Jianmo had once confided in Yoshika that even their indestructible sword form—forged by the fires of Sovereign Chou’s hatred to withstand the element of Destruction, and tempered by souls consumed over the course of eons as the Bloody Sovereign’s primary weapon—could not survive the void between worlds.
“There’s a difference between empty space and the Void, you know. Both are inhospitable, but space still has light and heat, and you can move freely as long as you have some way to propel yourself. It’s nasty, but people have learned to traverse it—though there’s barely any point since things are so far away from each other.”
It was one of the rare instances where the sword demon had actually lived up to their self-appointed status as Yoshika’s master. He was male at the time—shortly after he’d restored his form using Hayakawa Takeo’s demonic core.
Jia didn’t really think to question it. Jianmo could be fickle and whimsical, but even at the height of his mischief he wouldn’t lead her astray when it mattered. She just raised an eyebrow and leaned forward as he got into one of his rare teaching moods.
“How far?”
“Hell if I know. You’d be better off asking one of your scholars about that. The moon is closest, and you could probably circle the entire world ten times sooner than reach it. Anything else? Hundreds, maybe even thousands. Chou used to do it, and it was the most boring thing in the universe.”
“He took you with him?”
Jianmo smiled sardonically at that.
“I gained the ability to think long before I became an actual person. I have memories from before he realized that his suppression of my awakening as a spirit had failed. It...wasn’t exactly a quick process, but I didn’t hate it, if only because I didn’t really know any better yet.”
“Huh. So why did Chou fly through the void if there’s nothing there?”
“Space. The real void is different, but we’ll get to that. He wanted to master it—the way he mastered everything. He once just sat down and watched a star die—and it took billions of years. Then, with the knowledge that they could die, he tried to kill the next one himself. That was the kind of person he was.”
It was rare for Jianmo to get so nostalgic about his former master. He didn’t speak of him with fondness, per se, but he didn’t hold a grudge against the old Bloody Sovereign, either. Jianmo just...didn’t hate him.
“Did he succeed?”
Jianmo snorted.
“Eventually. Took a few tries, since trying to kill a star is a bit like trying to murder the sky, but he did manage it. Actually, your Star-Sundering Slash is an echo of the technique he used to do it.”
Eui blinked—Yoshika hadn’t yet finished recreating her individual bodies, and her true body changed form with a thought.
“It is? But how? You never taught me about anything like that.”
The demon chuckled and waved his hand in a vague gesture.
“I did and I didn’t. Cultivation is like that, sometimes. An idea doesn’t need to be taught directly to be inherited—sometimes it’s even better if it isn’t. I encouraged you to find a way to project the essence of Destruction, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but I figured out how to do it on my own.”
“You of all people should know that nobody does anything ‘on their own.’ I don’t hate that confidence, but everything you are has been built on top of those who came before you. Tell me, did I ever come up when you were looking for inspiration for that technique?”
Eui frowned, but Jianmo was right. When she’d been trying to envision the technique, it was her image of Jianmo that had pushed her forward. Reluctantly, she nodded.
“I guess so. And your blade is the only one that’s been able to survive the technique.”
He scoffed and shook his head.
“You don’t need me for that anymore. You only ever did because the technique wasn’t fully yours yet. The core of the technique—the insight or law, I guess—came from me, and it was only mine by inheritance from my previous master. Now, it’s all you—and even your mother’s girlfriend can do it.”
It took Eui a moment to realize he meant Ienaga Yumi. She quashed the urge to protest—rising to Jianmo’s teasing was the worst way to react.
“So you’re saying that if I ever get strong enough, I’ll be able to use Star-Sundering Slash to literally kill stars?”
“If you want to, but I don’t think you will. It’s an absolutely pointless exercise that benefits nobody at all. Killing the unkillable was Chou’s thing, not yours. But that does lead nicely into where I was trying to take us—the Void.”
Jianmo leaned back on Yoshika’s couch, lounging, as he was often wont to do—he could be as lazy as Heian, sometimes. And also just as deceptively hard-working. He drummed his fingers on the armrest as Eui waited patiently for him to continue.
“Master—that is, Chou, wanted to kill that which could not be killed. You already know why, now.”
Eui nodded.
“How come you never mentioned that part, anyway?”
“It didn’t matter. Plus, a hunger for power is easier for people to grasp than a fruitless war against the entire concept of fate.”
