The Void Nian

1,178 words

Thump-thump-thump-thump—heavy, chaotic footsteps kept transmitting through the soil into Li Huowang's ears. The sheer density of them made his expression grow increasingly grim.

He had been in Great Qi for a while now, but he had never felt such a massive disturbance before. Whatever this thing was, it would not be easy to deal with.

Whatever's making that noise, I have to get around it first! Eyes still closed, Li Huowang made up his mind and stood up without hesitation, sprinting in the exact opposite direction.

Li Sui's tentacles burrowed out from his body, probing the surroundings rapidly like blind canes.

“Daoist, you can open your eyes now. No more filth around.”

Hearing the monk's words, Li Huowang cracked open one eye and found that he had somehow wandered into a mass grave.

Under the Heavenly Calamity, the entire graveyard was far from peaceful. In the distance, some things were crawling up and wandering aimlessly.

Li Huowang ignored the horrifying scene. He immediately dropped back down, pressing his ear to the ground to listen carefully again.

Only when he sensed that the sound had faded into indistinctness did Li Huowang let out a slight breath of relief.

I didn't come to Great Qi to hunt evil spirits. It's getting more dangerous here by the day—I need to find Shangjiguan Pass and get out.

Li Huowang pulled himself together and charged in the direction Zhuge Yuan had pointed. He thought to himself, Brother Zhuge, how much further to Shangjiguan Pass? We might not have much time.

But when he posed the question, Zhuge Yuan did not respond. Only after asking three or four times did Zhuge Yuan, who had been standing with one hand behind his back, silently gazing at the mess of corpses around them, finally react.

“Not far. Almost there.” Zhuge Yuan's voice was low. After speaking, he fell silent again, watching the chaotic graveyard around them.

In that moment, Li Huowang felt he understood what was going through Zhuge Yuan's mind.

In the past, as a storyteller, Zhuge Yuan had always wanted others to know about Great Qi. Great Qi was his world. But now, with it reduced to… this… his heart must be aching terribly.

More importantly, Li Huowang couldn't even offer comfort, because the situation in Great Qi looked dire, and he himself had no idea what even worse consequences might follow.

But matters of the realm were not Li Huowang's concern—he had plenty of his own troubles to deal with.

Just as he was about to move again, shhhh—a gust of yin wind blew past, and half of Li Huowang's body went numb.

“Again?!” Li Huowang grabbed the bronze coin sword from Li Sui's tentacle and swept it hard toward the source of the wind. The darkness was cut away in a large patch by the copper coins, revealing a human skin hanging in midair.

Seeing that Li Huowang could still move, the skin instantly spread open in the air, swooping down at him like a great eagle.

Just as Li Huowang tightened his grip on the sword hilt, ready to slice the skin in two, it suddenly went limp and drifted weakly to the ground.

“Huh?” Puzzled, Li Huowang used his bronze coin sword to lift the skin. “Why did it suddenly stop moving?”

When he confirmed that the skin was genuinely dead and not faking it, Li Huowang flicked his wrist and tossed it aside.

The white skin moved out of his line of sight, revealing a strange face.

It was a woman's face, with a red dot painted on her brow. Her eyes did not blink, making her appear utterly eerie in the darkness.

But that alone would not have been enough to frighten Li Huowang. What was worse was the way her rouged cheek was split open, revealing the pale paper underneath, covered in wild cursive script.

“Is it you?” The woman stared fixedly at Li Huowang, her voice thin and reedy as she uttered this ambiguous question.

Li Huowang had no time to waste on small talk with something like this. Without hesitation, he gripped his spine-bone sword and swung it at her face.

“It is you. It really is you. How have you been?” The entire huge face shifted rapidly to the left, dodging the blade by a hair's breadth.

A phosphorescent stone was tossed, its green glow illuminating the darkness, and Li Huowang finally saw the creature's full body.

The only human part of her was that face. Apart from that, what remained was a massive, burly, four-legged beast's body covered in dark brown short fur, lying prone on the ground.

Fiery red mane sprouted from her three-clawed limbs and from a lion-like tail, swaying left and right with every twitch of her body.

A rusty breastplate engraved with a green-faced, fanged visage hung from her chest on chains, making her look even more grotesque and terrifying.

“What the hell is that thing?!” Li Huowang's expression turned ugly. Just from its appearance, he could tell this was nothing like the ordinary evil spirits he had dealt with before.

“What do you want? We can talk!” But his attempt at negotiation got no response.

What's going on? Does she just mimic speech without understanding human language?

Just as that thought crossed his mind, the creature charged. Three long, sharp claws swept toward Li Huowang with a whistling sound.

Li Huowang's body flashed backward, covering ten feet in an instant to dodge the strike. The corpse on the ground took the blow for him.

Then Li Huowang witnessed something horrifying: the half-rotten middle-aged corpse visibly aged at breakneck speed, eventually turning into an old man.

