I told you to plant peas, and you summon Mordekaiser?

The sunlight of the royal city only shines on those Yuan people.

From the time Nieba could remember, she knew that she was different from "humans".

Her mother was imprisoned in the Carento Sinners Camp in District 8 for offending the Yuanmin.

She was born in a camp of sinners and was not qualified to be a human being from birth.

She was merely a slave trainee of Wang Chengyuan.

The name "Nyeba" was told to her by her mother with her last breath before she died.

But she didn't think it was any use. Slaves didn't deserve names; in the eyes of the Yuan people, they were just walking tools.

At the age of seven, Nieba and other slave children were lined up neatly and sent into the royal city.

Everyone remained expressionless as the soldiers in charge categorized, numbered, and branded them.

A deeply etched arc-shaped rune marked Niba's wrist, symbolizing her "worth".

"From this day forward, you belong to the Yuanmin." The soldier's words were as cold as a knife. "Remember, bow your heads, obey, and you will live."

At that time, Nieba did not understand the meaning of life. She simply lowered her head obediently and, like the other children, entered the magnificent castle that was breathtaking.

She had even dreamed that leaving a place like the prison camp might bring her greater happiness in the royal city.

But she never expected that this castle would not represent hope, but the beginning of hell.

Nieba was assigned to a member of parliament.

He was a man with a belly full of oil and eyes squeezed between his fleshy crevices.

When I first met the congressman, he was whipping a slave who had fallen to the ground.

Blood flowed down the whip marks, soaking the floor. The slaves huddled together, not daring to utter a single cry.

At that moment, Nieba began to understand that "obedience" might not be a guarantee of survival.

The senator stared at Nieba with a sadistic grin, pointed at her, and said to the butler, "This one's good; she looks like she can take a beating."

From that day on, Nieba's life became an endless torture.

She was forced to use her bare hands to lift the scalding hot teapot and pour tea for the congressman.

My palms were initially scalded red, then blisters appeared, and later, the skin became dry, charred, and peeled off.

But she gritted her teeth and dared not make a sound, because she knew that if she cried out, she would face an even more terrible punishment.

At night, she was locked in a cold, damp dungeon, with rats and dampness as her only companions.

During the day, if someone makes even the slightest mistake, they will be whipped, slashed with a knife, or even thrown into the cold water pool in the courtyard to freeze for several hours.

Once, while cleaning, Nieba accidentally broke a crystal glass.

The senator grinned maliciously and had someone press her fingers onto the table, then used a sharp knife to cut each fingertip until blood flowed freely.

"Do you know you were wrong?" he asked.

Nieba shook his head blankly.

She could no longer feel pain.

......

By the age of nine, Nieba's health had completely deteriorated.

She resembled a broken doll, her limbs stiff, her skin mottled and charred, with some areas even rotting.

The senator, looking disgusted, ordered his men to drag her away, saying, "Throw her over there and put her with the trash."

Nieba was thrown into the "processing area" outside the city.

This is a place specifically for abandoning slaves.

The lifeless ruins were piled high with dying people, like a moving graveyard.

Niba leaned against the corner of the wall, neither crying nor moving, but simply staring blankly at the heavens.

She simply waited quietly for death to come; to her, life was meaningless no matter where she was.

Just as her consciousness began to fade, a tall man in a black robe stood in front of her.

The man was tall and strong, and Niba could only use her remaining consciousness to tell that the man in front of her was not a slave like her.

After only a quick glance, Nieba turned her head back to look at the empty sky.

A light rain began to fall, pattering on Nieba's little face.

Like countless other abandoned slaves, Nieba did not move, but simply let the rain slide down her face.

There was no shelter for the slaves from the rain in the 'processing area'; the only difference between this place and the garbage dump was that it had no other place to hide from the rain.

The garbage here is human.

"Child," the man began, his voice low, "do you want to live?"

Niba turned his head blankly, staring at the blurry face hidden in the hood.