He had a point. The Bloody Sovereign’s ambition to slay the Demiurges and free reality from the shackles of fate was...esoteric, to say the least.
“In any case, before he waged his ill-fated war on all of existence, Sovereign Chou took a crack at the next best thing to a real Demiurge. The oldest and most powerful being in existence.”
“Void.”
Jianmo nodded.
“And that was where he learned the difference between mere emptiness, and true nothingness.”
His enduringly playful tone darkened for a moment and he shuddered slightly as he went on.
“The Void isn’t hot or cold, big or small, light or dark. Metrics like that just don’t apply to it. It is old—time, at least, has some sway over it, so it’s not a Demiurge, but if anything in the universe is close...it’s that old monster.”
“And it exists between realities.”
“Eh...”
Jianmo made an uncertain gesture with one hand.
“I’d hesitate to use the words ‘exist’ or ‘between.’ Or ‘realities’ for that matter. It’s the best approximation we’ve got, but you need to understand that the Void is alien in ways that I can’t even begin to describe. And it thinks—it has a will of its own.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve spoken to it.”
He nodded, grinning.
“I know! I don’t hate that ambition—you want to learn, so you go straight to the very top. It’s just like you. And just like him. He never accepted anything but the absolute best.”
Eui frowned slowly. She knew that Jianmo didn’t intend it as an insult, but it was hard to be happy about being compared to the Bloody Sovereign.
“I don’t demand perfection, Jianmo.”
“Not in others, no—that’s where you differ—but in yourself? I know you better than that by now, darling. But when it came to the Void, even Chou was forced to compromise.”
His tone grew somber again as he picked up his tale once more.
“When Chou challenged the Void, I don’t think it noticed at first. Just being there eats away at your existence—gnawing away at you as if rejecting the entire concept of life, despite being alive itself. But my master knew that it was alive, and if it was alive, then it could be killed. Obviously, though, he never did actually manage to kill it.”
“What would even happen if he did? Void is like...a force of nature. A fundamental part of the universe.”
Jianmo shrugged.
“No idea! Maybe all worlds would get squished together. Or maybe its non-existent corpse would continue to fill the nothing between dimensions. Maybe it really is unkillable, but Chou didn’t think so. He refused to give up—the stubbornness of a man who could win a staring contest with the sun. In the end, though, even he had to give up, but not without...proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That he was right. That the Void could be killed. A compromise. Chou never did figure out how to kill the Void, but he did manage something else good enough to satisfy him.”
Eui leaned forward further as Jianmo’s crimson eyes glinted in the evening light. He grinned savagely—a reminder that for all he reined it in for Yoshika’s sake, Jianmo was still a demon born of violence and destruction.
“It can be injured.”
----------------------------------------
Yoshika’s mind reeled, retreating into memories as her senses betrayed her. She couldn’t see, but it wasn’t dark. She was blind, yet she couldn’t stop seeing everything, even when she shut her eyes. Everything was wrong, and no matter which senses she focused on, the result was the same. There was nothing, but she didn’t experience that nothing as a lack or an absence. Instead, that nothingness was everything, and it overwhelmed her on every level.
Yan De was there, and oddly enough that was a comfort. Something real that she could ground herself on. The Void, in its paradoxically vast and infinitesimal totality, was too much. Yan De, she could comprehend.
He too was struggling to adjust, gaining his bearings more slowly than she was, even though his power still eclipsed hers after her transformation.
Yoshika had an odd sense of familiarity that she couldn’t quite place her finger on. Had she been here before? It felt as though she had, but the memories were vague and fuzzy, which was a concerning abnormality that she hadn’t experienced since first awakening.
Void? Can you hear me?
She tried to speak, but there was no sound. Nor did the Void answer her, and giving it her attention was making her dizzy again. Instead she looked inward to take stock of herself.
The divine art she’d copied from Yan De and made her own had transformed her such that there was no longer any distinction between her body, mind, and soul. She was her domain now, and her soul realm, and her empire. A tiny, wavering step of the path of true divinity. Like the Void had been before, Yoshika was there, but not all of her.
Her physical and spiritual demesnes had not been cast into the Void with her, nor—quite thankfully—had they been transformed into living avatars of shimmering rainbow fire. Yoshika had performed the divine ritual by instinct, but once she had a moment to reflect, she began to understand the nature of it.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The part of her stranded in the Void was a concentration of her essence—of her—that was otherwise normally spread out over the vast territory of her empire and her soul realm. Then she realized her error.
