B2 Chapter 38
It was fading. Orange-crest felt as if he were sobering up and falling asleep at once. He blinked. He in fact was sobering up and falling asleep at once, but that wasn't what he was feeling. He'd glimpsed something in that moment where he'd held fate in his paws. Scales and fulcrums upon which the world could be shifted. The principles that had led to this inevitable moment.
Those truths had all slipped away, stolen from his memory. He remembered only two things. Upon three anchors he had changed the world. And he'd been right. About Tian, and his legacy. There were things that orange-crest was not permitted to know. A rule so deeply written it pretended to be a truth of the world itself.
But there was a reminder now branded onto his very cultivation. A character that floated in his dantian like a speck in his eye, refusing to let him forget what he could not remember.
Steel slammed into ice with a screech like a dying demon.
Orange-crest swallowed his final healing pill and washed it down with the last mouthful of Centipede Wine in his gourd. He surged to his feet, lightheaded from the raging energies. A few moments more. He might not know what he'd done, but he knew what he had to do.
Yang Wei fell upon formless-gleam like a storm. He was weaker than the fox. He didn't care. He had no idea of what he'd leapt into. He very clearly did not care about that either. Formless-gleam's cold blunted the edge of his qi, easily suppressing the storm of blades that had given orange-crest such trouble during their fight. Yang Wei pressed forward all the same, trusting his weapons to do what his qi could not.
The fox in the form of a woman leapt back, the Seventh Prince falling limply out of her hands as her bladed claws flashed to ward off Yang Wei's questing spear. With only a single hand on the shaft, the weapon moved more slowly than orange-crest remembered. Yet, it was hardly less deadly for it. The blade slithered through Yang Wei's hand like a serpent as he guided it through strikes and parries. His shoulder and hips oft tapped at the butt of the spear, Yang Wei was using every part of his body to adjust angles and guide his blows, compensating for the loss of a hand.
All the while the saber in his left hand rested at his side, a tiger ready to pounce.
"Enough!" Formless-gleam hissed, swiping a hand through the air. A swirling mass of foxfire in the vague shape of a fox's four-fingered paw formed, crashing down upon Yang Wei.
Yang Wei swung the saber in his left hand with almost contemptuous ease. It purred like a satisfied tiger as it cut through the air in a heavy chop. The descending blade struck the surging blue flames with surprisingly loud impact. The noise was rather like what orange-crest imagined a great mountain of glass shattering would sound like, at once sharp and deep. The room shook as the foxfire was not merely dispersed, but unmade. Cut from the world.
Formless-gleam was sent flying by the weight of the impact. Yang Wei staggered, but held his footing. A baleful aura emanated from the saber in his hand. Qi dense enough to be visible, mottled red and black and purple, a hateful bruise that seemed as demonic as any power formless-gleam had wielded crept up his arm. It licked at him, devouring his qi like a flame ate away at the logs that supported it. Spear qi condensed around Yang Wei, descending upon his left arm, intangible blades cutting away at the tongues of cursed qi that were siphoning off his strength.
Orange-crest smiled, struggling to his feet. Even here, Yang Wei was Yang Wei. He stood facing what he thought a demon, one he could see was stronger than himself. And he was experimenting with a new weapon. Testing his limits. Refusing to drop the possibly cursed saber that very clearly did not fit into his existing martial arts.
Orange-crest couldn't help himself. He snickered at the sight, then swallowed the laugh with a hiccup as the world tilted.
Orange-crest had no idea if that was the wine or the realm at this point. It wasn't falling apart. He wouldn't have written a future that destroyed the holy land. But it was unstable. Rendered porous by the release of more power than it could safely bear.
"I believe I told you not to die, monkey." Yang Wei said, not even turning away from his foe.
"Still here, human."
"Didn't look like you would be for long, without my intervention."
Formless-gleam said nothing. Her eyes were cold. They rested hungrily upon the Seventh Prince's still body.
Orange-crest stepped forward, standing over Xiao Yongzheng's unmoving form.
"He won't kill you." The monkey said.
Yang Wei did not turn around, but his confusion was clearly written in the set of his shoulders.
"I might." The heir of the Valiant Yang said. "I should. Unless you did that to the prince, Li Hou."
Orange-crest smiled. He knew all the right words. They'd already been written after all.
