Chapter 28: Nine Lives
Footsteps approached. A new voice, smooth as polished jade and cold as a mountain stream, cut through the tension. “That’s right. He cheated. Literally.”
From the shadows of the sanctum, another figure emerged. She was a stunning woman, her features sharp and elegant, her nine tails a cascade of pristine white. She wore a simple but exquisitely tailored kimono, and her demeanor was one of unnerving calm.
“And the fact that he cheated,” she continued, her golden eyes fixed on Tsuneki with a disturbing mix of affection and condemnation, “is a capital offense. Isn’t that right, my dear husband?”
Tsuneki whirled, his face a canvas of shock and dawning horror. “Y-Yumi?! What are you doing here? I told you to stay at the stronghold!”
Yumi offered a serene, wifely smile. “A wife’s place is beside her husband, especially when he is consorting with his old flames.” Her gaze flicked to Su Yao with the analytical look of a housekeeper assessing dust.
Su Yao watched, one eyebrow raised. “Husband? You actually married someone, Tsuneki? I am impressed. I didn’t think you had the spine for commitment.”
“W-we, it’s not—” Tsuneki stammered, looking trapped.
Yumi’s smile remained placid. “Of course we are married. We exchanged vows under the full moon. We promised eternity to one another.”
She took a delicate step forward. “Which is why it pains me so to see you like this, my love. Lying. Cheating. Associating with this hussy.” She said the last word with the same tone one might use to describe a stain on the carpet.
“We never exchanged vows! You were just a strategic liaison from the Tsushima branch! We’re coworkers!” The more Tsuneki protested, the more Yumi’s serene mask began to develop hairline fractures.
“Strategic liaison?” she repeated, her voice gaining a brittle edge. “Is that what you call the one who warms your bed? Who prepares your meals? Who listens to your every sorrow?”
“YOU SNUCK INTO MY ROOM AND WATCHED ME SLEEP!” Tsuneki shrieked, his composure completely gone. “I WAKE UP AND YOU’RE JUST SITTING THERE, SMILING!”
Yumi’s head tilted to an unnatural angle. “A wife worries for her husband’s rest.”
Su Yao, who had been observing this with growing fascination, suddenly snapped her fingers. “Oh! I see it now.” She looked at Yumi with newfound understanding. “It’s all inside your head, isn’t it? The marriage, the vows, and the eternal love? A beautiful, perfect delusion.”
Yumi’s placid smile finally broke, twisting into something possessive and unhinged. “It isn’t a delusion! Our love is pure! it’s destined!”
“And you aren’t even a kitsune, are you?” Su Yao continued, her tone clinical. “The energy signature is wrong. It’s too hungry. You are a gumiho. A different kind of fox spirit. All this talk of love and marriage.”
Her eyes dropped to Yumi’s midsection, then back to Tsuneki’s terrified form. “You just want to eat his liver to complete your transformation into a human, don’t you? All this ‘wifely’ devotion was just you fattening up the main course.”
Zhang Wei frowned. “That’s racist. Just because she’s a gumiho does not mean she wants to eat his liver to become human.”
Su Yao blinked at him. “I am racist.”
Zhang Wei nodded slowly. “Fair enough.”
The revelation hung in the air. Yumi’s form flickered. Her beautiful facade momentarily revealed something more predatory and her eyes glowed with a feral red light.
“He is MY husband!” she screamed, the sound shredding the last of her composure. “His heart, his soul, his LIVER, they all belong to me! I have been so patient! I played the part of the devoted wife! And now you, you ancient slattern, have ruined everything!”
She lunged at Tsuneki, her fingers elongating into talons aimed at his abdomen.
Su Yao sighed, utterly exhausted by the sheer melodrama of it all. She looked at Zhang Wei and Kitty. “See? This is why I prefer indifference. Love and hate are so messy.”
As the deranged gumiho descended upon her ‘husband,’ Su Yao simply prepared to watch the relationship drama unfold, wondering if she should charge admission.
Zhang Wei observed Yumi shrieking as she clawed at a frantically backpedaling Tsuneki with a look of professional distaste. “Should we interrupt them?” he asked, his voice tight. “Neutralize both threats while they are distracted?”