If Yoshika’s true body had died, it might have been the end of her, unless her friends could repeat the ritual that had brought her back the first time. That thought caused another twinge of recognition, but she set it aside to focus on the more pressing issue. Her transformation was the only thing allowing her to survive outside of anything she understood as reality. She was an anchor to her own realm—or at least the parts of it that she had made hers.
But if she perished, so would they.
She was a focus—a representation of all that existed within her. No, more than that—she had merged herself with parts of the world, as a nascent sovereign divinity. Beyond mere soul resonance, her soul realm and empire were so closely entangled with her that there was no difference between harm to herself and harm to them.
Yoshika had been trying to protect her people, even if it meant possibly sacrificing herself, but instead she’d stranded herself in the most deadly place in existence immediately after tying their fates to hers.
What a blunder.
But she was still alive, and though the Void was alien and confusing, it was not killing her. The connection to her inner world kept her grounded—and, she thought, might also be the key to finding her way back, once Yan De was dealt with.
The grandmaster of the Great Awakening Dragon was rallying, now—finding his own ways to make sense of their situation and ground himself in something real and comprehensible. Even in the deafening cacophony of the Void’s silence, his voice rattled Yoshika’s bones—not that she had any in her current form.
“What is that?!”
Yoshika almost laughed at his incredulous question. Of all the things to say upon waking, of course that would be the first thing to gain his attention. Not that there was anything else with them in the Void. Just Yoshika, Yan De, and an endless ocean of divine essence. It was just there—close enough to touch, and an eternity away.
How did you speak?
Her voice still wasn’t working, but Yan De scoffed at her question, apparently having somehow heard it anyway.
“There’s no space here—no distance to cross. Are you telling me you stole my greatest technique on sight, and don’t know how to speak as spirits do?”
Yoshika would have blushed if she had any blood, but she suspected that the thought alone was enough to reveal her. She felt so exposed all of a sudden.
“I do know how. It just slipped my mind, since I’m not exactly keen on sharing any aspect of my soul with you.”
“The feeling is mutual, but current circumstances don’t offer much choice. Your emotional discipline is atrocious, by the way. Practically every errant thought is bleeding through.”
“Sorry. Holding myself back like that isn’t usually a concern for my cultivation.”
He—didn’t exactly snort, but that was the impression Yoshika got. It really was like talking to a spirit.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be when you go around mixing your soul with everyone you meet like some kind of spiritual slattern. I want no part of it, however, so keep yourself in check or I’ll be forced to take extreme measures.”
The dialogue was helping. It reminded Yoshika of Jia’s first attempts at communion with her inner spirit—inappropriate insults and all. She could imagine herself and Yan De standing in a featureless black void, side by side. Too close, practically overlapping. She put some mental distance between them and felt the pressure of his soul subside.
“There. Better?”
“Hmph! You’re surprisingly adept at this, I’ll give you that.”
“My daughter is a great spirit.”
Yan De couldn’t hide his begrudging token of respect, and she imagined him turning away and clicking his tongue—no, that was too Yue-like, and it made her uncomfortable. Sneering down at her, delivering the compliment as though it were an insult. Yes, that was better.
He wasn’t attacking, and neither was she. Because they couldn’t, at least not in any conventional way. There was no space, and they had no physical forms to harm. Yoshika imagined herself as...herself, but still that blazing avatar of multi-colored flame. Yan De was still a dragon, but since neither of them had form she instead visualized him as the man she remembered.
Tall and well built, like his son, but not so eager to show it off. A well trimmed beard and ornate robes that bordered on ostentatious without ever quite crossing the line. A face that twisted into an ugly sneer so easily it may as well have been his default expression. Oh, and like Yoshika, he was an avatar of fire. Bright azure Dragonfire.
In the mortal world, it had been too bright to make out a color, and she had assumed that it would retain the same shifting aurora as Plasma, but no, it was azure. Yoshika didn’t know why she was so certain of it, but there was no question in her mind.
Across from them was something that defied imagination. Divine Essence, pure and bright, in such quantities that it terrified her. Before she’d claimed it, the density of the essence around the Sovereign’s Tear had been the greatest she’d ever seen. This? It brought to mind her earlier memory about Jianmo and the endless void of space. The difference was too great to put into words. Astronomical in the most literal sense of the word.