"Do what you wish." He said glibly, skipping right past the fact that he had put some of those bruises on the prince. "You always do. But if she dies. Even if the earth should split, and the heavens tremble, you will never find me again."
Orange-crest watched as the unshakeable Yang Wei flinched. It was the same oath he'd drunkenly sworn beneath the winter sky that night they'd bared the truth of their hearts to each other.
"She matters that much to you?"
Orange-crest looked forward to their rematch. But he clearly did not look forward to it as much as Yang Wei did. To be fair, he'd won. He probably would hunger for a third round far more if he'd lost the second.
Li Hou stepped forward to stand beside Yang Wei. On his right side. As far away from that ominous saber as it was possible to be.
The one man in all the world he would call a martial brother, as humans understood it. Not a master or uncle, but a sworn brother in truth. They'd never said it in words. But he knew the strange taciturn man felt the same.
"No killing." Li Hou repeated firmly.
Yang Wei sighed. He lifted the saber in his hand, turned it over, and plunged it into the stone of the floor. The ominous qi faltered, shrinking like a fire denied air.
"When this is over, you will explain everything."
"I will." Orange-crest lied.
Orange-crest watched as formless-gleam rose to her feet. Or, appeared to rise. She'd already moved. He knew how the fox fought. She'd be behind them, ready to go for the prince.
"I never thought you of all creatures would come to speak as if I were not present, Li Hou."
Ouch. So he was Li Hou to her now.
"You are my friend, Su Lingjie. If this is the only way you can see to break your curse, I will find another."
A dozen foxes stepped forward out of thin air, surrounding them.
Yang Wei did not wait. He chose a direction seemingly at random, thrusting. A sharp wind followed the blow, tearing two illusory clones to shreds.
Orange-crest leapt backward, back to where the prince lay. His staff soared to his hand, shrouded in orange light, and he swung it wildly. He clipped the fox, breaking her illusion.
Yang Wei was upon her in an instant, his spear diving for her throat like a descending falcon.
Formless-gleam was too fast for him, a flick of her bloody fingers driving the blow high. Even for a monster like Yang Wei, half of a great realm was not a gulf easily overcome.
"Nope." Orange-crest corrected, clenching his hand, pouring much of his recovered strength into the spell.
The vise of qi bound the fox for a fraction of a moment before she shattered it, but even an instant was enough for Yang Wei to stain her shoulder with blood. Viper-quick, her hand caught the shaft of his weapon before it could dig deep. Orange-crest launched his own thrust, but without the strength and weight of stone form behind it the fox simply caught the blow upon her open hand and turned it away.
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"No." Formless-gleam hissed. "Not now."
Yang Wei's qi flared as he ripped his spear out through the fox's clenched fingers, but he was forced to abort his follow-up attack to deflect a blade of frozen blood that would have taken his eye.
Formless-gleam roared. It was a hoarse, brutal noise. The kind of cry a creature can only give when it does not care for the damage it does to its throat in the process. Foxfire poured from every broken nail and shallow wound, dripped from her eyes like tears and from her mouth like venom, limning the fox in a shroud of winter like the one she'd used when she transformed.
It was time then.
Yang Wei raised his spear into a stance orange-crest had once had a nightmare about. The hidden realm shook as spear intent gathered about its head, a heatless fire to match the fox's cold.
Three tails emerged from the fox's back. Her teeth lengthened and a true beast's claws replaced her ruined bladed nails, emerging already bloodstained.
The Seventh Prince moaned, and the air grew heavy. Even here, in a realm apart, Heaven was close. Lightning crackled and thunder roared in the distance.
Yang Wei shot orange-crest a look. A very accusing look. The sort of look that said 'What exactly did you just make me agree to spare?'
"Monkey." He snapped in the sort of tone humans usually used to call orange-crest a furry bastard or a flea-bitten scoundrel.
Orange-crest just smiled, wild and toothy. Then he grabbed the Seventh Prince, hefted him over his shoulder, and stepped behind Yang Wei.
"Better to endure fated tragedy, than crush a flower yet to bloom."
The words had not left Huo'er since they'd first come to mind. She'd watched it all.
The fools who disrupted the Bai Tyrant's mausoleum. How they had stumbled about blindly in his velvet darkness, and perhaps righted one of the many wrongs the old monster had committed in the process.
The girl who'd impressed Daoist Endless Road by embracing unflinchingly the cost of his path. Accepting the worst of his way in pursuit of the best of it.
