Chapter [B5] 11 — Grief

Chapter [B5] 11 — Grief

I hesitated in front of the door as I lingered. Within, I could sense the meeting happening between Zhou Fang and the vague auras of the ice spirits I had saved back then with the assistance of Xuanwu. And yet I hesitated to open the door and show my face to them.

“Master,” Labby whispered behind my elbow, lightning crackling in tiny threads along her fingers before she clamped her paws and stilled it. Ash stood to my other side in human form, cloak hood down, eyes clear and watchful. Sheldon hovered half a step back, sea-quiet, one foot on a small slate covered in array lines that pulsed in time with the Seventh Peak’s ward ring.

Even as the guards at the door looked at me with slack jaws and wide eyes, clearly stunned that I was alive. I’d only given them a smile and a nod, but that alone seemed enough to almost bring them to tears. Finally, gritting my teeth and stripping away any hesitation lingering in my mind, I knew I couldn’t just stay here. I needed to meet Zhou Fang and talk to him, get an update on the situation. And then go get the leaves with Labby as I’d offered to Granny Lang. I wanted to visit the spirit tree and interact with it too. And so, taking a deep breath, I opened the door.

We entered together.

The room within was large—a giant rectangular desk surrounded by people, spirits of all kinds. Their hair colors were wildly unique, unlike the rest of the cultivators I’d seen. Unlike human cultivators with brown and black hair, and Zhou Fang, who was sitting at the front of the table in a chair just the slightest bit more imposing and glorious than the rest, looked up from the documents on the table, his scowl turning into a wide-open mouth of shock. “Brother Lu Jie,” he said, staring at me blankly. “You—but I—” He stood, leaping toward me, examining me from head to toe as if trying to determine whether I was genuinely a liar or if it was a trick of his mind. “How?” he asked.

“I’ll explain what happened to you. Can we…?” I gestured toward the spirits. He turned toward them, bowing slightly, giving a faintly apologetic nod. “I will need to talk to the one representing divinity if none of you mind,” he asked. None of the spirits minded, especially considering he was a representative of the divine beast, for they shook their heads hurriedly while staring at him with shock and some with hope blooming in their eyes.

Labby made a small wave at the familiar ice spirits. Sheldon inclined his head to the table as respectful greeting; Ash stayed silent, scanning the exits and the windows, then settled near the door to keep watch. Zhou Fang gave them a brief, grateful look before ushering me away.

Zhou Fang led me out of the room and into one of the chambers in the corridor, opening the door. Once it was closed, he let out the remaining chi in his body, which was surprisingly low even with the current drainage of chi by the demon god, and then asked, “What happened? Tell me everything.”

Sheldon set his slate on a side table and drew a quick dampening array so our voices wouldn’t carry; Ash posted by the window. Labby stood in front of me, tail swishing, trying to look serious and failing because her ears were too expressive.

“I’m so glad to see you’re fine, Brother Lu Jie. With my father gone and then you gone too, the Seventh Peak lost two pillars immediately.” An expression of grief settled on his face when he realized what he’d said. “Father had been an admirable man. I intend to hold his legacy, of course, but sometimes I just miss him.”

“I know,” I said. Labby’s ears flattened in sympathy; she had known the old lord by the weight of his hand when he’d scratched her head on long briefings. Sheldon bowed his head. Ash shifted once, a small nod.

“Do you feel his soul?” Zhou Fang asked hesitantly. “Or did it get claimed by the underworld? I heard he’d been trying to break into divinity and took down a demon divinity when he died.”

“I have his soul within my divine tree,” I said, glancing through the tree outside, which we could see from the window.

That made Zhou Fang’s body almost slump in relief. “I’m so glad. With how the underworld is, and the demon god’s manifestation, I had worried for the worst. I wanted my dad to at least have peace in the afterlife.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I collected most of the souls of the people who died in this war. Nothing to worry about. Your father is watching over all of us from the divine tree, rooting for our victory.”

Zhou Fang’s expression became conflicted at that. “I will do my best to maintain his mantle and uphold his legacy. But do you think I can do it?” He seemed to regret the question the second it left his mouth.

I smiled at him. “You are doing it, Zhou Fang. The fact that the Seventh Peak hasn’t collapsed, yes, credit must be given to Zhang and the rest of my friends, but you’ve been doing just as good a job as them, haven’t you? You’ve been holding this place together. I think you already are upholding your father’s legacy.”

Those words struck Zhou Fang in a way he’d not expected, as he stared at me blankly—just as he had when he’d first seen me appear. And then slowly he began laughing, laughter that evolved into full-blown cackles. “Hah. You always know just what to say, in the strangest of ways, don’t you? Rather, Lu Jie, or perhaps I should call you Emperor?”