The divine messenger, Kitty, however, was already turning toward the sealed inner sanctum doors. Her silvery ears twitched with urgency. “The distraction is a gift. Our purpose here is the Goddess Jinse. Every second we waste on their domestic dispute is a second her captors could be moving her, or worse. Time is of the essence.”
Su Yao, who had been watching the spectacle with the detached amusement of someone watching a particularly bad reality show, waved a dismissive hand. “Kitty is right. Let the trash take itself out.”
She glanced at the fighting duo. Yumi had Tsuneki in a headlock and was trying to bite his ear off. “He is finally experiencing the ‘eternal devotion’ he always claimed to want. It would be cruel to deprive him of it now.”
Without a second thought, Su Yao turned her back on the melodrama and faced the ornate doors sealed with complex, writhing black talismans. “Besides, watching a gumiho try to eat her ‘husband’s’ liver is only entertaining for the first minute. The novelty wears off.”
She placed a hand on the dark seals. They immediately began to smoke and curl away from her touch like burning leeches. “Our friend is behind here. That is the only thing that matters right now.”
Su Yao cast a final, contemptuous look at the screeching, fighting foxes behind them before pushing open the now-unsealed doors. The trio stepped through into the inner sanctum, leaving the sounds of dysfunctional ‘love’ behind. Their real mission, the rescue of a goddess, awaited.
The heavy doors swung inward, revealing the heart of the sanctum. Inside, the air was still and cold, stripped of all ambient qi, as if the sanctum itself had been forcibly drained, leaving behind the bitter residue of spent power and the metallic tang of corrupted divinity that could only have come from a completed ritual.
A massive, inverted ritual circle was scorched into the stone floor in the center of the chamber, its complex patterns now dark and dead. The symbols, a blend of Yamato’s angular script and twisted Daoist arrays, pulsed with a faint, dying malevolence.
In the center of it all, lay Jinse.
The Goddess of Contracts was motionless, her form pale and translucent. Once a source of quiet pride, her elegant robes now lay dim, their celestial sheen fully extinguished. Her long hair fanned out around her head like a silver halo, though it was a halo of defeat.
No visible wound or mark of violence marred her. It was as if the very concept of her being, the essence of her divine purpose, had been siphoned away. Her eyes were closed, her expression serene in a way that spoke only of absolute, final emptiness.
Kitty let out a choked cry, a sound of pure, divine despair. She fell to her knees, her form flickering between her powerful true self and the terrified kitten within. “My Lady. No.”
Zhang Wei stood rigid, his mind racing through tactical assessments and finding only failure. They were too late. The objective was lost.
Su Yao stood there, her gaze fixed on the lifeless form of her old drinking buddy. The playful arrogance and the bored amusement drained from her face, leaving something far more terrifying: a perfect, utter stillness.
The silence stretched, broken only by Kitty’s silent, shuddering sobs.
Then, Su Yao spoke, her voice a low, quiet thing that vibrated with the chill of the void between stars.
“A Goddess of Contracts, of Vows,” she stated. Her eyes, burning with a cold fire, traced the lines of the dead ritual circle. “You can’t simply extinguish such a concept. That would create a paradox, an unraveling in the cosmic weave.”
She took a slow step forward, her footfall echoing in the dead space.
“They harvested her.” She looked at Zhang Wei, her gaze piercing. “Her core authority over vows and pacts was taken. Then they drained the very meaning of her existence to fuel their ‘Nue,’ binding their abomination together with the power of absolute, divine promise.”
She finally looked down at Jinse, and for a fleeting moment, something ancient and lonely flickered in the depths of her eyes.
“They used my friend,” she whispered, “as a battery and a component.”
She turned away from the scene, her back to them, her shoulders straight.
“The Yamato have made this personal in a way you can’t possibly comprehend. They have broken a rule far older than any of your governments or sects.”
She looked at Jinse one last time, a final, silent vow passing between the living and the dead.
“Let’s go,” she said, her tone flat and final. “We owe the universe a debt. And I always pay my debts.”