And the three, now four, fools who the mindless remains of Grand Elder Tian had drawn together. His final usurpation of Heaven's purpose, throwing a monkey into the workings of fate.
Two of three inheritances spent. In truth, she'd not expected it.
It was her purpose, to watch. Lianhuo had created her at her master's behest even before they knew what Old Xiang would one day attempt. Jin Qingyi oft pretended to care little for the sect he'd founded. That sentiment could not be further from the truth. He loved the Azure Mountain Sect in the only way a cultivator half a step from immortality could, at unfathomable distance. He left them free to make their own mistakes. To endure their fated tragedies. Because to meet him before they were ready would crush them as surely as any uncaring blade or bloodthirsty demon.
It was not her purpose to intervene, save to protect the land itself. Her mistress had created her in the image of her master, a distant guardian. She'd only revealed herself for sentiment's sake. How could she not, seeing that technique on the lips of such an intriguing disciple?
After two hundred years, Huo'er was coming to think clones were often wiser than the cultivators that had created them.
It seemed inevitable that they would become such. Cultivators created clones with little thought for the fact that they were birthing a life as true as any clutch of eggs. They oft left them mind-numbing duties with which to while away the centuries.
Unable to cultivate or act freely, with so much time to think, how could one help but acquire a little wisdom?
Old Xiang would be reborn soon. Forever bound to the place he'd loved more than immortality. More successful than the Grand Elders, in his own way. Her watch was nearly ended.
The monkey had failed. It was such a foolish thing to squander Grand Elder Tian's inheritance upon, the life of a demon. It could have reached the midpoint of Foundation Establishment, or stolen the fate of a nation.
And it had failed to do even that, unless she intervened.
Lianhuo would have wondered. Questioned if her choice was driven by fate, by the currents the monkey had blindly clutched at. Huo'er was wiser than that now. She'd been born without choice. One day she would return to Lianhuo, a blazing feather to reignite the Soul Lamp the phoenix had extinguished to create her.
What did they really choose in the end?
She watched as Su Lingjie compressed foxfire into a seething orb, poured all her hatred and venom into a technique that would entomb in ice all those that had stood against her.
A choice.
She watched as Yang Wei stared into the face of a power that overmatched him, and brought up his spear to answer it, her master's blighted creation discarded. Wielded by worthy hands, that saber would shatter mountains. Even in the hands of a child, something as small as the fox's grudge would be effortlessly wiped away at the manageable cost of her life, and his pride.
Yet he did not take the saber up.
Another choice.
Huo'er made hers.
Orange-crest watched as his two friends struck at each other with their greatest weapons.
Formless-gleam leapt through the air, bearing death aloft. Yang Wei did not move, and carried it with him.
Hateful bloody winter surged toward him, only to be lanced by a thin line of spearlight. Space itself broke where the two blows met. The world above might be able to sustain such violence, but this half-real place did not yet have what it took to endure it. Orange-crest saw darkness seeping through holes in the air as the under-sect leaked through the rents in space.
Yang Wei's Spear Intent easily pierced through formless-gleam's attack, punching a bloody hole clean through the fox's abdomen. The fox fell to the ground, prone. But then winter was upon them.
Orange-crest had known terrible cold before. But he'd never felt cold that hated him. His limbs became as stone, his heart as ice. Yang Wei froze mid-thrust, immortalized in martial glory.
Nobody moved. Nobody could. Formless-gleam's tails vanished. Her qi retracted.
There was silence in the ruined hall, as the four of them waited to live or die.
The Seventh Prince's ragged breaths stopped.
And then a feather fell through the air. It drifted down slow and heedless, glowing with an inner light that was beyond such petty things as grudges and nations and blades.
When it touched the floor of the ruined hall, life and motion returned to the world.
Formless-gleam's bleeding stopped. The ice restraining Yang Wei shattered.
And orange-crest immediately hurled himself through one of the holes in the world, carrying Xiao Yongzheng like a sack of rice.
The hole in the world did not immediately collapse behind orange-crest and his unconscious cargo.
But it began to shrink.
Orange-crest dropped the prince unceremoniously, taking up his staff with both hands. He waited a beat. Claws ground against steel. Yang Wei would have pressed her the moment the ice broke. He could see nothing. The angle was wrong. A cry of pain. Male.
The air whimpered at the passage of steel.