I rolled my eyes. “The empire has collapsed, Zhou Fang. I am an emperor, but you don’t need to show me any formality anymore.”

Zhou Fang chuckled good-naturedly. “Now that you’re here, actually, I might need your help.”

“My help?” I asked.

“The spirits. It’s better if you hear it from them.”

Before we returned, Sheldon cleared his throat. “Two items. First, the ward ring will hold for four hours if I divert the south line. After that, we’ll need a relayer at the sea plate. I can send a runner, but if this meeting runs long—”

“Go if you need to,” I told him. “Labby and Ash will stay with me.”

Ash nodded once. Labby squeezed my hand and then marched at my side like a very small bodyguard.

Saying so, Zhou Fang guided me back into the meeting room, letting me sit in the seat of honor where he’d been sitting previously, standing behind me. Basic etiquette. I had become the Emperor, after all. All the spirits stood up, bowed to me with respect, and only sat when I told them they could. I raised an eyebrow as I looked at all of them: spirits from the west, from the east, from the south. Almost every kind had gathered—ice, fire, earth. But to gather all these representatives here, what could possibly have happened?

An ice spirit, the sister of the one I rescued back then from the assassin, was the first to speak, the most familiar and comfortable with me. “Your Highness, miasma blooms are corrupting the spirits, as Lord Zhou Fang must have informed you. We are not sure we have any solutions or information, anything at all we could work on.”

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Their gazes became desperate as they looked at me. Labby bristled at the word miasma and then settled when Ash touched her shoulder. Sheldon slipped out quietly; I felt the array-thread of his presence move toward the sea line.

“Corrupting the spirits? How so?”

“The spirits, even if they don’t come into direct contact with the miasma blooms, as long as they stay in sufficiently close distance, they’re almost converted into quasi-demons, rampaging wildly. We do not have any way to purify them, so we either had to kill them”—an expression of pain took over the ice spirit’s face at this—“or seal them until we could find a cure. But progress on the cure is slow. We, both on the human sides and the spirit sides, are looking into it as much as we can, but with the kingdom destroyed, it is a bit of a stretch to hope for a proper cure. Of course, if a sage like you steps in, the situation might be different.”

I raised an eyebrow as I listened. Corrupted spirits. It made me think about the divine beasts, to whom I felt no connection anymore. But instinctively, I wondered if they would be in similar states. The divine beasts, if they were in any state of sanity, would already have been trying to break out. The fact that the demon god was able to advance his plans without much competition, unlike Yang Shen, who faced actual resistance from his divine beast, meant the divine beast must also have been corrupted.

It would explain the miasma blooms, and why chi was failing from this world. If the divine beasts themselves have taken on a demonic nature, Gu would become mainstream, Qi and Chi no longer.

I had to find this cure.

Zhou Fang folded his arms, jaw tight. “We tried standard purifications. Water talismans fail after one pulse. Fire arrays aggravate the frenzy. Earth seals hold, but the longer they hold the more the seal lines corrode.” He flicked a glance at Ash. “We had to hunt three sealed ones that broke out last night.”

Ash inclined his head. “They moved like trained beasts. Someone is testing us.” His voice stayed flat, but I caught the edge. He did not like killing spirits any more than the spirits liked killing their own kin.

Labby raised her paw. The spirits turned to look at her; two flinched at the lingering dragon-thunder in her fur. “Labby marks blooms, Sheldon wants samples, Yin needs data.”

An old stone spirit rumbled, “You would harvest rot?”

“Not harvest,” Labby said, very serious. “Touch and leave. Bring a little back. So we can make better burn.”

The stone spirit blinked, then bobbed. “Practical.”

I nodded. “Is it possible to bring some of the spirits you’ve sealed to the Seventh Peak? Some of the tamer ones, perhaps?”

This made all of them go silent for a few seconds before an earth spirit nodded. “Yes, Your Highness, we can bring two spirits to the Seventh Peak. Both spirits are quite deeply infected, but they are not strong enough to break our bindings.”

“Understood,” I said. “We will experiment on them to see if it’s possible to free them. You do not have to worry. I will do my best to find a way.”

All the spirits looked immensely relieved at this, but none stood to leave or ask for dismissal.

I raised an eyebrow. “Is there anything else you want to talk about?”

It hesitated before adding, “The corruption is not limited to our kind. Even if it has yet to fully manifest, the humans are being infected as well.”

“Ah,” one of the spirits ventured, “about the divine beasts. Are they well, Your Highness? I do not know how appropriate it is for us to ask in these tumultuous times, but we thought you had passed away, that all hope was lost. Now you’ve appeared again, and I must ask. Can you give us some information on what’s happening? How are the divine beasts? What’s happened to the demon god?”

