A wave of shock moved through the plain. Soldiers on both sides flinched or stared in shock. In the sudden stillness, Shi Qing strode toward the center without expression, the four divine beasts around him.
The Black Tortoise reached the heir first. He dropped to his knees and placed his palm on the young man’s head, pressing down in an attempt to heal. Golden light flared, then dispersed.
Shi Qing stopped at the edge of the trampled square, looking down at his son. The muscles at the corners of his eyes held steady—there was no movent from him, none at all, nothing to indicate any emotion. He didn’t avert his gaze from his dead son.
The Vermilion Bird bowed his head. The White Tiger closed his eyes for the length of one breath and opened them. The Azure Dragon exhaled air slowly, as if he had prepared himself.
“Brother,” Yao Chuanli said softly.
Shi Qing did not answer.
Yao Chuanli lowered his head. “I am sorry.”
The White Tiger spoke flatly. “You are not.”
“This conflict was not my choosing. I ca to offer a—”
Shi Qing stepped and swung his sword a single ti, the slice accompanied by a thin line of black.
Yao Chuanli folded at the waist with his breath stuck halfway in his throat. Blood sprayed in a thin sheet that vanished just as quickly as it ca. His skin tried to knit itself together, but it opened over and over again, like the sword strike was continuous.
“Shi Qing!” Xuanwu roared, “Why did you use that technique—”
Yao Chuanli didn’t accept it. His fingers still tried to asure, desperately scrambling till they found two beads within his sleeve. He flicked one, then the other, each leaving a tiny arc of light as they vanished into the ground.
Shi Yan Yun roared, his fury visible,as the plain finally answered.
“They did like coming prepared,” Ki murmured to , “But no one could’ve guessed they’d go this far.”
The tremor built slow. Pebbles ticked against one another and dust shivered, rising into wispy clouds. A hum echoed through the packed soil and stone. Lines lit up under the surface like threads lit from within, sketching a circle centered a dozen paces behind Shi Qing’s heel. He’d killed Yao Chuanli but not stopped whatever Shi Yan Yun’s faction had concocted. The field-master turned toward Shi Qing with a desperate expression. “Formation—ancho—”
He didn’t finish. The hum rose and cracked, the world falling still.
The Azure Dragon’s head snapped toward the sound. The Black Tortoise sank his palm into the soil as if to pin it. The Vermilion Bird lifted the feathers along arm and neck, checking the air. The White Tiger set his feet and showed his teeth.
Nothing happened right away… nothing visible, but even I knew that sothing had gone terribly wrong.
Yao Chuanli’s mouth worked. Blood bubbled. He addressed the earth with the last of his strength. “H—Hollow Mandate.”
The circle obeyed. It did not care for common soldiers, leaving them untouched, but instead sought out the marks of advancent. The quiet signatures written into a body when one had the audacity to call themselves Celestial Lord could not be hidden.
For another single breath, nothing changed. Then it was as though all of chi inverted itself around those with the mark. Individual failures followed. The woman who’d been unleashing her power earlier lost her ridians, the technique frayed and died. A talismanist slapped paper to his palm and nothing ca. A hamr fighter lowered iron he suddenly could not be strong enough to carry. Ŗ𝘈Ｎ𝖔ВÊs
“Stop this!” the White Tiger roared, looking at Shi Yan Yun with deep betrayal in its eyes.
Shi Yan Yun did not stop. His voice ca out in a cadence just as divine as the Divine Beasts. “Chain them to the laws!”
The formation’s hum rose in welco at his reinforcent. Five of Shi Qing’s Lords folded where they stood, their cores giving in. Seven more clawed at their abdons, trying to hold onto any semblance of Chi. Three on Shi Yan Yun’s side cracked as well, but Yao Chuanli and Shi Yan Yun were well past caring.
Or perhaps this had been their backup plan for the worst case scenario, which they brought upon themselves.
Shi Qing’s eyes widened. “...To think you’d go this far,” he murmured, even his own grief and rage montarily overshadowed by pure disbelief. “Retreat.”
Banners pivoted. Horns called rehearsed patterns n could follow even shaking with fear. Everyone was terrified by what Shi Yan Yun had invoked. The laws of the world, the fact that he’d gone to that extent…
If Shi Yan Yun and Shi Qing fought head on here, no one would survive. Not a single soldier, not even the Celestial Lords. Both had clearly used forbidden techniques. Only sothing of that calibre could have taken down Yao Chuanli, and multiple Celestial Lords wouldn’t fall like paper tigers to anything normal.
