Chương 60: Chapter 9

Her previous self was a mess. If the state of the Sect at her awakening didn't prove it, that of her private quarters did. Now, Wu Zetian was all for expressing one's personality. Her old office, with its wooden, filigreed paneling, unchanged across five decades no matter what fashion dictated, and mementos worth nothing except to her, exposed the philosophy well. With that, the furniture turned to kindling, the crushed bed, the Qi-explosion stains, and the miasma of despair were a little too much, even for her.

So it was the chaotic maze of writing covering walls, floor and ceiling. I am a failure, corrected with a NOT jammed hard between the words. Harder, HARDER, clawed into the stone, dotted with flecks of black blood. And it kept going, a tormented soul laid bare in claw marks and smeared lifeblood. Again. Concentrate. You are wasting time. Thirty millennia. THIRTY MILLENNIA! I have given up so much. I have no limits. I have no limits. I have no limits. I am so tired. Weakness always reveals itself.

This was the true test. I was lucky. No, no, I did everything right. I have worked so long, so hard. So, why, why? I'll be left behind. I cannot fail. I am not worthless. I am worthless. Perhaps… no, NO! It's me. It's me. And low on the wall, low enough, small enough that a trembling child could have written it. Father was right. Wu Zetian didn't move. Expressionless, she raised a finger to her mouth. Her skin split evenly under her teeth, the bittersweet tang of immortal blood filling her mouth.

She swiped, and the word Father disappeared under a splotch of dark blood. Worlds apart, and it's truly the same? Why wasn't she surprised? Massive space aside, her former self had shared her spartan tastes. Apart from the bedroom, only another chamber made up what were the Immortal's private quarters. Another room, Wu Zetian thought, stepping over the piece of the door. And another madness. Blood, immortal, eternal blood, was used as paint here too.

But instead of the thoughts of an overheated mind, something else, just as haunting, decorated the half-destroyed wall.

"Hello, Father," Wu Zetian murmured. The old man, depicted in loving smears over cracked stone, was small and thin, with a slight hunchback. His features were deeply etched into a scowling face, and he was bald. The mouth was small and red. Thick eyebrows arched above the eyes. The eyes. It would have been a common face without the eyes. Wide and cold, bearing a quiet, unwavering contempt toward the world, a reptilian consideration.

They didn't shine, as much as they seemed to fold inward, two pits inside of which light went to die. The resemblance was perfect. Her father, the little, mediocre man in the big chair. Except that there was nothing mediocre about this goblin, this knotted ball of darkness, this… thing. Thirty millennia and one transmigration away, and Wu Zetian still felt the lingering feeling of her knees going weak. A single name echoed in her mind, wiping away every other thought, tyrannical and frigid like the word of winter.

Wu Gongen. Outsider. Father of Thousands. Great Demon. The God of Alchemy. The Beckoning Old Man. Wu Gongen. Wu Gongen. Wu Gongen.

"Wu Gongen." The thought became a choir became a chant. Heart Demons, old, hateful things of slavish will, slithered and emerged from the shadows. They writhed in the dust, humiliating themselves before the visage, ripping and clawing at themselves, scattering their abeisance with their pain. Just like He would have liked it. Wu Gongen. Wu Gongen. Wu Gongen. Say his name. Wu Gongen. It was like her skull had become a sound box for that name to bounce and echo. Her mind felt like a piece of overheated metal.

Wu Zetian tried to tear herself away, but she couldn't. The picture, those pits, had caught her in a vice. She was back in the office. Massive pieces of furniture loomed over her, black mountains wrought from the bones of giants. The clock, she always hated that cursed clock, marked the time, its gong beating a dull, ruthless tempo. The great desk was a cliff around which seas churned and died. And behind it, her Father was a little man with great black eyes, floating in a chair never too big for him.

"I can't do it," she heard herself say, her voice that of a frightened child. There was no answer, no rebuke. The little man in the chair just bored into her with those horrible eyes, his silence more cutting than any scream. The clock kept its cold march, relentless.

"It's impossible!" She exclaimed, and her voice sank into the silence like a pebble into a black sea. It smothered her, pinned her. It forced her to her knees. And the little man watched, and the clock continued.

"Please! Please…" She pleaded, but it was like asking for water to spring from a stone.

"I can't do it! I can't…!" She fell, and the fall was like dropping to the Abyss's bottom. She lost consciousness, found it again in the cold pressure of the floor against her cheek. The eyes were still there. They pierced her like ten thousand blades, battered her skin until it was blackened with frost, until it peeled away, revealing the rimed bones underneath.

"I can't!" She howled, the last death-kneel of a broken soul. No answer ever came. Only the eyes, and the relentless ticking of the clock. Wu Zetian tore herself from the vision with a choked snarl. She stumbled back, leaning against the threshold. Her heart hammered in her throat. Her skin erupted with goosebumps. Another crisis, she managed, struggling to keep the panic at bay. It wasn't purely emotional. That name alone had a weight to it that made it sink into her thoughts like tar.

