Chương 58: Chapter 7

In the Lightless Underworld, where darkness was rich as wine and the gloom so deep you could forget yourself in it, a palace stood still. It was a strange thing to be still, despite this being a place of stillness. The other palaces, each given to a Sect Elder to use as they saw fit, danced like dandelions on the breeze, carried over the colossal flows of Night Qi wafting from beneath. It was necessary.

In this place, where stillness was an elemental force with a will and a desire, what was alive needed to move to avoid forgetting that it could. What it stopped, it did so forever. So it was strange for the great, somber palace-fortress to be still. Even more strange, it wasn't eclipsed by the dark as it should have been its due.

Its pagoda-like roofs ran with Night Qi so thick it would devour Cultivators instead of the other way around, and its walls were woven through with Night as pure as Night could be without becoming Immortal. And yet, it didn't dissipate in the dark. Instead, it stood, almost more fantasy than reality, a project thrust between what was and what could be, what was imagined, and what was seen. A shadow cast upon reality.

In the Night, made of potential and marvel, that an object may flow along with its currents without losing its shape was almost an impossibility. It took an Immortal's touch to defy that. Wu Zetian acknowledged the Owls' bows with a slight tilt of her head. None of the elite Assassins braved the landing. The Night that lapped at the polished stone was too much for them to handle.

They stood behind protective cordons instead, shielded by the call of the eclipse by ancient protective measures set into place ten millennia before and still working to peak efficiency. Wu Zetian paused to glance critically at a junction point. The bindings wrapped around the whole palace like a net of ribbons around a present, or the ceremonial binding around an artifact.

They turned the Black Halls from a somber fortress-laboratory into a temple offering that wouldn't have looked out of place on an altar, only raised to gigantic proportions. Now, if only we had some color to cheer the place up. She joked. The currents of Night Qi felt invigorating, and they held all the colors she may need and then some. Why, they made her nostalgic for the True Night even deeper. For once, Shanti was holding her peace.

Standing on the gates' threshold, the secretary had a strange expression, her eyes flickering with a mix of emotions. The Owl Assassins kneeling around her, waiting for Zetian's pleasure, radiated with just the same.

"Are the bindings enough?" Wu Zetian asked without hurry, her voice overcoming the void's penchant for silence. Shanti parted her lips, then closed them. Her aura shimmered among an array of emotions. Marvel. Excitement. Fear. A distant vertigo. A morbid curiosity. It was all the answer Wu Zetian needed. Flexing her Qi muscles, she pumped some of her energy into the shields. The red net flared with energy before settling into a steady hum.

Instantly, the Owls' signatures calmed down, their discipline snapping back into place as an iron band stretched tight. Not without an echo of regret, but that was just to be expected. The Night was the Night, she thought with a hint of satisfaction. The bindings formed a dense reticulate before the great doors. They moved on their own as she advanced, the many knots unfolding like sea plants to let her pass. The Owls stood aside, smooth as water around a reef.

"Are you feeding well?" She asked, hands folded and a mild smile on her lips as she moved among twin rows of kneeling assassins. The closest Owl, Dharma was his name, the burly champion of the Order, shifted, the effect being the same as a beast moving in the dark.

"Oh yes, Mother of Night." There was a fierce relish in his growl. Wu Zetian chuckled. The Owl's soul dripped like a piece of coal pulled from a well.

"My pretty chicks. Keep feeding, then. Keep growing. There'll be need for your sharpened wings yet." The Owls nodded as one, their spirits sparkling with awe and greed. Smiling, Wu Zetian turned to Shanti. The woman was pale, her steely discipline as taut as a pulled string.

"And what about you? You yearn for the dark as well?" The question was rhetorical. Of course she did. The Night, with its hidden mystery, called those who had been born beneath its boughs.

"Go on," she murmured, moving beyond the guards.

"Slacken your thirst for a bit. I'll take my time here." She didn't turn to see Shanti's deep, grateful bow. Honestly, she didn't. She understood. The yearning for the Night, that deep, primal desire for what was unseen, for its still depths, for its vertiginous heights. It was just natural, and who more than a Nightborn could embody it? Why, she was the premium yearner among them all.

