When one gains rich wealth, they lose poor humility. When one gains comfortable heat, they lose the motivating cold. As such, when one attains godhood, they lose humanity.
That was what Xiaojun surmised when he was face to face with the blood god. The deity formed a body from his red bile, before hardening it just as blood hardens. “Just as a desperate rat climbs for scraps, so has The Envoy of Man returned for more.”
Xiaojun charged at the deity and slashed him where he stood. But the liquid simply sloshed out of the way before reforming itself in the other end of the room. “Do you wish to end the talking already?” the deity asked. “It seems that your death wish is an immediate one.”
“It’s not that I have a mere death wish,” Xiaojun retorted. “I just wish for you to die.” The battle began.
The Blood God launched blood fragments from his body, like a porcupine firing its quills. Xiaojun slashed these fragments away and crashed his weapon through evasive deity. Instead, he hit the wall and sent the stone bulwark crumbling to the ground.
Demons presented themselves from the other side—servants of the Beast of Lust. They snarled at Xiaojun, but shuddered when they saw his face and blade. This wasn’t the first time they had heard of the horrific Envoy of Man, though it was surely their last.
“Not to worry,” the Blood God flatly said. “I require their blood.” He raised his liquid hand and petrified the demons where they stood. Xiaojun watched the red bile forcefully exit their bodies through any opening: eyes, noses, and even fingernails. It was a violent death for a violent race.
“Good. That has satiated me.” The Blood God had grown in size—about three times to be exact. “It is clear that I cannot be killed, and yet you continue to persist. Such a funny little human.”
“All I need is a sponge and a latrine to throw you in,” Xiaojun taunted. But the talk was cut short by The Blood God’s offensive. More crystals were launched through the air, and Xiaojun had to pick up a wooden door to serve as a shield. The crystals then returned to liquid form only to return to the Blood God’s body. This way, the deity had infinite ammunition.
Xiaojun continued to clash with the deity, but it was clearly one-sided. Although Xiaojun remained relatively unscathed, he still had no real way of killing this deity. It was a hassle to slash the being, and slashing the liquid body didn’t even yield a result. It was the same as fighting the wind.
“Unless,” Xiaojun thought to himself, “I’ve been thinking of the wrong question.” Returning to a defensive stance, he smiled at the Blood God. “You like to siphon the blood from other humans and other demons. And yet you have yet to take a single drop from me. Why?”
The Blood God angrily transformed his liquid arm into a crystal spear before trying to thrust into Xiaojun. When a table took the attack instead, and broke upon impact, the Blood God continued his sudden offensive with further strikes.
Xiaojun blocked an overhead swing, a sideways thrust, and another overhead swing. “Riled that quickly? I see it now. You can’t take my blood because of my heavenly weapon! That’s why you’re getting so aggressive!”
“Silence! You are no closer to victory than the moment before!”
At that moment, Xiaojun caught a momentary glimpse of a jade stone hidden within the Blood God’s torso. “You possessed Rina’s father to cover for your weakness, and you used his illness as an opening. What a simple tactic! Of all this time, you’ve pretended to be above life when you’re as fragile as porcelain!”
He aimed his counterstrike at the Blood God’s chest and shattered the jade stone. “Ha! All talk!” Xiaojun taunted. As expected, the Blood God stumbled back and slowly disintegrated into a simple pool of bile. However, despite Xiaojun’s looming victory, the Blood God responded with a smile.
“Haven’t you forgotten?” the deity asked. “The Beast of Lust promised me a larger body.”
The ground rumbled with a significant tremor. The wall came crashing down as a bramble of bodies tumbled through the stone. Xiaojun was presented with the behemoth he had seen in the battle long ago. “Ah. So this was a part of your plan.”
The bodies looked like a coalescence of bodies being digested. They slowly churned into red as they continued to scream and clamor for their lives, though one could argue that these nonsentient vessels were merely exuding muscle memory. Either way, the Blood God was growing from their very suffering.
