ANCESTOR WITH THE GUZHENG
By the time Songhe found the entrance to the cave where the Severance Loom resided, he could no longer tell how far he had walked or how much time had passed.
Sweat gathered along his brow. Blood seeped slowly from his ears, tracing the side of his face, yet he made no effort to wipe it away. Such discomforts no longer held his attention.
He stood before the cave entrance, barely able to remain upright, when he sensed a presence behind him.
He turned at once.
“Ling Feng?” The name left him before restraint could take hold.
It was not Ling Feng.
The figure before him was a young man, no older than his early thirties in appearance, with flawless features and robes so pristine they remained untouched by the corruption of the Blackwood.
Songhe’s gaze moved over him once, deliberate and cold, and his teeth clenched with open disdain.
“Dimian. Where is the little fox?”
Qiang Dimian returned the look with equal attention, studying the man before him. When he spoke, his voice carried a soft, musical quality, thoughtful in tone, yet devoid of any true warmth.
“You have lost favor.”
A faint smile followed the observation.
A sharp pang of pain moved through Songhe’s body. Blood surged upward from deep within, filling his mouth. He turned and spat it out, crimson staining his lips before he spoke again, his voice steadier than his condition allowed.
“Where is the fox?”
Dimian tilted his head. The question held little interest to him. His gaze did not leave Songhe; instead, it deepened, examining him with increasing focus, tracing something beneath the surface.
“It makes sense,” he said at last, almost to himself. “I see your cultivation has declined as much as your manners, boy.”
The insult was deliberate, but more than that, it was dismissive.
Something in Songhe’s composure fractured.
“Where is he!” he snapped.
Dimian’s eyes settled fully upon Songhe’s face. For the briefest moment, surprise surfaced before giving way to quiet amusement.
Songhe pressed on, forcing the words through the instability closing in around him.
“I know you do not possess the power to destroy him. So tell me. Where is he?”
Dimian began to move.
His steps came measured and unhurried until he stood beside Songhe, close enough that the distance between them no longer felt like space. When he spoke again, his voice lowered, his breath brushing faintly against Songhe’s ear, the intimacy intrusive.
“Let go,” he murmured. “The fear. The desire. That… newfound love…”
There was persuasion in his voice, offering relief rather than demanding surrender.
“Give it to me. Let it go, and you may yet draw breath without suffering for it. The so-called Silver Thread of Shifting Stars is on the verge of collapse. It will not be a graceful sight.”
Dimian shifted slightly, moving just enough to look directly at Songhe’s face, the faint smile still resting upon his lips.
“Let go.”
Songhe drew in a shallow breath. His body trembled beneath the strain, but his voice held.
“No,” he said, low and firm. “Parasite.”
Dimian withdrew slightly. His expression shifted in an instant, a brief grimace crossing his face at the word before settling back into a smile, this one edged with something sharper.
“Well,” he said lightly, exhaling in disappointment, “your little fox did not resist at all. I could not destroy him. That much is true. But the loom…” His gaze flickered toward the cave. “The loom consumed him.”
He allowed the words to settle.
“Oh, he had much to give,” Dimian added thoughtfully. “Xue Feng Yong Ye… all that Yin within a single vessel. And the loom took everything.”
A faint pause, then:
“What remains is inside. An empty shell, if you wish to see.”
Something within Songhe dropped.
His breath caught, then steadied with effort. He swallowed, the motion tight and uncontrolled, as though forcing down something that refused to yield.
He turned. Without another word, without another glance, he stepped forward and entered the cave.
Songhe collapsed beside Ling Feng’s body, gathering him into his arms and drawing him onto his lap.
“Ling Feng?”
There was no response.
He smoothed the red hair away from Ling Feng’s face, his fingers unsteady. Though he already knew, he bent forward and pressed his ear lightly against Ling Feng’s chest, refusing to trust his spiritual senses in their battered state.
There were no heartbeats.
