NOVEL NEXT Chapter 62: War Against Heaven
~~~
Feng was somewhere else again.
There was… a room? The air tasted cloyingly vile. It reeked of perversion, of sex, and strangely enough…
The scent of lightning and passion. Gunpowder and silver mercury.
Something moved against him.
Soft and hard. A naked body languid against his skin. Zhong looked down.
A woman of silver, bare of the slightest stitch of clothing.
Slender legs, rounded hips, and lithe muscles beneath steel-silken skin. Beautiful beyond logic or imagination.
Looking at her was a soft madness. Feng's mind was almost undone.
Zhong's mind held firm.
Her gaze fluttered open. Twilight purple; lids of winged butterflies. Eyes void of white… Only sunset flames…
Violet framed against gold. A painting of summer. Fire and war.
Her lips curled, almost mocking.
"Well?"
Her voice sounded alien. Like the peals of bells mixed into the snapping of muskets. Soft and hard. Cold and warm.
Perfectly polished violence, running down his spine.
Zhong shrugged. "It was nice."
The creature looked taken aback. Then, her lips snarled.
From the base of her spine, nine tails of shadowed mercury rose, bristling with anger.
"Nice? Nice?! The incarnation of Desire slept with you last night, and all you can say is nice?!"
"Well, it was nice," Zhong protested. "You were clearly very good at… the stuff we did. I'm not even sure it can be called sex anymore."
"I am the best at it! Men have died from pleasure when I so much as grace their eyes a passing glance. Gods have killed such that I might spare them even a single hour of passion! Heavenly Kings had ascended when I took them to bed!"
Even when enraged, her beauty was impossible to ignore. Burning moon silver. Starlight hair, an ashen scythe swinging. Breathe of prowling thunder, sulfurous and sweet. Feng wanted to take them in his mouth.
And so Zhong did.
When they ended their kiss minutes later, with their bodies now pressed deeper into each other, her mood was far improved.
"Your skill at flirtation needs refinement," she moaned as he bucked against her. Her fingers reaped bloody lines across his back. Her tails were wrapped around his legs and waist, caressing his thigh while pulling him closer still. "I shall have to teach them to you proper."
"I'm afraid… my ability to wax proper poetics was irreversibly ruined. Courtesy of a certain Heart of mine," Zhong whispered, eyes closed as he bit gently against her collarbone. "She thinks of all the worst verses."
The creature stilled for a moment. Zhong grinned when he felt her displeasure.
"Lesson one: Do not mention that woman in my presence again whilst in my bed. Ever." Her fingers warningly trace across his scalp.
Had she so desired, she could split his head open in a heartbeat. He was strong, yes, but this creature was greater than him still.
For now.
Zhong wisely chose to hide his amusement or thoughts. Instead, he grabbed her hips and brought her close with greater vigour.
The cries she made were wild incarnate; lust-poison needles punctuating into every pore of his skin. Whether intentional or not, her carnal hunger was decidedly inhuman, and its appetite was corruption that drove men mad beyond repair.
A Dao of fervour vice, unquenchable and unequal…
Save, perhaps, for a Dragon's pride.
Zhong's self-control teetered on a knife's edge. He knew, should he fall here…
There would be no escaping her loving madness for the rest of his life.
"'Nice', you said…" she hissed in equal parts bitterness and arousal. "I should kill you for such insult."
"You could hardly blame me," Zhong chuckled shakily. "I lacked a frame of reference… for the sharing of one's soul."
The creature stilled once more. When she looked at him again, her molten silver eyes were wide and vulnerable.
"I… was your first? You chose me? Even over her?"
She was lovely before. She was even lovelier now. For a moment, Zhong's will wavered.
But he had already resolved himself on what he had to do, even before he came to her. His Path left him no other choice.
"I chose you," he lied. "There was no other before. You, above any other, know this to be true."
In that moment, to call her beautiful was a sin on its own, for no mere word could ever approach the sweetness coaxed from her tears.
"Stay with me forever," she breathed.
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He almost fell. Every ounce of pride was used to deny her, and still, he nearly fell.
Then he remembered. A woman of red hair and strange eyes.
His Heart was still waiting for him.
"You know I cannot," Zhong whispered. "If you want me, you have to follow me."
They came together then, life mixing with each other's. Her silver tears fell into his mouth.
He tasted lightning and fire.
Su Daji, the Nine-Mouthed Fox of Calamity, was his.
~~~
"You cannot keep going like this."
Zhong did not reply. His body was battered; his strength spent.
Still, he had enough hate left in him for a reply.
"You do not get to decide where my Path goes or ends."
The rain was heavy. The storm blocked out all light. Howls and hail combined to plague the land. The silver milk of heaven's ocean fell with enough force to crush mortal men.
A stone's throw away, his mentor sat and watched.
An old hag in rags, feeble and wracked with the symptoms of age.
Her appearance mattered little. Her powers commanded that beyond the scope of Heaven and Earth.
Great General of Karma… She who Swam Against the Tides of Samsara.
Far above them, the Milky Way continued to rage.
"Your peasant rebellion has failed," she said. "The Court grew tired of your games and sent their greatest Gods against you. Your armies are destroyed. Your disciples are likely dead. The Primate and the Fox… turned to treason, just to spite you and your lies."
Zhong spat blood. He tried to rise.
He could not. His mentor did not allow it.
