Yuan and Mordiggian discussed the apocalypse over a cup of spirit-leaf tea.

Though he had seen cultivators partake in the practice in the past, Yuan had never been allowed to participate himself. Qi-charged nutrients were too rare and precious to be wasted on Scraps.

Now that he could test it, Yuan found himself supremely unimpressed. The beverage tasted terribly bitter and while it carried more qi than usual food rations, he could easily gather as much from training near a leyline.

“My sincere apologies for the taste,” Mordiggian said as he poured himself a cup with an ancient jade teapot. “I focused on cultivating wood-aligned spirit-leaves, which is of little benefit to those blessed by the metal sign like yourself. I myself was born under the auspices of the Yin Wood Pig.”

“Do you believe in the Zodiac?” Yuan asked as he looked at the hole to his left. Mordiggian had made his lair on the second floor of a ruined pagoda with a crumbled wall exposed to the garden below them. It offered quite a splendid view of the wasteland. “It always sounded so vague to me. Never put much faith in it.”

“I see the Zodiac like I see the wind,” Mordiggian replied while sitting on a dusty old cushion. The old cultivator lived modestly, with deceptively strong cobwebs keeping the cracked ceiling from falling apart. Yuan didn’t see any furniture besides the tea table, rare scroll shelves, and a few ceramic vases. “It pushes us in a direction, but hardly enough to throw us onto a specific course. It is merely one influence among countless others.”

“Strong enough for us to notice, too weak for us to care too much about?” Yuan glanced at the grass-covered rails below and the rusted wagons resting upon them. Lady Tama showcased a few of them to Orient’s group, with the spirit-train’s caretaker examining each of them closely. Yuan guessed she was considering which ones she would incorporate into herself. “Were there more trains and railways during the Lost Age?”

“Thousands, with routes that circled the whole of Earth,” Mordiggian said. “Men created so many technological wonders. Vehicles that could fly from one side of the world to the other in a day’s time; machines that could run a thousand tasks at once; even rockets that allowed us to go to the moon.”

“You’re making this up,” Yuan replied in disbelief. “They would have burned.”

“The moonlight wasn’t yet the radiance that burns away falsehood,” Mordiggian replied while sipping his tea. Unlike Yuan, he seemed to enjoy the taste. “Moonburns would have been a boon during those times. Youngsters call this era the Lost Age, but the Age of Decay would be more appropriate. Nations went to war all the time, poverty ran rampant, megacorps plundered nature’s resources until the seas turned poisonous and the earth drowned in trash.”

“Megacorps?” Yuan asked, the word unknown to him. “Are those demons of some kind?”

His question appeared to amuse Mordiggian. “You could say that. They too were evils born of human greed. Many sects follow in their footsteps to this day, seeking to commodify human suffering.” He shook his head in annoyance. “Our people had lost their way back then. Our minds were clouded with such filth that we blinded ourselves to the Dao. The men of that time worshiped money, fame, and power rather than virtue and potential.”

Yuan had heard those stories. “Until the Thunderdance.”

“Until the Spiral Dancer,” Mordiggian confirmed. “I never met her before the Thunderdance, though I’d heard much about her. She was a holy woman from an eastern land, a mystic of immense spiritual power and knowledge. Many called her the last bodhisattva, who achieved enlightenment and yet decided to remain in this world to guide mankind to salvation.”

“What’s a bodhisattva?” Yuan asked. He didn’t know the term.

“A spiritual rank in a religion long forgotten. Their principles weren’t so far off from today’s cultivation rites.” Mordiggian stroked his enormous gut. “Most importantly, this marked her as a regressor of considerable power and wisdom.”

“A regressor?” Yuan had heard the term. “Aren’t they people aware of their past lives?”

“Indeed they are,” Mordiggian explained. “The Spiral Dancer wasn’t the first of us to awaken her core through meditation in human history, but she was the only one to succeed in the modern age; and the first person in history to ascend through the Seven Coils of Infinity and join with the Dao.”

Mordiggian looked up at the vibrant sun and the golden clouds outside. For a moment he seemed gone; his body anchored in the present moment, while his mind wandered past the veil of time to a past long gone.

“You should have seen her dance,” he said, his eyes shining. “It was such a surreal yet entrancing sight. Every step thundered forth lightning from the sky, and every movement was a wave unraveling illusions and falsehoods that blinded us humans to the Way. She was a spark among men, a bolt that shocked the world awake. I watched her ascend a spiral staircase of shooting stars until she became one with the sky.”

His words carried such vibrant awe that Yuan could almost hear lightning crackle in the background. He imagined a Thunderlands’ veil covering the world in an instant, bringing forth spirits, demons, and the wonders of cultivation to all.

“How did it go wrong?” Yuan whispered, his attention turning towards the ruins of the Lost Age surrounding him. “How did it come to this?”

