Chapter 114 - Without you (Patreon)

[Table of Contents]

Chapter 114 - Without you

It was after hours. The restaurant had been closed, the tables and chairs moved back inside from the yard.

Old Wang Gangliu wiped them clean while taking about the day’s stories with a few of his old buddies who came for a game of mahjong.

Meat for the next day was marinating in the kitchen, Ding Shi's folks had dropped off produce, fresh as dew.

The girl in question sat upon a stone slab in the backyard, a small piece of land that housed a shed for wood and charcoal. Etched on the stone slab was a formation that gently gathered qi. 

The whole place was now hidden, or so said the foxes. So the pedestrians passing on the streets behind the place could not see the weirdness happening.  

There were nine points, akin to the voidification formation the cultists used. But the star was skewed, resembling a living creature.

Other parts had been shifted too. Rather than void, the formation now answered to the shadows.  

On the nine points of the star, fiend cores related to the aspect of shadow, night, and darkness were placed. 

Three each.  

Su Haochen snapped his finger, Su Yafeng fanned Ding Shi with azure wind.  

"Breathe slowly to the rhythm of nines. Yes, like that. Girlie, you're doing fine," the tod in black said.  

Wang Gangbao watched with a slightly nervous, slightly excited heart. He wanted to pace back and forth but thought it would be unsightly.  

The cores were drained of their shadow, night, and darkness aspected qi. Chaos qi. The formation sucked in the light in the area, casting strange shadows.

In the two Su cultivators' vision, the chaos qi was purified before it went inside Ding Shi and gathered in her Navel Palace Dantian. Then circulating through her body via the innate meridians, it seeped into her body.  

Like poison.  

The chaos qi corrupted the void fiend grafts on her body with abandon. The womb, pancreas, intestines, half of her lungs, and two-thirds of her heart.  

A fifth of the right side of her brain. The lenses in her eyes. The follicles in her nose.  

Seven of her toenails.  

Eighty-one of her bones.  

And many more.  

Ding Shi frowned. It tingled.  

It would have hurt, had it not been for the pill Su Yafeng had fed her.  

The qi in the fiend cores almost ran out. That was the fuel for this process, and without replenishment, the transformation would stop.  

Su Haochen's Umbral Foxvines replaced the cores one by one, carefully so as not to disrupt the formation.  

Hours passed.  

Finally, a dam seemed to break. The process turned automatic. No new cores would be required to sustain it.

Because a core had ‘formed’ inside Ding Shi. This core, was her Navel Palace Dantian. And Ding Shi, from today on, was a cultivator of origin qi.  

"Dark Mother Physiques," Su Haochen muttered, "Did you all know that the first Dark Mother was the daughter of a tasteful barbarian and a sentient chaos spring?"  

Wang Gangbao stopped his pacing. "H-How... Would that even work?"  

Su Haochen shrugged, "Given enough time and qi and coincidences, anything can grow a mind. And a body. And things on the body. Except for those void fiends."  

"Stop lying. Why haven't I heard of that before?" Su Yafeng said, seemingly concentrating on Ding Shi, but actually quite interested in the conversation.  

"That's because you don't read the really good books," Su Haochen said. "The ones in the forbidden section."  

"You need a token from the council of elders to access that floor," Su Yafeng said. "Did you sneak in?"  

Su Haochen raised a brow and grinned, "The other forbidden section."  

Su Yafeng hiccupped. She would never admit that she had followed her mistress into that section many a night. No token required.

Wang Gangbao helped Ding Shi down from the altar, "How do you feel?" he asked, concerned.  

"Mmm," Ding Shi stumbled, letting her husband carry her weight, "Strange..." She touched her abdomen, "As if there is something here."  

She then raised her palm and concentrated.  

There was a gust of wind; it felt sticky. But Gangbao couldn't see anything. "What is it?"  

