Chapter 99

  When the Heavens Weep (IV)

  The tunnel I found myself in was rather long, dark, and cold.

  No, not cold. Not it. It rather seems that... I am cold. You know that tingling sensation that starts in your fingertips and that dread that coalesces in your stomach as your feet, for some ungodly reason, go cold, no matter how hard you rub them together? And the ever-so-slight mist in the mind that seems to make it just that much harder to get through a thought?

  They're all here, like the soldiers awakened.

  I've seen death more than a few times by now, and though I could hardly say I'd grown numb to it, I've never had someone close to me die in this world. And however suspicious I was of that old oak, and however misaligned his title of 'Just' was, I... did care for him.

  He was always kind to me, from the day I met him.

  And, yes, I didn't see him die--but I may as well have.

  The reality of everything is catching up to me, but now isn't the time. It may not be the time for a long while, but especially now when I need to bolt and run.

  It took me about a minute to emerge on the other end, where everyone else was waiting; Dai Xiu and Xi Zhao sighed in relief, Long Tao and Hua barely reacted, and Light already seemed assured I'd come out.

  "Are you okay, Master?" Dai Xiu asked, walking up to me.

  "Just fine, just fine," I forced on a smile and patted her head gently, looking around.

  We were still in the mountains, surrounded by jagged rocks and steep cliffs and trees marrying the slopes. Oddly, however... it was silent. Well, not wholly--there was the chatter of the occasional bird and the whistling of the fading gale, but I couldn't hear the hell unraveling behind us.

  No thunder.

  No explosions.

  No agonizing wails and cries.

  No scent of the scorched flesh or the red rivers digging canals.

  ... how is it possible?

  "We should hurry," I said, recalling Elder Qin's instructions. It wasn't time yet to swap our appearances; I figured we'd do it once we leave the mountains. "We'll have to run a long while without rest."

  "Well, this is disappointing," A familiar voice startled me as I gazed sideways, where I saw a ripple in spacetime contort into a twisting deconstruction of the world, from which a silhouette emerged.

  An old man with hands behind his back and a seemingly kind smile on his face.

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  "I always knew you were a coward, Elder Lu," Spirit Sage said. "But to think you would run away while your home is being destroyed. How shameful."

  "..." I instinctively pulled the kids behind me, standing at the front--not that it would do much good. If that guy wanted me dead, I'd be dead in a heartbeat. "Aren't you the same?"

  "Hoh? Talking back?" He chuckled. "I've had my suspicion for a while, but... aah, poor Lu. He was a good kid. Perhaps it was the karmic ties to me that finally got to him."

  "Shouldn't you be reaping the rewards of your labor?"

  "Hm?"

  "The Seed. It should be drowning in souls now."

  "Oh?" he arched his brows in surprise, seemingly not having expected me to know. "Looks like Elder Qin may have shared more than he should have. It must be that you think all those attacking us are here for the Seed."

  "Well, I imagine some of them are here for you."

  "... hm. You know far more than you should." Gone was the surprise, replaced with strange malice that seemed less born of anger or hate and more of just... calculated apathy. I mean, I get it.

  The guy's survived for thousands of years not by being lucky or strong, but by being cunning and calculating and cold.

  "Thank you at least for bringing me that demonic child," he said. "It would have been hard to extricate her from the mess unseen. Come. Return to me," he snapped his fingers as a tendril of Qi rushed toward Light.

  I couldn't react in time, and it hit her... but then, nothing happened. She tilted her head in confusion, as did I, and as did Spirit Sage himself.

  "What?" he snapped them again, and the same thing happened. And then again, and again, and again. "What did you do to her?!" Okay, forget calculated apathy--now he's just pissed off.

  I glanced at Long Tao, who barely smiled with the corners of his lips, and I understood. Whatever happened to her in the Antechamber erased whatever it was that Spirit Sage was using to 'control' her. I still don't have the full picture there, actually--how she came to be here, anyway, and why he got her.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I shrugged.

  "Ha ha ha, good. If I had known you would come between me and my means so decisively, I would have buried you at birth." Hm? "Well, not you. Only the heavens know who you are. Alas, it doesn't matter. Time is running out, I'm afraid, and I must return if I am to, as you said, reap the rewards of my labor. So, I will ask you all kindly to simply die."

  "It's time you left." Hua suddenly stepped forward, surprising everyone except for me. "Remember your promise." He glanced at me.

  "... can't you just kill him and come with us?" Was I being too greedy? Of course I was! He's a Demigod! Oh, how much more secure would I feel in travelling this freakin' world if I had a Demigod trump card by my side?

  "He's just one part of the puzzle," he smiled. "Go, now," Qi began to surge and stir, and I felt my soul gnaw at itself for a moment. "Run... and don't look back."

  Long Tao grabbed Dai Xiu, heaved her over his shoulders, and started sprinting as though his life depended on it.

  No, not as if.

  I grabbed Light immediately, did the same, and started executing the movement art, with Xi Zhou right there by my side.

  "Where the hell do you think you're going?!" We heard a roar from the back, but nothing stopped us. There were no obstacles; there were no tendrils of Qi ripping out of the ground and tying our feet.

  Just... nothing.

  "They're going away." However, there was something behind us--the kind of energy that made me realize that all any of us have been doing thus far was more akin to playing at being martial artists, cultivators in pursuit of immortality.

  Comparatively, really, we are children, blindly staggering about without a guide.

  What I felt... was so greater than anything else that I found myself short of breath. Spirit Sage? Elder Qin? It didn't matter. Even that old guy who came from the Ancestral Peak... all of it was irrelevant.

  Beneath this sensation, there were tiny pebbles adrift on the raging waves of an angry sea.

  Take all the people, living and dead, within the sect, and combine them into one, and I think they'd still fall short.

  "As are you, I'm afraid." That was the last I heard of the two, as we made it into the forest and continued our rapid descent.

  The last I ever heard from either Spirit Sage or Hua.

  The last whimper of my first ever home in this world.