But the body—it was still warm.
Songhe lifted his head slowly and looked down at Ling Feng’s face.
Had he lost him?
I pushed too hard…
Anger rose first, overwhelming and immediate. It surged through him before grief could take hold and drag him into despair.
In that moment, Songhe went still.
The storm within him gathered, turning inward upon itself, building and boiling without release. Yet his face remained empty, betraying nothing of what formed beneath.
He looked like a battered statue.
His gaze, steady and unbroken, came to rest upon Qiang Dimian.
Dimian sat upon a round stone slab not far from the cave’s center. Beside him rested the instrument, the guzheng’s strings trembling faintly in endless resonance.
The Loom of Severance.
Dimian returned his gaze.
He waited, watching for the moment Songhe’s control would fracture, for the instant his resistance would collapse.
Though his expression remained composed, quiet satisfaction lingered within him. Ling Feng’s arrival in the Blackwood had been an unforeseen gift. The Yin drawn from that single vessel had granted him a surge of strength he had not known in a very long time.
And now, before him, sat another vessel.
Songhe.
The memory of their last encounter returned, sharp and unwelcome. This same man had resisted him and escaped. Dimian’s lips tightened at the recollection. That outcome had been aided by outside interference; without it, a mere child in cultivation could never have overpowered him.
His gaze settled upon Songhe once more.
Still unmoving. Still silent.
Then, at last, a single tear traced down Songhe’s face, cutting through the stillness like a fracture through stone.
Dimian’s attention sharpened.
He watched without blinking as it fell. Behind Songhe’s empty expression, he sensed it: the subtle shift within his essence. The golden aura bleeding from him wavered, its edges stained by something darker, a slow current threaded with red.
Chaos, contained yet rising.
Yes.
Dimian could barely contain his excitement.
“Let it go!” he barked, rising to his feet. The calm in his demeanor broke just enough to reveal the urgency beneath.
He crossed the distance in a few quick steps and seized Songhe by the face, his grip firm as he forced him to look up.
“Just a little more,” Dimian said, his voice tightening, no longer merely persuasive. “One more severance, and I will have enough to leave this…”
He lingered on the last word.
Releasing Songhe, Dimian stepped back and drew in a measured breath. His gaze swept briefly across the cave before his composure returned.
“You have already lost, child,” he continued, the softness returning to his tone, though hunger still edged his voice. His eyes flickered toward Ling Feng’s body. “As fate would have it, your loss becomes my gain. Now give me your Yin… and your life.”
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Songhe did not move.
He remained exactly as he was, his body rigid, gaze fixed forward, as though he could remain suspended in that state indefinitely.
Dimian watched him for a moment longer before impatience overtook his restraint.
He returned to the stone slab and seated himself beside the loom.
He raised his hands and began to play.
As his fingers moved across the strings, the melody penetrated Songhe and spread through his body in fine, invasive strands, wrapping around the Yin within him and pulling at it with violent force, wrenching it against the Yang that held it in harmony.
Blood flowed more freely now, from his nose, his ears, and his eyes, where the last trace of tears had given way to red.
Still, Songhe resisted. He remained motionless, his gaze fixed upon Dimian.
Dimian’s playing grew more intricate, the patterns deepening and shifting into increasingly complex arrangements. Though the loom was broken and had only just absorbed the vast Yin drawn from Ling Feng, it still responded beneath his control.
The air around Songhe began to stir, subtle at first, then gathering with increasing force. Threads of energy unfurled into the open space, coiling and overlapping in slow spirals, gold deepening into a red that flickered like embers.
Dimian paused.
He had expected collapse, yet what unfolded before him bore no resemblance to surrender. The pressure in the air did not recede. It condensed.
Songhe was not breaking.
Before Dimian could adjust, the shift completed itself.
Songhe’s form dissolved into light and force, breaking free of its human frame. In its place rose a vast silver dragon, its scales catching what little light the cave possessed and bending it into a cold brilliance.