“The Spiral Dancer had hoped to jolt mankind out of its self-inflicted spiritual decay and force them to look up to a brighter future,” Mordiggian replied after focusing back on his tea. He looked at his own monstrous reflection in the beverage with sorrow. “Unfortunately, she was mistaken. A world drowning in sin and filth could only birth monsters.”

Yuan quickly guessed what happened. “That’s when they appeared, wasn't it? The demigods of ultraviolence?”

“Them and countless other terrors.” Mordiggian shook his head. “The megacorps were transformed into self-aware spirits of industrialized greed, demanding worship and stripping the earth of its resources. Maure Incorporated, Dynamis, Dismaker Labs… voracious evil things, all of them. So many saw cultivation as a ticket to power and glory rather than the path to enlightenment, and the nations of the world tethered on the brink of a war that could have destroyed us all.”

“And no one tried to take a stand?” Yuan wouldn’t put it past cultivators to try to seize power for themselves, but no sect would let their own world be destroyed.

“The Spiral Dancer inspired many heroes and peace bringers, but what can a few flickering lights of hope do against such an endless tide of greed and sorrow?” Mordiggian finished his cup. “Chaos reigned for five years until Lord Kou’s ascension purified the world.”

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Yuan didn’t buy his excuse. “You mean when he destroyed it?”

Mordiggian stroked his oily chin. “Say you are a doctor, Gunsoul, and a patient comes to you with legs infected by gangrene. If nothing is done, the rot will spread and the person will die. Would you cut off both of your patient’s legs to save their life, even knowing that they will never walk again?”

“Your master bit off a lot more than two legs,” Yuan countered.

“And yet, they had to be removed to save mankind. Was that the best outcome? No, I do not think so. Was it necessary? I’m afraid it was.” Mordiggian glanced down at the group following Lady Tama, singling out Holster among them. “Did you know that Lord Kou was around your Hitobashira’s age when he began to cultivate, right after the Thunderdance?”

Those words took Yuan aback.

“The same age as Holster?” He could hardly believe it. “But if so… he can’t have ascended at such a young age…”

“Age means little in the grand scheme of things,” Mordiggian replied. “It does not necessarily teach wisdom, as many believe. That is born of experience, which Lord Kou had plenty of in his short life.”

Yuan struggled to imagine a boy of Holster’s age reaching the Dao so early, but then again… his charge had shown great aptitude in the arts of feng shui and sutras. A knowledge that had been forced upon her by the cruelties of the wasteland.

“What…” Yuan cleared his throat and then found himself staring at his reflection in the tea. “What was he like? This Lord Kou?”

“He was an orphan in a war-torn land whose name will mean little to you. A child with a great heart and strange powers he did not understand himself. He could eat the ills of his fellow man, which in turn granted him insight into the human condition.” Mordiggian’s eyes brimmed with immense sadness; the kind which Yuan believed to be entirely sincere, raw, and true. “Every day, he would tend to the poor and the needy, absolving sinners and taking their pain upon himself.”

“You admire him,” Yuan realized. “You worshiped him, even back then. Even before he ascended.”

“I did.” Mordiggian rubbed his fingers against his eyelids, wiping off oily tears. “He ascended too soon. His life had barely begun. Tell me, Gunsoul, how is it fair when our children are the ones who pay for our sins?”

“It’s… not,” Yuan conceded.

“Yet it happened,” Mordiggian replied. “Lord Kou spent five years pursuing his Path and took the Lost Age’s sins upon himself when he ascended. All the wars, all the suffering, all the corpo-spirits, and countless other horrors you will never have to experience. He recreated the world anew.”

“He unmade it.”

“This world is not unmade,” his host insisted. “It is unbuilt.”

Yuan frowned in confusion. “What difference does it make?”

“A big one.” Mordiggian waved a hand at the wasteland. “Look upon this empty expanse. Where you see ruins, I see the wellspring of possibility; clay waiting to be molded in a better shape than what came before.” He shook his head. “Lord Kou gave us a second chance, and he received nothing but scorn in return.”

“Seems to me your master didn’t do a good job at cleaning up the rot,” Yuan replied. “The Flesh Mansion Sect sounds very much like those megacorps reborn.”

“Not even the Wayfinders can change human nature, Gunsoul,” Mordiggian replied. “I suspect a few of them ascended to do exactly that and failed. The Blackmoon seemed keen on dispelling falsehoods, but free-will is a core component of the Dao and spins the wheel of karma.”

“So we’re free to repeat our mistakes?”

“Maybe cultivators will fall into the same pitfalls as their predecessors, or maybe we will live up to the potential the Spiral Dancer saw in us.” Mordiggian waved the subject away. “What matters is that we have a chance to make something better for ourselves… if enough good people seize it.”

