Why is My System Glitching
Chapter 146: Monstrous Truth

Chapter 146: Monstrous Truth

The beauty’s curse tore through the air like a venomous whip, each syllable dripping with malice. Before the last echoes of Shirley’s words could fade, a sudden, sickly-sweet wind surged forward—thick as syrup, cloying as decay—slamming into Lordi’s face with enough force to make his eyes water.

His vision blurred, and in that split second of disorientation, Shirley’s figure vanished, her form dissolving into a streak of motion.

Then, as if the very air had folded to her will, she reappeared—not ten feet away, but directly before him, so close he could smell the faint, floral poison on her breath. Her presence crashed over him like a tidal wave, an oppressive, suffocating weight of killing intent that turned his blood to ice. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to retreat, to brace, to survive—but since combined the ghost aura from Yunny Hanzwart, Lordi had never been one to cower.

Goosebumps prickled across Lordi’s skin as his fingers tightened around the hilt of his bone blade. There was no time for defense, no room for hesitation. If she wanted his life, she’d have to carve it out of him. Teeth bared in a snarl, he swung, the edge of his bone blade cutting a vicious arc through the air—aimed not to block, but to cleave through her incoming strike, to meet violence with violence, force with force.

What The?!

To his shock, the blade passed through her without resistance, her form shattering into mist. The palm strike, a coiling wraith of weird mist, bypassed his blade and slammed into his chest with a bone-rattling THUD.

Pain exploded, as Lordi staggered back three steps!

Shirley’s figure reformed behind him, her palm flashing toward his skull with venomous precision. Lordi’s instincts screamed, his every hair standing on end.

He spun, slashing his Blade of Life Hater backward, but again, the blade sliced through mist, stirring it into a swirling vortex.

FUCK?!

Lordi cursed, his mind reeling as another palm strike crashed into his jaw, the force sending stars bursting across his vision. He stumbled, senses snapping back just in time to catch Shirley’s form shifting to his side, her emerald eyes glinting with cold calculation.

This time, Lordi didn’t strike blindly. Channeling his Blood Spectre Footwork Art, he retreated in a blur, covering dozens of meters in a heartbeat, his bone blade raised defensively as he eyed Shirley warily.

Pain burned in his chest and jaw, sharp and searing, but it was the memory of the Martial Arts Arena that chilled him. Shirley’s palm strike on Emma Dawson had seemed innocuous, yet Rodney Luther, a peak Ninth Layer cultivator, had thrown himself in its path, terror in his eyes, desperate to block it.

Now Lordi understood why. These strikes, deceptively simple, carried an eerie, lethal weight, laced with a malice that could unravel meridians and crush organs from within.

Ruru Rosa struggled to her feet, her delicate high heels broken and scattered, her bare soles trembling on the cold earth. Blood trickled from her pale lips as she glared at Shirley, her voice sharp with shock and fury. "Cough, cough... Senior Sister Quinn, what’s the meaning of this? Why betray us?" Her curls clung to her sweat-dampened face, her Serpent Fang Dagger lost in the dirt, her defiance barely masking her scary and pain.

Nearby, Cade Barret coughed up blood, his broad frame heaving as he forced himself to sit up, one hand clutching his bronze sheild for support. His gruff voice rasped, thick with disbelief. "Cough... Quinn, why attack us? You think you can hunt the Treasury House alone? Even if it’s right in front of you, you’ll never outmatch Donovan Valdez or Jorge Blue’s squads!"

Shirley stood poised, her raven long hair swaying in the breeze, her lips curling into a beautiful, chilling smile. She glanced at Cade, then fixed her emerald eyes on Ruru, her voice smooth and deceptively warm. "Easy, my darling comrades. Betrayal? I’d never dream of turning on my sect brothers and sisters." Her tone dripped with mock sincerity, but a faint tremor betrayed her—a twitch along the left side of her face, unnatural, as if something squirmed beneath her flawless skin.

Before she could continue, the twitch erupted into horror. Her left eye bulged grotesquely, the orb straining against its socket, then burst free with a sickening plop. The optic nerve stretched eerily, glistening with viscous fluid, before snapping like a frayed rope, arterial blood spurting in a crimson arc, spattering the ground in heavy droplets.