"All of it matters little. Mere shit you stepped in, hanging to your feet. You could discard them a hundred times, and it wouldn't have altered the skeins of your fate by even the slightest angle."
His allies… All gone. "I will find them again. I will rise again."
"No, you won't. Because for all your pride, you did the one thing that you could not afford to do."
Lightning flashed. Zhong was blinded for a moment. When his vision returned, the old hag was gone.
In her place was a young woman. Still dressed in rags, the General's black eyes were bored, her mouth twisted into a mocking grin.
"Where is your Heart, Zhong? Where is the Hierophant who would guide you down your Path? The lonely Worm whose corpse you cannibalised and defiled so long ago… Have you grown tired of her love?"
"She is where she needs to be," he snarled.
Lightning again. The young woman was gone, replaced by a girl not even a decade old.
Black eyes gleamed with mirth. Her voice was pitched with lunacy. "You tried to abandon your Path! Stupid, greedy, prideful Morning Star! Is it not enough for you to simply fulfil your purpose and kill Gods? Must you seek to devour the Dao of Mount Tai as well?"
"This doesn't end until the Star Tyrant is dead. You know this!" Zhong roared. Scales and talons formed across him for a second, before they too flickered out.
The girl tutted, fingers pressed mockingly on her lips. "The UEC would disagree with that! Things are developing far worse on the other side of the world, Dragon. We are running out of time. The more you hesitate, the greater the consequence. For you, for her, and for all of Humanity."
"Then help me." The Devourer's eyes turned silver. "Give me Mount Tai, and I shall end the Crawling Gods, once and for all."
Lightning flashed, black and dark. The old hag returned. She sighed, tired and mournful.
"You cannot save her," she said.
"I must try."
"She doesn't even want to be saved."
The Devourer was silent. Then, he laughed, broken.
"What she wants… does not matter to me. I will see her free. I will accept no other outcome."
Lightning, one last time. The young woman rose to her feet.
She stepped over and lightly patted Zhong on the cheek, not without affection.
"Greedy bastard till the end."
Silver eyes met blackness. "I am who I am."
The Great General of Karma laughed. She kissed him on the forehead.
"I suppose I should get around to finding another army for you, my troublesome student. Say, how does eighty thousand demons sound?"
~~~
Once more, in another place.
Feng knew this one. He knew these slopes, even if he had never seen them before. It was impossible not to recognise it.
No cultivator could ever mistake the visage of Mount Tai.
Not a mountain. Not a landmass.
It lived. It breathed. It… It was…
It was burning. It was screaming.
Mount Tai was dying.
All around him was war. War on a scale that left the Heavens breathless with horror. Calamity unleashed against the Celestial Court. Each passing second saw the once-glorious realm falling towards its final devastation.
The armies of the Underworld had arrived, and at its head was the Dragon of the Dawn.
The end of the Gods had come.
Demon forces flood forth like a tide from hell. Giant armoured titans the size of mountains disgorged blasts of blue magma from tubular arms. Their shoulder carried giant hives, vomiting long arrows armed with erupting fire. Flesh-metal forms tore themselves apart with excitement, revealing the innards of teeth and eyes within.
Lances of light rained down from floating sky monasteries, wrought of bleeding flesh and impossible alloys. Their roaring warhorns bellowed for death and murder, creeping ever closer such that they might defile the peaks of Mount Tai with their searing conflagration.
Crawling parodies of insect swarms skittered across the land, devouring entire provinces' worth of lakes, forests, and cities within hours, leaving behind only blackened ground. Any living creature within their path died agonising deaths, torn apart at the molecular level by a million bites.
The Earth burned. The sky screamed. Cultivators were dying by the hundreds with each minute, mortals by the thousands.
Then, the Gods and Immortals came.
From the peaks of Mount Tai, they flew down, riding upon storm clouds or bearing great wings of light. A dozen, dozen Divine Arts were unleashed. Unfathomable, world-defying mysteries, one and all, they smashed into the Demonic lines with physics-altering force and biological devastation.
The Demons were slowed, but not stopped.
There was no coordination, no order. A hundred duels took place between Daemon Engines and God Beasts. Steel-clad fists the size of buildings punched against the misshapen physiology of River Gods. Sky fortress burned and exploded when its astral shields failed against the belching elemental spews of Avian deities.
Stumbling abominations of Divine puppets blew apart under concentrated hails of explosive javelins. Heavenly Kings, millennia old, roared their last when thunder hammers clutched in iron hands rose and fell upon their heads, flooding the ground with a rain of holy blood.
Time and space grew meaningless. Mass and momentum turned upon themselves. Steel transmuted to blood, the atmosphere ignited, flesh dissolved from radiation, and every aspect of immortal terror was unleashed a thousand times over.
Unspeakably horrific and incomprehensible as it all was, the battlefield was even, for a time.
Then, the Primate came.
On the side of the Gods.
The Victorious Fighting Immortal destroyed all in its path. Even the most powerful of Daemon Engines could only slow its advance, but not halt it. Never halt it.
The Primate's roars echoed all across Heaven and Earth.
"ZHONG! WHERE ARE YOU, YOU LYING COWARD! I AM HERE! COME FIGHT ME, BROTHER! FIGHT ME, AND DIE!"
Zhong heard him. Zhong ignored him.
The Dragon had his eyes set on greater prey.
Atop screaming Mount Tai, the Jade King awaited.