Xiaojun was now in the real fight. Despite being a hulking stitch of bodies, the Blood God could swiftly swing his lumbering arms. Blood was still under its monstrous command as it hardened into crystals and fired at Xiaojun like arrows. These ones were faster, and one of them nicked the Envoy of Man in the cheek.
Xiaojun watched as bile seeped out of the base of the behemoth. This blood formed multiple humanoid figures who fashioned their arms into crystallized swords. “Force him to me!” the Blood God bellowed.
The bloodied soldiers charged at Xiaojun and tried surrounding him. The Envoy of Man easily slashed their liquid forms away, but they would simply regenerate just as the Blood God did. Due to this distraction, Xiaojun couldn’t see the colossal arm pick him from the ground.
“I can’t see how Siumeng had to many issues with such a lesser human! You are nothing but fodder to satiate the gods!” the Blood God bellowed. Xiaojun watched as a mouth seemingly formed from the deity’s body, like a gaping hole from the collection of writhing bodies.
In this moment, Xiaojun was doomed to die. His arms were stuck within the god’s grip, and he could barely move—let alone breathe. It was this moment of weakness that awoke the voice in his head: the God of Hate.
“Xiaojun. Don’t you see it? If you do not allow me into your heart, then you will die. When this god is finished with you, then your friends will be next. Hua will taste like a strawberry, and Rina’s blood will taste like wine. I have no commitment to any of the other beasts. Let me into your heart, and my power is yours.”
“Xiaojun!” Huanglong intervened. “You cannot submit to the voice of this naysayer! You must focus your energy, and place your faith in me. Do this, and you will not need this fake demon.”
Xiaojun slowly approached the gaping mouth. He could even feel the disgusting warmth emanating from the monster’s body. “Even if I trust this Beast of Hate in killing this deity, I cannot trust him to spare my friends from his carnage,” Xiaojun responded. “Huanglong, I place my trust in you.”
Suddenly, the hand broke apart and Xiaojun leapt from the demon’s grasp. “No!” the Blood God yelled. He tried to grab Xiaojun with another arm, but the Envoy of Man slashed that arm away too. It was clear that something was different—Xiaojun had tapped into the powers of a higher being as well.
Xiaojun landed on the ground with a faint glow reflecting from his body. It seemed that the mystical energy of Huanglong had extended to his entire being, going so far as to emanate his eyes with a mythical glow. No word or thought parsed through his mind. Such a mystical warrior was beyond the fragility of words.
“Soldiers! Kill him!” the Blood God commanded. The soldiers stepped forward. Xiaojun slashed. The soldiers were no more. One slash from Xiaojun’s mythical form rendered them into disintegrated red mist. “Impossible!”
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Xiaojun leapt from the ground to a superhuman height—jumping high enough to surpass the Blood God—before bringing his blade to a downward slash. The slice thunderclapped through the air. The Blood God remained still. Then he fell apart.
The Blood God had been eviscerated into multiple incoherent sections. Due to the heavenly weapon’s strange properties, these parts bore separate sentience. In short, the Blood God’s own personality was brought into discord. Five different bodies couldn’t even say the same sentence.
“What…”
“…did…”
“…you…”
“…do…?”
Xiaojun returned to the ground. The glowing dissipated, and he returned to his mortal state. Air rushed back into his lungs, as his muscles ached with fleeting adrenaline. “Huanglong… what did you do…?” he muttered aloud.
“I gave you some of my power. It comes at the cost of your own stamina.”
“That goes without explanation,” Xiaojun responded.
He looked at the shattered body of the Blood God. The blood was already seeping out of the body to form a new figure. Such was the result of the Blood God’s ruined form. “You have destroyed the Beast of Lust’s gift. Unfortunately, your own power has come at its own cost.”
“But you seem tired as well,” Xiaojun replied. “You complain about the weakness of man, but perhaps now I can show you where our strength truly lies.”
“Oh? And where would that be?”
