"What did you say?"
Lanaia jerked her head up and looked toward the treetop, trying to make out her original appearance among the distorted, swollen limbs.
"Don't bother looking. This is obviously Old Master Qiao's new wife."
Fu Qian spoke from beside them.
"Lily?"
Lanaia stared at the monster before her in disbelief. But the head had swollen beyond recognition, and the tangled hair, uneven in thickness, covered the entire face.
"You tortured her into this state, and you still dare call her your beloved?"
Lanaia was trembling with fury.
"Lily is, of course, my beloved."
As Ian said this, he still wore that strange smile. Tears even streamed from his eyes.
"I have to love her above anyone else. And if she weren't my beloved, my ritual wouldn't succeed."
"Let me guess. Because the ecstasy needs to be transferred?"
Fu Qian recalled the state Jia Yi had been in when he died, and the woman who'd been with him at the time. Her physical mutation had been less severe than Jia Yi's.
Fu Qian had suspected back then that it might have something to do with the desire being brought to life—in other words, the ecstasy Ian had mentioned.
For some reason, the ecstasy had been transferred between the two of them.
"That's right."
Ian confirmed his guess.
"Ecstasy is an extremely complex thing. The instant it's split off and brought to life, it's merely like planting a seed."
"It needs soil to grow in, and that soil is human cognition."
Ian continued.
"To give a simple example, depravity itself doesn't make desire evolve. You have to realize that you're falling into depravity. Otherwise, wouldn't a few animals in heat be more effective than anything else?"
"At the same time, the construction of human cognition is a complex process,