Kitty’s soft sobs turned into a sharp, pained gasp. She clutched her head, her form flickering violently between her divine messenger visage and the image of Wong Lei.
“Ahhh! The memories, it’s all wrong!” she cried out, her voice layered with her own and a richer, more resonant tone laced with grief and guilt that belonged to another.
Jinse’s ‘corpse’ began to glow with a soft, golden light. Her features shifted, the elegant robes dissolving into the simpler white and gold of the divine messenger. The form on the ground was no longer the Goddess of Contracts. It was Kitty’s true body, pale and lifeless.
The being standing before them, clutching her head, was now radiating a faint, familiar aura of structured power and cosmic order. Her form solidified, the silvery ears and tail melting away, replaced by the subtle, commanding presence of a goddess.
It was Jinse, her soul trapped within the borrowed, lesser form of her messenger.
“We switched places,” Jinse’s voice, now unmistakably her own, was raw with anguish as she stared at her own lifeless messenger. “When they came for me, we enacted a contingency through a contract of substitution. I thought if they captured a mere messenger, they would simply interrogate her and discard her. I never thought they would harvest a divine core from a lesser being!”
Tears of liquid starlight streamed down Jinse’s face as she looked at the shell of her most loyal servant. “She took my place and bore the ritual meant for me. They tore her essence apart thinking it was mine, using her love for me to fuel their monstrosity.”
She hugged herself, the weight of the sacrifice crushing her. “I was a coward. I hid in her form, my power suppressed, waiting for a rescue that came too late for her.”
Su Yao observed the scene. The initial shock hardened into a grim understanding. The stillness around her deepened, but now it was focused, a honed blade of intent.
“So,” Su Yao said, her voice dangerously calm. “The Yamato murdered your kitten, thinking it was you. And they have your divine authority woven into their ‘Nue.’”
She walked over to Jinse and placed a hand on her shoulder. The touch was was firm, an anchor.
“Your grief is a liability right now,” Su Yao stated with absolute pragmatism. “You can mourn later. Right now, you are a living contract, a clause that was never executed. Your power is out there, powering the very thing that killed your servant.”
She met Jinse’s tear-filled eyes. “We are going to get it back. Every last shred. And we are going to use it to rip their ‘Nue’ apart from the inside out.”
A slow, terrifying smile spread across Su Yao’s face, her eyes glowing like embers.
“After all,” she purred, “a contract works both ways. And you, my dear Jinse, are about to become a very, very hostile takeover.” She helped Jinse to her feet. “Now, pull yourself together. We have a clause to enforce. And a kitten to avenge.”
Zhang Wei stood rigid. The weight of the revelation pressed down on him with physical force. His gaze was fixed on Kitty’s lifeless form, then shifted to Jinse’s grief-stricken face.
The professional composure he had maintained throughout crumbled, replaced by a stark, personal guilt. He took a sharp step forward and bowed deeply, his voice tight and stripped of all its usual defensive edge. “Goddess Jinse. The fault is mine.”
He straightened, but could not meet her eyes, instead staring at a point on the floor between them.
“When your messenger first tried to make contact, possessing Xiao Ling’s aunt, I intercepted it. I expelled the spirit, believing it to be a hostile entity attempting to establish influence. I was operating on flawed intelligence and excessive caution.”
His jaw tightened. “If I hadn’t acted, if I had allowed the message through then, Kitty would have delivered her warning weeks ago. We would have been here sooner. She would still be alive now. The responsibility for her death is mine.”
The confession hung in the silent, desolate chamber.
Jinse, still wearing Wong Lei’s face, looked at him. The tears had stopped, leaving behind a vast, weary sorrow. She shook her head slowly.
“Don’t burden yourself with that contract, mortal,” she said, her voice soft but imbued with the absolute certainty of a deity who understood cause and effect on a cosmic scale. “The threads of fate aren’t so easily severed by a single action.”
She gestured to the dark, dead ritual circle. “The Yamato had been planning this for a long time. They moved with a precision that suggests multiple contingencies. If it hadn’t been your interception, it would have been another obstacle. A delayed message, a misdirected sign, the variables are infinite.”