Xiaojun smiled. “That would be in our ability to keep fighting.” The warrior weakly raised his blade and charged at the deity. He didn’t seem to care about his shattered energy; far from it actually. It was as if his own exhaustion provided his own fuel.
The deity and the warrior clashed in a complete melee. Each one would strike as soon as the other blocked, turning it into a battle of attrition. Which one would crumble from fatigue? Which one would crumble from their wounds? Which one would simply surrender? Such was the battle between deity and man.
“I shed my flesh a long time ago,” the Blood God said in the middle of the fight. “I was a scholar hoping to attain enlightenment, but I realized that my own bodily material was getting in my way. That was when I met the Yellow Emperor. Fools like Jiu Zhu could never understand my ambitions. So when I accepted the Yellow Emperor’s offer, I was more than elated to turn against that stupid fool.”
The Blood God slashed Xiaojun in the leg before forming his head into a hardened hammer and slamming it against Xiaojun. “You are just like him. By not being able to see this clear vision, you are no better. The Yellow Emperor will crush you all the same.”
Xiaojun was on the ground. All of this fighting had sapped his energy, and it was clear from his defeated position that he had little more to give. But in the end, this was still a little more to give. The Envoy of Man used his weapon as a staff to help himself up. He looked back at the deity and prepared his weapon once more.
“Stay down!”
The Blood God gave another devastating attack. He shattered Xiaojun’s leg, battered his chest, and threw him against the wall. And yet, the Envoy of Man stood back up. “The God of Hate is in my head right now,” Xiaojun bluntly stated. “He says that I can get more power. That I can defeat you and save my life, if I accept his call.”
“Will you accept it?”
“No.”
The deity grabbed him by the leg and thrashed him against another wall. The brick tiles crumbled under the power as the Blood God slowly stepped towards him. “You should’ve accepted it. The Beast of Hate could give you enough power to separate you from your weak flesh. You would have the power to destroy me, and more.”
Xiaojun took a moment to return to his feet. “But I don’t care about power. I don’t care about you. And I don’t care about your idea of ‘more.’ I just want a moment of peace. Not for myself, but the people I’ve come to appreciate.”
“Ha! The Envoy of Man has become sentimental!” the Blood God bellowed. “Can you remind me what some humans call you? Ah, that’s right: ‘The Demon Warrior!’ They cannot stand to believe that your power is human. I’m sure they’d kill you once they don’t need you.”
The deity thrashed his arm into Xiaojun’s body. Like how a drill systematically beats the dirt, so did the Blood God repeatedly beat into the Envoy of Man’s body. Bones were crushed. Blood was spilled. And Xiaojun’s life was brought at its precipice.
“Ha,” Xiaojun gasped. “Now I see why the Beast of Lust wanted you here. He wanted you to break me. Doing so would force me to harness the Beast of Hatred. The Beast of Lust could then kill two birds with one stone: me, and the competiting Beast of Hate.”
The Blood God stabbed him in the stomach with his arm. “You are creative, for a man on his last moments. Alas, I’m sure that the Beast of Lust will be satisfied with your death instead. We can bring the Beast of Hate with a ritual or—”
Hua leapt from behind and bit the Blood God in the neck. The surprised deity screeched in pain as he tried to grab the hulijing off of him. Using this one moment of respite, Xiaojun pushed the Blood God away and recovered Hua to his side.
“What are you doing here,” he weakly muttered.
“Giving you some help,” Hua responded. “When we found that you disappeared, Rina decided to attack the castle as soon as she could. As for me, well, I happened to decide a little faster.” She then presented her arm for his mouth. “One bite. Now.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Xiaojun hesitated, but took a bite from the hulijing’s arm. Hua momentarily winced in pain, but was glad to see the healing immediately take place. She watched as Xiaojun stood back up with a little more vigor. “I’ll let you take more when we—”
She stopped in her words as her eyes went artificially wide. Her veins seemingly popped, and her skin went pale. “Wow,” she suddenly said. “I know I promised not to eat anymore blood while by your side, but that guy’s blood tastes very good.”
