“Patriarch, you were alive? You—what happened to you?” Asked a Youjin man, horrified.
“Don’t falter! Keep the formation steady.” The Youjin Formation Elder yelled with gritted teeth.
“B-But that’s our patriarch! Why do we have to—”
“That’s a voidfiend, you idiot!” Youjin Linbi shouted.
“I’m afraid Linbi is right; he might not be our former leader anymore,” the Youjin Crafting Elder said with a shake of her head. The clansman from the old patriarch’s faction looked conflicted.
“You hurt this old man, Tiantian,” Youjin Fuqiang said. His fuzzy brows lowered a tad, and he quietly clicked his tongue.
“Do not call me that,” the crafting elder with a surprisingly cute name, Youjin Tiantian, spat back. She looked middle-aged with salt-and-pepper hair, but Yung knew she was far older.
The woman was also visibly shaken by the development; Yung could sense it, but unlike the younger generation, she was able to regain her wits fast enough. As did the Formation Elder, Youjin Gangkai, and the two other Youjin clan Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realmers.
“You died, Fuqiang, I was there. We cremated your body. You have a lot of explaining to do,” the Formation Elder said.
“Yetu. Is that the tone to use when talking to your patriarch? Oh how far has my Youjin clan fallen in the last years. Manners down the dirt stream, it appears.” The abomination of a man made out of foxmoth remains sighed in a dramatic manner as a thousand cricket cries joined his speech. “No wonder you have joined hands with these filthy madlanders. Has the Baishui really pressured the clan into such a corner that you need help from thieves and beggars? Our ancestors roll in their graves!”
Youjin Yetu, the Formation Elder, fell silent.
“D-Do we tell him?” He whispered to Youjin Tiantian, then looked at Yung through the corner of his eyes.
The madlander teen just shrugged.
“He is an enemy,” It was the contrarian middle-aged man who bickered with Youjin Linbi who replied.
“Tenghou, weren’t you one of his most ardent followers?” Youjin Tiantian asked, surprised.
“I admired the ren cultivator striving to the heavens, not a void cultist,” Youjin Tenghou said calmly.
“Why whisper? Are you so ashamed to converse directly with your leader, oh ungrateful kin?” Youjin Fuqiang asked with his throaty voice. The others might not have felt it, but Yung could see the malice in it as clear as day.
“You have not the right to utter those words!” Youjin Tiantian shot back. Youjin Yetu was busy holding the formation together because of how rattled the younger generation of cultivators were, but his glare said he agreed with her. The crafting elder continued after exhaling, “We might have joined hands with Leader Free Sparrow. Yet here you are, colluding with Void Cultists of all things! You, our former leader! Do you want the Youjin Clan to be purged off the face of the plane?”
“Soon, the plane itself will belong to our lords of the void. It is us who will do the purging, scrapping the filth off of our rightful lands.” Youjin Fuqiang looked at the madlanders in utter disgust.
“Y-You have lost your mind,” Youjin Tiantian said.
“It is you who are still blind. For look at my prowess now!” Youjin Fuqiang did not take the disregard lying down. His voice got louder, and the myriads of foxmoth wings that formed his robes fluttered as though he was about to take off.
He did.
His fuzz-made long hair swirled chaotically, and violet light shone from the cracks of his carapace skin and compound eyes.
The old abomination flew into the air as his aura, a strange mix of heart, spirit, and void qi, radiated out in a circle like an ever-expanding smog.
Yung could see a chain of qi connecting him to his original place, a dim silhouette of a foxmoth and a foxball hiding in the clouds there. But the physical body of Youjin Fuqiang, the abomination made out of foxmoth corpses, seemed not to be stuck in place anymore.
“Merely one week. One week after receiving the grace of the lord, I had broken through to the Imperfect Heaven 3rd realm. After being stuck for three decades. Three, unbearable, decades! Do you not grasp the opportunity here, the utter power in my palms? Can you not see the grace the lord grants us that our merciless heaven so selfishly denies?”
“And then you died,” Youjin Tenghou poured water on his enthusiasm.
“Died? Died, he says! Oh foolish Tenghou, for there is no true death for the children of the lords. Ahahahah!” A purple vein popped on Youjin Fuqiang’s pale-white stitched-together face. “I did not die. Am I not here right now? Do you not quiver at the very sight of my Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realm aura? And if it weren’t for that annoying Yaoguai, I would not have been forced to give up my physical body to achieve this! That treacherous extension of the planar consciousness, how dare it strike at its master clan after all the Youjin has done for the foxmoths over the centuries.”