Was he talking to me? Or was he talking to someone else?

On either side of Niba, no one responded to the man's words. The emaciated slaves remained leaning against the wall, their eyes filled with despair.

It was as if they hadn't seen the man at all.

“If you want to live, come with me,” the man said again.

Although she couldn't see the man's face under his hood, Nieba was certain that he was speaking to her.

He took off his hood, letting the rain soak his short hair.

His eyes were as black as ink, devoid of any light.

Nieba looked up at the man and nodded mechanically.

“Very good,” the man bent down and extended his hand, “Come with me.”

Niba didn't react at all; she simply stood up with him, like a soulless puppet.

......

But hope and redemption only exist in fairy tales.

Reality is cruel.

From the moment Nieba stepped into that laboratory filled with black-robed cultists, her life ceased to belong to herself.

Until her death, she never left that narrow world.

Because Nieba had no sense of pain, she became the ideal experimental subject for the Corpse Cult.

Those men in black robes treated her as a silent testing ground, constantly dissecting her body and branding her with dark characters inside.

Whenever the experiment ended, the wound was bleeding profusely, and they would use the power of the immortal peach to heal it quickly.

Nieba endured the experiments day after day, a cycle that seemed to have no end.

But she just silently endured everything.

She didn't cry, nor did she resist; she simply stared with her numb eyes at the iron chains and lights on the laboratory ceiling.

She didn't know how much longer she could endure it, but strangely, she felt that this kind of life was better than before.

After each experiment, a man in a black robe would always hand Nieba a small piece of strawberry cake.

"This is a reward, good boy."

Niba never refused; this strawberry cake was the only dessert she had ever tasted in her life.

Even until her death, Nieba remembered the first time she ate the cake; its soft texture and slightly sour strawberry flavor left her stunned for a long time.

She had seen such things on the tables of members of parliament, but at that time, she could only look at them from afar and never dared to hope for them.

Now, she can finally taste this "deliciousness," and this moment of pleasure fills her with anticipation for the days to come.

Nieba even started hoping for more experiments so she could eat cake more often.

Even though her body was torn apart and healed, she still felt it was all worth it.

However, although her will had not yet collapsed, Niba's body collapsed first.

It was an extremely complex experiment; the men in black robes injected some kind of unfamiliar energy into her body.

After the experiment, her limbs were unable to move, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Nieba slumped on the lab table, still conscious, but her body had completely given up on her.

The only part of her body that could move was her neck.

No matter how the power of the peach worked, it could not awaken her muscles and nerves.

The black-robed cultists could only sigh and shake their heads, lamenting the failure of this experimental subject.

But Nieba paid no attention to anything else; she simply turned her head and looked at the experimental table in the distance.

The strawberry cake was still on that lab table.

Originally, once this experiment was completed, the strawberry cake would have become her property, and she could enjoy it as she pleased.

She had even planned out how she would enjoy the strawberry cake.

I went back to my room and ate a bite first.

Have another bite before bed.

When you wake up the next day, you can have another bite.

Of course, if you suddenly feel a craving, you can have another bite.

That's about right; there's about half of the strawberry cake left.

She wanted to save half of it for lunch, and then eat it all at once to her heart's content.

......

Nieba stared at the cake, her eyes vacant.

It was so close, yet it became a phantom she could never reach.

She never had the idea of ​​begging from others.

They never dared to ask others for anything.

But at this moment, looking at the black-robed man who had not yet left, she made her first request in her life.

"Could you please get me that cake over there?"

The man in the black robe glanced at her, then walked to the lab table and picked up the strawberry cake.

Niba had never felt her heart pound so hard; a feeling called hope exploded within her.

But a cold smile suddenly appeared on the black-robed man's lips, followed by a look of fury that filled his face.

He roared at Nieba.

"Inferior, defective product, what right do you have?! Trash! Trash! Trash! If I had known the fusion would fail, I shouldn't have wasted the zombie plague on you! Trash! Trash!"

