Yoshika yearned for the day when war councils would be a distant memory—a thing of the past, rather than the unfortunate necessity of her present. This one was small—just her, Yue, and Long Xiaofan huddled in the sanctity of her humble abode. While she had no shortage of trusted advisors and close friends, the sad reality was that there just weren’t very many people who could contribute meaningfully to the discussion who weren’t busy elsewhere scrambling to give her more options. Any options, really.
“In the worst case, how many could we evacuate? With your Voidbreak technique, we can potentially cut our way out of this world.”
Yue’s question hurt, but it had to be asked. It wasn’t about being cold or ruthless—failure was not only possible, but distressingly likely, and they had to find out what it looked like in order to prepare for it.
“Not as many as I’d like. Even with Void’s favor, trying to navigate it is dangerous, and there’s no guarantee I can actually survive the attempt. And it’s not just about how many I can bring with me, I may need to sustain them indefinitely.”
Her soul was already stretched to a painful limit, but if she pushed herself she could bring more people in. The problem was that once they left, even if Yoshika found her way to the divine realm, no mortals would be able to survive there. She was still incomplete as a sovereign, and her inner world could not sustain her people within it forever.
Xiaofan grimaced and shook her head.
“You’d be ascending to a proper deity in the process, by definition. Even if you escape this world and the void unscathed, you’ll be landing in the divine realm with a tribulation hot on your heels. And that’s if it doesn’t find you in the void itself.”
Yue sighed.
“A last resort then. But it already was. I’ll assume we can bring no more than are already present.”
“Less.”
It broke Yoshika’s heart to say it, but it would help nobody if she got herself and everyone with her killed in the process.
“Right. What’s our first plan, then?”
That, at least, she’d had some time to consider in all the panic.
“Qin Yang’s benefactor is Shen Yu. I don’t know the details, but they’ve got some kind of deal promising the God-Emperor some sort of status in the divine realm. I don’t know what Qin is doing for Sovereign Shen, but my guess is that he’s been acting as an agent for the Divine Immortal faction like the Dragon Lord is for his father.”
Xiaofan nodded slowly.
“It makes sense. My brother and I—among others—were volunteers, but the Immortals tend to be more...sparing with their disciples. It fits Shen Yu’s methods to seek out local talent instead.”
“Right, but Sovereign Shen is pragmatic, and we have something he wants far more than what he’s getting from Qin—the Tear.”
Yue raised a curious eyebrow.
“It might be a bit problematic to offer that to him now that it’s become part of you.”
“Sure, but Shen Yu doesn’t need to know that. He’s neutral now, but if we can break the divine seal, then he’ll want to collect, and he’ll be forced to choose between honoring his deal with Qin or his deal with me.”
“And you think he’ll choose you?”
“He will if he wants the Tear.”
Xiaofan leaned on one elbow and frowned.
“Let us assume that you are able to separate yourself from the Tear, even at risk to your own life—which I know is your plan even if you hesitate to say it aloud—”
Yoshika looked away and blushed, ignoring the way Yue swatted at her shoulder indignantly.
“—and let’s say that Shen Yu does as you hope and honors his agreement to protect you—which he likely will as long as it doesn’t provoke all-out war with the Crimson Demons—that still leaves you crippled at best, and beholden to the Divine Immortals. If you renege, as Yue would ask you to, then you are their enemy, and neither my brother nor I have enough pull with our father to shelter you from that. You are damned either way.”
“I know that already.”
“Then what, if the God of Men wasn’t so uncooperative, was your original plan?”
She sighed and looked wistfully out into the garden. Yoshika could almost see little Haeun and Chiyo out there playing with the kitten, Heian. In her mind’s eye, Narae joined them, though that was incongruous with her actual memories. Even Kasai Hanako’s daughter, and Zheng Long’s son frolicked there, playing tag among the flowers as Yue scolded them not to make a mess of her garden.
Then it was gone, and she was back in the desolation of the present, the literal weight of the world resting on her soul. All she wanted was to create a better world for the ones who came after her.
“I was going to leave the seal in place. Drain the essence threatening to cause the collapse, and buy enough time to become the true sovereign of this world. Then...maybe find a way to bypass it? A controlled entrance and exit, so that this place could serve as a sanctuary for...whoever needed it, I guess. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
Xiaofan pursed her lips.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“It seems to me that you’ve put quite a bit of thought into it, actually. And that won’t work now, because...?”
“Because Qin Yang is too strong. He won’t work with me, because we can never be equals in his eyes. Shen Yu he can accept as a superior, but I can only be either a subordinate to his will, or an obstacle to it.”
“Then become his superior. Emperor Qin requires hierarchy, you require cooperation—the two aren’t entirely incompatible. Your cooperation just happens to be incompatible with his hierarchy, but if you become strong enough to overwhelm it, then he’ll have no choice but to accept his new place in the world.”
Yoshika chuckled mirthlessly.
“‘Hierarchy’ is a gross oversimplification—even more than ‘Unity’ is an oversimplification of my own domain. If I could do what you’re suggesting, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. He’s just...so much stronger than I ever imagined. Is that what a real deity is like? Can he do that because he’s a loose immortal?”
Xiaofan frowned.
“I don’t actually know, but—”
“No, there’s more to it.”
All three of them jerked in surprise at the sudden intrusion. Of all people, Do Hye appeared at the entrance, bowing as Yoshika narrowed her eyes at him.
“How did you get in here?”
