Chapter [B5] 8 — Heaven and Death

Chapter [B5] 8 — Heaven and Death

I watched the Azure Dragon and Vermilion Bird close their eyes, letting themselves manifest into the Chi that was being dispersed into the air.

They faded into the sky. In the same moment a weight returned, one I hadn’t realized was missing. Only now did the heavens’ chains set in properly.

“So this was when the heavens were truly formed,” I managed, letting out a soft gasp.

“Indeed. But while their sacrifice was effective initially—” Ki clicked her fingers, and the scenes in front of me shifted in rapid succession.

I watched the first three cycles after the laws. The skies cleared. Birth rates rose. Tribulations became regular rather than feral. The courts restructured around ritual that reflected the heavens.

Then cracks. Sect wars. A dynasty that believed it could harvest good fortune from the borders and depleted the spiritual veins. A grand array that siphoned too much from the earth and poisoned the river. Each time, balance returned, slower than before.

Years blurred into destruction and creation: a cycle showing the rise of empires and then their destruction. Sometimes due to their own hubris, civil wars and revolts, sometimes due to invasion from the Western Kingdoms, and all the while behind it all, slowly and steadily, the unending rise of the demons wore them away.

“The demons were practically nonexistent in the early cycles after the heavens’ establishment, but as they gained the ability to fight back, Shi Qing’s festering spirit only grew more voracious.”

I could feel that weight now that I knew what to search for. It wasn’t the same as the miasma I had sensed before. It was colder and patiently pooled wherever grief was not resolved. It waited in ancestral halls and battlefields that had been paved over and turned into farms. It waited in the hearts of oathbreakers.

The heavy weight on my shoulders made me feel like I was sinking. “If only I could have sensed this earlier—”

“It is not your fault. You could not have done that in the real world. Only now that you are freed of your mortal restraints can you perceive it, as a spirit stripped from your vessel, free to experience the deeper currents of reality. You will feel that weight now in the real world too, because the Demon God is manifesting. But to expect yourself to notice it as a living man would be unreasonable.”

“Maybe so.” But I couldn’t help thinking of all the ways I could have done things differently. I thought of lessons I had ignored because I was tired, of letters I had delayed answering, of minor formations I had promised to reinforce and never had. None of those would have changed this tide, but regret did not care about scale.

Then a new scene coalesced. This time it was Shi Qing’s spirit looking silently at the empire from the same peak where Shi Yan Yun stood just a few eons ago.

The demonic spirit, the very embodiment of death, didn’t say anything, continuing to stare down. He wore Shi Qing’s face and did not. His outline bled into the night air and reformed in wisps of colored darkness.

“Nice view from this place, huh?” Shen Yuan’s voice. I turned and found him walking up to stand alongside the spirit, looking out at the world below with a playful light in his eyes. “I like watching scenes too. People-watching was a passion of mine back when I was on Earth.”

“Do you have anything productive at all to say?” the Death Spirit asked. “Or are you just going to joke around?”

There was silence for a few seconds, and then Shen Yuan chuckled. “I will take down this empire, just like you wished. You’ve been trying, haven’t you, with the demons? And I’m sure you will succeed eventually. But I will speed up that process. I will help you and end this empire fully.”

The Death Spirit turned toward him. “Why? Weren’t you chosen by the divine beasts? Why not restore the cycle? That would have been appealing.”

“Sure,” Shen Yuan said, chuckling. “But now that I’ve lost something truly precious to me, I’ve come to realize what the true evil of this world is.”

“Oh?” the Death Spirit hummed.

“It is you. Death.”

The Death Spirit blinked in surprise, then began laughing. “I admire your gall to come to the Spirit closest to Death and tell me that I am evil. So what is it that you want to do, Shen Yuan? Is it to end death itself?”

“Yes,” Shen Yuan said. “You want the end of this empire. I want prosperity for all the people, freedom from suffering and the chance for them to truly grow. So I will help you end this empire if you help me end death.”

“Do you not know my history?”

“I do.”

“Then why do you imagine I would accept? Your principles sound incredibly similar to my brother’s.”