Orange-crest waited half a beat, then thrust.
"Guh."
Formless-gleam flashed into vision, half-folded around the shaft of ivory wood he'd jabbed into her abdomen right next to the bloody hole Yang Wei had put in her.
Her qi was finally running dry. There was nowhere to dodge while trying to pass through the portal. All that had remained was the timing.
Their eyes met. There was so much orange-crest still wanted to say. Promises he wanted to make. Promises he feared he could not keep.
He retracted the staff just as formless-gleam's fingers were about to close upon it.
"We will meet again."
The promise at least, orange-crest could keep.
Yang Wei fell upon the fox in the next moment. He was a good friend, Yang Wei. Uncomplicated in the best possible way. Or, if not uncomplicated, the sort of person who cut through complications. Orange-crest didn't deserve him. And orange-crest felt he deserved a lot of good things.
The hole between worlds closed. And orange-crest was left in darkness.
It was over.
Not just the battle. Orange-crest would not be able to return to the sect after this. That was obvious. He'd known it the moment he struck the Seventh Prince to prevent him from wielding that formation against formless-gleam.
The monkey pressed the royal in question up against the corner of the wall. The tunnel he'd found himself in was silent, wrapped in velvet darkness. He laid back, using the unconscious Xiao Yongzheng as a headrest.
Perhaps the prince would lie for him. His pillow's true feelings after all that had passed between them remained a mystery to the monkey. But too much had happened. Questions would be asked, words would spread. His connection to the fox would become known.
He couldn't see every path fate might take, but one way or another, catastrophe would follow.
His master would be here soon. Fate, or skill and planning. One would assure it.
Orange-crest supposed he'd failed. He'd never win the Initiate's Tournament now.
But what was glory worth? Would it have let him save formless-gleam? Would it have really protected his master? He didn't regret it. When things came down to bared fangs fame wasn't worth much, was it?
Far better to have a friend like Yang Wei in your corner.
Orange-crest's head swam. He was fading in earnest now. He started, reaching out for his staff, only to realize it was still clutched in his hand.
Perhaps things could have been different. He could have abandoned formless-gleam. Fought alongside the prince. He would have been lauded. His master forgiven. The Seventh Prince would have owed him a favor. Elder Lu would have kissed his feet. He could almost taste that future, even though all but the dregs of Elder Tian's gift had faded.
Could almost taste the fox's blood. Almost feel her fur around his shoulders. He would have worn her pelt ever after, like his king wore that tiger's. Anything else would have been sacrilege.
No. Orange-crest didn't want that future. The orange-crest that did would have been a very different monkey. Perhaps formless-gleam was a demon. But the orange-crest that chose to kill her would have been something worse.
Something in orange-crest felt different, and it was not the fateful character Grand Elder Tian's seal had branded upon his dantian. It was something simpler, but no less impactful. He felt surer now. The wordless fear that had gripped him after the fight with Hu Weimin had diminished. Perhaps the heights of cultivation were beyond his imagination. But he'd seen the terror of them, and still lived true to himself. What would come would come, and he would remain himself.
Orange-crest felt like he heard footsteps in the distance. He struggled to rise, but his head felt so very heavy.
Perhaps that had been what he feared the whole time. Losing himself. Perhaps only by coming to better understand the ways of men had he become more sure of his own way as a monkey. He still feared the terror of their world, but no longer did he fear losing himself to it.
His master's face emerged from the shadows, illuminated by flames clenched tight in a raised fist. Orange-crest smiled. Not like a man, nor a monkey, but like something in between. He smiled like orange-crest. Mouth open, but with a grin on his cheeks. His teeth neither bared nor hidden.
Daoist Scouring Medicine took in the sight before him. The patches of frozen bloody fur. The prince lying on the floor of the tunnel, covered in bruises and puncture wounds.
"Li Hou. What did you do?"
Orange-crest laughed.
"Is long story. Should run while we talk." The monkey tried to rise. It didn't go well. "Run while you carry." He amended.
Orange-crest blinked.
"Talk while you carry." He corrected. Words were hard right now.
"Is that-"
"Man-shit!" Orange-crest suddenly barked. "Forgot! Give him pill!"
He was out. He'd taken the last of his own pills earlier. But he'd also completely forgotten about the prince.
Li Xun sighed, and then went to work. His disciple was alive. Compared to that, what else truly mattered?