Just Like Being Drunk

The system seemed to think doing was faster than talking, so she decided to give him the offering and title right away.

Then Yu Xing heard the woman's voice say, "The fusion of your core offering is beginning. It will hurt quite a bit and feel strange, so please bear with it."

The unchanging black mass writhed, faintly revealing patches of different colors. It was like a clump of darkness, shadow, lightlessness, and blindness, all squeezed together until it bulged.

Yu Xing had just thought that core offerings really were different, if even the fusion hurt, when he felt the darkness around him begin to take on a solid form. Beneath its surface, something indescribable gradually emerged.

A huge hand made of condensed darkness grabbed Yu Xing, then pried his mouth open.

Yu Xing: "?"

An astonishing pain struck his mouth without warning. For a moment, he couldn't tell whether it was being torn or severed. All he knew was that blood was pouring out.

Blood gushed from his mouth. He had a high pain tolerance, so he felt it with almost excessive clarity as his tongue was "plucked" out.

The thing before him—or perhaps not merely "before" him. Its presence was so vast and profound that the entire darkness might have been its body. Wrapped in its airtight embrace, Yu Xing's nerves throbbed again and again. The veins in his temples bulged involuntarily, and he nearly choked on the blood in his throat.

He'd heard there was a Hell of Tongue-Pulling in ancient times.

Now he felt as if he were in hell himself.

"Bear with it a little longer," the system said at just the right moment, reminding him that she was still there and that the situation was under control.

Yu Xing gave a muffled laugh. If