“Your brother wanted immortality for himself, Shi Qing. He wanted power for himself, and in his hubris thought he would rule everyone properly, equally. You know just as well as I do that if he had actually achieved that immortality, he would not have split the heavens’ power equally among the people. No, he would have used that chance to strengthen himself more. What I want, truly and fundamentally, is immortality for all of these people. I think that given immortality, given true freedom from fear and ending, we can flourish into something truly beautiful. I don’t think you’d mind that, would you?” ṛ𝙖NƟ𝖇ĘS

The Death Spirit didn’t say anything, staring back at the scenery for a few seconds. A cold draft passed through the grass around their feet and did not stir their sleeves. Neither of them were here in the way mortals were.

“So what do you say?” Shen Yuan pressed.

“For my brother to be dead and his legacy and memory destroyed while all others live on as long as they wish?” When he spoke, the air around the peak thinned. The Death Spirit smiled, a cruel and empty thing devoid of joy, a parody of satisfaction that made spite look kind. “I agree to your terms. Ruin what is his, destroy it beyond salvation, and I will bind the last remnants of death to myself forever. Any who finds their life complete may come to me, but I will no longer hunt those who have any wish to remain. If the heavens are to be broken from the earth, then let the new world be one of equality.”

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And then the scenes faded fully, darkness enveloping them peacefully once more.

—

“The Death God broke his promise,” I said. “That is why Shen Yuan lost himself at the last second.”

Ki nodded gravely. “Yes. Shen Yuan is a prodigy—the likes of which the world has seen very rarely, if not ever. But he underestimated the Death Spirit, just the tiniest bit. And that hubris is the reason the Death God was able to once again take on a physical form.”

“The Death God took him over forcefully. But why? It sounds like it was getting everything it wanted.”

“That is something you must discern. I have showed you everything the heavens remember, everything that I can yet recall. Even now, I cannot tell you what you have seen. It is no longer within my reach.” Even her voice seemed faint and ethereal, fading with each moment that passed. “For now, the Demon God is not fully formed yet. But as it is, it is absorbing Death, the miasma, and all the demons across the world into itself. The battle against you has injured it too heavily, damaged its mortal vessel too much. It will need time to recover from those injuries.”

I swallowed. “How long until it completes the merge?”

“That depends on resistance. If left alone, months. If challenged, longer. But it is a voracious being. Challenging it without the right method feeds it instead.”

“Feeds it…” Hunger, consumption. Vengeance without satisfaction. There was something there, the keypoint in this confrontation. Shen Yuan had offered it everything it asked for, given it what it wanted, and it wasn’t good enough. He still ended up consumed himself in the end, and the promised peace and life was nowhere to be seen.

Which made a brutal kind of sense, the more I thought about it. If the heavens were control, then their counterpoint could only be wild untamed chaos, this existence of betrayal and vengeance. Which meant I could not negotiate with it. Whatever promises the death spirit made, it could never be trusted. Even if Shen Yuan might be reasonable, this new god was not.

“Then there really is only one path.” I clenched my fists, the truth of it something I’d already accepted without quite realizing it. “End this perpetual cycle of war. Resolve the divide between life and death and put the Death God to rest.”

“But, Lu Jie.” Ki trailed off, her voice becoming hesitant. “That path…”

I met her eyes, lifted my chin, waiting for her to continue.

She looked away and did not speak.

“Ki, this is important. If there’s anything you know…”

“I told you before, that I knew you would come here. This is the end of all paths. This is where life ends, and death begins. Immortality is false, nothing truly lives forever, no matter how big a vessel is, no matter how much power it holds, or how much Qi or Gu or Chi or any number of energies, even the chaos of the primordial realms it may wield, it can never truly be immortal. All things break. You can beat aging, the way the Divinities and the Emperors did. But there is a price, death had to be cut from life, the rot hidden and stowed away, only to return and bite once it had gathered for long enough.

“The cycle cannot be repaired in any lifetime, the divide is too deep. It can only be bridged and bound until it can heal, and that will require a sacrifice. One I’d hoped not to ask of anyone. But definitely not you, who have already done so much, already sacrificed so much.”

“What sacrifice?” I’d already died protecting my people, after that everything else started to feel less daunting.

