Fatherly Asura

Immortally foolish, Fu’s [Pull] maintained.

A devastation of lightning arrived from his [Dao]. A Heavenly descent. Continuous, annihilatory force that consumed the immediate battlefield about him in a glow of arcing teal.

Hushi’s arms reaped [Air Qi] from any nearby.

Shuidi’s mists were cleansed, and yet her [Pull] drew a torrent in bloody, twisting composition.

The [Dao] wished to break them. Such was its purpose.

Inwardly Fu felt the enormity of lightning grow, threatening to rip his body asunder through the lens of this Heavenly column. It swallowed Shaokang, Wiapi, Zhu and Tanshaui, inflicting as much suffering upon them as it had the encroaching assassins.

Fear was to accompany it. A trial and [Tribulation].

But the [Dao] could share no terror greater than this moment, for no fate was worse than the blade that could soon sever Yuling’s life.

Purge.

Their [Pull] became a vortex, expanding through the storm. He felt another’s [Core] and reaped. The tarnished, bloody [Air Qi] vanished into his own, melding to deliver a further deluge of violent [Demonic Urges].

And another.

Grasp, pillage, grasp, pillage, grasp, pillage, grasp, pillage: and the bloody Qi suffused every iota of skin, [Channel] and [Core]. Empowering. Bulging like a sac that was fit to burst.

Shuidi.

The [Spirit Crab’s] consciousness wrenched control of the rampant [Dao], funneling its explosive force into the massed stockpiles of reaped [Inner Qi].

And detonated.

Heaven gave a singular applause.

[Tribulation] energy raged about the [Heavenly Spectre’s Shroud] as Fu left the battle in his wake, He moved as a predatory cloud, arcing and wind-made, consuming the landscape beneath his stride until he shattered the very ground at the [Paifang’s] mouth.

The cabal of assassins had not yet crossed.

“Flee,” he warned, once.

Fools cried out in expletive or rallied about surprise and insult. These disciples of the Sepulchral Saber Sect merely vanished into action. Grand deliveries pierced from the [Hundred Ephemeral Cuts], manifesting sabers and smoke, mist and fume, plunging through the intangibility of his body to disturbingly great effect.

[Three Wisps From Breath].

Prodigious arms fumed from Fu’s back and empty socket, alight with the roar of the [Tribulation’s] energy.

[Half Cloud Step].

The three partners could feel no trace of [Demonic Urges], now cleansed by the denotation of their called [Tribulation]. This power had brought rejuvenation enough to clash, infusing strength into the lashing chain his technique had created.

But oh how these assassins struck with glee. These mirrored talents of spectral lineage, blurring [Might] and elite foundation. [Spirit Tigers] chuffed as their Qi tore holes in his own wispy [Constitution]. Douli-bearing villains smiled as their myriad lesser [Dao] were countered by Fu’s lashing tendrils.

Was this enjoyment?

Did they think crossing the [Paifang] was no great feat?

Does more of this plan go unseen?

Shuidi drowned the [Core] of an onyx [Spirit Tiger] to their rear, deflecting three more with fumes of the [Wind Phantom’s Breath].

Dozens remained.

It matters not.

🀨

[Ink] burned.

Fu spat.

The final reserves of his liquid [Origin Qi] washed upon his form, replenishing the great deficit of his [Constitution] and the [Inner Qi] that fed it. It could not mend the great mental toll that ceaseless use of the [Dao] had seized, nor that of his wounded [Spirit].

“Hushi, Shuidi…” he struggled, rising from a great gasp. “Are you well?”

A constellation of specks wisped about the [Mystic Realm].

A vibrant marker of fresh corpses.

All else was in ruin. Gone were the poppies’ pink fumes and the ground that had once held them, covered instead in visceral fluid and the pox-marks of ten thousand exchanged blows.

Sabers littered the ground.

Hushi lifted their chain, securing it in Fu’s grip.

“Tanshuai. Zhu,” warned Shuidi.

[Water Qi] flushed the vile coating of blood from their weapon, and their [Senses] moved to where Zhu clashed with the Sepulchral Saber Sect’s lead disciple. Just as his rain no longer fell, his [Dao of the Ephemeral Cascade] - exhausted, so did the scene paint an empty, fume filled sky.

No moon gleamed nor sun radiated.

One breath and [Half Cloud Step] delivered them hence.

The veil clad disciple showed large against a ravaged field. Her three [Spirit Tigers] loomed in lax formation about her, half-ensconced by pink-hued smoke.

She allowed Fu’s approach.