"Some qi; it takes awakening to see. Unless concentrated, most qi tends to be invisible the mortal eye," Su Haochen said, then turned to Su Yafeng. "Aren't you going back?"  

"... They won't let me see. Those perverts," the maid walked to a chair and sat down. Azure wind gathered near her ears and tail and she closed her eyes. A few seconds later, she opened them. "... they're not done," she clicked her tongue in annoyance, then turned to Wang Gangbao and pointed, "You."  

"Me?" the youth said.  

"It's hard for mortals and cultivators to produce children if the mortal is a man," the fox maid said. "What are you going to do about it?"  

Wang Gangbao went silent. He felt inadequate.

Ding Shi touched his hand. "C-Cats are nice. O-Or a dog."  

The fox maid hiccuped again, but no one replied.  

Not even Gangbao. The visage of a strange madlander boy appeared in his mind.

***  

"Was what we did so wrong?" Su Nanya spoke with a voice devoid of emotions. The usual her would be either enraged or in tears, but on the contrary, this lack of emotions creeped Yung out more.

She grabbed Yung's collar and flung him into the suite.  

Yung fell on the queen sized bed without harm. With a soft sound, the door closed.  

The curtains moved to block the light. An intense scent of fruits wafted his nose.  

"Nanya?" Yung asked, his sight pointed to the ceiling, the soft muslin canopy of the bed fluttering without wind.  

Yung blinked. Then opened.  

Nanya's golden eyes stared back.  

The vixen had not a single feeling on her face as she hovered above him, her palms planted firmly on the mattress by his ears, supporting her weight as she locked her gaze on his. Her knees grazed the bed on either side of his hips.  

Not a hint of tenderness, but a blank slate of a void. Judging, appraising, calculating.  

"Touch your heart and tell us, for we wish to know," she said, her lips moved like an automaton, "to you, are the crass peasants of this village more important than us?"  

"It isn't about importance," Yung replied. There was no hesitation in his voice. This was a conversation that needed to be had. And despite Nanya's demand that he leave just a minute ago, at least now she was talking. "It's about trust."  

When Yung said that, he was shocked to find out that Nanya's Empathic Link read nothing.

But that was fine. With or without Links, this was a Heart to Heart.  

"Have we not proved time and again, of our favour?" Nanya said, "No harm shall befall you. You shall one day be our consort."  

"My head was removed from my body, mistress."  

"Yet here you are now, alive and well. What of mere pain to learn more of our charms?"  

"So as long as it ends well, it justifies the means? As long as you get to do what you want, the way you want it, without care and regard for what kind of trail of despair your acts leave behind, you expect me to act all fine and dandy?" Yung said. Each word was articulated with care; he did not mean to come out as accusatory.  

But perhaps he did.  

Yet there was not a ripple in Nanya's eyes.  

"That is so," she said, "We wish nothing but the best for you. So you should merely heed our words and listen."  

Yung exhaled. He would not do that. "I trust that at the end of whatever plans you have for me, I'll come out alive. But I don't trust you to make the process kind for me."  

"This isn't a kind world, oh foolish servant. Learn cruelty in the presence of safety, or learn to die a swift death. Yet with us here, you shall not die. Is that not enough?" Nanya asked. She stopped, waiting for Yung to answer.  

He didn't.  

"Are we not enough?" Nanya asked.

"No," Yung said.

“We had apologised once under the caverns.”

“It wasn’t sincere. I don’t accept it.”

Nanya's eyes remained still. Yung could not read her link. Not her face. But for some reason, he knew that he had profoundly hurt his girlfriend today.  

"I am my own person. Not your doll. I am not your everything, so why would you expect the same?" Yung said, "Because you're infinitely stronger than me? Because your family can decide the life and death of everyone? Because you want to change me into something that is not me?"  

Yung could feel his breaths coming in shallow; he lay beneath her with a heart full of hurt. "You don't have my best interest at heart, you have yours. You don't respect my sovereign will, you want to overwrite it. You want to mould me into a loyal puppet that can never go against your word. Never hurt you like your fiance did."  

