Voidlight Rising (A Xianxia Cultivation Adventure)

Damn thing just floated up with that awful light. It burned my leg clean off at the knee and, I swear, my luck hasn't been the same since. -Disciple Hu Lixiao of the Blood Stalking Demon Sect

I pulled my head back quickly before the creature caught sight of me. After counting to ten and hearing the bells pause for several seconds, I chanced another glance around the corner. A silver robed figure floating several feet off the floor had turned and begun drifting back the way it had come.

"What is that thing?" Lin whispered.

"It's a Watcher," I provided. "They're constructs built to watch the palace in my absence."

"You know, most people employ actual people as their guards." Lin said, rolling his eyes. "How do we fool these things?"

"They patrol a set path and will only deviate from that if they spy something out of the ordinary," I explained. "We stay behind them, then dart around a corner when they aren't looking, and we'll get by without issue."

I didn't want to mention what else they were meant to do. It would only distract them. If all went according to plan, we'd only have to encounter three watcher routes before reaching the wall separating the front and rear palaces.

As the three of us crept forward, the Watcher seemed not to notice the cultivators trailing it. It continued floating along, holding its lantern ahead of it on a thin rod that revealed neither hands nor arms beneath the shimmering cloth.

What was mildly more concerning was the color of the lantern's light. It shone a pale blue, extremely similar to my voidlight, if slightly washed out. Thinking back to the bone, I think I knew exactly what had happened to its owner, even if it wasn't part of the Watcher's original design. Just like everything else in the palace, they had been damaged by the void.

The Watcher drifted forward at a slow but steady pace, making shadows dance around the walls as the lantern gently bobbed up and down. It passed by the same tapestries and bits of artwork it had passed for untold years. As far as it was concerned, nothing was out of the ordinary as we crept quietly behind it. It passed a hallway, paused momentarily to turn and shine its lantern down into the darkened depths before continuing on its way, the sound of unseen bells accompanying. Meanwhile, I led the others into that corridor and out of the Watcher's sight.

"That didn't seem too hard," Lin muttered. "I would have expected you to have greater security."

"You also happen to have an expert guide," I pointed out, continuing to lead my companions around another corner and down another hall. "If I have anything to say about it, we won't have ever have to-"

I blinked once, staring blankly ahead as my mind tried to catch up with the scene before me. I expected to see another hallway. Instead, I saw rubble filling the entire hall. The roof had caved in.

"Yoru?" Lin asked, edging around me to see my face. "Are you okay?"

I snapped back to attention. "Yes, I just…didn't expect this."

"It is an old building," Xinya added. "I would have been surprised if we didn't come across a broken section or two."

They didn't understand. How could they? The Black City was the very first place either of them had known where cultivators and powerful yokai lived and worked, but it paled in comparison to an actual city. Places where cultivators gathered were under constant threat, and thus, were built accordingly. The more powerful the cultivators living there, the sturdier the materials that went into building their homes.

Half-Moon Manor was home to four Ascendents, one of whom was a Divine Avatar, though frankly, I suspected that Shi Reili probably qualified for that title, despite never being considered one of the four. In addition to the four Ascendents living in the rear palace, the front palace was often host to hundreds of powerful artists. Even our lowest servants were at least Gold or Salt, as they had to be in order to withstand the potent aura of qi that choked the palace thanks to all the powerful artists living here.

With such an abundance of qi, it wouldn't do for the palace walls to be made of normal materials. After all, within ten minutes of Chouko formally moving into the palace, she tried to put my head through a wall for stepping on bare earth that she claimed would someday be a beautiful garden if I didn't tread all over it like a fool. If a major support beam or load-bearing wall were to be cracked just because of a bit of rough housing between siblings, the palace would never stand up to any form of assault.

Time should have had no influence over my palace. Void or no, the halls should have been intact. That it wasn't, and that the hallway was blocked enough that I couldn't even see the other side, meant only one thing: Half-Moon Manor had been attacked after I was locked away.

It…wasn't that surprising, really. Whole dynasties had risen and fallen in the time I'd been away. Even if the traps were still in place, that just meant that no one had succeeded…probably…in making it all the way to the deepest part of the palace.

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But, just because it wasn't surprising, didn't mean that it didn't hurt. My palace…my city…had been attacked, and I wasn't there to protect them. Chouko and Reili were dead, and I was in prison. Perhaps Jinshi had tried, perhaps he hadn't, but as their prince, it was my responsibility, and I failed them.

"Yoru?"

I snapped back to reality. There wasn't time to reminisce about things I could not change. Even now, I could hear soft bells approaching as another Watcher neared.

"We'll take another path," I answered, leading them back down the hall. There was more than one way to reach the rear palace, it would just take additional time. "We'll have to hurry. We don't want to be anywhere near these halls when the serpents are released."

"Do I even want to know?"