“The answer you seek is true Divinity. You’d touched upon it, touched upon the Will of the Heavens, and in that you had come closer than most to achieving it. The Fifth Law is quite simple, Lu Jie. You heard of it before, in fact, from the Black Tortoise, even if you did not realize it in that moment. To attain transcendence through immortality, you must leave behind your mortal shell and let your soul become one with Chi, the world around you. That was what all the people ascending into divinity were expected to do. That was what Emperor Shi Yan Yun broke apart with such heavy hands. And now that is what you will have to bind yourself to, if you want to protect the world, if you want to stop the Demon God for good.

“To do so would be to leave behind the confines of mortal life—this world, the people within it, your mortal body. To do so would be to achieve freedom from the cycle of life and death. To sacrifice your mortality means all that comes with it must also be sacrificed. And to some, like Shi Yan Yun, that is not too far from death itself. And to you…” Her expression dimmed. “This is the choice you will face.”

I pictured all those I had promised to see again. Labby clinging to my sleeve. Zhang’s steady nod. The old man’s stubborn eyes when he told me to rest. Regret sharper than ever before gripped my heart.

Then the words she’d spoken fully registered. “Will face? Not a choice I face now?”

She smiled at the hope in my voice, my sudden attentiveness, though it was a sad smile. “You are too connected right now. Too many lives cling to you, and you to them. Even if you could let go of yourself, could you let go of them?”

Small scenes rose one by one. Teaching a child to hold a brush. Checking a kiln’s heat by hand. Arguing about the angle of a spear formation until midnight and then laughing at the same bad joke.

“No,” I whispered. “Not yet.”

“And that is why you must return. Finish what you have begun. One way or the other.”

I could have said many things. I could have asked many things. But maybe Ki didn’t want me to face her—didn’t want to answer those questions—because I felt myself beginning to lose consciousness, lose grip on that darkness.

“You will have a year,” Ki’s voice echoed within my head. “That is the maximum I can guarantee you. Beyond that, there may be nothing left to save. No matter what choice you make, no matter what happens from now, know, Lu Jie, that I am thankful for all that you have done. I am thankful that you were the one who was chosen.

“There is not much time, Lu Jie.” Her voice sounded ever farther away, fading like a dream upon waking. “And when next we meet, there will be no time at all. Be sure of what you want.”

I woke with my soul hovering within the castle, the battlefield on which the Demon God had killed me. My corpse lay off to the side, charred and broken. If not for the distinctive hole where he’d struck me, it could have been anyone’s.

I watched the events after my death unfold at rapid speed. A perimeter had been established around the Demon God, a translucent white barrier at first, then intertwined roots as the tree blotted out the sky and cast the interior into bands of shadow. The barrier was made up of rotating threads of pure Chi braided into rings, one for stillness, one for separation, one for purification. The tree felt intensely familiar… Was that from my corpse? I figured Ki would need something immensely strong to try and seal the Demon God, and if she’d used the tree in my body, make it stabilize the outside world while my soul recovered…

But even that wasn’t enough. The glowing construct drank power from a formation that sank into the castle foundations, and from beyond that, into lines under the city I had never realized were there. Lines that ran beyond the mountains, beyond the continent, sank deep into the bedrock beneath the sea, connections blazed with gathering power as far as I could see in every direction.

Ki had used everything within her domain, the domain of the earth itself, and it only bought us one year. In cultivation terms, long enough to change fates and too short to finish anything properly.

The Demon God roared in fury as he tried to escape, pounding his fists against the barrier, clawing at the roots, but he was not able to free himself. After a time, he gave up and sat down in meditation. Crimson light began to hover around it, streaked through with deep purple-black corruption. It was absorbing Death, drawing in all the miasma and aura of destruction from this massive battlefield.

And then Ki’s presence faded, and I felt myself losing the depth of spiritual connection, the lines fading as my perspective snapped down into a single viewpoint.

I was violently hurled back into a physical body. And then I blinked awake, no longer on the battlefield, but on the Seventh Peak, cold wind making me shiver. Someone had stacked boxes of talismans by the stairhead. A long spear leaned against the wall where I always left it when I didn’t want to pretend I would rest.

How long was I gone? My gaze drifted toward the distance where the gigantic glowing yellow tree—the holy Tree of Life—stretched into the sky.

I sat up and felt at my core. My meridians ached, but they were whole. The mark the Demon God had left on my soul pulsed faintly, like a bruise under the skin. The Tree’s rootlet in my dantian steadied it, a counterbalance.

That’s when I noticed the dragons… flying straight at me at a breakneck pace.