Cohorts fell back in segnts, not in a single turn that would invite knives in the back. The Black Tortoise laid down plates of pressure so enemy arrows bent and fell before they reached retreating backs. The Vermilion Bird ward a path between lanes; frost slicked to glass; a cavalry wedge hit it and slid, buying three counts. The White Tiger walked backward, baiting with short feints that pushed confidence out of the enemy line by inches and made pursuit clumsy. The Azure Dragon called counts that traveled clean down the drums.
Panic looked for purchase and found none, thanks to the Divine Beasts.
Across the field, Shi Yan Yun’s fury ate through prudence, then circled back to it. With his own Lords staggering, with his ally dead and still dictating the weather of power, he bled off his anger into the only sensible order left.
“Hold. Fall back by rings.”
So they retreated together—two currents leaving the sa basin by different channels. The hum dulled as the qualified targets thinned and, by the ti Shi Qing’s flag crossed the second ring of flags, fell below hearing entirely.
Trumpets signaled the end call. The envoys folded their arms over their plates and pretended duty kept their feet nailed to the ridge.
Shi Qing did not look away long. When he did, it was to the pavilion the servants had raised under his brief nod. “Send a team to retrieve his body.”
“Your Highness—” the field-master began.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The Black Tortoise was already moving with eight n and a white flag. They walked the clean lines between lingering residues. Xuanwu lifted the heir’s body with care and turned back toward the pavilion.
Shi Yan Yun watched them, his teeth gritted. The rage had co back, and this ti, it was the cold kind. His fingers twitched just the slightest bit. A fleck of black crossed the air like wayward dust that warped the light around it.
No banner stirred. No horn cried warning. The thing fell on the dead body and blood without light, a sudden darkness that ate flesh before it ate cloth. A second later, there was no face to wash, no hair to comb, no neck to clean before they buried the body.
Xuanwu stood very still with empty arms, his eyes wide.
“I believe…” Ki began, “That that was when Shi Qing truly began… honing his resentnt.”
I sighed. I could imagine. With how much Shi Qing seed to love his son, to not even have a body to bury…?
The scene shifted once again, relentless in its pace.
The chamber doors thudded shut behind .
Fur, scales, shell, and feathers ringed the war disk. Now the Divine Beasts were in their true animal forms, albeit in miniature. They were alone, just the four of them.
“We are done waiting,” said the White Tiger. “Shi Yan Yun must be plotting at this very mont. His envoys stall. If he strikes first, he will claim defense and bind us to terms.”
“No more terms,” said the Vermilion Bird. “We entered this with rules. He broke them.”
The Azure Dragon’s head lowered over the river runes. “Then choose the path that ends this fastest. Take his capital.”
The Black Tortoise set his foreclaws on the map. “Na the hand. And weigh the cost you put on that hand.”
Silence. Then the Tiger: “Shi Qing goes first.”
The Bird’s wings tightened. “You would have him cross tonight.”
“Yes,” the Tiger said. “With the army, and with us.”
“That is invasion,” the Dragon said.
“It is,” the Tiger answered. “It prevents a longer war.”
The Tortoise looked to the door. As if summoned, Shi Qing entered without escort. He stopped at the ring, eyes on the disk.
“We have an answer,” the Tiger said. “You enter Shi Yan Yun’s city before dawn. You break command halls. You seize plates. You hold the storehouses and archives. But… you do not touch sect wards or burn their knowledge.”
I would’ve found them specifying that ludicrous, a mont ago. This was Shi Qing, after all. Wasn’t he supposed to be the hero, the guardian of balance and protector of the cycle? He wouldn’t break into sects and burn their techniques. But that was before I watched him lose his son. Before I saw his bloodshot, rage-filled eyes, and I realized that in his current state he would do so without even pausing to think.
Shi Qing did not argue. “Done.”
The Bird stared. “You accept.”
“I accept.” His voice did not climb or fall.
“Say the lines,” the Bird pressed.
“I will keep the sects intact. I will not burn the archives. I will not harm mortals if I can avoid it.”
“Qing,” the Tortoise said. “If hatred is steering you, you will not see the edge under your feet.”
Shi Qing paused. “What else do I have to hold?” He left.
They watched the door close. The Bird exhaled first. “He did not refuse. Nor hesitate.”
“He has been walking to this point for a long ti,” the Dragon said.
“He has been sinking into it,” the Tortoise said. “That is what frightens .”
Based on Ki’s expression, she agreed too.
The next scene made blink a few tis to adjust to the difference in brightness.
I stood next to Shi Yan Yun, as he watched what happened below him indifferently.
The city was splattered in blood and fire. Traces did remain of what it had been before, but red dyed the towering buildings that reached the very sky, its glory turned to a monunt of death made manifest.
