Chương 71: Chapter 20

The door slammed open.

"Founder!" Shanti was deadly pale. She barely glanced at the black material that, like an explosion of ink centered on Wu Zetian, had reduced the room to the same formlessness. Zetian opened an eye, raising an eyebrow at her.

"That tea was in a hurry." The woman hesitated, but then, making a visible effort to rein herself in, she pressed her lips together.

"My apologies," she said, bowing. The door closed, and Wu Zetian closed her eyes again. Poor Shanti. She wouldn't forgive herself easily for that lapse in composure. Even if she should have. A second sun blooming into the sky would do that to you. Zetian re-immerged herself in the world of sensations and signatures that was the Night, and was met with the spiritual equivalent of glaring into the heart of a volcano. A sphere of sickly, raging light the size of a mountain loomed over the plateau.

Flares of green fire licked greedily amidst a sea of howling faces. The Qi scraped against her perceptions like a razor. Madness. Chaos made form, strong enough to raze the world to the ground. Destruction. Unchained, unrestrained, unstoppable. Howling into the void while hammering a thing that could be splintered but never broken, joyous, caring only for the act, never for the end or the purpose. Fury, yearning, hatred, love, joy and sorrow. The universe collapsing into a vortex of colors and sounds and motions.

And you, running triumphantly toward it, because the world was ending and soon all would be nothing. The ecstasy of destruction. You. Me. Everybody. Everything. All collapsing into one, until an egg of perfection trembled into the singing sky. Wu Zetian felt the destructive madness of an Immortal that embodied it. It tasted of spilled cherry and steaming meat.

It scrabbled at her senses like a dog turned desperate by hunger, wishing with all its miserable being for her to become like it, to die, to dance, to rush and forget. Chi You. The Demon of Destruction. Daughter of the Flood. Great Gnawer. Her presence was a more brilliant sun behind the sun. It howled, urging it on like a fan cheering for his favourite player. CRUSH! She howled cheerfully, the intensity of her desire so deep and painful that it was a light was a wine was a sickness. DESTROY! RAZE! FALL! FALL!

And fall it did. The great sun of destructive madness started descending toward the plateau. It sank into the Night like a stone and started gnawing its way in like a worm into flesh. The clouds burned up, blasted away by its thirst. A massive hole of clear sky formed above the Domain. The earth started to heat; it trembled, the whole plateau shaking under the growing pressure. Undaunted, Wu Zetian shaped a stiletto of meaning from her soul and thrusted it at the sun. Light cannot exist in the Night.

Her Qi converged over the falling sun, tendrils of meaning attempting to snuff it out with the obvious reasoning that Night was Night because no sun existed in it. It didn't care. The sun howled with ten million mouths and one voice, singing of destruction. It may have had weaknesses. It may have been denied, argued down and rejected. But its song was so loaded with meaning and weight that subtle means weren't enough. What if it made no sense? It screamed. I am strong, stronger than sense, stronger than reason.

Bow to me and be erased! Like someone shouting down dissenters, it howled its way through her metaphysical attacks and kept falling. In the close and far distance, Chi You screamed a laughter that was as distant by order and restraint as black from white. Wu Zetian let out a slow breath from her nose. Chi You wasn't Yellow-Brow. She just loaded her attacks with a crude meaning, just enough that she couldn't just eclipse, and then overloaded it with power. As brute as a brute could be, but it was just as effective.

Zetian knew could veil the city in Mystery. She could twist the distance to it, or make the world forget it. It wouldn't matter. The chaos of the attack would just gnaw through it by sheer brute force. She thought, assessing her options. Above her head, the city bloomed with panic. It wasn't often that Zhao was happy to be a soldier.

"Lin! Here!" People were shouting, many rushing away. Some had fallen to their knees, looking up in bewilderment. The sound of frantic prayers and cries of terror filled the air. It had happened too fast for him to notice. One moment, he was doing his usual patrol, thinking about what he'd need for dinner and cringing at the damage it'd do to his money pouch. The next, panic was sweeping the market, people screaming and pointing. A sun had appeared in the night sky.

Zhao didn't need to see how the light it shed didn't enlighten as much as impossibly darkened, or his experience with demonic cultivation, to see the writing on the wall. An Immortal was attacking the city.