First to great, twinned mounds. Tapestries of gore wherein Shaokang knelt aside his vast Waipi, both with uncountable bloody fissures carved upon their flesh. Low was their breath and the slight rise of each chest.

A wheeze.

Hushi slung down, seeing that both held open, unblinking eyes. Their pupils no larger than pins, terrorized into submission.

“I would have them see,” intoned the disciple.

Her tamber, her inflection, it suggested that them applied not only to Shaokang and his partner.

Fu crossed Kang Jae’s corpse, reaching a scene of second horror.

Smoke formed the sabers interred in Zhu’s palms, sealing him against the ground. These cruel blades had the skin about them blacken and hiss, mirrored again in his shoulders, thighs and feet.

Tanshuai’s wings were charred, twitching as the [Spirit Butterfly] writhed upon his gut.

The mad and foolish might consider a thousand complaints.

Had Yuling’s rescue not taken priority- Had the [Paifang] not need defended- Had they approached as assassins- Had Grandmother Hua intervened- Had another [Season] passed- Had he met his daughter sooner- Had he the merit to join the sun-facing Sect-

Fu gained another step.

“This Gao Shuidi sees three partners now. Gao Zhu has dealt the talentless saber a blow! She would not dare continue!”

Slow was the disciple’s turn. “One cannot take life and hold it dearly,” she intoned, circling a palm. “That is Heaven’s first truth.”

Zhu’s struggle had felled one of her partners, and yet the monsters before them showed no signs of this crippling. An entire Path removed, a fifth of her soul and myriad moons of cultivation. Such detachment was grim indeed.

“We do not come to bandy insight, cultivator. Let this ending begin.”

“The lost cub knows this. The starved beast that happens upon a litter. The sun-walking heroes mask well their knowledge of it. It is no insight, Gao Fu. Merely… law. But you know this, yes. The assassin. A monster beneath the moon. That you hold it dear now is but the last lingering attachment of mortality.”

The disciple employed no trickery.

Her words were true.

“Yet you stand here,” said Fu. “Seeking vengeance, possessing the same sentiment for a fallen Sect. If this is your concept, you walk against it.

Hushi’s arms dripped, trailing the [Impending Mortality Dew] across their physique.

“To conflate duty with sentiment is the outlook of youth. I see you believe I say this for naught. Further folly brings further insult to my Sect. Stay that poison. It would be… disappointing to have you crippled before justice comes to pass.”

Motion flew from the fumes at her rear.

Fresh figures appeared as swift as thought. A douli clad pair, and their three [Spirit Tigers] each, coarsely thrusting Yuling and Nuwang to their lead disciple’s feet.

“Yuling!” he cried. “Nuwang!”

Released that she might be captured again. Where are the Clouded Courts?

His heart beat cold.

“The plum-eyed trash and the one-armed fool. Possessing of eyes, they still cannot see. This once-great Sect was ruined once by your hand: fate sealed by your intervention. Now twice, for your futility has cleansed the weakest of my remnants. A service. A debt,” she said, swirling the ranks of her partners. Caressing with gentle trails. “And [Karma] bids we right it.”

A hair of movement announced Fu’s intent to move.

Smoke coalesced at her whim before even this infinitesimal distance might be crossed. An immediacy of fume-borne sabers pierced the [Heavenly Spectre’s Shroud], wresting control of the very Qi within.

Fu’s body stalled.

Hushi and Shuidi became frigid, unable to lift a breath.

The lead disciple was then upon him, and her hand burned with the heat of a thousand blazing suns at his jaw. Her grip was titanic as she snapped his neck towards Yuling.

“See her love, Gao Fu. Witness first hand the folly of attachment and all you have wrought. It shall be burned upon your memory as this life ends,” she finally hissed.

A purity of [Fire Qi] entered his [Channels] at her command.

An inferno to make steam of the [Impending Mortality Dew], [Twin Demon Chrysanthemum Sap] or [Pure Yang Lotus Drops].

To make steam of [Channel], [Meridian] and [Core].

[Mind].

[Body].

[Dao of-]!

[Dao o-]!

[D-]

Futility.

Agony.

Yuling clamped her mouth tightly shut, trapping the heartful screams between gum and lip. There she thrashed, impotent as the second assassin steered her head and tore wide her eyelids that she might not look away.

She is ever diligent, is she not? Hushi? Shuidi. Brave and righteous.

His impressions met silence.

Absent souls.

Heat held meaning no longer.

The means to control his thoughts faded, and soon his eyes lapsed from the edge inward. A curtain closing, flaking, removing the pink-hued fumes, the tarnished ground… and Yuling.

