over. To please other equally wicked cultivators, Long Tian cruelly offered her to them as a gift. These evil cultivators, each with a狰狞 (zhengning - ferocious) face and a morbid light in their eyes, subjected Lin Shi to increasingly cruel torture. Some bound her hands and feet with cold chains, rendering her completely immobile; others cast vicious curses, corroding her soul and pushing her mind to the brink of collapse.

Lin Shi tried to escape, but failed each time. After her third failed escape attempt, she was captured and beaten to the point of near death by the evil cultivator Long Tian. She lay on the ground covered in blood, and Long Tian grabbed her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. Long Tian said viciously, "Lin Shi, if you dare to resist me again, if you dare to escape even once more, you will die a horrible death!"

Lin Shi's eyes were now filled with feigned fear and submissiveness. Her pupils contracted slightly as she tried her best to appear weak and said to Long Tian, ​​"I understand, I will never dare to do it again. Please forgive me one more time, my husband!" As she spoke, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

Long Tian, ​​however, always took advantage of the beautiful woman's feigned weakness. Each time, he would watch Lin Shi try to escape like a cat playing with a mouse, then calmly follow behind. Just when she thought she had escaped, he would catch her again, torture her half to death, and then listen to her feign weakness and beg for mercy, all to satisfy his perverted fetish.

Whenever Lin Shi showed weakness and begged for mercy, Long Tian would laugh heartily for a long time. After laughing, the disgusting evil cultivator would then defile the beautiful woman's body. Lin Shi, whose strength was negligible and who could be considered half a puppet and half a female cultivator, could only be forced to submit, but she thought about revenge every moment.

In this hellish existence, Lin Shi's heart burned with an indomitable flame. Despite her physical imprisonment and mental torment, she never relinquished her yearning for freedom and her belief in revenge. Through countless long nights, she gritted her teeth, silently enduring all the pain, secretly searching for an opportunity to escape. Every subtle movement, every possible opening, was keenly observed and memorized. Like a cheetah lurking in the darkness, she patiently awaited the perfect moment to hunt.

Finally, her perseverance paid off. On a stormy night, when the evil cultivators were off guard due to their revelry, Lin Shi seized the opportunity and unleashed her pent-up power. Her eyes flashed with determination and hatred, and she gripped a blood-stained longsword tightly, moving like a ghost among the evil cultivators. Each of her attacks was imbued with boundless rage and power, each strike deadly. After a fierce battle, she successfully killed the evil cultivator Long Tian and the other evil cultivators who had tormented her. Those evil figures fell one after another under her sword, blood splattering across the ground. Their dark souls were completely annihilated.

Unfortunately, after avenging herself, Lin Shi also became a heretical cultivator. Her spiritual energy was impure, tinged with blackness and bloodlust. Even though she only killed the heretical cultivator who had humiliated her, she never harmed mortals or righteous cultivators. On the contrary, after killing her enemy, apart from visiting the villagers of Xu Family Village once, she remained nocturnal, diligently killing every heretical cultivator she encountered.

However, fate always seems to enjoy playing tricks on people. Just when Lin Shi thought she had finally escaped the nightmare and ushered in a new life, righteous cultivators appeared. When Xu Xingran, Huo Linglong, and others went to pay their respects at the graves of the people of Xu Family Village, they discovered Lin Shi's aura and mistakenly believed she was the evil cultivator who had wiped out the Xu Family Village. They followed Lin Shi's aura all the way, and later on, almost all the righteous young cultivators in the Dream Heaven Small World joined the hunt for the evil cultivator Lin Shi.

"It is everyone's responsibility to exterminate evil cultivators!" Righteous cultivators chased after Lin Shi, who was desperately fleeing for his life, shouting slogans loudly.

In their eyes, Lin Shi was tainted with too much evil, making her an unforgivable being. Despite Lin Shi's attempts to explain her predicament and helplessness, the righteous cultivators wouldn't listen to her explanations. In their view, Lin Shi was an evil cultivator. They firmly believed that Lin Shi had colluded with numerous evil cultivators and committed unforgivable crimes.

And so, after a flash of sharp sword light, Lin Shi's life came to an abrupt end. Her body slowly collapsed, her eyes revealing endless resentment, sorrow, and despair. The light of hope that had once burned in her eyes was extinguished completely at that moment.

In the mysterious and unpredictable world of cultivation, Lin Shi's fourth reincarnation seemed shrouded in a heavy gloom from the very beginning, with the wheel of fate relentlessly pushing her into an even more tragic situation. A beautiful but powerless mortal woman, even if kind-hearted and accidentally embarking on the path of cultivation, could only end in tragedy without good opportunities.

As the cultivator Lin Shi recalled the tragic experiences of the mortal Lin Shi in her first life, she couldn't help but shed tears. But she was quickly drawn into the scene of the mortal Lin Shi's fifth life. That was also one of her inner demons…