A Song For The Ages

Feiyin exhaled slowly through his nose, a hand resting lightly on the wax-coated wall. The image of the Empress, grotesque and powerful, still hovered in his mind. Ruan, crouched beside him, gave him a nod. No words were needed. They had seen enough.

He gestured silently, pulling them back into a tighter crevice. Hidden behind a veil of shadows and the pulsing heat of the hive, they communicated with subtle glances and the barest movement of fingers.

Ruan's brows knit. She tapped twice on her wrist: Observe more.

Feiyin nodded. Timing. Pattern.

They stayed there for half an hour. Feiyin's senses attuned to the rhythm of the hive: the regular drone of worker wings, the shift of queens laying, the movement of guards. He focused on the Empress.

She ate first.

Corpses, carcasses, slabs of meat dragged in by drones; she took the choicest pieces. Only after her belly bulged with essence-rich food did the others receive scraps. Despite her size, she laid only a few eggs at a time, conserving her strength. Feiyin's oscillation sense picked up something strange; her essence was dense but unstable, as if on the cusp of transformation.

After retreating at a safe distance from the chamber, they spoke once more.

"She's preparing to break through," he murmured, voice low. "Tier six."

Ruan's eyes narrowed. "We have to stop her before that happens."

He tapped the pouch at his waist. Inside were a handful of jet-black pills, no larger than sunflower seeds. Each one brimmed with a fast-acting poison formulated with Mu's advice; designed to bypass standard essence detoxification for beasts.

"We'll target her food," Feiyin murmured. "The meat and pollen they bring her. I'll slip a few poison pills into one of the fresher carcasses. If she eats it…"

"She won't live to see her breakthrough," Ruan said, her tone soft but resolute. "Let's make sure she picks the right one."

They doubled back quietly, retracing their steps through the tunnels. Their feet moved in harmony, stepping only when the hive trembled with movement. Ruan led through the side crevices, using her instincts to blend with the terrain. Feiyin, eyes alert and senses flaring, tracked guards and motion with precise clarity.

They reached the food chamber. Waxen walls glistened with layers of crystallized honey. Slabs of dried meat and corpses were piled high.

"Here," Ruan whispered.

Feiyin reached out, pressing three pills into the side of a large feline carcass that the Empress seemed to favor. One in the throat. One under the eye. One near the liver. It looked untouched.

They retreated fast, cloaked in Ruan's veil and masking talismans.

Back in the Empress's chamber, they took cover behind a towering wax growth. The scent of blood and rot clawed at Feiyin's nose. He steadied his breathing.

Then the drones brought in food.

The Empress bent her massive frame forward, mandibles clacking in anticipation as she began to eat. She devoured the first few carcasses eagerly, slurping down limbs and organs with grotesque delight.

Then, as she approached another pile, her snout brushed a large feline carcass. Her jaw opened, only for her bulk to accidentally shove the carcass down the mound.

It tumbled with a soft thud and landed before one of the shriveled queens.

Drawn by the scent, the queen snatched it up, tearing into it greedily.

Within seconds, she began to twitch. Her legs buckled, mandibles locking in spasm. Ichor gushed from her maw. A shrill sound escaped her before she collapsed in a heap of stillness.

The Empress shrieked.

Feiyin's senses lit up. A pulse of rage, fury, and command burst from her through the hive, his oscillation sense catching it like a crack of thunder underwater.

At that moment, his talisman flared.

Qingling's voice, urgent: "I don't know what happened, but they are all rushing back to the nest even when the fire has yet to be extinguished. You have to stay careful!"

Feiyin cursed under his breath. "Plan B."

They moved. Stealth gave way to urgency, but not recklessness. Ruan activated two more Hiding talismans, masking their aura. They slipped through the chaos, dodging drones scrambling in response to the Empress's shriek.

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Feiyin saw her still atop her perch, fur blistering with rage.

"This is it," he muttered.

From their hidden vantage point, he took a single pill from his pouch; glimmering with a more aggressive, volatile poison. Channeling a burst of essence qi, he flicked it with surgical precision.

The pill arced silently.

And landed directly in her open, shrieking maw.

She recoiled- then convulsed.

Feiyin grinned.

But then her thorax glowed; a circular patch beneath her fur igniting with a strange light. A faint hiss escaped her mandibles.

"She's purging it!" he warned.

A cloud hissed out of her joints, misty and glowing.

"Take the guards," he said, eyes flaring. "Now."

Ruan surged forward, blade flashing.

Feiyin roared inwardly, igniting every fiber of his being as essence qi surged from all three of his rotating nexuses. The force of it seared through his meridians, each nexus pulsing in perfect harmony as they drew upon his reserves. Earth grounded his stance, steady and immovable. Metal honed his edge, cold and unyielding. Water coursed through him, fluid and relentless. His muscles coiled, refined and taut, before he exploded forward in a burst, the air itself cracking as he shattered the sound barrier with a single, blinding step.