“The perks of being soulbound to you, my dear. You have my leash, but the connection goes both ways. I know how Qin Yang is able to wield such power within a mortal realm.”
She pursed her lips.
“How? You’re an incomplete shard of your former self and didn’t even know that before you died.”
“Well, obviously I lied, of course!”
The silence that stretched out between them was deafening, with all three women giving Do Hye the flattest looks they could before he cracked.
“Hah! Your faces! No, I didn’t comprehend the full breadth of the God-Emperor’s might before my untimely demise, but I did once, even further before, several lifetimes ago. It seems my former self was too clever for his own good, because I hid that particular cache of knowledge somewhere I would never find it.”
“How?”
“Erm, I confess that it’s something that requires a level of expertise I haven’t achieved in many incarnations. Until this moment, I didn’t realize it was possible. I encoded the comprehensions into the matrices of my Soul Jar technique itself. Present in every soul seed, but dormant until exposed to a particular essence signature.”
“Qin Yang’s.”
He nodded solemnly.
“I can understand why I did it that way. Some knowledge is so dangerous that even the simple act of knowing is a terrible burden and risk. It was too important to hide externally, and too dangerous to preserve wholesale, so I ensured it would stay hidden until I was certain I’d need it. It’s just as well I’m currently bound to you, Empress Yoshika, or it might not have activated at all.”
Yue huffed and rolled her eyes.
“Well get on with it, then! What are we dealing with?”
The old man scratched his bald head, his face turning uncharacteristically grim.
“You’ve come close with your theories so far. He is—at least partially—a sovereign deity of this world, and he was a loose immortal once. He couldn’t abide that weakness, especially when it left him so vulnerable to what he considered lesser spirits. So he formed—or rather, seized, a core to protect his soul. One that no denizen of this star could ever hope to compromise—the planet itself.”
Yoshika gaped in disbelief.
“His true body is the entire world?!”
“No, just the core of it. Even his power is not yet great enough to encompass the entire planet—his domain actually radiates from the northern pole because otherwise his entire empire would just be rocks underground.”
“How did he even do that? And why do you know about it?”
Do Hye turned a bit red and looked away awkwardly.
“Erm, well it would seem that I er...may have been complicit in it. Or rather...I helped him do it. Or to be more specific it was, that is to say...my idea.”
Yue threw a teacup at him.
“You absolute—and you just locked this knowledge away? Why? Ashamed of how monumentally stupid you are?”
“I may have been. But I must have had my reasons at the time. As for why I sealed this knowledge...well, do you trust me?”
“Not in the slightest.”
He nodded in agreement.
“I don’t either—or didn’t. The only way to kill Qin Yang is to destroy the planet, and if I had known that and that he was intent on preserving the divine seal, then I may have done just that and left to do the rest of my research on the moon. Mind you it was a much nicer place back then.”
As if summoned by the mention of it, Yue’s moon spirit drifted in like a pale beam of light just peeking over the horizon. It settled around Yue’s hair and shoulders and cast a judgemental moonbeam at Do Hye.
He winced and scratched the back of his head.
“Ah, yes. I suspect I rather owe you an apology, old friend. You see, it wasn’t entirely my idea. The Moon Lady had already bound herself to the moon in a similar manner, playing host to all manner of spirits of Light, Dark, and Shadow. She was a deity ascended from what you call a Tennin—quite rare—and practically a pseudo-sovereign in and of herself, attending to her domain upon the moon.”
Yue narrowed her eyes.
“And then what happened?”
“Like me, she refused to leave when we were sealed away. Her nature allowed her to remain close to the height of her power without having to depart this world. I had hoped that by accomplishing something similar down here, we might be able to muster enough power to contest the seal itself—maybe even break it. I enlisted her and Qin Yang to help me realize that plan.”
He stared down at his feet and sighed.
“Qin betrayed us. He used me to drive the Great Spirits out of his empire and entrap them within the souls of what we now call half-spirits, and he used the Moon Lady to...power the ritual binding him to the core of the world. He never intended to work together—simply take our strengths for himself.”
Yoshika pursed her lips.
“He tried the same with me. But then what do we do? How do we fight him? Even if we succeed in breaking the divine seal, this world remains his and he is a lot worse than I thought he was.”
Do Hye held out his hands helplessly.
“That’s just it—I don’t know. The knowledge I encoded in my soul seed has only one recommended course of action—do not engage. Flee immediately and reincarnate to avoid pursuit. Qin Yang is, for all intents and purposes, invincible.”
!
Selkie Myth for their incredible shoutouts.
RMullins
Etly
Emilin
Victor
Mine
Odunski
Naimah
DvorakQ
Thomas
Robin
Cog
Alexis Lionel
Attherisk
Kit
Vail
Arusalan
Saganatsu
Stephane
Celdur Ey'lin
Alexandra
IrateRapScallion
Fraxx
The Test Subject
Yandron
Berj
Sorcoro
Max C.
Solo
Mark
Ava
Auribia
VietDom
MeliMeliDH
Andrew C.
Seasparks
Joseph H.
ShadeByTheSea
Beryn
Ranzbart
Connor B.
Taylor W.
Lu
Rayaface
Zeodeicasia
Jess
j0ntsa
Jan
LarryParrish
6J0ker9
GiantOrange
K G
eagle0108
thkiw
FISHLAD
Tatsu D
The Human
Tarantism
Elisah
RuRo
bisque
Salmuna
Jake T.
Emanym
TAF
mrblue
Rhaid
Damian Z.
itbeme12321
Joseph C.