Pushing it back required actual effort. From an Immortal.

"SILENCE!" The Heart Demons erupted under the wave of Night Qi, turning into gusts of dark mist before dissipating. Silence. Wu Zetian panted, waiting until both Qi and her traitorous heart were under control. My father. Her father. It's the same, isn't it? She raised her head, watching the little man caught in blood. Her fingers trembled, and she caught them, refusing to accept it. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Beneath, close to the horrible little man's left foot, there was a bloody handprint, one that was so low that a child could have left it. Wu Zetian watched it, thinking of a little girl who thought, who truly thought, that only by being what her father wanted her to be could she ever be something deserving of existing. You too had somebody whose love you desperately wanted, didn't you? Somebody who called himself your creator and cast a curse upon you, calling it duty. Become Immortal. Rise to crush the Heavens.

Fulfill this, or you aren't worthy of existing. You gave your life to this. You sacrificed your past, present and future; ripped your skin and broke your bones. You did so joyfully, never suspecting the chain wrapped around your neck. And no matter how high you rose, you never obtained what you truly craved. Because not even once, not even for a moment, he watched you. A story repeated across time and space.

Except that there hadn't been a son to tell this foolish Immortal that all her pain and struggle were nothing but a lie. The world did. And by then, it was too late. No limits indeed. Her laboratory was exactly as her previous self left it. The massive Qi condensation structures uncoiled in the almost perfect darkness like a madman's idea of roller coasters. Glass tanks the size of buildings waited alongside arcane machinery of steel and solid darkness. Moving among them, Wu Zetian revived memories not hers.

Despair. Obsession. Rage. There had been immense quantities of peak-quality substances stored there before. Lakes of distilled cultivation that could have made an average cultivator into a Nascent Soul ten times over. If he wouldn't have collapsed under the Qi's weight, that is. Drained away, all of it. Slurped down by a single soul looking for an impossible ascension. And it hadn't been enough. How humbling, she thought. She felt drained, to the point that even dragging her feet was a chore.

Her destination was a small forging station. Almost invisible beside the colossal machines, it consisted of a hearth, an anvil, and a basin filled with dark water. A hammer lay on the anvil, waiting. All the tools were simple, surprisingly unadorned for having been in use more than a millennium. But only deceptively so. The geometric patterns ornamenting the hammer's handle and the anvil's edge came from a style that only a chosen few still remembered today. Not for its excellence.

It was just a memory of a lost realm. Wu Zetian picked the hammer, testing its weight. Pointless to say, it was perfect, less a tool made for her hand than one that took its shape by unrelenting use. Her previous self had been quite the crafter. No surprise: she surpassed the rest of the Sect by such a wide margin that many things useful to her could only come if made by her hand. And… she was the independent type.

A series of armor, some already assembled, some still in pieces, were arrayed on a table close by, waiting. The new model of the Sect's armor let go of its austerity: the half-armor was to be replaced with a full suit. Beside them, weapons of all types formed orderly arrays. Wu Zetian hesitated. One of the greatest plotholes she had always struggled with during her novel-reading was in logistics. An Immortal had access to knowledge that let him create works of wonders.

Why wouldn't he put himself to work and forge, let's say, 500 excellent swords for his Sect's soldiers? Nascent Soul was likely beyond his means, but even only Core Formation would mean much: his Sect's army would boast a crushing technological superiority in all but the greatest encounters. Some stories had faced this, and she had felt a strange sense of disappointment in seeing their same reasons firsthand. Simply put, good weapons cost a lot.

Powerful resources, rare ingredients, enough Qi to fuel twenty years of low-level cultivation. Even an Immortal couldn't create them from nothing. And with things being like that, why spend what could create ten Core Formation to equip one thousand Formation Establishment? It just didn't make economic sense, not with the difference in power. The same reasoning applied to all Realms And then, cultivation incompatibility. More importantly, maintenance.

No, it couldn't be done, no matter how much her fingers itched to create a never-ending array of Immortal-grade weapons. What was needed wasn't a mass of good weapons. It was a mass of good weapons the Sect's logistical network could sustain. That was why she had been working mostly on optimized prototypes. Once a design was completed, they would move down the chain, to crafters whose efforts poured into it could be justified. Hers? It simply couldn't. Wu Zetian picked a piece of armor. This can be done anytime.

She put it back down. Farther away, her current main project loomed from the darkness like a beached galleon. The pylon was massive, easily the size of a palace on its own. Glyphs of resistance and stalwart foundation covered it in a tight scripture that was partially invisible to the naked eye. Wu Zetian walked beside it, passing her hand over its intricate surface. The glyphs gleamed briefly when her pale fingers brushed them, only to return to sleep when she left them. A great undertaking.

Can't it be done without the proper focus? She was stalling, wasn't she? The truth was, she was unsettled. Whether from her own memories or of her counterpart, she couldn't say. Nor did it matter. They were so close they may as well be the same. Twenty-five millennia ago, the Flood God almost broke this world, she thought, staring at her hand. That scar healed. And you couldn't?