He had no choice but to go all out. The Empress was nearing tier six, and from her bloated form- fur thick like armored moss, her bee-like head and insectile exoskeleton glinting under the dim glow- Feiyin knew her defenses were formidable. Anything less than his full strength might not even leave a scratch.

In a single motion, he unsheathed his saber, and with it, unleashed every ounce of cultivated force he possessed. Essence qi surged from all three nexuses, whirling in synchronized rotation. Earth, metal, and water elemental intent pulsed from their seed cores, merging into his body with seamless precision. His saber sang with unleashed saber intent, the energy fusing into a dense, dark membrane of saber energy that wrapped the blade like a predator's shadow.

The chamber lit up.

His intent compressed- tight, focused- until it was a singularity of will and power.

The blade shone like a beacon.

With a breath, he whispered, "Cut."

He struck.

The Empress barely had time to turn.

The saber cleaved from crown to root, splitting her down the middle in a thunderclap of raw force. The wall behind her split as well, leaving a smooth scar of destruction through the chamber. Her scream was cut off mid-note, a gurgling shriek smothered by the explosive burst of ichor that sprayed across the walls.

For the first time in a long while, Feiyin had struck with his full strength. He could feel his three essence nexuses rotating with fury, drawing in raw essence through his acupoints to replenish what he had spent. He immediately swallowed a qi-replenishing pill, stabilizing the drain.

As the Empress's body slumped in two halves, something within her glowed; a strange egg, partially fused with her interior. His blade had cleaved into it, revealing a grotesque insectoid creature curled inside, twitching weakly.

Feiyin's blood ran cold. There was something disturbingly familiar about it. Without hesitation, he raised his saber and sliced through it as well, ensuring no trace remained.

Ruan's blades had already done their bloody work; her twin daggers, now dripping with deep crimson essence qi in the shape of jagged fangs, had felled the guards in a flurry of precise violence. She turned toward him with wide eyes.

"You're even stronger than I thought," she said with a small upturn of her lips.

Feiyin exhaled, shaking his head slightly. "I wasn't expecting that myself," he admitted, smiling back. "It's the first time I've gone all out since infusing three elements. I had no idea how far I'd come until now."

He turned to look at the remains in the chamber, adjusting his stance. "But for now, let's finish this first."

They regrouped and swiftly dispatched the remaining queens. With the Empress dead, the hive lurched. A psychic disarray swept over the colony. Feiyin focused, feeling the waves of panic ripple through the killer bears. His oscillation sense, still humming with the aftershocks of battle, caught the erratic pulses of fear and uncertainty rushing through the hive. The Empress had once broadcast her will with frightening clarity; an oppressive, singular command that bound them together. But now, that voice was silent. The killer bears were awakening to their own instincts.

He furrowed his brow. If the Empress had manipulated them through frequencies and her will, then maybe, just maybe, he could reach them through the same channel.

"Wait," he murmured to Ruan, stepping forward and summoning his guqin, the lacquered surface gleaming under the dim light.

He plucked the strings gently, infusing each note with deep musical intent. At first, it was just a lullaby of calm; soft, unthreatening vibrations sent into the hive. He tuned it carefully to match the Empress's frequency, soothing the chaos in the killer bears' minds. Their oscillations shifted, becoming less erratic, and more curious.

Then, he changed the melody.

He imbued each note with subtle suggestions. Not orders, but nudges. Images formed in his mind and flowed into the strings; of forests rich and unspoiled, of smaller, scattered groups of killer bears foraging peacefully, of balance instead of consumption.

The effect was gradual. First, the twitching of antennae. Then wings paused mid-beat. Heads tilted. The killer bears faltered in their frenzy, some glancing around, others halting in place.

Then the shift began.

They moved as one, a great wave of bodies surging out of the nest. Not in panic, but in instinctual, directed flight. They rose like a black-and-gold cloud from the mound's upper passages, splitting into small swarms. Feiyin could feel their scattered intent as they each sought distant parts of the forest, away from one another, as if waking from a long, hungry dream.

Outside, Qingling and Thalanil- who had prepared for battle- stood wide-eyed as the sky darkened with buzzing wings. At first stunned, they readied their weapons. But when the swarm passed without aggression, dissolving into the trees with disciplined silence, awe took their place.

Feiyin exhaled as the final chord faded, the strings vibrating beneath his fingers. "Let's go," he said, quiet and steady.

Before he left, he walked back to the bisected corpse of the Empress, and with a solemn look, scooped the severed egg and its parasite into a reinforced container that he stored in his pouch.