Chapter 27: A Thousand Years Obsession
Suffocating force pressed into the courtyard, distorting the light under the arrival of stronger presences. The initial wave of Yamato grunts, formidable as they were, suddenly seemed like mere children playing at war.
Three new figures descended from the sky. Their auras slammed into the ground like meteorites.
The first was an elderly woman with hair white as snow, her face a mask of serene cruelty. She held a single jade hairpin, but the spiritual pressure radiating from it was a crushing glacier, freezing the very will to fight. Zhang Wei recognized the technique as the “Frozen Soul Pin” of the long-lost matriarch of the Silent Ice Pavilion.
A mountain of a man appeared next. Bare-chested and covered in scars that writhed like living tattoos, he cracked his knuckles, and the ground trembled. His aura was the raw, unrefined power of the Earth-Shattering Fist School, a sect thought to have died out a century ago.
The third was a slender man who seemed to flicker at the edges of vision, a wisp of smoke given human form. He held no weapon, but the space around him distorted, a tell-tale sign of the Mirage Sect’s ultimate technique, which allowed its user to phase between reality and illusion.
“The real welcoming committee,” Su Yao mused, her smile sharpening but not fading. “The washed-up legends. The has-beens who traded their sect’s colors for a black and gold uniform and a promise of more power. How pathetic.”
The mountainous man spoke, his voice like grinding stones. “The Nine-Tails. Your era is a forgotten memory. The Nue’s dawn is coming. Stand aside, and your end will be swift.”
Su Yao laughed, a sound that cut through their combined pressure. “You first.”
For a breath, the three stood motionless. And then their auras shifted in unison.
The elderly woman flicked her hairpin. A wave of absolute zero shot forward, aiming to freeze flesh and solidify spiritual energy itself. Zhang Wei, caught in the edge of the effect, felt his own power seize up, his movements turning sluggish as if trapped in amber.
But Kitty was there. With a defiant yowl, her divine aura flared, a golden sun against the artificial winter. The freezing wave shattered against her, the clash of energies creating a storm of glittering ice crystals and holy light.
The mountain man charged Su Yao. His fist pulled the very earth up with it in a tidal wave of stone and force. Su Yao met it with her own palm. The impact created a visible shockwave that vaporized the nearest willow tree and sent the remaining grunts flying.
The slender man flickered, appearing behind Zhang Wei, a dagger of solidified mirage aimed for his spine. Zhang Wei, his energy still partially frozen, couldn't move fast enough.
The strong protect, Su Yao’s voice echoed in his mind as a command. So protect yourself.
Desperation forged into clarity. He let the frozen energy around him become a shell, a cocoon, and then shattered it outward. A blast of razor-sharp spiritual ice shards forced the mirage assassin to recoil, his form solidifying for a fraction of a second in surprise.
It was all the opening Kitty needed. She pounced, her claws of light raking across his back. The slender man screamed, his mirage technique faltering.
Su Yao, meanwhile, grabbed the mountain man’s fist. She used his own momentum to spin him like a top. With a final, contemptuous heave, she launched him through the air, straight into the elderly woman who was preparing another hairpin strike. They collided in a tangle of limbs and conflicting energies.
The fight was now a cataclysm contained within crumbling walls. A dozen fallen sects’s stolen techniques, refined by Yamato’s ruthless efficiency, clashed against the primordial power of a Nine-Tailed Fox and the structured might of a divine messenger.
And Su Yao was, for the first time in a long while, not bored. She looked at the chaos, at Zhang Wei and Kitty holding their own against legends, and her grin was a terrifying, beautiful thing.
“Finally,” she breathed, the shimmering outlines of her nine tails beginning to manifest behind her. “A proper warm-up.”
The thrill of the battle sang in Su Yao’s veins, a familiar and welcome feeling of clashing energies and rising adrenaline. She could have drawn this out, savoring the process of dismantling these traitorous cultivators one refined technique at a time.
But a single, clear thought cut through the euphoria. Jinse is in danger.
Every second spent playing with these toys was a second her drinking buddy, the weaver of vows, might not have.
Her smile vanished, replaced by a cold, terrifying focus. The shimmering outlines of her nine tails solidified into pillars of incandescent power.
“Enough,” her voice rang out, a statement that silenced the battlefield. It carried an ancient, absolute authority that made even the Yamato-enhanced elders freeze for a critical instant.
“Zhang Wei, Kitty, fall back. Now,” she commanded, her tone brooking no argument.
To their credit, they acted at once. Zhang Wei disengaged from his flickering opponent in a shower of defensive ice shards, leaping backward. Kitty, with a final swipe of her luminous claws that forced the mountainous man to block, flowed back to Su Yao’s side like a loyal hound.
The Yamato forces, sensing a shift, rallied. The elderly woman gathered her glacial power into a spear of absolute zero. The mountain man roared, pulling the very foundations of the temple up to form a colossal fist of earth and stone. The mirage user blurred, preparing a dozen lethal illusions.