Part of her still thought that sequestering herself inside the Iron Blossom and tasting the True Night forever was a very good plan. The rest knew better, of course, but that didn't mean she couldn't sympathize. In fact, she very much appreciated it. Now, she wondered. How would the Owls react if they knew that when they cultivated this close to the Shadow Dragon Vein, it wasn't just natural Qi they were cycling, but also her own? Reverential awe? Startled respect? Repugnance? Who knew.

They likely must suspect something, as most of the people on the Plateau must. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. The Night Domain came from her and the Shadow Dragon Vein combined, and was called the Founder's blessing. But she wondered how close they realize that expression to be. Every little act of cultivation, every imbibing of Qi; it was pulling at her essence, diluted or not, and it was that essence that the Nightborn used to grow stronger.

Why, it was what made them Nightborn to begin with. In a way, she was quite the funny contagion. And yet, it was useful, the foundation of the Sect, and so it was fine. For her? It was… strange. A mix between giving milk to an endless litter and having a swarm of tiny creatures nibbling at the edge of her robes. Her previous self always had mixed feelings about it, between motherly pride and outraged intrusion. Her… more of the former maybe, joined to a fond amusement. Look at how eagerly they breathed!

Watch them eat and drink and grow! Aren't they lively? Aren't they cute, with all their desires and wishes and hunger? It was pretty, it was amusing. Why, it was almost comforting in a way, as though seeing your garden grow under shining sunlight. Not to mention, satisfying. You only had to balance it with a healthy dose of reminded that it was people you were dealing with. But enough of that, it was the two newest flowers of her garden she was here to visit today.

Two hungry, hungry flowers in need of the gardener's care. How could she do anything but offer it? The cells of conversion were just that. Bare and stark, they consisted of a small dais that emerged from a sea of liquid Night Qi. Their occupants were forced into a space just wide enough to sit, while around them darkness pooled in still silence. Qi wafted thick as cotton here, the Night layering depth upon depth in a heavy shroud. All was silence and black. Wu Zetian slipped inside the first cell like a shadow.

A deeper shadow, darker and darker and yet darker. This cell smelled of wet fur, and the fog hissing from blood on freshly fallen snow. It echoed with padded steps, and rasping breath of heaved flanks. Glowing eyes glimmered in the dark. Predators loomed in the Night. Wu Zetian moved among the liquid Qi, her passage not stirring a mote of it. Her eyes were for the creature sitting in a lotus position on the dais. Fan Yu had changed from the last time they had seen each other.

The tall, amazonian girl was gone, replaced by a creature that only a nightmare could birth. Massive claws, fit to skewer a man, tipped trunk-like arms that could have popped a ribcage between them. Digitigrade legs, thighs as wide as a man's torso. And a lupine face, pulled in a perpetual, open-mouthed sneer of one hundred fangs. Wu Zetian moved around her.

She took in the calm of her new Qi, black as sin and thick as tar; how all her previous animal enhancements had been taken and remoulded by the powerful energy into something better. Not a change in Realm, or a breakthrough. Just an adaptation. And yet, she had grown stronger. A perfect fit? Her voice echoed, seemingly coming from every corner.

"What are you, creature of Night?" Fan Yu flinched. Beady eyes, four of them, blinked into the dark, trying and failing to find her.

"You've peered into the Night, and accepted its cool blessing inside of you. It has reshaped you, and yet, you're still you. A conundrum, a mystery given flesh and blood. But if an answer is to be found, it's in your will and desires. So I ask, what are you, Creature of Night?" A violent shiver coursed through the girl. She shook her massive head. Her fur, thick and glossy and dark, stood on end like a porcupine's quills. When her maw opened, thin trails of fog wafted out of it.

"I… don't know." Wu Zetian smiled. A proper answer.

"Are you still you, Fan You of the Horde?"

