Chương 30: Chapter 29

Being an Immortal was… surprisingly difficult. For the one who decided to rule, that is. Mortals and immortals. Lesser strivers and those who had stepped across the yearned threshold, from slavery to entropy's grip to freedom from it. Vanquishers and strugglers. Lords of life and death and inhabitants of the world's order. How different were they! As different as cultivators claimed they were from mortals. It was a fallacy. Cultivators died. The Great Path was littered with the bodies of the failed and fallen.

It was only when the Nascent stepped through infancy and into adulthood, when the caterpillar became a butterfly, that the edge was drawn. And it was real. The True Night was sublime tranquillity. It was the abyss's weight and midnight's stillness, the cold silence between stars and the waiting expectancy of Lord Di's steps. It was Shen. Eternal, immortal, self-reliant and sufficient to itself.

Compared to its vibrant depth, the mortal world was faint, colorless, a chaotic mash of noise and matter, of meaningless flailing and irksome distractions. It would have been very easy to just… stop caring. Empathizing with the lesser required constant effort. Caring for their silly little problems, for their silly little lives, asked for focus and attention. Sometimes, not to lash out and see the world flattened into the silent and dark became a study in patience.

There always was a part of Wu Zetian that yearned for the blessed quiet of her Abyssal Iron Blossom. To stand there, at the bottom of the abyss, and listen to the quiet breath of the heart of shadows. Forever. Her previous self had surrendered to that pull. The old Wu Zetian had long turned her back to the material world, focusing, then fretting, then obsessing over her cultivation. Foolish. The iron sand twitched as irritation, like the thunder red inside a cloud, disturbed the world nestled in the Blossom.

It wasn't any particular insight brought by her previous existence. It was a simple remembrance. The old Wu Zetian had a life surprisingly similar to hers. Concocted thirty millennia ago by a sage to become an Immortal, she had given herself fully to it. Even after her father died, she had continued, believing that the mission was hers. In reality, she had been a slave to the fate bestowed upon her, as unable to break free as she was unable to overcome it. Wu Zetian couldn't say she would have acted otherwise.

She, too, had never managed to break through her limitations. It was only thanks to her son that she had seen the chains. Even then, cleaving them was beyond her. In her self-imposed obsession, her former self never had the chance. And yet, she should have. Wu Zetian saw through the memories bequeathed to her, and a face looked back. It looked like a mountain face. Pockmarks marked craggy, weather-beaten skin. A smile like a fissure opened up between chapped lips.

Two eyes, clear as water pools, looked at her, their honest affection untouched by an age's distance. Immortal and eternal you may become, said a voice that crackled like dry tinder. And yet, it was joyful. But remember always that it's only in the breathing, pulsing world that improvement can happen. Retreat not into yourself, lest you lose yourself to stillness! Sing instead! Cry! Laugh! Fight and play! Learn and dance! Open yourself to the world and see as your Night blooms with stars!

Memories of a person whose footprints had been erased tens of millennia ago. And yet, the old Wut Zetian didn't forget them, even as she forgot the lesson. Wu Zetian let out a slow breath. The Blossom world reacted. The Black Star pulsed in its bindings. The horizon contracted, then swelled. The rising rain spiralled, before snapping back into its smooth flow. To bring instability into stability, to reach a greater stability. Ironic. But it made sense.

If she retreated here, she could have seen another ten millennia pass and not notice. Her Immortal Soul would continue to gather and produce Qi, but to such a slow crawl that it'd take just as much for her to reach another breakthrough. Not acceptable. She had no intention to give in. Not her own growth, nor her ambition to see the world around her flourish. To cherish, and be cherished in turn, no matter how unpleasant and difficult that may be. Birthed by lingering emotion, a Heart Demon crawled from the sand.