Su Yao ignored them. She raised a single hand, palm open to the sky. The light in the courtyard twisted, bending inward towards her palm, draining the color from the world. A sphere of nothingness began to form above her hand, shaping into a void that drank the sound, the light, and the very hope of her enemies.
“It has been a long time since I needed a technique with a name,” she murmured, her eyes locked on the converging attacks. “But for the sake of an old friend, I shall make an exception.”
She closed her fingers around the void.
“Heaven-Sundering Claw.”
With that, the sphere of nothingness expanded. It reached out, claiming the space between her and the Yamato forces. The battle ended without spectacle, dissolving softly, as though reality itself were being erased.
The spear of absolute zero vanished, the colossal earthen fist collapsing into nothing, while a dozen lethal illusions popped like soap bubbles.
The three high-ranking cultivators, their expressions frozen in a moment of triumphant attack, simply disintegrated. One moment they were pillars of stolen power and ambition, the next, they were gone, their spiritual signatures wiped from existence as if they had never been.
When the expansion stopped, it left a perfectly smooth hemispherical scar in the earth. The remaining grunts, those on the fringes, froze in place, their weapons shaking in their hands.
Silence, deeper than before, returned to the temple.
Su Yao lowered her hand, a faint wisp of smoke curling from her fingertips. She took a deep breath. The immense output of power barely registered on her serene face.
She turned to Zhang Wei and Kitty, who were staring at the void-scarred ground, their faces pale.
“The welcoming party has been dismissed,” Su Yao stated, her voice once again casual. “Now, let’s not keep my friend waiting.”
Stepping over the crater’s perfectly smooth edge, Su Yao moved deeper into the temple as if she had only swatted a fly instead of annihilating a significant portion of Yamato’s elite forces.
Zhang Wei could only follow, the image of that silent, absolute nothingness burned into his mind. He had witnessed her power before; now he understood it as an execution. It was a stark reminder that the Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox was a force of nature when she chose to be. And a very, very impatient one.
The path beyond the scorched earth led to the temple’s inner sanctum. A very specific, ancient malice made the air grow cold and heavy. Standing before the sealed doors was a figure Su Yao hadn’t seen in centuries.
He was tall, his form elegant in traditional Heian-era robes, but his aura was a storm of razor-edged resentment. Nine silvery tails, less magnificent and more jagged than Su Yao’s, lashed behind him like agitated serpents. His handsome face was twisted into a mask of pure, undiluted hatred.
This was Tsuneki, the Japanese fox spirit she had once rejected.
“Su Yao,” he hissed, his voice a venomous melody. “You have not changed. Still so cavalier with the hearts of others.”
Su Yao stopped, tilting her head. “Tsuneki. How ironic. When you professed your love for me, you were a pitiful creature, all empty words and grand gestures with no power to back them. Now that you despise me, look at you.”
She gestured to the potent, if corrupted, energy swirling around him. “You have finally grown some teeth. Hatred, it seems, was a better motivator for you than ever adoration was.”
His eyes blazed. “Don’t mock me! You shattered my pride! My very being! This hatred is all that I am now! it’s my core!”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Su Yao waved a dismissive hand. “You have it backwards. Hatred isn’t the opposite of love. It’s far too passionate, too involved. It requires constant attention, a perpetual focus on the beloved object of your ire.”
A cruel, knowing smile appeared on her lips as she took a step closer. “The true opposite of love is indifference. To not think of them at all. To forget they exist. And you, my dear Tsuneki, have not been indifferent to me for a single moment in a thousand years.”
She paused, letting the implication hang in the air like a poisoned petal.
“In a way, you still love me. It’s just… twisted. And I find that rather touching.”
“ENOUGH!” Tsuneki roared, his composure shattering. He moved and performed a spiteful, opportunistic lunge while she was still speaking, aiming a blur of silver and rage directly at her throat.
The attack held the same impossible precision as the masked woman, but fueled by a millennium of bitter obsession.
Another lock of Su Yao’s perfectly restored hair drifted down, settling on the dusty ground between them.
Su Yao fell silent. Her eyes drifted to the severed strand of hair, then lifted slowly back to Tsuneki. There was no anger in her face, only exhaustion. It was the kind that ran deeper than words.
“How rude,” she sighed, the sound laden with annoyance. “Talking is a free action. And you cut my hair.”
She closed her eyes. When they opened, they blazed with full hellfire. The air warped, the ground trembled, and her true nine-tailed form manifested in all its terrifying glory, the demonic divine weapons materializing in a deadly corona around her.
“Fine,” Su Yao’s multi-layered voice boomed, shaking the very foundations of the temple. “You want a conclusion? You shall have one. Let us settle this, for once and for all, Tsuneki.”
She pointed one clawed finger at him.
“Let it be a duel, as your culture supposedly values such a contest. The loser,” she paused, a flicker of mockery in her eyes, “has to commit sudoku. Or whatever that ritual where you disembowel yourselves is called. Do we have an accord?”