"Yes… yes! I am me. Daughter of Chief Stonehorn, hunter, warrior, bearer of the Name, heiress of Lion-Devours-The-Sky!" Her words had enough strength to set the darkness a-quaking. The Night Qi reflected her soul: a still bleeding daughter, receiving her first fang-dagger with a smile that missed teeth and none of its joy. A hunter, clinging to a roaring monster's neck, her own roar a match. A champion, the bodies of her foes piled around her feet, the proud gazes of mother and father on her. And now…

a new thing, whose thirst had been slaked by Night, whose Dao had taken a new path.

"And what else? What are you now?" She paused, lupine nose quivering, barrel-wide chest rising and falling.

"I… I know it."

"Can you say it?"

"I… I can't."

"Do you want me to say it?"

"Yes… yes!" She added, as though hesitation was a crime to be stamped out. Wu Zetian circled her. She reached out, and felt the sharp intake of breath when her fingers brushed fur. She stopped, leaned close, whispered to her ear a secret that only they could know.

"You are the beast that howls to the Moon," she breathed.

"You are the monster whose breath fills the dark with dread. You are claws and fangs. You are fear and purity. You are the exultation of the hunt, and the murky gloom beneath the boughs. You are the silence that heralds death, and the thrashing kill." Fan Yu trembled, a mix of horror and ecstatic realization thundering through her.

"It's Weight, as we call it," Wu Zetian told her.

"And the Path of the Feral Soul." As marking as giving her a new name and a new life. As she felt her shiver under a cascade of conflicting emotions, Wu Zetian knew that this girl was a step closer to truly being her disciple. She left her there, to continue her meditation over the new awareness she had gifted her with. The Night in the second cell was different. Less dense, less deep. It resembled a simple gloom rather than the layering of mystery of the other. And it stank of fear.

Sun Mei slumped on the dais like a pile of abandoned rags. She shivered violently, as though caught in the open winter. The darkness around her flickered with phantoms born by her memories. A daughter, born among great reverie and expectations. A promise of salvation for those stranded among danger. The same daughter, struggling under that weight, gathering one wound more with every failure to hold it, until there was no such thing as unmarred skin. A daughter, always a daughter. Never a grown woman.

Wu Zetian moved around her, assessing the trembling fear of her soul. Ten minutes in the cell and this…? How awfully weak. How marvelous. One peered into the Night and found a new self, imagined herself as the monster stalking the dark. Another did the same and all she saw was dread. And yet, neither was wrong.

"Disciple," she murmured, settling beside her. Sun Mei didn't answer until Zetian's hand found hers. She flinched then, a pitiful whine escaping her lips.

"T-Teacher."

"Grieve no more. I stand by your side." She didn't answer, but her delicate hand squeezed hers with an almost desperate intensity.

"The Night is a canvas," she murmured.

"In it, we see our innermost thoughts reflected to us, bare and great. In it, our mind can paint stars and summon nightmares. Tell me, Disciple, do you fear?"

"Y-y-yes." She flinched, whining.

"Do you fear being weak? Or being alone?"

"I… I f-fear being w-weak."

"Why?" There was no judgement in her question. It was just that. A question, piercing and sharp and yet not cold.

"I-I… I f-fail my f-family by being w-weak. I was… I was meant to s-save them." Oh, there were so many different types of strength. But she wouldn't listen now, and, well, the world could be quite cruel. Instead, Wu Zetian just stood there, holding her hand, giving her something to cling to. All around them, phantoms of failure danced and flickered. Some real, some too bizarre and exaggerated to be anything but illusions. Sun Mei's hesitations, doubts and fears given form.

In the Night, they had taken a life of their own. She lingered on them so much that her bottleneck was quickly explained. Wu Zetian hummed. There was no point in keeping on pushing. And yet, it wouldn't do to leave her like that either. She leaned toward her, and murmured two things for her to ponder.

"Night must not necessarily be dark," she said.

"And think of this: why linger on fear and doubt, when you can wonder what it'd mean to be strong?" She felt her go still, the seeds being taken by that far too active mind. But she didn't push. They remained there, sitting in the dark, hand in hand. Her own great heart beat in sync with the girl's fluttering one, steadying it, holding it. Another kind of Disciple, really.