The creature mewled as it pulled itself free, iron particles shedding free from its skeletal frame. It babbled regret and uncertainty, every word carrying enough drive to reduce a mortal to babbling insanity. Picking it between her forefinger and thumb, Wu Zetian considered the creature. Once, there were armies of the things crawling in and around the Blossom, materializations of the unchecked obsession of her previous self. Now… only this one. Quite pleasing. She flicked it away.

The creature flew with a whine before disappearing against a black rock. Its substance was instantly subsumed back into the bedrock that spawned it. Reality is a wet stone, Wu Zetian thought, already forgetting about it. By overcoming its challenges, I overcome and grow myself. By seeing more, I imagine more. By learning more, I countenance more. And so it is that my mind's limits yawn wider, and my Darkness grows deeper still. It wasn't just that, of course.

She believed in responsibility, growth and brimmed with a desire for connection. Standing here, amidst dark perfection, it all felt quite foolish. A bit childish, too. But she wouldn't let go of it. She was just that stubborn, she guessed. It was how she would break her chains. Stolen novel; please report. Her pulse accelerated at the idea. A mix of excitement and fear wafted through her. Wu Zetian smiled. She really had a long way to go. Huffing, she put aside the philosophy and focused.

Her perceptions encompassed the Sable Lotus Palace by default. The place was so suffused with Night Qi that it may as well be part of her own body. In it, her awareness was perfect: catching the stray surfaces of the inhabitants was done… just like that. A middle-aged clerk, Qin Jinsai wasn't sure how he felt about the recent changes. Sure, it had been an incredible relief that the Siege was broken, or that he hadn't needed to employ his escape plan and leave his wealth behind.

It was also great that they could finally breathe free after so much tension. All his friends and colleagues agreed on that: staying under the Ancestor's aegis was worth anything. Still, part of him couldn't help but wish that certain things remained the same. The Palace was vast. Enough that Jinsai never managed to imagine a time when it was bustling with people. To him, the stories were just that: stories.

Walking the cavernous halls, all he saw was dust, silence and an age lost past its due, no matter what the Masters kept saying. He wouldn't apologize: cultivators knew where opportunity lay, and he was quite proud of his nose. That's why he had remained. The Palace may be the remnant of a dead era, but his instinct told him that there were treasures to be found in its bowels. One only needed the tenacity and wit to find them. In that, the Palace helped him.

It was so vast and the guards were so few that slipping into the forbidden rooms was trivial. Jinsai had more than his share of close calls: Shadow Beasts infested many of the halls, ready to burst out the moment he loosened the seals. But it had been worth it: he found treasures and trinkets forgotten in the chaos of the previous decades and never retrieved. Some had gone to fuel his cultivation; others, he sold, making a small fortune that he had then reinvested in an escape route out of the Domain.

It was dangerous, but far better than dying like a cornered rat. He had no intention of following the soldiers in whatever patriotic nonsense they were stuck in. Still, the real treasure had been the room. Jinsai found it thanks to a stroke of luck. The spiritual charge that kept it hidden had long given out, and Shadow Beasts were chipping at it, revealing its presence. His long studies in the Sect's formations had done the rest.

Private, safe, tucked in a corner of the Palace, the chamber was the perfect hiding spot. Jinsai found no incredible treasure hidden behind the amazing concealment array, but he didn't complain: he knew opportunity when he saw one. Little by little, he had approached colleagues and superiors who he knew would be interested. The chamber could work as a safe room should – when – the walls fell. The hiding array was powerful enough that even Nascent Souls would struggle to find it once it was supplied with Qi again.

In it, a stubborn cultivator could hold until an occasion to escape presented itself. He wouldn't bet on it, but he never said so to his customers. He counted on being far away when things came to that. Until then, it was the perfect place to indulge, and Jinsai hadn't lost time in turning it into a place of business. He had struck a deal with a provisioner to sneak out some of the good stuff and turned it into a small heaven for those who could afford it.

