vstars B2 Chapter 44
B2 Chapter 44
Li Xun writhed in the dark dirt like a worm.Too weak to advance on his feet. Too stubborn to die on his knees.
Bolts of lightning like rain. They were beyond mere numbers now. An endless stream of celestial punishment, a waterfall of extermination. The only number he remembered was nine. The number of times Heaven had paused, before redoubling its assault.
The bolts stopped. Elder Lu outstretched his hand, accessing his storage ring.
Li Xun rose, and threw himself forward. He grabbed Elder Lu around the hip and knee, dragging the golden man down into the blasted earth. Wrestling like a monkey, rather than striking like a cultivator. Elder Lu's flesh could not be tarnished. Li Xun's hands could not touch flesh without poisoning it. Fetid smoke bloomed from the places where they contacted, where the contradictions of their natures became manifest.
Lu Xiaosheng cried out in wordless, soundless, agony. His qi wavered. His fingers danced. The scales he had summoned shifted, and an irresistible force cast Li Xun backward a dozen strides.
Elder Lu could have slain him with a single strike, if he had a moment to bring his treasure's full power to bear. Could have brought forth a life-saving treasure to help protect them both, if he had managed to open his storage ring once more.
But the space of a breath had elapsed, and the tenth wave of the tribulation began.
That was the trick of it, fighting a cultivator like Elder Lu. It was like fighting an alchemist. One could give them no breathing room, once the final exchange began. All the magical treasures in the world meant nothing, if one had not the time to use them.
Li Xun lost sight of the foe hardly four chi away from him. There was no sound except his hummingbird heartbeat now, no sight except the blinding yellow-white of lightning.
No company except his thoughts, for the short eternity of his tribulation.
Li Xun should have been in agony. This much lightning should have been excruciating to bear, if it did not kill him outright. But he'd beaten it to the punch. He'd poisoned his channels so thoroughly they no longer directly felt the impulses of his spirit. When he moved now, he did so drunkenly, manipulating his ruined body like a puppet. Lightning could not scour what was already dead.
It made for a curious tribulation. A detached part of him noted he'd cheated Heaven in a way few cultivators had ever dared. A painless Core Formation tribulation. All it cost was everything.
The tenth wave broke. Six heart-beats. The next would last twelve.
Lu Xiaosheng was no longer on his feet. The lightning had driven him to his knees. The scales at his back were no longer ghostly. Black and heavy, cracked and physical. They had taken too much punishment without opportunity to release it. Unbalanced.
Li Xun moved like lightning. He flexed violently, popping off the ground like a corpse puppet surging out of a coffin. Bursts of nameless poisons, stimulants with half-lives measured in moments, forced violent twitches from muscles that were no longer his to move.
A punch was far beyond him. Orange-crest at his most drunken had a dozen times more grace than the half-dead Li Xun. But he did not need to strike at Elder Lu or the Duskgold Scales.
He just needed to bleed on them.
It was a pathetic thing, Li Xun's final gambit. He slammed into the Duskgold Scales bonelessly, flopping around like a fish out of water, a worm out of the loamy earth.
But graceful or not, it worked.
His blood was death, and Elder Lu's great treasure was too weak to resist him. One of the scales' limbs sagged beneath him, and the eerie unlight went out of it as the treasure crashed lifelessly to the earth.
Elder Lu spat blood from the backlash. Real blood, clean and crimson, the first Li Xun had drawn since Lu Xiaosheng had stepped beyond his flesh.
And then once more, there was lightning. Endless and inescapable. He could not feel his body shutting down, but he knew it was. He could sense each light within him as it went out. One less thing his venom could affect, inflame, kill.
Li Xun held tight to the only truth he could. It would be less than fifteen waves. The stories Han Jian had confirmed. The mathematics he half remembered. It should be less than fifteen. Fourteen. He liked fourteen for it. The sound of the number was pronounced the same way as 'certain death'.
Bonelessly, painlessly, his body flopped around on the soil. His vision went black, and it was not because he had killed his optic nerves. He no longer noticed when the lightning stopped. Blind and deaf, insensate and numbed, it was all the same to him. Heaven's fury, as inconsequential as a spring rain.
Li Xun was dying. It wasn't even the lightning. He'd killed so much of himself that it hardly affected him.
He wished he could be certain, that he'd finished what he started. Cleared Li Hou's path forward. His disciple. Not a son, but the little brother he'd never had.
Li Xun forced his heartbeat to slow. Stilled his muscles, to reduce the spasms he could not feel. Thickened his blood, to manage the internal bleeding.
His world narrowed. There was only qi. He felt it in earnest now, the pit of curses he'd named Blight-Crowned. He could feel every venomous insect and poisonous plant that had contributed to the gu.
And they were curses, all of them. Desperate wishes, to endure and punish. Prayers to be spared the genocidal mouths of ruminants, or to strike down with guile the greater beasts that pillaged with might.
He would die. Heaven dictated that. Survival wasn't his choice to make.
But advancement was.
He could feel it now. They said one needed the lightning of tribulation to temper their dantian. A cultivator must resist tribulation, transcend Heaven's wrath, then take its blessing within themselves. Only then would they find the mysterious gravity they needed, the swirling vortex of pressure that would allow them to transform their myriad qi into a core.