Li Huowang swung hard, his spine-bone sword slicing through a rift, but the creature dodged it with ease.

“Brother Li, be careful. This thing is a Nian.”

“Nian?”

“Correct. Not a Wàn Year, but a Void Nian. Do not let it touch your bare skin, or it will drain your yang life.”

Unable to touch it and unable to hurt it effectively, Li Huowang's situation grew precarious by the second.

He had planned to use a rift to retreat back to Great Liang first, but the Void Nian seemed to anticipate his every move. Every time he opened a rift ahead of himself, it would charge over and disrupt him.

Under its relentless pressure, Li Huowang could only keep retreating.

Just as the creature lunged again, Li Huowang's expression hardened. He reached down to his navel, grabbed two ribs, and rammed them backward into his own chest.

Seeing the Void Nian rear up with a roar, Li Huowang's face twisted into a bloodthirsty grin. “So you can feel pain!”

Seizing the pause, Li Huowang quickly pulled out a dagger, lifted his robe, and with one cut and a flick, a bloody sheet of human skin flew up and landed squarely over the Void Nian's human head.

As it thrashed and struggled, the vague outline of its face pressed through the skin. It shook its head wildly, but could not shake the skin off.

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Reading Guide Decoding

Folklore Nightmare: When the Nian Beast Stops Being Fun

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The "Nian" (年) Monster in Chinese Folklore vs. This Chapter — The traditional Nian beast was a legendary creature that emerged at the end of every year to terrorize villages. The folk remedy? Loud noises (firecrackers), the color red, and bright lights. It's the original basis for Chinese New Year customs. In this novel, however, the Nian is not a seasonal pest but a parasitic predator that directly feeds on "years" (yang life/lifespan). The "Void Nian" (虚年) specifically implies a corrupted, hollow version—one that exists outside the normal cycle. The folk-remedy of "scaring it away with noise and light" is useless here, which reinforces how thoroughly broken Great Qi's reality has become. The creature's name is also a dark pun in Chinese: 年 (year) sounds like 年 (beast in legend), and 虚年 (Void Year) can also vaguely evoke the concept of "stolen time."

Human Skin as a Weapon — This chapter features Li Huowang ripping off his own skin to use as a combat tool. While grotesque, this is not random. In Chinese folk horror, human skin (especially from a possessor or a powerful practitioner) can carry residual qi, curses, or spiritual weight. Using it to blind or "seal" a supernatural enemy follows a grim logic: a piece of a "lesser" monster's body can become a temporary binding tool against a "greater" one. It's desperate, but it has its own twisted rationality.

Chapter Overview

Can't take a single step in this Great Qi without something else trying to kill you, and this chapter proves it in the most infuriating way possible. Li Huowang is this close to the Shangjiguan Pass exit—the one lifeline out of this crumbling horror of a realm—when a new breed of monster slams the door in his face. We finally get a namedrop for a classic piece of Chinese folklore weaponized into absolute nightmare fuel: the Nian. Except this isn't the zodiac-friendly New Year monster you might know from children's books. This is the Void Nian, and it doesn't just want to eat you—it wants to eat your remaining years. Literally. Get ready for a chapter that's 50% desperation, 40% body horror, and 10% Zhuge Yuan being a very depressed tour guide through the apocalypse.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang finally gets an ETA on Shangjiguan Pass from Zhuge Yuan, who gives the most defeated "almost there" in literary history. The reality of what happened to Great Qi is visibly breaking him.
A sentient human skin ambushes Li Huowang—then immediately gets killed mid-attack by something else hunting in the same area, which is never a good sign.
The real threat reveals itself: a beast with a woman's porcelain face, a lion's body, and a chestplate bolted on with chains. She has no interest in talking; she just repeats a cryptic phrase like a broken record.
Li Huowang's first attack is useless; the Void Nian phases right through the rift. Worse, any physical contact drains Lifespan at an alarming rate.
Trapped, unable to retreat or advance, Li Huowang pulls out a nasty trick: he stabs himself with his own ribs to trigger a pain response, finally getting a reaction out of the creature.
He uses his own skin as a weapon, flaying it off mid-battle and slapping it over the Nian's face, buying himself precious seconds.

Reading Guide

This is a "cornered animal" chapter, and it shows. Li Huowang isn't fighting smart—he's fighting desperate, and the narrative rewards that by having him resort to increasingly brutal self-mutilation to gain any advantage. Notice how the chapter plays with the tension of "almost there": the exit is close, but the closer he gets, the stronger the obstacles become. This is classic path-horror, and it works because we know that Great Qi is a piece of dead world being propped up by an angry god. Also, keep an eye on Zhuge Yuan's silence in this chapter. He's not being useless—he's mourning. His entire identity was built on being Great Qi's biggest fan, and now he's walking through its corpse. That quiet sadness is more devastating than any monster attack.