Gambling, alcohol, food, forbidden topics; they had all worked well to fill his pockets. But the showpiece had been the girls. The maids of the Palace were always looking for ways to fill their bellies. He had only needed to throw a few morsels their way to have a constant line of eager participants for his patrons. And when one made some disturbance, it was swallowed by the concerns of the Siege and quickly forgotten under his enforcers' batons. Jinsai was quite proud of it.

Lesser would be fed, the powerful would be grateful and he would make a tidy profit to squirrel away when it was time to bolt. Until then, he sampled some of his merchandise. In moderation, of course. He wasn't one for gluttony. Everyone was happy. Everyone won. Then the Ancestor returned. Jinsai had never gotten the morality the Hand of Night liked to spout. In his eyes, the world was simple. Either you made a profit, or someone else made a profit out of you.

Anything else was wishful thinking, and he was too busy making money to care about it. That hadn't kept him from feeling right at home in the silent gloom of the Palace. It was his legacy, and he had made it doubly his when he repurposed it for his means. Now, it had sprouted eyes. At first, Jinsai thought it was his imagination playing tricks on him. Maybe all the tension from the Siege and the impending escape attempt had finally caught up.

Then, he had opened his tavern, expecting to find a row of clients and one of girls, and found the Founder instead. A clone, really. A ten-foot-tall replica, wrought out of tattered shadows and wearing a blank porcelain mask. Jinsai wasn't afraid to admit that the brief exchange had been the single most terrifying moment of his life. Honestly, if someone told him it wasn't, he would call them liars. The ancestor had come to gather her things.

If Jinsai knew opportunity, he knew when to pull back, no questions asked. The casino was gone in a quarter of the time it took to set it up, and he and his clients were back to work, obediently filing the corridors for their offices. Since then, the clones had become an everyday sight. You'd feel them before seeing one. The darkness suddenly loomed closer. The silence became deeper. Then, she would appear, her mask a pale gleam. If you were lucky, she would pass you by, bringing the cold dark with her.

You only had to step aside and bow until she was gone. If you weren't, she stopped, faceless gaze turning your way. That's when you knew you had done something wrong. It was as simple as closing a door. You didn't argue, didn't ask. It didn't even matter if you remembered it. She knew. She always did. Jinsai had gone back to his clerk job. He had been dutiful, attentive and never strayed into the Palace's depths, ever again.

He had even tried to get into the new atmosphere of the place, so filled with newfound purpose. Pointless to say, he never managed, but he wasn't going to lose sleep over it. What did those soldiers have to be happy about anyway? Most of them would be dead by the end of the year. But he wasn't complaining. Sure, the clones were downright terrifying – he would eat his hand before voicing that.

Even thinking it made him cringe -, and it stressed him out of his mind that it may happen, he'd cross paths with more than one on the same route. But he was alive, and that was all that mattered. But, if he had to complain about something was the ungratefulness. He had fed those girls, sheltered them. Now, they tromped around the clones like chicks around a mother hen, sometimes going as far as making faces when they thought he wasn't looking.

He wasn't the only one: many of his colleagues found it just as disrespectful. But you didn't mess with the Founder's property. You just didn't. It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a thought. Strangely, he almost looked fondly at the times of the Siege. There was space for an entrepreneur to carve a niche for himself back then. Well, thankfully, he still had his little fortune squirrelled away. And his job was solid. He would go to the city when he was free and book some time with the Geji.

He still had his little entertainments. Nobody said he was so greedy as not to see it. And so went on, from hopeful guards who marched with a new spring in their step, to maids who worked harder than ever, to bureaucrats who looked at the new circumstances and thought how to make a profit out of them. It helped her, in its own way. Intrigue pulled her back from the contemplation of the infinite and into the chaotic, terrible, beautiful world. Wu Zetian shook his head, a smile caressing her lips.

There was a question there, as difficult to answer as the Dao itself. Or maybe it was the Dao. But those were idle thoughts for another time. There was noise in the Palace, ragged and loud and disturbing. And she knew who was making them. With a small humph, she moved into the nearest of her clones.