The dragon did not strike.
Instead, it circled Ling Feng’s body.
Once. Then again.
Dimian’s fingers faltered.
The rhythm he had imposed upon the guzheng slipped for the briefest instant.
A string snapped.
The silver dragon released a roar.
The sound struck the walls of the cave with force. Stone trembled beneath it. Fine cracks spread through the roof, and fragments of rock loosened, falling in uneven patterns as dust poured downward in thin, choking veils.
Songhe moved.
He tore through the air with a speed that blurred form into streaks of silver and red, his path impossible to follow, his presence impossible to ignore. The cave itself began to protest beneath the violence of his movement.
Dimian’s initial shock hardened into something sharper, more controlled.
He adjusted his posture and steadied his breathing, forcing his focus back into his hands. When he resumed playing, the guzheng answered—though not without resistance. His fingers moved faster now, pressing beyond precision into something bordering upon force.
He drove the melody toward Songhe, forcing the loom to reach, to probe, to seize and sever.
Another string broke.
Then another.
A third followed, each rupture louder than the last, carrying the unmistakable truth that the instrument had never been made for battle. It was a scalpel, not a blade meant for war.
Dimian stopped and rested his hands upon the loom, stilling the strings.
Silence followed, abrupt and jarring after the relentless music.
Dimian lowered his hands, his gaze lingering on the damaged strings. He understood the boundary he had reached.
He rose to his feet.
Across from him, suspended within fractured air, Songhe coiled upon himself—the vast length of his silver form held in a tense, controlled spiral, his eyes smoldering with darkness bleeding into the red threaded through his presence.
Intent to kill.
For a brief moment, the two simply regarded one another.
Then the dragon roared again.
Dimian smiled.
He could see the strain beneath the display, the cost hidden within the power. Whatever strength Songhe drew upon now, it was borrowed against a limit he could not sustain for long.
He tilted his head slightly.
The man before him no longer stood aligned with anything the heavens would defend.
That made what would follow clean.
Fair.
Dimian allowed his own form to respond.
The transformation was heavier, denser, carrying the weight of accumulated years and stolen essence. His body expanded and reshaped into that of a great golden dragon, larger than Songhe’s by a clear margin. Horns curved from his head like carved crescents, and a long beard trailed beneath his jaw. Yet the gold of his scales was not pure. It was tainted, veined with dark, seeping Yin that clung to him like smoke refusing to dissipate.
His eyes were black.
Empty of light.
He moved first.
The distance between them vanished as he lunged forward, and Songhe met him without retreat. Their bodies collided with enough force to shake more stone loose from the fractured cave.
The space could not contain them.
Songhe saw it before the collapse began in earnest. The structure above them, already weakened, would not endure prolonged strain.
And below, beneath falling stone, lay Ling Feng’s body.
He broke away from the clash and drove toward the exit. Dimian followed without hesitation as they burst into the open sky.
Clouds scattered beneath the violence of their emergence. Songhe moved with speed and precision, each motion measured and adaptive, while Dimian relied upon crushing force, his attacks direct and punishing.
For a time, the balance held.
Then it began to tilt.
Dimian felt it before he acknowledged it. Scales tore free beneath Songhe’s claws, wounds opening along his length with increasing frequency. Each strike landed where it mattered, not merely where it could.
The realization unsettled him.
It sharpened into irritation.
Then anger.
That anger cost him.
His movements lost a measure of control, his focus narrowing in ways that made him predictable. Songhe exploited it, tearing across his flank and raking through weakened scales. The pain drew a raw, unrestrained sound from Dimian, something closer to a shriek than a roar.
In that moment of strain, he reached for something he had withheld until now.
The Yin he had taken from Ling Feng.
It had not yet settled. The energy remained volatile, its nature still unbound to his own. Until now, he had deemed it unnecessary to draw upon such instability against an opponent he believed already spent.
Now, that judgment no longer held.