"No, you do not. Blame Shi Reili," I said simply.

Picturing the map of the palace in my mind, I reconsidered our path. The fastest way to the rear palace was still by way of the inner wall. I still had three paths in mind that could lead us there in time. Surely one of them would be available, even if we had to climb the rubble. That would be preferable to the types of traps that awaited if we were forced to stray from the Servants Quarter prematurely.

"You're going to get them both killed," whispered the illusion of Jinshi conjured by the Labyrinth. The sadistic phantom had been stalking just out of the corner of my eye since we set out from the entrance, despite my attempts to thoroughly ignore it.

If we just continued pressing east and north, eventually we'd make it. It wasn't far. I could keep everyone safe. Watchers were easy to trick once you knew how they worked, and everything else could be avoided by someone who knew the map backwards and forwards. After all, I built this place. I knew every corner and hiding hole. The situation was perfectly under control. No one would get hurt.

"Uncle Lin," Xinya whispered, probably thinking I couldn't hear her. "Is what you said about his chains true? They tighten when he's upset?"

"Shh, Xinya," Lin answered. "Don't distract him." I pulled at the chain around my neck, trying to loosen it slightly so as to keep from proving his theory.

"See, deep down, you know it's hopeless," the phantom whispered. It jogged forward before turning to walk backwards in front of me. "You can't fool me, and you can't fool those chains. They'll just tighten and tighten until they choke you like they used to. Remember that?"

I did remember. Then I tried very hard to forget, all but forcing from my head the image of the inside of a steel coffin, seven layers thick.

Another Watcher rang its tiny bells. I peered around the corner, seeing it approach gently. From the front, they were little more than floating cloth, with a single mote of light to serve as its eye beneath the hood and a lantern to light its path. It had no thoughts, no emotions, no feelings. It paused, floating gently in place before turning around and floating back up the hall.

"This way," I ordered the others. "Straight through and to the hall on the left."

"They'll never make it."

Xinya was the first to make it to the safety of the next intersection, with Lin right on her heels. I was half-way across the hall when the Watcher turned, having not even reached the far end of its path yet.

"Or maybe you'll die here first, but that would be a pity," the Labyrinth whispered. "Then you wouldn't be able to watch them suffer and die."

I backed away from the Watcher, trying to figure out why it had turned early. Its qi looked normal or, at least, as normal as it could have been with voidlight shining from its lantern. But, the Watchers weren't people. They were constructs that operated on procedures rather than anything that fortune could have had a hand in.

"Yoru, focus!" hissed Lin across the hall.

"Yes, Yoru, focus on how close the light is."

Lin flinched away from the light as it spilled around the corner, effectively blocking my path to them. I backed away from the light as it drew closer.

But the Watcher didn't get any farther away. Its speed increased, as if it could actually see beyond the light, meaning it had detected an anomaly in the area around it. I backed away further, and it matched my pace.

I turned and sprinted away, trying to lose the thing before it was pulled too far off course. The defenses were all linked. If one Watcher was pulled away…

It wasn't worth thinking about. I raced down halls I once knew, thinking only about getting away from my pursuer. The sound of bells slowly faded from earshot, and I slowed my pace. Another Watcher was ahead, but it was drifting away from me.

Without warning, the Spirit of the Labyrinth appeared mere inches from my face. Startled, I took a step back, feeling threads of voidlight surge from the mote of misfortune that shone from inside my core. My feet tangled in my chains. My left sandal, which was always mismatched from the boot on my right foot thanks to the cursed band branded into the flesh of my ankle, slipped on the wood, and I fell back against a table. A round ball, like a moon made of pure white crystal, crashed to the ground, shattering into a dozen pieces which skittered down the hall…

And into the light of the retreating Watcher…

"Whoops. That sure is a shame." The phantom laughed at my misfortune, a sound that drove nails into my mind, so similar was it to Jinshi's own laugh. Except this laugh was filled with malice and cruelty.

The cloth turned instantly and began floating closer. I scrambled to my feet, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it catching the scent of my qi. It sped up to chase me and quickly overtook me. The light shone bright against my skin, burning with corrosive light that was far stronger than my own.

As soon as the Watcher found me, it stopped. A moment later, an ear-splitting shriek filled every hall of Half-Moon Manor, and I was quite certain that the shrill cry could be heard in the city below.

Ignoring the blisters forming on my skin, I sprinted back the way I'd come. Lin and Xinya would be lost without my guidance. It was critically important that I reach them as quickly as possible.

Because the Watchers had summoned something. It had summoned a lot of somethings, and I was not foolish enough to think that they would be damaged by thirty thousand years exposed to the raw void. No, if anything, these creatures would be empowered by it.

Thanks Reili, I thought in a panic as I rounded the first corner to see the first shadowy cluster of void qi slithering up the hall towards me.

The serpents weren't coming. They were already here.