"How dare you…" Nanya said through her fangs and pretty lips. "Is it wrong of us to want as such? For without me... You are nothing."  

She said it. And she was right.  

Yung kept silent.

"My fiance? Dare you compare yourself to our hero?" Nanya brought her face down, low enough that their noses almost touched. 

But they did not. 

"Our hero has the strength to claim a thousand nations. He has freed seven lost planes. He rules an apex sect in the Coiling Zenith continent. He is the foremost prince of the greatest ren Empire on the plane. His heroics are praised by billions, his light radiating hotter than the sun. But you, here you are. Without me, you are a worm. Without me, you cannot even live to see the next day. Without me, you will die worthless as a puny 1st realmer before the century is even over."  

Yung didn’t notice when Nanya’s facade broke. Wet drops of tears fell on Yung's cheek.

"We do not want that. You shall be a dragon. You shall live until time itself dies. You shall climb to harmonious heavens and then beyond, break the curse of this Last Ascension Mortal Plane, conquer a thousand others, father my pups, stay with us until all there shall be is you and me."  

The tears sizzled on Yung's cheek. It didn't hurt. This was merely their Essence qi entwining.  

"So what's wrong with what we have done, if it is for our sake? Can you not see, that all we do, it is for the one slight hint of a future we mayhap have together? If we don't fight for it with our lives, what chances are there for it to come?"  

"You don't want an equal partnership. You want the safety of absolute certainty," As Yung said those words, he came to realise what a big hypocrite he was. "Like I wanted absolute safety… Even though that was impossible."  

Yung’s realisation hit him like a ton of bricks. It was him… he realised what else went wrong, his stomach felt like it was punched. He repeated the words, “I’m sorry.”

Nanya waited for him to continue.  

"I wanted to mould you into a perfect girlfriend too," He said. "No, not a girlfriend. I wanted you to be my shield, my scapegoat, my sponsor, my... I wanted you to do everything to keep me safe in the name of love, without putting in equal effort."  

"You sound like a merchant. We are not here for a transaction," Nanya said.  

"I know," Yung replied.  

There fell into another silence.  

"I still want you to apologise to me," Yung said. "For hurting me, and playing with my heart. I know you did it for my own good, but there must have been a kinder way to do it. I want to feel you are being sincere in your apology, not trying to gloss my feelings over like back in the cavern."  

Nanya frowned.  

"I felt despair then. I thought you were going to die," Yung said. "I thought everyone else had died for one of your silly pranks. Nanya, I... I'm repeating myself. I... I want kindness towards each other to be a priority in our relationship. I don't want you to be cruel to me, even if it's for my own good. Nanya, without you... I am nothing. Without you, I would have been dead in the branch family graveyard."  

The minutes dragged on.  

Finally, the vixen spoke, "Without you... we would be another man's woman."  

More silence. More tears. More Essence qi.  

"We... are sorry," Nanya said. Sobbing. Hiccuping. Whimpering.  

"We're sorry," Her voice drawled, she collapsed on Yung's chest. She hugged him tightly. "We need time. We cannot see your face right now. We don't want to kill you. We’re sorry. We shall have to speak to Brother Sun."  

"I'll leave," Yung said.

“We shall have him acknowledge his wrongs.”

“Don’t meet him.”

“We must.”

“You don’t have to change for me.”

“We shall.”

“What will you do if he’s sorry?” Yung’s chest tightened. “I trust you. I’ll get out of your way.”

"No. Meet us here in two weeks' time," Nanya demanded.  

"I'll bring flowers."

"Say it."  

"I love you."  

Nanya squirmed. She covered Yung's eyes even as he closed them, then met his lips with hers.  

What a wonderful kiss. It had been so long. Yung broke through.  

And when Yung no longer felt the soft palm covering his eyelids, he opened them slowly.  

Nanya was gone. He was all alone.