Ash.

Heaven laughs at the will of cultivators, for what did it care for such plight?

Fresh specks released upon the breeze. A teal that ashen white could not repress, and yet it was meaningless. Mere granules carried from one stretch to another, loose ribbons that would once more add to the impartial winds.

To an onlooker, naught differed.

To Heaven, the same.

Fragments of the once Fatherly [Asura] returned skyward, venturing to horizons near and distant.

Some trite fifth landed upon a distant laborer’s scarf. Another scattered beneath the breathy flare of a [Spirit Oxen’s] nostrils.

Smaller pinches flowed elsewhere, careless and carefree.

To the wedge of a merchant daughter’s window, pried wide that her passion might be explored. Beneath the foot of the realm’s lowest villain, dirtying his sole as a rusted jian pressed against this latest victim’s collar.

Stolen novel; please report.

One speck landed gently atop a poppy’s whorl.

This pink-rich breeze carried all. Indifferent and vast, its scattering took but a span of breaths. It did not mind the sorrowful cry of a daughter’s despair.

Nor care as the sky erupted in cerulean.

But it heeded the call.

“The debt is clear, brute of the [Cherry River Sage]. Repaid, it shall be.”

Cerulean flame ignited upon the laborer’s scarf and in the [Spirit Oxen’s] wake. The merchant’s window, villain’s sole and orchid’s lip. From prayer bead, Patriarch’s beard, thrusting qiang and slurry upon a daughter’s blood-matted cheek.

The wind extended its palm, and [Ink] roared with a flame to make cinders of Heaven.

From four corners these ashen specks reformed, racing across the cerulean skies like meteors in flight. Each a pulsing star of inordinate Qi, condensing to form a tri-partate silhouette upon the poppy-strewn ground.

[Ink] burned. [Ink] blazed.

Gao Fu set down a reforged douli, and with a second hand welcomed Shuidi to his palm. A maelstrom of cerulean flame encased him: children to the titanic entity that soared well above.

The mythic [Divine Serenities Phoenix].

No gratitude was shared, for one sight alone held the three’s focus.

“If the Heavens block, cut the Heavens,” intoned the lead disciple. Her [Spirit Tigers] flocked with the swiftness of fresh initiates.

A flick pulsed [Intent] across Fu’s palms and he trailed through their smoke-borne flesh as if they were curtains to be drawn. Their [Spirits’] sundered at a touch, dispersing them to the ground like mewling kittens.

If the lead disciple felt this…

“My daughters,” Fu smiled, stooping to Yuling and Nuwang. The flames of the [Divine Serenities Phoenix] embraced them at a touch, casting free the stain of violence and injury. From teal arms did the douli descend, cradling Yuling’s head.

The world was slow about him, and so he said no more.

Hushi went east, and Shuidi west, making prey of the Sepulchral Saber Sect’s remaining pair.

Fu’s grip plunged about the lead disciple’s neck. “[Dao of Four Horizons],” he called, whisking both into the Heavens themselves.

“What is this?” flinched the woman, shades of her hanfu and flesh failing to turn gaseous.

[Impending Mortality Dew] flooded from his grasp, saturating the assassin’s skin as he ripped free her veil. A great bore opened at her forehead, set there by malefic, burrowing tendrils. No thorns as the former True Imperial’s brand had held.

He ensured its progress was slow, dessicating flesh and Qi.

“My service.. On the [Dao]...” she screamed. “I pledge…”

“You spoke of death, attachment and sentimentality. That it is Heaven’s truth. I do not deny it. A weakness that I choose to hold dear. Thus I say once, go. From one black-hearted soul to another, go. Meet the afterlife swiftly, rejoin your Sect, your ancestors, the Great Cycle: and warn them, assassin. Prepare the dead for ten thousand visitors, for I will dispense no less than this fate to those who endanger my children.”

The assassin’s bones went aflame, for her flesh was too weak to contain the [Fire Qi] of her [Constitution].

His grip fell, scattering her across the realm.

[Dao of Four Horizons].

Hushi and Shuidi returned to him at his landing, withholding myriad impressions save for curiosity about the titanic myth’s arrival.

Yuling bowed deeply aside Shaokang, proffering respects to the great phoenix without further words.

The rejuvenating flames had not touched the Gao clan’s brutish pair wholly, extinguishing so that vast lattices of scars remained upon he and Waipi’s flesh.

Zhu and Tanshaui held this same fate, punctured yet living. “Brother,” he acknowledged, dazed enough that he had yet to unstopper the wine in his palm.

