Chapter 62: Circle of Life
Determined to preserve the fragile peace of her lunch and her sanity, Su Yao refrained from turning on the television. The risk of seeing a live feed of the dragon negotiating with city planners or the false Seimei giving a press conference was too high.
Su Yao pulled out her phone and opened Douyin instead, seeking the bland, predictable comfort of the internet’s most reliable content: animal videos.
She clicked on a compilation titled ‘Cats Being Majestic Derps.’ For a few minutes, she watched a series of cats getting stuck in boxes, falling off couches, and staring with existential dread at cucumbers. It was soothing in its utter meaninglessness.
Then a new clip autoplayed. Security camera footage showed a suburban backyard. A fluffy orange cat was sunbathing lazily on a fencepost. Its tail twitched in serene boredom. Suddenly, with a soundless thump, a full-grown Siberian tiger landed in the middle of the lawn.
It had apparently fallen from a low-flying cloud or a passing interdimensional rift.
The cat, startled out of its fur, shot straight into the air. It did a mid-air flip, and scrambled up a tree with a speed that defied physics, hissing violently.
Su Yao raised an eyebrow. That’s new.
Then a small, brown field mouse scurried out from under a bush, sniffing the air. The massive tiger, which could have swallowed the rodent in one bite, let out a comically high-pitched yelp. Its eyes widened in sheer terror. It spun around and fled in the opposite direction, crashing through a decorative trellis and vanishing from the camera’s view.
The mouse, unconcerned, continued its journey.
Su Yao stared at the screen for a full ten seconds after the video ended.
A slow, dry chuckle escaped her. The cat, a tiny predator, was terrified of the tiger, an apex predator. The tiger, a beast of legendary power, was terrified of a mouse, a creature so low on the food chain it was practically a snack.
It’s the circle of life, she mused, as written by a comedian.
It was the same principle that governed her own world. The Deep Ones feared the Jiao Long, who was likely wary of something even older, and everyone was probably secretly terrified of the thing on the moon. Everyone, no matter how powerful, had their own personal “mouse.”
She found it strangely comforting. The universe, for all its grand conflicts and celestial dramas, still ran on a bedrock of pure, ridiculous farce. It was a welcome reminder that she wasn't the only one dealing with unpredictable, irrational nonsense.
Su Yao, momentarily comforted by the universe’s inherent absurdity, made the mistake of scrolling down to the comments section.
The top comment, pinned by the uploader, read:
FYI, this is 100% AI-generated! Our new ‘Chaos-Engine’ model can create hyper-realistic animal videos from text prompts. The prompt for this was: ‘tiger falls from sky, scares cat, then mouse scares tiger.’ Cool, right?
Su Yao stared at the words. AI-generated. The flawless, ridiculous hierarchy of fear she had just found so philosophically resonant was a fabricated product of algorithms and data sets.
A dry, humorless laugh escaped her. Of course it was.
Her eyes scanned lower, where the true digital abyss opened up in the replies.
User TruthSeeker77: AI video generation has been around since the 90s, people! The government declassified it in 2020 but kept the public in the dark. They use it to fabricate evidence and control the narrative!
User LunarLanderWasFake: This is the same tech they used to fake the moon landing! Stanley Kubrick used an early version of this AI! Wake up, sheeple! The moon is a hologram!
User ReptilianEliteWatch: The deep state uses AI to create ‘cute’ animal videos to keep the masses docile and distracted while they harvest our adrenochrome. The mouse represents the awakened populace, soon to overthrow the tiger (the illuminati).
Su Yao leaned back. The phone felt heavy in her hand. She had sought a refuge from the ridiculousness of her reality, only to find a different kind of madness where mortals willingly spun their own webs of conspiracy from the digital ether.
Yet, a part of her, the ancient, cunning part that knew a half-truth was often more dangerous than a lie, couldn't entirely dismiss it.
AI generation existing longer than the public knows, was that so hard to believe? Governments and powerful corporations hoarding advanced technology was a tale as old as time. If they could fabricate video this perfectly, what else had been fabricated?
Her mind, against her will, connected it back to her own investigations, toward the moon, its missing name, and the feeling that its entire history was a carefully constructed narrative.
What if, she thought, the idea feeling both insane and inevitable, the conspiracy theorists are accidentally right, but for the wrong reasons? What if the moon landing was faked to hide what we actually found? Or to reinforce a false story about what the moon even is?
Su Yao clicked on the username TruthSeeker77. The channel was a sprawling digital collage of every major conspiracy theory she'd ever skimmed past.
Video Title: ALIENS BUILT THE PYRAMIDS! Proof: Egyptian & Aztec Pyramids Same Shape! Coincidence? I THINK NOT!
Video Title: The ANUNNAKI: Ancient ALIEN Gods of Sumeria Who GENETICALLY ENGINEERED Humanity!
Video Title: Mayan King PACAL’s SARCOPHAGUS is a SPACESHIP! The ‘Tree of Life’ is a ROCKET SHIP!