If the essence that leaked from the Tear was the moon, then this was the sun. A thousand suns. And despite that, Yoshika knew at a glance that they were one and the same. The ocean before her simply had a much longer time to accumulate.
It would annihilate her in an instant if she touched it. Like a mortal throwing themselves into the heart of the sun. This was what her sister had seen at the edge of the world? Yoshika couldn’t help but feel that Misun had perhaps undersold it a bit. The sheer scale of the calamity threatened before her was beyond comprehension.
So of course, Yan De reached for it, however hesitantly. Like a moth drawn to flame—a man who saw that kind of power and felt only desire.
“It’s not yours, you know.”
He jerked his hand back from the ocean of essence, infinitely distant yet tantalizingly close.
“What?”
“The technique. I didn’t steal or copy it. Nor did either you or I create it.”
Yan De blinked at her in confusion for a moment before he realized what she was talking about.
“Ah, the art of ascension?”
Yoshika nodded.
“It existed before either of us, I think. The important part, anyway. I did take that spark of insight from you—I guess you could call it inspiration, but I feel like that’s still giving you too much credit. I was only able to match you because I found my own understanding, just like you did.”
“Your point?”
“I guess I’m just trying to say that if it was as easy as simply stealing techniques, then anybody could become a god. Or rather—everyone would. I inherited part of that insight from you, just like I once inherited the power to cut a star asunder. Both of them, I made my own.”
The grandmaster raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“I’ve seen your audaciously named technique. It may have slain Bu Dong Rushan, but I found it wanting.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgement.
“I’ve got a long way to go before I can realize its potential, yes, but that’s my point. If it were the Bloody Sovereign’s technique, you would be dead. Though I never learned from him directly, I know that there was nothing in heaven or earth that he could not slay. Not even Nothing.”
Yan De furrowed his brow and twisted a pinky in his ear. Purely performative, since they weren’t actually speaking with sound—he really was amazingly good at spiritual communication.
“I’m sorry, what was that? I could swear that last part was complete nonsense.”
“Maybe it is, but that’s the sort of person Sovereign Chou was. He chased nonsense until the very end, until it broke him. And I think it will break you too, with enough time. A path without end. An endless life where satisfaction is ever out of reach.”
“I already told you I’m not interested in being lectured. You clearly had some wise teachers, I’ll give you that, but my ambitions are not so petty. I will climb that summit and stand above all others, and neither you nor the ghost of a man who quit halfway will stand in my way.”
Yoshika sighed breathlessly. It’s not like she was trying to warn him away. She knew there was nothing she could ever say to convince Yan De of anything that he hadn’t already decided for himself. She was, if anything, just thinking aloud.
“I’ve been here before. I can remember it now. When I died. I know Void is here, and listening. It was one of my teachers too, the ones you just complimented.”
“Tsk, the elemental? I suppose this would fit within its domain. Shen Yu warned me not to cross it. And? Are you trying to impress me?”
“No, just thinking. The three best teachers I ever had were Qin Zhao, Jianmo, and Void. At least, when it comes to cultivation. Master Yumi is my favorite, and taught me things that I hold far more dear than cultivation—Hwang Sung supported me from the beginning. But those three, they were the best, and also the most infuriating because they never just taught me anything.”
She huffed, getting herself a bit worked up as she ranted about her various mentors.
“It always had to be some kind of puzzle or challenge. It wasn’t enough to tell me, I had to figure it out. They just put the pieces in front of me and then wait for me to understand. They don’t even tell me they’re doing it, most times!”
Yan De chortled with what Yoshika thought might be the first bit of genuine amusement she’d ever felt from the man.
“Teachers are like that, aren’t they? The good ones.”
“Maybe? Do they have to be? I hate it. I never understood the point, and maybe that’s why everyone but Haeun tells me I’m a bad teacher.”
“This is all very fascinating, but do you have an actual point? I swear, if I have to spend the rest of eternity suffering your complaints, I may actually go insane.”
Yoshika shrugged.
“You won’t have to worry about that. Misun guessed ten years, but now that I’ve seen it for myself—now that I remember what Void showed me...”
She remembered that vision of a divine realm—the first of many—growing so large that it collapsed in on itself, imploding into a tiny singularity floating aimlessly through the Void. The only way to prevent it was to spread out the power of the font of creation, to funnel its energy into many small worlds instead of one great realm. Mortal worlds.