“Father.”

“Gao Fu.”

“F… Fu,” stammered a fourth.

Kang Jae skulked forward, unblemished save for burns upon his fabric. His personality did not align with subtlety, and at this moment Fu cared very little for the suspicious bulge of Gochi within his folds.

The phoenix mended only us. This mystery is for later days.

“My Gao clan,” he met, dipping his head towards Shaokang and Jae both despite the latter’s lack of inclusion. “Great [Divine Serenities Phoenix], I exchange my endless gratitude at this second meeting.”

Heat wormed through Fu’s skull at the very utterance of its speech.

“[Winter’s] child is mistaken. This great flame has crossed only the brute’s path. Another ember have you encountered,” it tremored. “Know this, the [Cherry River Sage’s] debt is cleansed. As Heaven dictates our [Karma] is null. No further favors are owed by this great flame.”

Fu stoked his whisker. “Then we will cry it loudly, great flame. The [Divine Serenities Phoenix] is indeed righteous. A thousand gratitudes,” he bowed.

Caring not for such insects, the [Divine Serenities Phoenix] vanished before his words had half begun.

Shuidi’s mirth was great. “This Gao Shuidi will one day mirror this feat. To leave unwanted conversation so dramatically. A boon this talented hermit will surely master.”

The poppies fumed pink once more.

“I’ve need of much wine, brother. Home awaits,” said Zhu, nigh collapsing with the next step.

A supporting shoulder emerged in Yuling. “This humble daughter greets you, cultivator Zhu.” Nuwang ripped the bottle from his grasp. “But no, there shall be no wine until your injuries are treated. You will act rationally until we return.”

His grin showed blood-stained teeth. “An insult perhaps, but Yuqi remains my favourite niece.”

🀧

“...again, it is this lacking disciple’s failure.”

The heat beneath [Summer’s] mists had grown oppressive. Aggressively more stifling than that of some few hours ago.

Though much more had changed.

Discomfort did not distract Fu from the disciples before him, arrayed behind the closed screen to his office. Three envoys from the Clouded Courts, steeped as their [Spirit Serpents] were, in roiling shadow.

“The fault lies in my lacking foresight,” he said.

Shuidi sneered in protest.

These gathered assassins bowed deeper. “Master Fatherly [Asura], such a thing cannot be said! We six gathered souls are here for atonement, sent by Elder [Breath Upon Onyx Nape]. To have disappointed one of your station: these deaths are offered. An offence of this magnitude demands no less.”

“Elder [Breath Upon Onyx Nape]. Two Hundredth and Forty First Elder of the Clouded Courts. Seat of Order, Golden Merchant Canton. [True Lord Realm].”

Fu thanked the Old One for this recollection.

“Oh?” he mused. “Is this the expectation? That the Fatherly [Asura] will reap his juniors for such insult? Does rumor circulate that my justice is of this ilk?”

Unflinching, the assassins’ bows went prostrate.

None dared answer but one [Spirit Serpent], manifested from shadow. “The Fatherly [Asura] hears truth, punishing not the lens or messenger. It is these disciples that hold blame, that we might not recognize blood of your blood. Had we better insight, confirmation would have arrived swifter. Forgiveness.”

“This Gao Shuidi admires her junior’s boldness.”

“Acceptable whispers. Then, juniors, do you believe your lives equal to the absence of aid when requested? The spurning of the [Starry Skies Sage’s] personal disciple and first blade of the Cloud Gathering division?”

Leftmost spoke then, partner to the boldest serpent. Feminine beneath her mask. “On the [Dao], if it is wished.”

Silent and swift, his chain’s head thrust. The point tearing a single strand from each of their blackened robes in one motion.

“Six serpents are slain here this day, reaped as recompense to rise once more as spectres. Yet their senior’s cruelty binds them. These walls become your tomb. See that none desecrate its contents.”

One kowtow began, and on the second Shuidi scoffed. “Bah! Do these serpents not have fangs?”

The proffered face… paused.

“The dead should first show gratitude to Elder [Breath Upon Onyx Nape],” he continued. “And second, voice their concerns if marinated pork is undesirable. Spectres are unwelcome at my table, but it is improper to have even dead juniors miss their morning meal.”

Of the three only the central disciple gasped.

Fu would rectify such foolishness, lest he truly wished to become a ghost. A hand dismissed these assassins into shadow, and the other set a pipe into his mouth. Care was taken not to shatter it between his grip.

Much had changed.

Teal smoke wafted before him, joining Shuidi as she reverently inspected their [Ink].