Yuan clenched his jaw, then pondered the Sin-Eater’s words while sipping his tea. The beverage no longer tasted so bitter on his tongue. The portrait Mordiggian presented of his master contrasted so much with the image of the larger than life, all-powerful demon king the Sky-Biter was so often presented as. The man could be lying or remembering the past through the lenses of his own prejudice... or maybe he was telling the truth.

Yuan realized he didn’t care all that much. Philosophy and grand metaphysics always flew over his head because they served little practical use. Whether he believed Mordiggian’s story or not didn’t change anything about his situation. It didn’t matter why the world changed, only that it did.

He had a more down-to-earth problem to deal with.

“You still haven’t said anything about the cube,” Yuan reminded him.

“I am getting there, young man,” Mordiggian reassured him. “I simply gave you the context in which it was created.”

“Oh, alright. My apologies for my impatience.” Yuan had spent so long on the road he had forgotten how to speak politely to ancient cultivators. Mingxia would have scolded him for it. “So this Natho empire was one of these warring nations?”

“NATO was one of the greatest military alliances of the Lost Age engaged in a confrontation with other nations,” Mordiggian said. “In order to gather power for the inevitable world war everyone knew was on the horizon, many of these countries attempted to bind the demigods of ultraviolence into their service.”

“They tried to bind the Gun?” The very idea sounded absurd to Yuan. No cultivator could control such a mindless force of slaughter and destruction. “Is such a thing possible?”

“The demigods of ultraviolence are no different from exceptionally powerful spirits or demons. It is possible to form contracts with them, or to trap and seal them. Obviously, nobody managed to do either with the Gun, who was too strong and savage to behave.” Mordiggian refilled his empty cup. “The Nuke proved an easier target. I am not certain how NATO’s cultivators managed to trap it in the cube, but they did.”

“But if it’s trapped there, how can there be nuclear cultivators running around?”

Mordiggian pointed at Yuan’s bullet-core, which was stuck in his forehead. “Did the Gun personally fire the bullet that killed you?”

Yuan’s jaw clenched. “No.”

“The demigods do not have to be physically present to influence the weapons that fuel their violent existence,” Mordiggian explained. “NATO’s leadership wished to exploit this relationship to win the war before it began. If the Gun can empower others through bullets, even those that it didn’t fire by itself, then they thought that the Nuke could… rear its children.”

“My mentor mentioned weapons that could wipe out cities in the blink of an eye,” Yuan muttered, his bullet-core pounding in his skull. “You’re talking about them, aren’t you? The Children of the Nuke?”

“I’m afraid so.” Mordiggian let out a heavy sigh. “Nuclear weapons are much rarer than guns, but far more devastating. I’d once read a report that said it would only take four-hundred of these nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity, and the world hosted over twelve thousand of them before Lord Kou’s ascension. Sadly, they aren’t all gone or rusted. I suspect many of them sleep underground, waiting for the signal to awaken and set off the Nuclear Age…”

Yuan shuddered. He struggled to imagine such boundless destruction, but then again, the world had ended once already. He couldn’t brush off Mordiggian’s warnings so easily.

“Why would this NATO empire do that?” Yuan asked. “Why would they destroy themselves?”

“I doubt they ever intended to do anything so thorough as to bring about the Nuclear Age,” his host replied. “I suspect the cube was designed to partially bind the Nuke to a summoning contract. Whoever controls the artifact may be able to partially control its prisoner, forcing it to either neuter hostile nuclear weapons or sabotage their enemies’ arsenal. It may be why these devices continue to sleep underground. The Nuke’s seal prevents others from triggering them without the proper ritual.”

Which neatly explained why the Yinyang Khan would seek this weapon. The ability to control these slumbering Children of the Nuke would make him the most powerful warlord in the Unmade World. Weapons capable of wiping out cities with a mere blink would destroy his enemies and cow everyone else into following his orders.

As for Manhattan’s motives…

“What will happen if someone wakes them up?” Yuan muttered under his breath. “These nuclear weapons? If they detonate all at once?”

“I cannot say for certain what would happen then,” Mordiggian replied. “The Children of the Nuke may bathe the wasteland in searing light, after which the strongest cultivators and spirits will survive to inherit an irradiated grave. Life may endure and bounce back in some way, or it may not. Maybe time, the seven ascendancies, and constant battles have destroyed enough sleeping bombs that their damage will remain localized. All I can say is that our world will become much less safe with the Nuke spreading its brand of nuclear death.”

Yuan feared as much.

Manhattan said that the cube could bring salvation to all. When Yuan stared at the horizon, at the desert that went on forever, he found himself having a vision of what the nuclear cultivator would see as the salvation of a broken, flawed world.

A silent land bathed in nuclear light.