Reborn as a Demonic Tree

The darkness enveloping Diana shifted from an empty void to a dreamscape—a world that seemed real but fell apart under scrutiny. The verdant meadow of lush grass lay still as if painted, and the horizon blurred, making the sky appear to be melting.

Diana tried to steady her mind and recall her father's advice on handling Nocturnes, rare but dangerous threats that sometimes appeared when dealing with demonic sect scions.

Nocturnes, also known as dream eaters, were abominations that shadowed their hosts like haunting spirits, doing anything to keep them alive and preserve their food source.

"Selena, was it?" Diana called into the dreamworld, catching a glimpse of movement in this motionless landscape. She spun around to find the shadowy figure of a young girl.

Diana knew the real body lay on the ground, where an eerie specter of a girl with similar features to Venik floated where a normal shadow should be.

"You were his sister, weren't you?" Diana said solemnly. She had never met a Nocturne, but knowing their origin made the scene before her horrifying.

To create a Nocturne, a sacrificial ritual was needed to bind a relative's soul to one's own, allowing them to consume the relative, often a sibling, for a surge in cultivation.

This dark, secretive demonic practice also granted the added benefit of transforming the relative into a Nocturne, like Selena for Venik, that would protect the host from the shadows.

But there were severe consequences. Apart from brutally murdering a sibling, Nocturnes had to be fed, consuming their host's dreams and sanity for sustenance. And if the host ever reached the Nascent Soul Realm, the Nocturne could take over the infant soul and be reborn.

This fierce urge to keep their host alive for sustenance and the chance at a new life made Nocturnes exceptionally loyal protectors.

Diana now understood why Venik acted tough in front of Douglas, despite being a wind affinity user two Soul Fire stages below him. A guardian always lurked in the shadows, watching.

A moment of silence passed as the shadow figure refused to answer, but the ghostly form trembling with grief betrayed understanding.

"I need to kill Venik," Diana declared, and the Nocturne howled. A chilling wail filled with anguish echoed as though pierced by countless needles. The dreamscape quivered, and hundreds of shadow tendrils shot forth, but Diana swatted them away with ease. It was weak.

The Nocturne faced a hopeless situation. If Diana killed Venik, the creature would perish without its food source. On the other hand, if they fought until sunrise, the dreamscape would shatter, and the Nocturne would burn under the sun's glare.

As Diana deflected more tendrils, she pondered Venik's motivation for subjecting his sister to such a fate. Had his parents arranged it, or had he performed the ritual himself? When Diana was involved with other noble scions, she hadn't heard of a wind affinity Azurecrest child named Venik.

If Venik had done it himself, the ritual would have been done out of desperation for the benefits, as his rate of cultivation would decrease drastically since the Nocturne siphoned Qi. And he would also be unable to sleep or meditate without feeling haunted, which would deeply affect his state of mind.

Also, if Venik ever reached the Nascent Soul Realm, the Nocturne would devour his new infant soul, denying him the semi-immortality of being a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator.

All of that for a reliable bodyguard no stronger than the host suggested Venik couldn't leave his back to anyone other than his own sister's ghost.

Venik must have been either insane or desperate for protection, either from family members vying for power or from numerous enemies he had made.

Neither option sounded good. Venik was a tumor that needed to be culled, especially since, with the death of his Nocturne, he would soon become consumed by heart demons, just like how Diana had been before Ashlock saved her with those truffles.

Diana continued slashing at the tendrils with her Qi-covered blade while gradually filling the dreamscape with her haunted mist technique. She could shatter the dreamscape with her cultivation, but the Nocturne would escape. She aimed to kill it first and then pursue Venik.

Although the dreamscape looked like it stretched for many miles, it was only around the size of a large courtyard. Soon enough, she could lock down the location of the Nocturne that was running around while its wails filled the entire space with her mist.

"There you are," Diana muttered as she dashed through the mist.

Diana tore through the shadowy figure a moment later as if it were smoke and seized the Nocturne's throat. She was about to tighten her Qi-coated grip and kill the spectral abomination when she hesitated. The wailing ceased, and the young girl, no older than ten, gazed at Diana with eyes full of innocence.

Was this some kind of trick to make her hesitate? Her father had only briefly mentioned this threat and simply said to kill the Nocturne to escape. Was there really no other way?

"Don't hurt Venik," the girl said in a distorted, eerie voice. "He was my brother, and I still love him."

Diana hadn't known Nocturnes could speak.

"Why?" Diana frowned. "He killed you and turned you into an abomination. How can you still love him?"

Was it some kind of mind magic that made the abomination loyal?

The Nocturne's eyes grew dull as if recalling a painful memory. "Venik had no choice. Our father forced this upon us."

"Father? Who's your father?"

"Grand Elder of the Azurecrest family. He received an order from the Patriarch..." The girl hesitated.

"Which was?" Diana pressed, knowing that the Patriarch rarely gave direct orders. But as a true demonic cultivator with little regard for human life, anything he meddled in was bound to be twisted.

"He wanted more airships and, therefore, more pilots. Our family is the main provider of these pilots. But he wanted them within a year."

That was enough for Diana to piece together the rest. Noble families were often vast, sometimes consisting of dozens of branch families and thousands of members in total. But not all family members were created equal. Out of those thousands, only a few hundred would reach the Soul Fire realm, and only a tiny handful of those had the potential to reach the Star Core realm.

As the largest producer of wind affinity cultivators, the Azurecrest family was invaluable to the sect's continued existence, operating airships that enabled trade between cities and mass evacuations during inevitable beast tides.

With every Azurecrest family member in the Soul Fire realm already employed in the airship industry, if the Patriarch demanded a new batch of pilots to appear overnight, the Azurecrest Grand Elder likely resorted to something truly horrific to meet the quota.

"Your father forced everyone in the family to kill their siblings to turn them into Nocturnes in order to increase their cultivation, didn't he?" Diana asked, and the little girl's eyes widened before she nodded.

"So please don't kill Venik. I was the weaker of the two, and he promised to make me

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