Cultivators continued to fight, even in the veritable river of blood or astride piles of corpses, they fought on. Each mont new corpses joined the fallen, replaced just as quickly. Those from within the castle and outside the city alike joined the battle, streaming in a steady flow.
I let my divine sense spread. The air was thick with shredded Qi. Formations had collapsed; their nodes flickered and faded like dying embers. The ground array that once cycled spiritual veins into the capital sputtered, feeding half-spent streams to broken relays in the streets. On the distant walls, banners once inscribed with warding scripts had been slashed apart.
I looked up, but there were no stars to be seen. The moon was turned a vivid red and clouds smothered any hint of clean light before it could reach us.
Below, I watched squads fighting along ruined avenues. Sword cultivators cut arcs through demon beasts while talisman specialists flung paper seals that burned bright and then guttered against the miasma. Body temperers in heavy armor held chokepoints with bare hands and borrowed spears.
Each unit rotated according to drilled timing, but discipline failed where grief took hold. A young woman in sect robes stabbed a demon hound through the eye, then stand stunned as the hound’s thrashing tail took her legs out. A comrade dragged her away, and a third covered them with a collapsing barrier. The barrier shattered a breath later.
Suddenly, the battle froze. All the cultivators were forced to their knees as Shi Qing walked into the capital, step by step, all four of the Divine Beasts hovering behind him like generals behind an Emperor. Shi Qing’s aura was so murderous, so hateful, that even his Chi was dyed red. It was a miracle to see Shi Qing walking—his body was littered with injuries—cuts so deep that bone showed.
His injuries weren’t healing.
Did… he beco so consud with bloodlust that his Chi attuned towards nothing but causing death? I wondered. It wasn’t only intent. His ridians pulsed in a single direction, a river forced into a canyon. Recovery Qi could not form a cycle; it leaked out as killing edge.
My head snapped towards Shi Yan Yun when I heard the sound of grinding. Shi Yan Yun had his teeth grit so hard that blood leaked out, despite the fact that he was a cultivator nearing divinity, a cultivator so strong that he’d broken the life and death cycle. He rose from the palace, hovering above the dying city.
“You dare show your face here after killing Yao Chuanli?” Shi Yan Yun demanded. His robe’s inner formation unlocked with a hum, revealing layered plates that fit like scales. White radiance climbed his arms as his domain stirred.
“You dare say that after killing my son, brother of mine?” Shi Qing replied, breath ragged, also rising to hover in the sky.
The four Divine Beasts fanned out in a loose diamond behind him, watching.
When the two brothers clashed, the world was splashed in power of white and red.
Their first exchange did not make a sound. The shockwave arrived a blink later, flattening roofs and peeling stone from the nearest walls. The white light of Shi Yan Yun’s order t the red edge of Shi Qing’s hatred. The sky split along their lines, clouds cleaving apart. On the ground, cultivators who had struggled to lift their heads were forced flat again as the two domains pressed down.
Shi Yan Yun’s palm cut forward, enacting a principle: return everything to asure. The red tide faltered where his hand passed.
Shi Qing ignored the wound that opened across his ribs and answered with a straight thrust aid at the heart. He missed by half a finger.
“Call back your beasts,” Shi Yan Yun said between blows. “Or I will chain them to the laws.”
“They are not yours to chain,” Shi Qing said, and his next strike went for the throat.
I could no longer follow every movent, but rather understood them as edicts. White stillness, containnt and binding. Red severance, negation and annihilation. When white wrapped, red cut. Each ti red cut, white sealed the cut and fixed it into a boundary.
The city below beca a map of their contest—streets turning into lines of pressure, courtyards into pools of still Qi where debris hovered as if held by invisible strings.
And then the scene shifted once more when Ki clicked her fingers, her expression lancholic.
“It was a battle that lasted for four months,” Ki remarked. “A miracle, that the world did not break apart. And in the end…”
“You failed!” Shi Yan Yun announced, cackling like a madman. “You failed, Shi Qing, you failed! Yao Chuanli shall be rejoicing from heaven! I shall guide this empire towards glory, show you just why you were wrong!”
The Divine Beasts were chained to the ground, struggling against their bounds but failing to escape.
Shi Qing, his chest gouged out and limbs torn off, stared at his brother with loathing. “I swear on the Heavens… Death… shall return. Death shall… reclaim what it was denied, destroy everything… everything that you’ve worked to build.”
The first emperor threw aside the broken spear he had taken as a trophy and raised his hand. Light flowed down like chains. The battlefield hushed as if the world held its breath. He was too drunk on his victory to even hear what his dying brother was saying, his laughter all but drowning it out.
“And that shall be his downfall,” Ki announced, her tone grim.
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