The goddess offered him a sad, gentle smile that was out of place on Wong Lei’s features. “You acted to protect what you believed was yours to protect. The blame lies solely with those who twisted the sacred nature of vows into this abomination.”
Jinse placed a hand over her heart, where Kitty’s core had been. “Her sacrifice was born of her loyalty to me. Don’t rewrite the terms of her death with your guilt. It dishonors the purity of her service.”
Su Yao, who had been listening quietly, snorted. “See? Even the goddess of promises says you are overthinking it.”
A sharp clap landed on Zhang Wei’s back, the gesture surprisingly devoid of its usual mockery. “Your mistake was being a jumpy government dog. Their crime is deicide and cosmic theft. The scales aren’t even in the same universe.”
She looked from Zhang Wei’s guilt-ridden face to Jinse’s divine resignation. “Enough introspection. The time for blame is over. The time for breaking things is just beginning.”
Su Yao pointed at the empty vessel that was once Kitty. “They broke something of hers.” She pointed at Jinse. “They stole something of hers.” She then pointed a thumb at her own chest. “And they annoyed me. So we are all in agreement.”
Her gaze swept over them, a general assembling her troops for a war of annihilation.
“Now, let’s go find this ‘Nue’ and repossess our property. And Zhang Wei,” she added, her tone final. “If you want to atone, then be ready to hit whatever I point at harder than you have ever hit anything before. Understood?”
Zhang Wei gave a single, sharp nod. “Understood.”
A stunned silence followed Jinse’s and Zhang Wei’s confessions of guilt and absolution. Su Yao shattered it with a sound that was utterly alien in the grim sanctum: a light, dismissive snort.
“Honestly, you are all so dramatic,” she said, rolling her eyes. She gestured vaguely at Kitty’s lifeless form with her chin. “Besides, Kitty will be fine.”
Jinse stared at her, a flicker of bewildered hope warring with her grief. “What? Su Yao, her core is gone. She is empty.”
“Her current core is gone,” Su Yao corrected, as if explaining something obvious to children. “She is a divine feline messenger, you dolt. She has nine lives. It’s the whole point of her species. It isn’t just a cute saying.”
She walked over to the empty vessel and nudged it with her foot, with the practicality of someone checking a piece of equipment. “The regeneration cycle takes a while. She will be disoriented and weaker than a newborn kitten for a century or two, but she will be fine. All she need is a safe, energy-rich place to incubate.”
She turned to Zhang Wei, her expression all business. “You. Government dog. You have a secret base full of stolen spiritual artifacts and vintages, correct?”
Zhang Wei, still reeling from the emotional whiplash, managed a nod. “The containment vaults, yes.”
“Perfect. A nice, stable, high-energy environment.” She pointed at Kitty’s body. “Have your people box her up and stick her in there. Put her next to something warm. Maybe that cask of Molten Phoenix Tears. The ambient energy should speed things up.”
Jinse was now looking at Su Yao with an expression of dawning, tear-streaked wonder. “You are certain?”
“Of course I am certain,” Su Yao scoffed. “I have seen her get squashed by a drunken mountain god before. She showed up three centuries later demanding compensation for emotional distress. Kitty is annoyingly resilient.”
The crushing weight of tragedy in the room lifted, replaced by a surreal sense of relief. Though severe, the loss proved to be a temporary setback.
“See?” Su Yao said, clapping her hands together once, the sound sharp in the quiet. “Problem solved. No need for all the weeping and self-flagellation.”
Her gaze hardened again, the brief moment of practicality giving way to cold purpose.
“Now that the sentimental distractions are handled,” she said, her voice dropping back into that deadly calm. “We have a ‘Nue’ to dismantle. They still stole your authority, Jinse. Even if it’s a temporary condition, they still murdered a divine messenger. And they still owe me a colossal apology for the inconvenience.”
She looked from Jinse to Zhang Wei.
“So, let’s send Kitty off to her spa retreat at Government Headquarters,” she declared. “And then, we go hunting. The bill for today is about to come due, and I’m adding interest.”