No.
Heaven could decide if he lived or died. But what could lightning do to temper his dantian that the blood of his Blight-Crowned Crimson Rotworm could not?
Li Xun gently pressed his qi to the edges of his dantian. One final time, he spit into the eye of his betters.
The walls that divided Li Xun from the world without, the shelter that had allowed him to begin to cultivate, melted away. It was so very easy to destroy what had once been precious.
A dantian's walls were not a physical thing. They were closer to selfhood itself, at least where qi was concerned. It was a rare affliction, a child born without them. One that often came with strange side effects. But the core of the prognosis was not so mysterious. Without walls to separate themselves from the world, such a child would never cultivate.
Li Xun's blind eyes were opened. A sucking vortex. Heaven's blessing. That wasn't how one formed a core. It was the pressure of the world without that made possible the next step. His qi was not being pulled inward, but pushed. Only by asserting himself in the world, defying all that was, did a cultivator form a core.
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The world took little notice of his venomous tantrum. It bore the boundless curses within him without complaint, and showed him new boundaries.
Li Xun felt how small he was. How miniscule his triumphs and tragedies. A suppressive pressure beyond any he'd ever known pressed his qi back together, carrying back with it all he'd tainted in his outburst.
His body stilled, becoming a chrysalis for his spirit.
Li Xun formed a core effortlessly. It was a beautiful thing. He hated it. It was a terrible and unwholesome thing. Demonic, in truth. He could not help but love it. But for the first time in long years, the space at the core of Li Xun was not empty.
The lightning stopped, and Daoist Scouring Medicine rested, and did not stir.
Li Xun's last thought was that he wished he could tell his disciple what he had learned.
Orange-crest awoke in hell.
There were no truer words for it. Yet, it was false all the same.
He knew this place. The overlook where he had shared a lunch with his master loomed in the distance, colder and starker now, denuded of vegetation. No traveler would find comfort or privacy there now, with the bamboo and grass alike crumbled to powder, blown away on the wind.
The land was dead. Grayed as far as the eye could see, blackened in spots, like one of the pox-ridden corpses in his master's darker books.
And at the center of it all, at the bottom of a deep crater in the blackened soil, were two statues. Two men.
Orange-crest felt the golden fur of his king's chest against his cheek. He felt like an infant again, safe and protected. But he also felt too old to live, for he knew he would never be that safe again.
Wordlessly, he pried his king's arms apart, and descended into this ruined world. His feet began to itch the moment they touched the grey dust. After a pair of unsteady steps, that tingling progressed to burning. The monkey took a single breath, and his throat began to close up. His eyes wept a waterfall of tears, trying to wash away an irritant they had no hope of clearing.
Orange-crest hardened his heart, and embraced stone.
The Stone Monkey ran to his master's side. It shamed him, that he would not have known his master's face, save that the unbreathing golden idol at his side had to be Elder Lu.
Li Xun's skin was darker than the grey dust, but lighter than the ashen scars left behind by the countless strikes of lightning. His limbs had thinned and withered. Blood coated his every orifice. His eyes were closed, and orange-crest dared not open them, for the lids were oddly deflated.
And his chest. It was the one part of his master that had not withered. Instead, it bulged grotesquely, pulsing with something that was not a heartbeat.
"Save him!" Orange-crest begged, for he had not the slightest idea where to begin fixing the human he loved most. He reached out for his master's bag, desperate for pills, only to recoil the moment he touched his master.
Pain bloomed at the tips of his fingers, as if he'd been stung by a bee. Their tips whitened, a single moment's contact enough to burn them brittle.
But far worse, his careless touch destroyed his master's bag. One of his great treasures, given to him by the man orange-crest knew he considered his own master in all but name, Old Xiang. A single gentle touch, and it fell apart, vanishing into powder, along with everything it contained.
"No!"
Orange-crest felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.
He looked up, meeting the Monkey King's eyes. It felt so very wrong, seeing the king without a jape on his lips, a confident smile on his face. His face was so severe orange-crest's stony heart fell anew.
"Move him."
Orange-crest moved with his king, helping him gently slide Li Xun a few steps to the side.
The Monkey King took in a deep breath, wincing at the poison on the wind. He stood astride Li Xun, and with his staff gently traced a circle around orange-crest's comatose master. Flames sprung up in the wake of the golden tip of his staff.
The Ring of Fire. The Monkey King's greatest restorative technique. Within that ring any injury, however grievous, would eventually heal. When a tiger had mauled big-butt, when orange-crest had been plunged into icy waters; each time it had drawn them back from the edge of death.
They waited. One moment stretched into dozens, then hundreds. Orange-crest felt cold. Empty. He refused to think. Refused to doubt. Refused to believe. Nothing happened. Li Xun's eyes did not open. The pulsating in his chest did not speed up, nor slow down.
Orange-crest looked up at his king. His king looked away.
"No."
Orange-crest stepped into the ring. He could feel the poison intensify. The Ring of Fire was containing it, trapping and intensifying it. But he could feel his king's magic too, healing him, even as his master's rampant qi sunk into him, rotting away his bones.