“Excuses. You were the one who slaughtered the foxmoth kin first. Or do you say that if the royal Xiyue clan of the Westmoon kingdom, our supposed ‘masters’, were to come in and slaughter our young children and siblings, you would gladly give them up?” Tenghou said.
“The accursed Xiyue are not our masters. Neither are the heavens,” Youjin Fuqiang said. He then turned his cracked compound eyes towards Su Nanya, “And neither are the Su Fox Clan, the evil fox spirits with their unfair claim on immortality.”
A golden beam left the vixen’s mouth, and Youjin Fuqiang was blasted away. His body crashed onto the cavern ceiling, breaking rubble and stalactites as a cloud of dust rolled down.
The cultist humanoids stirred into anger. They shot their arrows and threw their spears, accompanied by void arts glowing a malicious purple hue, all of which were intercepted by the Dim Gold Severance 9th form and the free madlander cultivators acting together.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“This isn’t a defensive formation, you know,” Youjin Yetu said.
“Keep steady,” Youjin Tiantian did not lose concentration.
“My my. How irritable you are, oh corrupted grace from the south,” A chirping laughter came from the dust cloud as the robed humanoids continued attacking.
Nanya didn’t speak. She aimed at Youjin Fuqiang’s original location, the rock pillar surrounded by foxmoth remains, and fired another golden beam. The qi-condensed attack hit squarely against the pillar.
“Futile,” Youjin Fuqiang said, not a hint of worry in his voice.
The space itself seemed to shake. Nanya flinched, and multiple images of her overlapped.
W-What’s happening? Ugh, I am gonna vomit.
Yung took a shaky step back. He was seeing triples and quadruples.
The same was happening to everyone. As Nanya’s attack clashed against the stone pillar, it was as if the golden beam was trying to pierce from one reality into another.
Every being there, whether renyao or voidfiend, appeared as a superposition of multiple rotating images in Yung’s eyes, like a kaleidoscope that wouldn’t turn off.
“So you have joined hands with other invaders too, amusing little headsman,” Su Nanya finally said. She raised her vixen head and then tilted it down slightly, not a worry on her face.
“Invaders? No, no, Pitiful Su Nanya—”
“Lèse-majesté. You court death!” This time, the giant vixen really seemed mad! Face was important to cultivators after all, especially for an insecure bundle of sex appeal like Su Nanya. She fired another golden beam, and Youjin Fuqiang was blasted away again. “How dare you utter our majestic name without proper honorifics!”
Angry shouts came from the robbed humanoids and the foxmoth voidfiends, but they didn’t attack this time.
<…> Yung was speechless.
<... after all, it is not the same. Words written in this communicator gadget and the words uttered in your unmanly voice. We hate it!>
Nanya didn’t Eeeeek. Yung didn’t like that. If not for the absolute certainty she was sending through her Empathic Link, Yung would have assumed she was too wary of Youjin Fuqiang to do her adorable Eeeeek.
No, even if she can’t tell me the truth, she wouldn’t purposefully lie, not like this.
“I love you?” Yung whispered uncertainly.
“Eeeek!” Nanya beamed.
Youjin Fuqiang got up again, seemingly unharmed. “Eeeeek? What manner of humiliation is that? Do you feel that threatened by the immortality granted to us, the children of the lord? Hahaha, tremble, yes, tremble in fear. Pretender immortals!”
Yung readied another charge of the pink heart ring.
“You and your degraded concubines of a clan are not my rulers. The nine heavens and the infinite mortal planes already belong to the lords, Yet the Last Ascension Mortal Plane dregs by like a tumour in an otherwise healthy body. The Lords grant us salvation from the eternal struggle, yet you and your false immortal kin spearhead the malignant effort to topple the Lord's plan! We, the little folks, we are nought but sacrificial flesh for you,” Youjin Fuqiang was as stately as always, stroking his beard as he took slow steps towards the pillar again.
“P-Patriarch, what are you saying?” The Youjin clan member who was supposed to be on his faction spoke up, shocked, “These are void creatures! What lord? What salvation? Have you forgotten how the late madam, your wife, and your children were… were… mutated into monsters?! How could you join hands with beings of such depraved souls!?”
