Without the external distractions of the sect, without the daily, agonizingly brief visits from the gray-aproned cook, the obsession had nothing to dilute it. It concentrated.
It crystallized into something devastatingly pure, overwhelmingly potent, and incredibly dangerous.
When a cultivator at the peak of their realm experiences such a profound, violent disconnect between their chosen Dao and their true, underlying desires, the universe does not offer comfort.
It offers a tribulation.
An Inner Demon.
The Xinmo did not attack from the outside.
It slipped through the microscopic fractures in Wangchen's icy composure, born from the very depths of his own suppressed, violent lust and desperate longing.
It bypassed his conscious defenses entirely, wrapping its dark, hallucinatory tendrils around his spiritual sea, plunging him violently into a tribulation of the mind.
The transition was seamless, a terrifyingly smooth warping of reality.