The ocean of divine essence was so massive, so dense...she could see the future in the past. As Void had, over billions upon billions of generations.
“I think I was always meant to be here. To inherit Sovereign Chou’s legacy, die, be reborn, and then come here to see this. I wonder, Void, oh greatest teacher of mine, whether you predicted all of this. Or maybe you just kept nudging levers, improvising and adapting like a certain Snake-like Grand Magus. I don’t think I’ll ever know, and I doubt you’re going to just tell me.”
Yan De furrowed his brows as she started talking past him, but still the Void didn’t answer. Yoshika kept speaking into it anyway.
“You’ve given me all the tools and set up all the pieces. So I guess all that’s left is for me to solve your puzzle. The collapse of this world is imminent. I can’t solve that problem from here, which means I need to leave. Now.”
Still nothing. Yan De crossed his arms and sneered at her.
“It is your fault we are trapped here in the first place. Had you simply known your place—”
“Fuck you, Yan De! You forced me into a position where my only options, as you understood them, were death or mutual destruction. You’re not stupid enough to do that on purpose, and not even you would bet your life on me being altruistic enough to sacrifice myself to prevent collateral damage. That can only mean one thing—you didn’t think I could do it. You underestimated me. Again.”
He hesitated, then grimaced, forcing his next words out as though they physically pained him.
“I did neither, Empress Yoshika. I know you are the greatest foe I’ve ever faced, and I knew that I would not defeat you without giving it my all. I simply...was not aware of the consequences.”
“You—what?!”
“I haven’t felt anything like that rift since the descent of the gods, when Shen Yu came through one just like it to warn of Chou’s legacy and the demonic invaders. I did not know it was possible to generate one from within a mortal realm without ascending as a god. I did not...know.”
Somehow his ignorance made it even worse. She’d been so sure it was calculated, that he’d pushed their world to the brink of collapse as a way to stay her hand and prevent her from fighting back effectively. After being underestimated constantly for her whole life, the fact that she’d nearly died from overestimating her opponent rankled like nothing else.
But if Yan De truly didn’t know that he had the strength to tear open a rift in space...that meant he didn’t have the strength. He’d said it himself—he held nothing back. He was trapped here and she...
She’d returned once before.
Void had guided her—or a small piece of her—to find the way back. To...make her own way back. She’d been so weak and fragile, then. Just a pale remnant of her soul—a tiny seed crystal from which her friends could regrow her back to life.
That wasn’t an option this time, but in the way of infuriating but brilliant teachers, Void had given her all she needed. Chou’s legacy, the tutelage of his one and only disciple, and the memories of a being that had seen the dawn of creation itself, and would live to see its end. One that would have survived the entire span of time without knowing the fear of injury but for a single, stubborn man, determined to find an end to all things.
She wondered how far back it had planned this. Do Hye would surely be taking notes if he could witness it.
If even one piece had been missing, it would have all been over. She would have languished there, imprisoned alongside her greatest foe and helpless to stop the apocalypse looming on the horizon.
“Yan De, it has been a truly unpleasant experience knowing you. I almost wish that we’d never come into conflict. Yet without you, I’d have never met my best friend, I would never have risen as far as I have now, and I would never have witnessed this. Our petty feud—and the war you waged over it—has never mattered, but for this moment. For that, I suppose I should thank you. But I won’t.”
“You think it’s over? I do not plan on staying here forever, and there are ways that our battle might yet continue. Your power will be invaluable kindling to fuel my escape.”
“It is over, Yan De. Because I did have good teachers, and I have no interest in battling you. But I do have some tiny level of begrudging respect for you, as a fellow traveler on the path to perfection, if nothing else. So I’ll leave you with the same thing my masters left me. A tiny glimmer of insight—the tools to solve a puzzle I never even knew existed. Watch closely, mighty grandmaster, because you will only ever witness this once until you can refine the insight I share and make it your own. In return for all I’ve stolen from you, Yan De, I return that favor and consider us even.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but Yoshika’s power was already circulating around her like a hurricane as she grasped at that unexpected nugget of wisdom from a child that had lived millions of years without ever quite letting go of their father, and paired it with the memories of a timeless being that had only once known pain.
Then, she whispered her apology into the Void as it wrote itself into the fabric of reality—her reality.
Divine Art: Voidbreak