"And you think yourself any different?" Wu Zetian had felt no intruder. She didn't feel it even when she heard that creaking voice. There was none. Atop the pillar, a cloaked creature looked down at her. It clung to the stone like a lizard, its limbs shooting out of tattered cloth like grey roots. Two wide lights peered from under the cowl, just above a divide of square teeth. Wu Zetian understood. Heart Demon. A great, ancient one. The largest, maybe.

The one who had followed her previous self for tens of millennia. The voice of doubt, sorrow and pain.

"I am Qon," it said, its voice underlined by the crackling of a dying fire. He was cold, sounded disappointed.

"I follow you now, new soul." He knows. And why shouldn't he? Heart Demons were viruses of the soul, experts of the workings of the universe that spawned them. How could they miss their soul changing? For a moment, Wu Zetian was scared. For a moment. Then, a wave of disdain washed over her. The blade of dark Qi hit Qon in the chest, a direct hit that would have felled a Nascent Soul. The Heart Demon didn't flinch.

"You are no different," he said, disappointed and sad.

"You too know only how to destroy what pains you." Wu Zetian watched him. Her heart wasn't beating faster. It wasn't.

"I am not her," she said, and hated how defensive she sounded.

"I overcome her memories. I overcome mine." She hated the way he looked at her, almost paternal in his pity.

"Destroy me then." A simple thing. Except that she couldn't. With the iron weight of certainty around her neck, she knew: she couldn't.

"Recognizing that you're chained isn't the same as shattering those chains." Qon turned away. Squatting like a gargoyle from myth, he looked in the distance.

"You've never managed to. Even after you understood. All you could do was give him up. But you never truly freed yourself." Wu Zetian's throat was dry. It was like all words had deserted her.

"Why?" was all she managed.

"You never were there for her. Why are you here for me now?" The demon didn't move, didn't flinch or breathe. All the small details denoting life didn't appear on his wiry body. He just stood there, watching, reminding.

"Her voice was my own," he said, mournful.

"But it's not yours. So now I am here. To remind you of who you are." Wu Zetian didn't dignify him with an answer. Without a word, she turned and walked away.

"You didn't truly let him go." She froze.

"You were only too tired to keep fighting. He refused to become what you wanted him to be. You lacked the strength to compel him. You lost, and you called your surrender love." Wu Zetian squeezed her fist until her knuckles were white. Her fingernails scraped furrows in her palm.

"That's not true."

"And now, you're doing it again. You already think about how to control her future. How to control him when he returns. You think you are loving them. You are just chaining them so that they wouldn't leave you."

"I…" It was true. Gods damn her, it was true. But she didn't… she didn't realize it at the time.

"You cannot change," observed the Demon.

"You'll always run back to your work to find worth in your life. You cannot find it in yourself, and you'll burn the world to keep that fire lit." He sighed.

"How many children must suffer before you realize you don't know how to love?" Wu Zetian realized she was trembling. She grabbed her fingers, willing them to stop. But they refused.

"Lin," she mumbled.

"Lin stays with me." His smile was filled with kind sadness.

"She's lonely," he said.

"She would have attached herself to anybody as long as her needs were fulfilled."

"She wouldn't…"

"She loves the grandmother she imagines. Once she sees who you truly are, she'll know."

"No, I…"

"You're not her. You inherited her family, but it's not you they hate or love. You lie to them. You perverted her Dao. You stole her face. Now, you teach them to love someone who never was. What exactly is here that belongs to you?" Wu Zetian felt her knees go weak.

"Are you her?" She whispered. The demon looked sad.

"Would it change what you've done? Will it change the end that you know is to come?" He paused, shook his head regretfully.

"You will try to chain him to yourself, but he will refuse to. This time, you won't be able to let him go. He will learn to hate you in the end." It was too much. Wu Zetian didn't run. She knew there was no outrunning this. She sat down, covering her face with both hands, like a child refusing to look at the boogeyman. It was pathetic. It was ridiculous. It was also the only thing she could do. When she reopened her eyes, she was alone again. Qon was nowhere to be seen. I am always here.

She could feel it, an echo of something horrible, trapped inside her chest. A worm, roiling inside the apple. Her very personal struggle. Wu Zetian covered her face again, a muffled "fuck" being her only word. It took her a shameful long time to calm down. When she did so, there was rage. Wu Zetian felt the old doubts return. The pain, the sorrow. The fear. The endless, abyssal fear.

"Not this time. Not this time. You won't stop me this time." Nothing would. Nothing. No matter how weak the words felt. No matter how much her fingers trembled, her heart seized and her ears echoed with the demon's words. She would overcome herself, even if she had to sacrifice her immortal existence for it. That night, the Rest of the Plateau's inhabitants were disturbed: their land, so renowned for its stability, trembled as though a great dragon roiled in the depths beneath.