Xiaojun smiled as he looked at the wounded deity. “You eat blood. That’s exactly what I need right now. Just let me distract him, and I’ll let you have seconds. Does that sound good?”
“Sounds great. Delicious, actually.”
“Good. Then go!”
Xiaojun started the attack, while Hua flanked from the side. The Blood God was forced to grow further limbs from his body to accommodate for the extra attacker, but it was clear that the deity was truly outmatched. Although Hua looked like a mere little girl, it seemed that her strength had exponentially improved since the last time Xiaojun had seen her.
Xiaojun parried an overhead strike before following with a thrust of his own. Momentarily pinning the bile of blood, he made his signal. “Hua!” Xiaojun called. “Now!”
She took another gracious bite from the deity’s neck, and the Blood God gave a terrified shriek. This was the one attack that could truly hurt him, as his bile visibly shrank with each passing moment. Hua’s body would simultaneously change as her veins continued to pop and her skin continued to pale.
“Get off!” the Blood God yelled. He kicked Xiaojun back and barely pushed Hua away. The Envoy of Man prepared for another attack, but he found the deity was in no shape to fight. In fact, Hua was already enough for the Blood God.
The Envoy of Man woefully watched Hua commit to a hand-to-hand battle with the Blood God. The deity would stike, but Hua would strike faster. It was clear: the deity’s blood had exponentially strengthened her powers. She was far from the sly fox who preyed on unsuspecting travelers. Hua was now the Goddess of Foxes.
By the end, she had him pinned to the ground. In a hungry rage, she transformed herself back into her fox form and mauled him like a complete animal. Xiaojun mockingly watched as the god was reduced to such a humiliating form. “This is what I meant,” the Envoy of Man said. “Defeat kills a god. Yet defeat strengthens a man. That was why I was going to win. I’ve known many more defeats than you could’ve ever imagined.”
The Blood God gurgled in his last breath as Hua took her last bite. Even her animal form had changed to become far more muscular, and her fur far more pronounced. But even in this state, she still returned to Xiaojun’s side to rub against his leg like a loyal dog.
“You don’t have to do all that,” Xiaojun stated.
Hua returned to her human state and laughed a little bit. The effects were slightly dying down a little, but it was clear that her new strength was here to stay. “You’re still a little hurt,” she said. “Do you need another bite from my arm?”
“No. We’ll do it the old fashioned way,” Xiaojun said. He handed her a knife, and gave her the dignity of choice. A long time ago, such a thing seemed brutal. Now, it seemed sentimental. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
“No, it’s quite alright,” Hua replied. She easily sliced a bit of her arm and allowed Xiaojun to sip from her blood. By the time he was done, his wounds were all healed and Hua’s own cut had regenerated.
“As I said,” Hua added, “Rina and her men are marching here as we speak. It seemed that the monsters didn’t want to be around while you fought the Blood God, since he can snatch blood from things and all, but they might be around for—”
The ground rumbled as distant cannonfire could be heard. Rina’s army had clearly arrived sooner than expected. “Well. That was fast. I really thought I was miles ahead of that woman, but she must’ve had plans of her own.”
Xiaojun nodded as he prepared for his next battle. Although he had defeated the Blood God, there was a far worse being waiting for them. “The Beast of Lust is here. The usual tactic of simple slaughter won’t work.”
“Why not?” Hua asked. “Do I have to eat this guy too? I’m not sure how that would work, but I think it would be interesting. I swear it’s not because the guy’s blood tasted really good or anything.”
“You can’t solve this by eating him either,” Xiaojun replied. “When I fought the Blood God, he said that he got his powers by the Yellow Emperor. We can kill the beast, but we cannot kill the sin. As a result, we’ll have to come up with something—”
The ground trembled once more, but without any cannonfire to precede it. “Look out!” The floor fell through as Xiaojun and Hua went tumbling through the earth. They were entering hell. They were entering the realm of the Beast of Lust.