I pondered for a second whether I should tell these spirits what was happening, and then decided there would be no harm.

I didn’t go into as much detail as I did with Zhou Fang, only giving them the basic outline: how the demon god was sealed because of the divine tree, and that the divine beasts are currently trapped with the demon god, though I didn’t mention they might be corrupted. I told them I had a way to end the demon god, but I would need their assistance.

If I was going to be experimenting the next few days, or advancing weapons to face the demon god and his army, then I would need all the resources I could get. And where better to get them than from the spirits themselves, arbiters of nature?

At my explanation, all the spirits relaxed, as if a major burden had been lifted from their shoulders; some looked like they’d regained hope; some looked positively delighted. I barely stopped the smile from spreading on my face.

Labby leaned close and whispered, “Master, Labby can fetch leaves now? The tree listens.” Her eyes flicked to the window where the divine tree’s branches reached into the clouds. She could feel it like I did, thin but present.

“Soon,” I said. “After we finish.”

A fire spirit raised a hand. “Your Highness, if we transfer essence cores, can your crafters embed them into your devices? We have been using mortal rifles and talismans provided by your sect. If we amplify them with our cores, perhaps the range and penetration will increase without overloading the mortal users.”

I thought about Sheldon’s designs and Yin’s prototypes. “Maybe. We’ll need to regulate the flow so mortals don’t scorch their meridians. But if the cores are bound to the device and not the user, the device can handle most of the strain. Bring me two small cores. Yin will test it.”

An elder snow spirit bowed. “Done.”

My mind immediately went into theorycrafting. What could I do to help free the spirits and beasts from their madness and corruption? Weren’t Granny Lang and my master using the divine tree’s leaves for fertilizers?

I looked toward the divine tree that stretched into the sky from the room I was in. Perhaps if I used a combination of those leaves, would it be possible to free spirits from their corruption? I could easily use many more leaves without it being much of a burden to my spirit or almost-divine reserves, after all. That seemed promising the more I thought about it. Maybe utilizing the divine tree’s leaves within my weapons too would give it a holier edge and allow us to damage the demon god properly.

Yes, that would be a potentially good path to pursue. Anything that could buy us more time.

Sheldon slipped back into the chamber without a sound and murmured near Zhou Fang’s ear. The ward ring steadied. He met my eyes. “Sea line stabilized. I have thirty-six minutes before the next shift. Yin confirmed she can accept infected samples in Lab B. She requests controlled exposure time and your approval for using a leaf shard in Trial Twelve.”

“Approved,” I said. “We’ll begin with sealed spirits under arrays, then ramp up.”

Ash spoke for the first time to the room. “We will need containment cells that do not crack when the thing inside screams. Mortals panic. Place cells below the east range. I’ll post there.”

Two spirits flinched at the word scream. The earth spirit who’d offered the two sealed ones nodded grimly. “We will strengthen your stone.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We’ll also need a clean-room for Yin. Sheldon, pick the dry lab with the best ventilation.”

“Already done,” he said, then tapped a foot on his slate. A neat diagram of corridors, arrays, and flow lines rotated in the air. “South vent. Labby?”

Labby thumped a paw to her chest. “Labby will escort the sample team when they arrive.”

The meeting moved to logistics for a few minutes—names, times, lines, the boring parts that save lives. Ash charted patrol routes for the next two nights and assigned militia to the lower caverns. Zhou Fang drafted two elders to assist Yin with heavy lifting and to stand guard on her orders only. The spirits organized their transfers and agreed to align with our signal flares so our people wouldn’t shoot them on approach. We kept it clear and simple. No flourish. No wasted breath.

My gaze drifted to the window, towards the Divine Tree stretching into the sky, and I wondered what all I could do with it. The people I could help, the things I could change, until the demon god was destroyed.

And then I remembered the Matriarch, the lady who had been abandoned in the most brutal fashion by me. At least with the other two divinities, even if I’d condemned them to their deaths, they’d actually died and their souls returned into the divine tree. But Matriarch Shie was stuck to the world with no way to leave, considering she was still alive.

Could I heal her? Maybe building her a core would be too much of a stretch, but if I could do that when I was younger with Zhang, when I had much less experience, couldn’t I do this now? Using the leaves, or the same technique I’d used on Zhang, wouldn’t it be possible to give Matriarch Shie a new cultivation base?

It would depend on her interior cultivation state and how broken it was. I would have to examine her. Maybe I should meet her next. Maybe I could use this for my master too, to give them a bit of a long lifespan so they could savor the years, even if it was after I was gone.