He drew it in.
For a brief instant, his power surged, the dark current within him swelling beyond its previous limits. The air around him thickened beneath the density of that force.
Then it turned.
The energy resisted integration, twisting violently against the channels that sought to contain it. What should have strengthened him instead fractured his control. The vast body of the golden dragon convulsed midair, its movements breaking into violent, uncontrollable spasms.
He fell.
Not in a controlled descent, but in a loss of command so complete it bordered upon ruin.
Songhe did not hesitate.
He followed.
He descended through the broken canopy and into the Blackwood, his vast form cutting through branches that recoiled from his passage. When he reached the forest floor, he slowed, his movements no longer driven by momentum, but by intent.
He searched.
There was no sign of Dimian.
The golden dragon, so immense only moments before, had vanished without trace. No crushed earth marked his fall.
The concealment unsettled Songhe.
This was no retreat.
It was a shift in method.
Then—
Motion.
A fracture in space resolved too late for Songhe to evade. The golden dragon surged from the shadows and struck with brutal precision.
It caught Songhe.
The force of the impact drove the silver dragon into the ground. Before Songhe could reorient himself, Dimian tightened his hold, locking him in place with ruthless efficiency.
Songhe struggled.
He twisted and drove his strength against the bind, but Dimian’s grip only tightened. The pressure shifted, narrowing around his throat.
Dimian’s fangs sank in.
The draining force tore at his essence as much as his flesh, drawing his blood with ferocious hunger. Strength bled from him in a sudden, accelerating collapse.
Songhe’s movements weakened. The force sustaining his transformation began to fracture, his control slipping as the drain deepened.
Just as his consciousness began to slip—
The golden dragon released him.
The abruptness of it was disorienting. One moment there was pressure and crushing force; the next, nothing. The silver dragon fell heavily against the ground.
He could not rise.
Dimian withdrew and roared.
From his mouth burst a stream of red flames that carved a path through the forest.
Songhe watched through a dimming haze.
Through his fading vision, he saw Dimian turn.
For a moment, the golden dragon regarded him, its black eyes burning with smoldering red. Then it turned away and moved toward the cave.
Something in Songhe tightened.
Ling Feng.
Songhe forced himself to move.
At first, nothing responded. His body remained where he had fallen, heavy and unyielding. He pushed again, then again, dragging himself forward against the weight pressing him down.
He rose, barely.
The effort fractured what little control he retained, but it was enough. He forced his weakened form into the air, abandoning speed for stability.
Back to the cave.
He entered with dread already settled within him. The space inside was quieter now, the oppressive resonance of the loom diminished though not entirely gone. The guzheng remained where it had been, its broken strings hanging slack. Dimian was nowhere to be seen, and Songhe did not search for him. He turned immediately toward Ling Feng.
The body lay where it had been left. Songhe circled once, then again, slower this time, before descending toward him. As he drew close enough to feel it, he sensed the faintest movement of breath. Faint. Fragile. But present. Unconscious, but alive. For a brief instant, something within Songhe stilled as understanding settled over him.
He gathered Ling Feng carefully, with a precision that stood in stark contrast to the violence that had defined every moment before. Then, with what strength remained, he took to the air once more.
The Blackwood pressed against him as he moved, its corrupted presence clinging and resisting his departure. Songhe pushed through it, forcing his way toward the boundary he could sense but not see, the edge where the distortion thinned and the world beyond waited.
When the threshold finally revealed itself and he crossed it, the change was immediate. The pressure lessened, and the air no longer resisted him with the same suffocating force.
His strength failed.
Songhe collapsed mid-descent, his great silver form crashing to the earth beyond the Blackwood’s edge. Even as consciousness slipped away, what remained of his control gathered instinctively around Ling Feng, shaping his body into a protective ring.
It was not long before others arrived. Some had seen the dragon fall. Others had heard it. And in that stillness, for the first time since the loom had begun its work, nothing was taken.