She scrolled. Her expression was deadpan. The sheer volume was staggering, a frantic connect-the-dots traced through imagined lines.
A cold, logical part of her mind began to filter the noise. She dismissed the literal interpretation. But the persistent, cross-cultural theme of ‘outsiders’ influencing early human development, that was a pattern.
The Sumerians did record powerful, non-human beings from another realm. Pacal’s sarcophagus did depict a figure in a pose that could be interpreted as ascending or operating machinery.
They're all seeing the same shadow on the wall, she thought, and they're all describing a different monster. The common thread was the concept of external, superior influence. A force that came from elsewhere and shaped human destiny.
Her thoughts snapped back to the moon. To the feeling that its history was a cover story. To Li Xuan’s wife, potentially sealed there. To the Jiao Long’s mention of “servants of Nuwa.”
What if the “aliens” these conspiracy theorists obsessed over were just celestials? Beings from the higher, spiritual planes who had interacted with early humanity? What if the “pyramids” and other ancient megastructures weren't built by aliens, but were powerful spiritual focal points or anchors constructed under celestial guidance or under duress?
The theories were pointing at a real, hidden history. It was a history of celestial intervention, of battles and alliances between powerful entities that humanity had later mythologized or forgotten. The moon landing cover-up would be about hiding that someone had placed the moon there intentionally, and that its surface held secrets that would shatter the accepted narrative of human history.
She closed the channel. The conspiracy theorists were like children hearing a complex adult conversation through a wall. They caught the tone of secrecy and power, but invented their own silly words to explain it.
They saw ‘aliens.’ She saw the fingerprints of the celestial court.
It was time to stop looking at mortal theories and start digging into the real records the government had sealed away, and the ones buried in her own ancient memories. The truth was out there, but it was unlikely to be on Douyin.
Su Yao leaned back. A memory surfaced with crystalline clarity. It had been in a high school debate class, of all places. A boy named Lao, armed with pop-paleontology books and a fervent gleam in his eye, had stood up to argue that dragons were, in fact, dinosaurs.
He had cited fossil evidence of pterosaurs and theropods. The legendary bones of dragons found in ancient Chinese tombs, and the universal human fear of giant reptiles.
Lao had some points, she had to admit. The similarities in morphology were there. It was like saying an ichthyosaur was a dolphin because they both had streamlined bodies and fins. They only looked similar because of convergent evolution, where unrelated lineages evolve comparable traits to fill similar ecological niches.
Dragons were primordial spiritual entities, beings of condensed cosmic energy and elemental power. Their ‘biology’ was a manifestation of ley lines and celestial will, far detached from carbon-based genetics.
A dinosaur was bound by the laws of the physical world. But a dragon could manipulate those laws, commanding storms, shifting earth, or even pausing time in their domains.
The Jiao Long currently tearing up the coastline was a perfect example. What dinosaur could have withstood the spiritual artillery the false Seimei had thrown at it, let alone regenerated from wounds that would have vaporized a Tyrannosaurus? Its very presence warped reality, something no mere fossil could explain.
Humans, she mused, were always trying to cram the infinite weirdness of the cosmos into their limited, rational boxes. Most of them saw a dragon and thought ‘dinosaur’ because it was the closest reference point they had. They failed to grasp that some things existed entirely outside their taxonomy.
She made a mental note to never mention this to Kayo. Kayo would undoubtedly launch into a rant about how dinosaurs were ‘so last era’ and that the real threats were ‘properly dramatic’ like nine-tailed foxes or moon goddesses.
Some debates were better left in the past. Especially when one of the participants could actually breathe fire.
Su Yao found herself momentarily sidetracked. The memory of that earnest, debate-club boy named Lao surfaced with unexpected clarity. Where is he now, I wonder?
The thought was idle, a strange, mundane curiosity amidst the cosmic chaos.
Did that fervent boy, so determined to prove dragons were dinosaurs, grow up to become a paleontologist? Did he spend his life digging in the dirt, forever trying to find the fossil that would finally bridge the gap between his rational world and the legends he instinctively felt were connected?
Or did he, upon entering the real world, slowly let that passion die? Did he become an accountant, a middle manager, a disappointed man in a beige cubicle, the memory of his grand theories reduced to an embarrassing anecdote from his youth? The fire in his eyes extinguished by mortgages, deadlines, and the crushing weight of ordinary life.
She pictured him, balding slightly, wearing a comfortable sweater, watching a nature documentary about Komodo dragons and feeling a faint, almost forgotten pang of loss.
Probably a disappointment, she concluded, though without malice.
It was the natural order of things. Mortals had such bright, fierce little flames in their youth, but the world was very good at smothering them. He was likely just another office drone. His greatest debate now was about which flavor of instant coffee to stock in the breakroom.
The thought was strangely melancholy. That boy had been closer to the truth than he knew, yet was destined to never grasp it. He was searching for dragons in the wrong stratum of reality entirely.