"This humble senior sister just need your... petty fucking souls to sustain my noble life," she said, her voice shifting from honeyed warmth to a chilling, malevolent rasp, each word dripping with eerie hunger.

The skin on her left face sloughed off in ragged chunks, revealing raw, blood spilling muscle that blackened and crumbled like charred meat. Her lips shriveled, peeling back to bare jagged, needle-sharp teeth, no longer pearl-white but predatory, glinting with ravenous intent.

Yet her right side remained pristine—a cruel mockery of beauty, her porcelain skin glowing, framed by silken raven hair. The contrast was nightmarish: one half a vision of elegance, the other an Asura-born abomination, its rictus grin exposing bone and decay. The trio froze, their breaths trapped, as Shirley’s half-face smiled, one side soft and inviting, the other a grotesque maw of hunger. A heavy chill clawed up their spines, the air thick with the estate’s curse amplifying her monstrous transformation.

Ruru’s eyes widened, her pupils shrinking to pinpoints, her voice stammering with horror. "Si... Senior Sister Quinn... your face... what’s happening to you?"

The cherry blossom forest’s moonlight cast a ghastly glow on Shirley Quinn’s half-ruined form, her right side a haunting vision of beauty, her left a decaying mockery of hell’s wrath.

Shirley’s lips—half-lush, half-shriveled—twisted into a feral snarl, her voice cold and jagged. "The Ancient Stone Well in the rear mountain... the thing devoured half my soul." Her right eye gleamed with cruel beauty, while her left socket gaped, a bloody void where her eye had burst. "I thought I was finished, but fate spared me. Garrick Blackthorn’s fall in the Ancestral Shrine left you stragglers without a Ninth Layer protector—perfect for my needs." Her tone shifted, a discordant blend of melody and guttural menace, as if two voices warred within her throat. "Rest in easy, my dear sect comrades..."

Her voice was a discordant harmony—melodic yet laced with something guttural, as if two throats spoke at once. With every word, her left side unraveled further, flesh surrendering to some unseen rot.

Her once-lush breasts, symbols of seduction now grotesque in their decay, were the next to wither. The soft, moon white flesh darkened, shriveling inward like fruit left too long in the sun. The pink stained smooth skin tightened, stretched unnaturally over collapsing tissue—until, with a wet sound, the left breast tore free from her chest. It struck the ground with a sickening Plop slap, the nipple a withered, leathery nub atop a deflated mound of waxen flesh.

The corruption spread like a creeping shadow. Her left arm, once delicate and graceful, stiffened, the skin turning translucent, then gray, cracking like old parchment. Fingernails blackened and peeled away as the muscle beneath sloughed off in thick, glistening ribbons. The decay slithered down her waist, her once-curvaceous hip collapsing inward, the smooth flesh bubbling before splitting apart in a grotesque unfurling of sinew and bone.

Her thigh followed, the supple skin that had once drawn admiring glances now sagging, then sloughing away in sheets. Beneath, the bones shimmered faintly—jade-like at first, as if carved from some otherworldly stone, this was indeed the color of a peak ninth layer cultivator’s jade tier bone. but soon even that eerie beauty dulled like lost the vitality, the luster fading into the ashen gray of a long-dead thing.

"This pretty Senior Sister will honor your sacrifice," Shirley purred, her right side’s warmth a cruel mockery against her left’s grotesque rictus.

But in a flash, her spirit energy erupted, a crimson blood aura flaring as she unleashed the Blood Burning Technique, its killing intent flooding the forest like a tidal wave. The air crackled, cherry blossoms scattering in the wake of her power. For a peak Ninth Layer cultivator, such a desperate, double-edged spell—shattering one’s cultivation base to amplify strength—was overkill against two Eighth Layers and a Seventh Layer. Yet Shirley’s desperation was clear: her spirit gworms and demon monster battle pets had perished in the Ancient Stone Well, and half her soul was gone, her strength crippled despite her terrifying facade.