Core Formation. Without a doubt. His master had done it. More tears poured down orange-crest's face. Why had his master done it?
"Longer?" He begged. "Will save?"
"Maybe."
"But you're the king." It was wrong to say. A silent knife, buried in what orange-crest left unsaid. But he said it all the same. Never before had the Monkey King looked so small. So helpless.
"I am no healer." The Monkey King said softly, shifting to the tongue of men. "I have one of his great arts. But... I am not him. In my hands, it can only protect and sustain."
Orange-crest didn't know what his king meant. He didn't care either. His hands rose, reaching out for his master's neck. If he was living, he would have a pulse. Orange-crest's hands fell back to his side. He told himself stone was insensate. He couldn't be sure, as he was. He would check for a pulse later. It would be there. Strengthened, by the spell.
"You'll keep the spell? Until he...?" Orange-crest's voice broke, that his spirit would not.
"Until." The Monkey King agreed. "Until."
Orange-crest knelt silently at his master's side, waiting for until to come.
It never did.
Instead, the Monkey King spoke.
"Someone approaches. Core Formation. A weighty presence."
Orange-crest returned to the world.
"Can you move him?"
"Yes. If we must. An enemy?"
"No."
Orange-crest did not elaborate. He could not bear it, in this moment. Han Jian's grief. His kind eyes. The complications his presence represented. The fact that he was not a healer either. Instead, the monkey rose to his feet.
"Bear him to Mount Yuelu." He commanded his king. "Please."
His master gurgled. Not his mouth. His chest. It bubbled noxiously, black blood like boiling congee forcing its way out through a hole in his lung.
Orange-crest hoped that was a good sign. Poison leaving his body.
The Monkey King picked his master up gently, ignoring the dark smoke that rose from his own fur as Li Xun's black blood stained its gold.
This was a real king. A real elder. How a senior ought to be, everything Elder Lu was not. Orange-crest refused to be disappointed in him. His master would get better. He had to.
But his master had made his choice, and orange-crest would not let it be in vain.
As his king and master vanished into the distance, orange-crest turned to Elder Lu.
The golden monster looked almost peaceful. His metallic body bore many wounds. But there was no pain etched on his perfect mask of a face. Just the stillness of sleep.
Elder Lu was important. A key piece in the human world orange-crest had come to love, and be disappointed by. Countless people and places depended on him for protection.
Even Li Xun admitted that.
Could he leave Elder Lu alive? Possibly. Orange-crest was operating far beyond his understanding of human politics here. Nothing was certain.
If he recovered, Elder Lu would know how his battle with Li Xun had ended. He might think Li Xun dead. But he would live, and his grudge would not be softened. Orange-crest did not think he would stop searching for his master.
But what if Elder Lu died?
It was possible they would think Li Xun had died with him. But with his master's body missing, it seemed unlikely. Li Xun would become a man who had killed an elder. The sect would hunt him. But Elder Lu would not.
And... And Han Jian would not think his brother was dead.
Orange-crest knelt over the prone elder. It was not for Han Jian he was doing this.
He had killed before. Rabid giant centipedes. A wolf. Many birds and rodents. Lots and lots of bugs. Killed for food and safety. But he'd spared things that did not deserve death whenever he could. Humans and bats and foxes. Never before had he slain something like him. Something smart enough to speak, to listen and learn.
Ever since he'd joined the Azure Mountain Sect, orange-crest had tried so hard to be more than the whispers thought him. To live up to his master's great expectations. To embody the best of man and monkey. He'd tried to carry forward the broad and unguarded heart he'd borne upon Mount Yuelu, and yet at the same time to live as a man, for whom kin and kind numbered in the hundreds.
Orange-crest wrapped his fingers around Elder Lu's head. He now moved with the opposite. A man's cold heart. A monkey's small world. If this too was fate, it was one that orange-crest would sever.
His fingers squeezed.
The power of Core Formation was formidable. If striking a Foundation Establishment cultivator felt like pushing through water, the passive defense of Core Formation was a solid thing, hard as stone itself. Orange-crest could imagine a mortal arrow simply stopping before Elder Lu's unguarded skin, unqualified to injure him without qi of its own.
But Elder Lu's qi was poisoned. Decayed. And orange-crest was not the monkey he'd once been. His golden head collapsed beneath orange-crest's stony fingers like the rotten fruit it was.
The gold vanished with Lu Xiaosheng's life. All that was left to stain the Stone Monkey's paws was mortal meat, already blackening from the poison that filled the air.
Orange-crest only felt worse the moment it happened. His stomach sunk again, falling into a bottomless abyss. He hated Elder Lu. But it still felt wrong. Like a whole road had just closed off in front of him.
Elder Lu had served his master monkey brains once, hadn't he?
Now human brains stained his hands.
Orange-crest slipped Elder Lu's storage ring off his finger. He would need it.
If his master—
No.
All he needed was to be at his master's side. Mount Yuelu beckoned, and orange-crest trudged onward, retracing the steps of a dream.
Hoping against hope to wake up.