She shrugged, dismissing the thought. His path was his own. Hers was currently cluttered with sealed princes, corporate demons, and a nameless moon. She lacked the luxury to ponder the fates of every mortal who had briefly flickered across her radar. Their lives were short, their struggles small, and their beverages, undoubtedly, terrible.
Su Yao’s phone buzzed with a message from Zhang Wei. The text was simple, almost jarringly normal amidst the spiritual fallout and dragon attacks.
Zhang Wei: Our high school reunion is next month. You going?
Su Yao stared at the screen. Her expression was utterly flat. She typed back a single, deadpan reply.
Xiao Ling:Do I look like the type to go to school reunions?
A moment later, another buzz followed.
Zhang Wei: You look like the type who would show up just to terrify everyone, make a scene, steal the snack table, and then teleport out after declaring the entire event beneath you.
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Su Yao’s lips. He was right.
Xiao Ling: You've described an ordinary day. I have a sealed aquatic prince, a corporate Hundred Demons to dismantle, and a moon that might be a prison. I don't have time to listen to mortals brag about their promotions and offspring.
Zhang Wei:So that’s a no?
Xiao Ling:It’s an ‘if I show up, it’s because the venue is a front for a Yamato operation and I'm there to burn it to the ground.’ Otherwise, no.
She put the phone away. The brief, absurd exchange was a reminder of the chasm between her existence and the mundane world she was forced to inhabit. School reunions? As if she cared who married whom or who had gained weight. Her reunions were with ancient Daoists in the dreamscape and legendary foxes in her living room.
The only alumni she was interested in were the ones trying to end the world.
Su Yao’s phone buzzed again. This time, the screen showed Wong Lei.
Her thumb moved with pre-emptive speed, tapping out a reply before the notification had even finished vibrating.
Xiao Ling: I am not going to the school reunion.
A moment of silence passed, then three bouncing dots appeared.
Wong Lei: ...How did you know I was going to ask that?
Xiao Ling: Zhang Wei already tried. The answer is no. I don’t do nostalgia, and I especially don’t do forced social interaction with people whose greatest life achievement isn’t yet being digested by a spiritual entity.
Wong Lei: Okay, fine! But what am I supposed to tell everyone when they ask why Xiao Ling isn't here?
Su Yao let out an exasperated breath. The dull concerns of mortal social politics were even more draining than fighting a Kaiju.
Xiao Ling: Pick a boring, plausible lie that requires no follow-up. ‘She’s in Japan’ is standard and uninteresting. Use that.
The three dots bounced again, slower this time, as if Wong Lei was processing the sheer audacity of the indifference.
Wong Lei:...Just “she’s in Japan“? That’s it?
Xiao Ling: Yes. If they press for details, say she’s studying something vague like ‘Cultural studies.’ Then change the subject. If they persist, they are being rude, and you have my permission to tell them she joined a yakuza gang and doesn't want to be found. That should end the conversation.
She put the phone away. The matter was settled. Let them gossip about a fictional life in Japan. It was far simpler than the truth: that the girl they knew was gone, and in her place was an ancient, sober, and perpetually irritated celestial fox who had better things to do than reminisce about gym class.
Su Yao’s phone buzzed a third time. The screen now showed Mei.
With a sigh of exhaustion, Su Yao typed her pre-emptive refusal.
Xiao Ling: Absolutely not. I am not going.
The reply was almost instantaneous.
Mei:??? Going where? I was just gonna ask if you wanted to check out the new bubble tea place that opened on Main Street. They have a cheese foam mango something that looks insane.
Su Yao stared at the message. Her thumb, which had been poised to deliver another scathing dismissal, hovered over the screen.
Xiao Ling: Wait. This isn't about the school reunion?
Mei: The what? Who cares about that? This is about cheese foam, Ling Ling! Cheese! Foam! On mango!
Xiao Ling: Is the place Thai? Only Thai restaurants would put mango on everything. It’s like their national fruit.
Mei: LOL no, it’s one of those generic Asian fusion places. But the cheese foam is Chinese, I think? From Taipei? Anyway, are you in? I need a taste-test partner before I commit to a large order.
Xiao Ling: Fine. But if this ends with me fighting another spirit disguised as a barista, I'm billing you for emotional damages.
Mei: YES! It’s on Main Street, right next to the burnt-out shell of what used to be that pharmacy! You can't miss it, it’s the only building on the block with all its windows still intact. I'm already here, so hurry up! I'm staring at the menu and my willpower is crumbling!
Su Yao stared at the message. The location was practically in the shadow of the recent Kaiju and dragon-related destruction. Of course.
Xiao Ling:I'll be there in five. If you order before I arrive, I am turning the cheese foam into a cursed artifact that will forever sour your perception of sweetness.
She shoved the phone into her pocket and stood. Cosmic mysteries, corporate espionage, and territorial dragons would all have to wait. The immediate priority was now cheese foam and preventing Mei from making a potentially disastrous beverage choice.
Some duties, she thought as she headed for the door, were strangely non-negotiable even for a former attendant of Nuwa.
The fate of the world could hang in the balance, but so too could the proper ratio of mango to foam. One crisis at a time.