"Lin! Quick!" The little girl squirrelled between two people before reaching him. She panted, holding the bolt of cloth he sent her to buy to her chest.

"Demons are back?" She asked, a heartbreaking mix of hope and fear warring in her expression.

"I wish," he murmured, pulling her close and under his cloak. Lin gave a squeak but didn't resist. She never did.

"Don't look up." The girl bit her lip and nodded, and just to show she understood, she pulled her hat over her eyes. Zhao's smile was pained. He took his own advice. He had tried looking at that abomination up there before, with the result that he was still blinking afterimages away, and struggling with something that felt like a spike of iron lodged between his eyes. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Gritting his teeth, he looked over the crowd.

His captain, Tai, was barking orders, sending guards like him sprinting to try and keep the people calm. Everybody knew there was nothing they could do, but the captain's voice was undiminished. Sun falling from the sky or not, the city guard could at least fulfill his duties until someone who could do something showed up. Zhao met the captain's gaze, and that understanding passed between them in a moment. He was a good man, Captain Tai.

Zhao nodded, and then he too was crying out to stay calm, that the Mother of Night would protect them. For a moment, it seemed almost like it could do something. A wave of Qi slammed into the market like a tidal wave. People, soldiers and civilians alike were bowled over, smashing against each other. The stalls were flattened, the ground swept by a wave of dust. Zhao had no idea when he had fallen. Pushing Qi into his meridians, he scrambled to rise.

All around him, people littered the cobblestones, moaning and gasping. Someone was screaming. He smelled the stench of burning. All of a sudden, the temperature had risen. It was hot, blistering. Zhao pulled his collar open with a violent tug, gasping for air. Sweat beaded all over him. He was drenched almost right away. Resisting the urge to pull off his armor, he checked for Lin. The little girl was unconscious and as drenched as he felt, but seemed otherwise fine.

He had just started to feel relieved when the whispers hit. KILL. DESTROY. EAT. DIE. LIVE. LOVE. FEAST. TAKE. ENJOY. CELEBRATE. KILLDESTROYEATDIELIVELOVEFEASTTAKEENJOYENJOYENJOYENJOY. It was like years of life were squeezing their way through his ear. He saw himself back when he was a kid, getting drunk for the first time on the jar of rice wine he bought with months of savings. His first kiss, with that girl who then broke his heart.

That time he and Jin fought off those bastards of the second regiment and he got his cheek cut open. The almost physical rejection he had felt when he recharged his Qi with the natal one stored in the stone. And then more, lives who he had imagined or dreamed but never actually lived. They carved through his mind like a flurry of spears. Not one was peaceful; they were all violent, piercing, intense, until he was drowning under a waterfall of unrestrained emotions.

He tried to make sense of the chaos, but it was like trying to empty a lake with a pierced bucket. The more he tried, the more the feelings increased, battering his conscious mind until he was about to faint. He could only endure. It went on for an eternity, ending so fast that it felt like a claw had torn something from his chest. Feeling nauseous and burning, blinking away tears, Zhao searched for Lin. Someone was screaming, but the sound was strange, wrong.

Discipline made him continue dumping Qi into his meridians. That helped. Night Qi poured into his body almost on its own, feeling like cool water splashed on his face. His sight cleared, but then he almost wished it hadn't. All around him, people were fighting. Screaming incoherently, they clawed and punched each other. Zhao watched with horror Tai disappear under a flurry of flailing limbs.

"Stop!" He thought it was blistering before. Now, it felt like the air was scraping against his throat. He choked, coughed. His stomach rebelled, and he emptied it on the cobblestones. Spitting, panting, he looked for Lin. The little girl nestled beneath him. Good, good. He had to protect her. She was foaming at the mouth. A violent tremor ran all over her body, shaking her like a leaf. Cursing loudly, Zhao grabbed her.

She had bitten her lips bloody, and her jaw was so tight that the veins in her face and neck had swelled. But he was Foundation Establishment, for all the worth that was, and he pried them loose forcefully. Someone swallowing his own tongue during a seizure was a myth. Getting their brain fried by invasive, demonic Qi was not. Holding her mouth open, Zhao pulled a small flask from his belt and dropped lily-colored liquid on her tongue.