Tsuneki’s laughter was a harsh, scraping sound. His nine jagged tails flared, each one crackling with silvery, corrosive energy. He spread his arms wide, his gaze sweeping over Su Yao, Zhang Wei, and the divine messenger, Kitty.
“All three of you,” he declared, his voice dripping with arrogant triumph. “Come at me together. I will relish extinguishing your light, Su Yao, before the eyes of your new pets. I have the power now to take you all on!”
Su Yao, in her immense nine-tailed form, blinked her great eyes. Her massive tilted with an expression of pure, innocent curiosity.
“In a fight, right?” she asked, her voice a resonant, deceptive purr.
The sheer, off-hand absurdity of the question shattered Tsuneki’s triumphant posture. His face contorted, the hatred in his eyes boiling over into sputtering rage. “WHAT ELSE WOULD I MEAN, YOU INSUFFERABLE HARPY?”
Her form seemed to sharpen, the amusement vanishing, leaving only cold, absolute finality.
“Good. Just checking.”
Zhang Wei and Kitty, understanding their role was to witness the fight and not interfere, took a synchronized step back.
Tsuneki, enraged by the dismissal, gathered all his power, all his millennia of bitter obsession, into a single, world-rending strike.
“DIVINE WIND: ANNIHILATION!”
A vortex of cutting silvery wind capable of flaying soul from body shot forward, aimed to erase Su Yao from existence.
Su Yao simply raised one claw and caught it.
The cataclysmic vortex of divine wind shrieked against her palm, trying to tear her apart, to prove his hatred was finally greater than her existence. It strained, howled, and then was snuffed out with a gentle closing of her claws as if she had pinched out a candle flame.
Tsuneki stared, his jaw slack, his triumphant rage freezing into disbelief.
“Your hatred made you strong, Tsuneki,” Su Yao’s voice echoed with a chilling, clinical truth. “But my indifference made me untouchable.”
She pointed the same claw at him.
A thin, almost invisible line of pure white light, identical to the one Li Xuan had used in the movie, extended from her claw-tip. Instead of the “Severing Karma” of a righteous Daoist, this was the “Severing Existence” of a being who had decided something was no longer worthy of taking up space in her world.
Tsuneki froze, his eyes wide. He looked down at his chest, expecting a wound, but there was none. Then he felt it. The connection to his power and the very hatred that had sustained him was unraveling. His form began to glitch and pixelate at the edges, dissolving into static nothingness.
“You never cared at all,” he whispered, the realization a fate far worse than any physical death.
“No,” Su Yao confirmed, her voice flat. “I didn’t.”
And Tsuneki, the kitsune who had loved and hated her for a thousand years, was no more. The space where he stood was simply empty.
Su Yao let her true form recede, landing softly on the ground. She glanced at the spot where he had been, then at her two companions.
“Sudoku would have been messier,” she remarked. “Now, let’s find Jinse before someone else with a tedious grudge shows up.”
The space where Tsuneki had been standing was indeed empty. But the voice that rang out came from directly behind Su Yao’s human form, laced with triumphant venom.
“Fool! You erase an illusion and think yourself victorious?”
The real Tsuneki materialized. His form had been concealed by a masterful mirage even as he teleported. He buried his jagged tail he hardened into a blade of concentrated spite deep in Su Yao’s back, piercing through her chest in a spray of crimson that carried a corrosive energy.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Tsuneki whispered into her ear, his breath cold. “The wound is woven with the essence of my grudge, a curse that severs the connection between your spirit and your flesh. It will never heal. You will bleed and bleed, Su Yao, until even your immortal core is drained. This is the power my hatred has forged!”
Su Yao looked down at the glowing, silvery tip protruding from her chest. She coughed, a faint trickle of golden blood at the corner of her lips. Then, she sighed.
“Again with the dramatic pronouncements.”
Her body began to glow with a soft, internal light of transformation. A shifting blur overtook her form, and for a single instant it felt as though time itself rewound her physical vessel. The flesh around the wound un-wounded itself. Tsuneki’s corrupted tail-blade was pushed out by pristine, unblemished skin, and the spilled blood reversed its flow, siphoned back into the now-sealed injury.
In the span of a heartbeat, she stood whole once more, as if the attack had never happened. She had simply transformed her body back to its state from three seconds prior.
Tsuneki stared, his triumphant sneer frozen into a rictus of disbelief. “That is… that is unfair! You cheated! You can’t just reset your own body with a temporal reversion technique!”
Her expression was one of boredom as she turned to face him. “Not fair? You are the one who cheated first.”
Su Yao began counting on her fingers. “One: You attacked while I was talking. Rude. Two: You used a cheap mirage to fake your death. Unoriginal. Three: You targeted my hair. A capital offense.”
A step forward brought her closer, her aura beginning to boil once more. “You don’t get to complain about the rules of the game after you have already set the board on fire, Tsuneki. I’m just playing by the new rules you established, prioritizing power and pettiness over honor and fairness.”
She cracked her neck. “And I am far, far pettier than you.”