Chapter 101

  When the Heavens Weep (VI)

  Hua appeared deep underground, enduring the sonorous songs of death coming from far above as he sped through the tunnel.

  He had limited time--just a minute left, at most—and he couldn't waste even a second of it.

  It took him less than a few seconds to arrive in a wide and round chamber, at whose center he sensed an awakening heartbeat. A tiny seed, clutched within the so-called Fingers of Soul, was pulsating as though being born. With each death above, the souls that should have entered Nirvana instead were dragged here, mutilated, and twisted into an unholy creation.

  Not unlike his brothers and sisters, he was a devout Guard for most of his life--he was born there, too, his father a centuries-long deacon of the place.

  All his life he was taught that the Seed was sacred and beautiful and that the guard were the blessed chosen for having learned the ways of conjuring and remedying it. Such a powerful relic, after all, should only ever be wielded by the noble creations, he thought, just like the rest.

  Yet now, as he stood before it, something in his heart grew cold; watching the gray motes of life twisting and trying to free themselves, only to irrevocably get dragged into it... it seemed less a noble, holy relic to be wielded by the noble creations and more a demonic artifact made by those who took a rather callous approach toward life.

  And to think, at some point, it would have been inserted into the Young Lady.

  The Eternal Guard was desperate for the Seed... but only so on the surface. They had more of them, stashed away in the dark, velvet depths of their sinful existence. As they had more than one child groomed for the exact purpose of being the vessel. Dai Xiu may have been the most 'perfect' physique they've had in centuries, but they would find another one.

  They always do.

  He walked up to it and stopped, staring emptily at the thing that had spun its yarn across such vastness of space and time. There were so many artifacts and relics of Dao littering the Seven Heavens that it was difficult to believe such an inconspicuous thing could be a star around which a thousand others orbited.

  As he reached toward it with his fingers, the tendril-like branches reacted, prohibiting him from touching it.

  He had no means of controlling it--he was just a Guard, after all.

  He had no means of naturally destroying it, or forcing it into slumber, or much else of anything, really. There was only one thing he could do--merge with it and end them both.

  Even with his current strength, it would be a marvelous feat to succeed, yet he had to try. He couldn't let anyone get their hands on the fully realized Seed, not when Dai Xiu was still so close. Though he trusted the art Lu Qi procured, it was better to be safe than sorry. Once the Seed disappeared, there'd be seldom more than a few interested in finding the host.

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  He ignored the lashing of the branches as they tore away at his skin, deeper and deeper the closer he got to the seed. By the time his fingers were curling around it, his skin was all but gone, the clear white of the bones shimmering.

  He ignored the pain and grasped it tightly.

  The recoil was violent--as though a cauldron of explosive Qi was detonated directly in front of him. The sheer quantity of energy released rivaled ten times his current Qi reserves.

  Yet he endured.

  The tsunami-like energy began to corrode through his meridians, spilling into his veins and blood vessels. Blood began to spray out, and skin began to peel back in a ghastly horror show as he kept the firm hold, repeatedly regenerating his hand as he continued to tear through the surface of the Seed, trying to inject his Qi into its heart and merge together.

  Before long, his entire right arm, up to the shoulder, was just a long stacking of bones, with the repeatedly burning hand at the end.

  His eyes began to glow with radiant green, the corrupting energy of the Seed slowly infecting him whole. He was already dead, just from this alone--if he let go, he'd fall and die within seconds.

  But he endured.

  Voices began to wail--voices of the dead seeping from the seed. They pleaded, begged, cried, and wept to be let go, but his grip only ever tightened. It was all a lie.

  The souls consumed by the Seed became Qi, nothing else. Their entire selves were erased; only the remnant energy remained within the hard surface.

  It was then that he felt it--a crack. A tiny little splinter in an otherwise smooth and perfect surface; like a tiger who'd been waiting on its prey all this while, he lunged at the opportunity and blew the tiny opening wide by injecting a mass of his Qi that he'd been keeping tightly locked within his fingers.

  The seed suddenly disappeared as he felt his chest catch fire. Robes burned away, his sternum glowing in blistering emerald. Veins became visible as they pulsed and writhed like worms, pain suffusing every inch of him.

  "Gui yu si tu." He mumbled just as his eyes shot beams of luminescent, volt-green light, and his body began to fall apart at its seams.

  A pillar of emerging energy erupted like a dormant volcano, tearing through the ceiling within a nanosecond and shooting up toward the sky in the next. It expanded rapidly and violently, like the howling winds of the abyss, tearing out and up in a cascading, noiseless existence.

  It consumed everything in its wake--flesh, dirt, and stone—ripping it clean from existence.

  From within the pillar, tiny, translucent silhouettes swept out and tore free, scattering in the vast skies, ethereally invisible.

  Within a second, half of the sect was gone, leveled into a cirque.

  Within the next second, the other half joined it.

  Within three, the pillar disappeared, the sky turned wholly azure, and life... was extinguished.

  The chamber that housed the seed was now buried underneath dozens of layers of rubble, buildings, and corpses, though it still shallowly remained.

  A pebble-sized, colorless rock dropped and rolled against the dirt, seeming wholly unremarkable, stopping by a half-shattered skeleton of white bones.

  It spun in place for a moment, rattling in the silence and the dark, before stopping, turning wholly silent.

  Up above, there was nothing.

  Not life, not death. Not ashes, not breaths.

  Some distance from the sect, those who'd stayed behind, as they were too weak to join the invasion, stared in awe, horror, and silence at the now flat land bereft of everything. In one second, they watched their Masters and Seniors forging ahead, just inches away from victory.

  In the next, there was nothing.

  Not even a blade of grass.

  Just dirt, an eternal grave that none would ever know.

  All of a sudden, the clear skies turned ashen with clouds, and it began to rain. Yet, horribly, the rain was as red as blood. And even more horribly, it only fell upon the flattened cirque, and nowhere else, as though the heavens themselves were marking this as a place no living thing was allowed to reach.

  Forever silent.

  Forever alone.