He thanked the new safety regulations: the draught wouldn't flush the demonic Qi, but it would slow it down. Meanwhile, the victim could sleep and not suffer from whatever sensorial effect this was. Zhao stared at her until her breathing turned almost regular. Like all cultivators, he had learned to hate his own weakness. At that moment, he could have ripped his heart out. Or maybe it was the effect of that alien Qi. It didn't matter.

He had never felt so small and pathetic, not even when demonic hordes bore down on the Sect. That's how life is for the weak, he thought painfully. We're like dust. We're alive one moment, with all our hopes and dreams. Then an Immortal gestures and we die. Gone with the wind. We're footprints in the sand. He couldn't raise his head to watch that deadly sun, but it didn't matter. Its presence was a physical, screaming thing filling his world.

Hellish heat slammed in waves over him, stealing his breath and cracking his skin. A sharp pain punched through his eyes, and he could feel himself growing faint. Whispers of madness scrabbled against his senses. All around him, those few who hadn't collapsed or escaped were busy tearing each other to pieces. Grimacing, he focused. His Night was pathetic, a skin-tight shell of gloom. It emerged from his body, wobbling in the blistering wind. It held, but barely. It didn't matter, as long as it did.

His meridian screamed with pain as he forced it to extend, to form a cloak over Lin, even as he shielded her with his body. It was useless, he knew it. That wind and heat would crush that little shell and then both of them. It was useless, and yet he did it all the same, because not doing it was worse than death and he wouldn't, couldn't, be that man who fed on natal Qi and her, the child who was a slave and didn't know it.

Maybe that's why so many famous cultivators have so few attachments, he thought as his Meridians creaked in his ears. It's not because they're a distraction. It's because they know that they'll lose them and it scares them. Not today, maybe, but one day their fathers and mothers and siblings and loved ones will grow old, become sick, or be wounded and no powerful cultivation methods will save them. And the cultivator will be left alone, cradling his broken heart.

Or maybe, this will happen: them shielding the body of a loved one without the same talent, their great, ascended body forcing them to watch as the people they have sworn to cherish and protect disappear into dust and they are left. And if that is to be the end, then why love at all? He was delirious. He knew he was. He felt weak, sleepy. The world was more nuanced than that, infinitely more complex. And yet, he couldn't stop himself. Thoughts flew from him like startled birds.

And aren't the Immortals the ones more vulnerable to this? For them, it's not a question of if, only of when. There are so few of them, and so many of us, who sicken and die. Zhao pawed at Lin's unmoving body, trying to coax one more moment of life in her. The weak was lucky in this. If they had to go, they could do so together. Even if one would always be forced to watch the other go first. In the end, he decided dimly, loving required courage.

He was almost gone, so much that it took him a few moments to realize that the heat was gone, and a few more to see the hair-thin tendrils of silvery darkness that, bending gracefully, infused healing Qi into the child, and himself. He hadn't realized how distant the world had become. With each push of Night Qi, the substance gleaming gently, it all returned, including the alarm. Or the attempt at it, at least.

Zhao felt like one of those rainy days, when the kettle bubbled on the fire and the air was cool and everything was peace. The maddened sun was still up there, still falling, and yet, he felt… safe. Marveling at it, he looked up. The Founder made quite the impression up close. She was watching the sun, her expression distinctly unimpressed. Zhao wondered if he was allowed to look at her like this. Wasn't there some kind of code? Before he could come up with an answer, she glanced his way.

Her expression softened into something between amusement and teasing.

"You're having interesting thoughts." Her robes, he noticed, flowed like a sea of silk. They covered the fallen people and where they brushed, wounds closed and breaths calmed. Tai, his arms hooked around two inhabitants' necks, looked like in the midst of a pleasant dream.

"Breath." He obeyed, and felt much, much better. Like waking up in the dark and hearing grandma stoking the fire. She watched him. Her smile was fond, but there was steel in her eyes.

"Just you stay put. This will be done in no time at all." She was gone, but her presence remained. Zhao felt no sun, no whisper of madness, no fear of death. Just the large presence moving in the dark, fixing the shutters while outside rained and in the house was warm. It made him feel small, but in a completely different way. He clasped his hands together and bowed his head.