The patriarch stopped and looked at the man. His compound eyes narrowed, and he sighed a tired breath. It looked like he was on the verge of confessing something important, something personal. The air around him solidified, and the robed figures that had been clumped around him gave him space.
He opened his mouth; maybe some tragic backstory would be uttered.
It was a chance!
Yung aimed and fired a pink heart beam.
But even though Youjin Fuqiang wasn’t walled by many robed figures now, the foxmoth voidfiends were still there flying around, and the pink heart beam hit one of the vile little critters.
“Damnit!” Yung cursed. Everyone else looked at him in shock. He asked defensively, “What?”
No one replied, but their eyes were unfriendly in the way normal people looked at asylum escapees.
The foxmoth voidfiend that was hit gurgled, then fell over, wings flapping erratically as it squirmed on its backside. The pink qi entered its body and left in waves, and a bit of colour seemed to return to its pale white fuzz. The foxmoth stood up on its six paws, looking pained and frenzied. It spotted another foxmoth a few meters away and screeched, diving with six clawed paws bared. The two foxmoths then coiled together in a strange position and kept rolling on the ground.
They were mating.
The former patriarch looked at the spectacle in utter shock. He flung his hand at Su Nanya, gasping as though he was hyperventilating, then roared in humiliation. Both the foxmoth voidfiends burst apart into flames, dim gold and purple.
“Depraved souls? Us children of the void? Yet do you see this vixen’s treachery, my kin? Do you not see how corrupt and perverted the assassination attempt of this immoral concubine of a vixen is? A woman plaything daring to target a man who is not her husband with a sexual excitation blasphemous art no less?” Youjin Fuqiang said through gritted teeth. He definitely did not appreciate being interrupted when trying to make an emotional appeal to his clansmen. He then stopped and suddenly burst into laughter as if noticing something. “Hypocrites! You Su Fox clan pretenders. You claim that no devil shall exist on your Land Bridge, you shun us worshippers of the true void lords as heretics, yet here you are mingling with hidden devils proficient in such… such shameful attacks!”
“Mingling? Proficient? How does he know!?” Nanya was shocked and took a step back. “H-He’s a voyeur, a cultist pervert!”
“… I think he means another kind of mingling.” Yung had to facepalm. At least it was a good thing that his stealth was working even against whatever void shenanigans the patriarch had going on. “Sorry, he blamed my attack on you. Do you regret using matching beams now?”
“We regret nothing! And for you forget, he cannot even see your beam.”
Yung smiled.
Youjin Fuqiang couldn’t see the beam, nor could he hear Yung’s reply to Nanya. But he could definitely hear Nanya’s own voice.
The former patriarch laughed louder, grandly waving a carapaced arm at towards the Youjin clan man who had questioned him, “See, my foolish kin? These are the supposed rulers you follow. See how she panics like the woman she is, being shocked that we, the children of the void with our superior observation skills, know of her mingling with the devils. And she dares even to say she regrets nothing. But worry not, for it is a chance. The lord is magnanimous and ever-forgiving. If you can join hands with the Su Fox Clan, who work with devils without regret nor remorse, you should not have any qualms about submitting to the true lords who are far more benevolent than these hypocritical two-faces. For only then can you be graced by salvation. Only then can you be truly immortal.”
The Youjin clan man looked at Yung and his pink heart ring awkwardly. Even if the former patriarch couldn’t hear Yung’s voice, the Youjin clan and the madlanders definitely heard Yung and Nanya’s banter.
“I’m telling you, it’s a numinous art,” Yung sighed.
“I-I know that,” the man replied. He wasn’t dumb.
Again, the patriarch couldn’t hear Yung. He must’ve thought the man was replying to his offer.
“Yes, yes, like that, my dear nephew,” Youjin Fuqiang grinned stately. His teeth were black, separated by lines of white. “Yetu, Tiantian, Tenghou, and I suppose you too, Gangkai. I do not want my beloved Youjin to sink into death alongside the rest of the Last Ascension Mortal Plane. Join me, take my hand, and we shall take the world as our conquest. Is that not what defying the heavens truly means?”
Everyone scooted uncomfortably in place, and perhaps it was the situation to blame that no one tried to break the former patriarch’s misunderstanding.
Silence reigned, and it was suffocating. The second-hand embarrassment was real.