The fourth gate did not open with fire, nor with light. It yawned like a mouth from the bones of the mountain, its jagged maw rimmed in rot-black roots that wept pus. A stench poured out that made the marrow of Li Shen's bones itch—a scent not just of death, but of death long ignored. Forgotten. Festering.
He did not hesitate. Not anymore.
The Garden of Rot welcomed him.
The moment he stepped through the threshold, the world shifted. The earth beneath his boots became slick and soft, like flesh stretched too thin over decay. Trees loomed in twisted agony—black trunks veined with gold mold, dripping spores that hummed with voices. The sky above was not a sky but a ceiling of bone and fungus, arching like a cathedral of disease.
And the garden breathed.
Li Shen could feel it, not with his senses, but deep within the soul. It pulsed. Inhaled. Waited.
This was no illusion. No spirit realm. It was alive.
And hungry.
He drew his blade—not because it offered comfort, but because the silence demanded violence.
Then came the tolling of the bells.
Low, sonorous, hollow. Each chime echoed through the filth like a heartbeat from a dead god. The rot shifted in response. Mounds of corpse-moss unfurled. The bloated petals of bone-lotus opened with sick squelches. And from the mulch rose the first of them.
A beast born of plague.
It had once been human—he could see the shape beneath the tumors. Dozens of arms reached from its ribs, crawling with leeches. Eyes that had long since rotted out pulsed with white fungal growths. It hissed, not in fury, but in longing.
Li Shen did not flinch.
He stepped forward, blade flashing.
The beast surged with unnatural speed, limbs flailing, shrieking like a funeral dirge. Li Shen pivoted, ducked beneath its claws, and sliced through its knee with a single strike. Rotten bone cracked like wet wood. The creature collapsed, and he buried his blade into its gaping mouth.
It spasmed—and did not die.
The rot resisted death.
With a snarl, he ripped the sword free and ignited his Qi, burning through the infection. The monster howled as its body shriveled to ash and pulp.
But it was only the first.
Dozens followed. Then hundreds.
They came from the earth, from the trees, from the very breath of the garden. Plague beasts, rotborn wraiths, bloated worms with screaming faces. Some crawled. Others slithered. A few flew on wings made of stitched skin and weeping sores.
Three hundred. Maybe more.
Li Shen stood alone.
He closed his eyes. Let his breath settle. Then moved.
Like a storm of knives.
His blade became an extension of will, carving through meat and memory. Each swing cleaved through decay, each pulse of his Qi burned away corruption. He spun between lunging ghouls, severed limbs, ducked acid bile, and unleashed barrages of shadowflame that tore through fungal hearts.
But the garden was endless.
The more he killed, the more rose.
Time lost meaning. His body bled. His vision blurred. Muscles screamed with fatigue. A dozen times he should've fallen—but something within him refused. The curse he bore. The hunger of his soul. The system that whispered:
> [Quest: Endure the Garden. Slay 300 Rotborn.]
Progress: 179/300… 180/300…
He roared.
Not in rage. Not in defiance.
In acceptance.
He was no longer a man in a trial. He was the trial. He was the rot, the blade, the cleansing fire. When they bit into his flesh, he bit back harder. When they tore his skin, he used the blood as bait. He fought with fury, with madness, with technique honed in hell itself.
And then…
Silence.
He stood amidst a mountain of pulp. Steam rose from the remains of beasts long rotted. His chest heaved. Blood—his and not—coated him from head to toe. His fingers ached from gripping his blade too long.
> [Quest Complete.]
He collapsed to one knee.
But the garden did not let go.
The earth opened beneath him. A maw of teeth and tendrils swallowed his body whole and dragged him into the soil. Deeper. Into the core of the rot.
And there, in the darkness, he saw it:
A tree.
Dead, yet breathing. Massive, with a canopy of tumors and a trunk made of melted flesh. Hanging from its branches were corpses that wore their own faces—smiling, weeping, rotting.
The tree spoke. Not in words. In visions.
It showed him death. Rebirth. Suffering. Power. It showed him the cost of becoming more than human.
And he accepted.
The tree opened.
And Li Shen walked through.