Neba could no longer hear the black-robed man's subsequent roars; all she could see was the strawberry cake smashed on the ground.

It turned into a puddle of mud at the feet of the man in the black robe.

Niba felt as if something inside her had been trampled into mud.

Despair continued to spread.

........

After losing her ability to move, Niba's world became even smaller, and even her last remaining bit of freedom was taken away.

She was strapped to a chair and could no longer move freely.

Her body wasn't incapable of fusing with the so-called 'corpse plague,' but her tolerance was poor, and she could only fuse with a very small portion of the corpse plague each time.

The experimenter that time was too eager for quick results and tried to brand multiple plagues onto Niba's body in one go, but the experiment failed miserably and caused Niba to lose her ability to move.

But after becoming a vegetable, Nieba became a "treasure" of the Corpse Cult.

She was used as the best experimental subject.

Every day, the men in black robes continue to tear her body apart and reassemble it, but they no longer offer her any form of reward.

During each experiment, Nieba would simply turn her head and stare at the empty lab bench.

Every day, only bland, watery liquid food is mechanically fed into her mouth to sustain her life.

When the experiment ended, the only thing keeping her company was the ever-burning overhead light in the laboratory.

Her gaze was fixed on the lamp, her mind a blank.

The deepest despair took root in the depths of her soul, devouring her consciousness.

Niba closed her eyes and imagined herself as that strawberry cake, used up and disappearing.

How she wished she could be like the cake, finally ending this endless fate.

The Corpse Cult members knew how to maintain a person's physiological survival, not to mention the existence of the Immortal Peach, which nipped all diseases in the bud.

Niba's soul died completely at the age of ten, leaving behind only a shell bearing endless despair.

There was no more hope in her eyes, and no more emotion in her heart.

As the experiment continued, the plague gradually spread within Nieba's body.

At first, those eerie black runes were just small marks, lurking on her wrists, ankles, or back.

But soon, the runes spread like a silent flood, completely engulfing her skin.

Her body surface was covered with flowing symbols, and even her internal organs were covered with black marks.

Eventually, her pupils lost their original color and turned into an unfathomable black.

......

On that day, when Niba's body was completely transformed by the plague, all the black-robed figures surrounding her suddenly froze in place.

Their bodies collapsed with almost no resistance, turning into lifeless zombies.

Niba did not take the initiative to attack, but all life around her was devoured by the plague.

She could feel the surging and violent power within her, a power capable of destroying any living being at any moment.

But this "power" only brought her deeper despair.

She quietly felt the surging power within her, loathing this body that could no longer be called "human".

She wanted it all to end.

So she tried to use that power to destroy herself.

The talisman emitted a gray-black light, and her body gradually dissipated within this light.

She watched as her arm turned to ashes, her skin, flesh, and bones gradually disappearing.

Finally, her body completely disappeared, the black runes turning into the last wisp of dust and dissipating into the air.

Nieba thought it was all finally over.

But she was wrong.

When she came to her senses, she found that she was still conscious.

She floated in mid-air, without a physical form, yet she could clearly perceive herself.

That was her soul.

She looked down at "herself".

The dark runes continued to flow, coiling around her invisible soul like venomous snakes.

Her liberation was an illusion.

She was destined to never be redeemed.

Then, the man in the black robe appeared once again.

This was the second time Nieba had seen him.

I first met him in that desperate, abandoned slave settlement.

She nodded numbly and followed him away.

After that, he disappeared, as if he had completely forgotten her existence.

Now, he appears once again, standing before her, as if he already knew everything.

Logically speaking, Niba's current state is formless and intangible, and cannot be observed with the naked eye.

But the man's gaze did not linger on the wreckage of the laboratory, nor did it wander among the zombies scattered on the ground; instead, it looked straight up at Niba in the sky.

His eyes sparkled with undisguised ecstasy.

At that moment, Nieba felt a chill run down her spine.

The man whispered to Nieba's soul:

"Zero, you are my most perfect creation."