The trip out from the sect is a lot less eventful than her entry. Elder Shang Hao called Hisheng to the chamber, Hisheng saw that they hadn’t ripped each other to pieces, and he was more than happy to escort her out and away from it all.

It was a little weird walk, going out through the main route this time. There’s a hundred-foot wide path of carved marble that goes through the gates of the core, inner, and outer sects, manned by the strongest defenses and checkpoints that the sect can offer and almost half-again the number of arrays and formations active around them. By her size she draws a good amount of attention, but Hisheng at her side seems to actively suppress a lot of the more burning questions people might have, and she is heading out, not in. Besides, she’s not the only large or strange looking person in the sect; she sees two people with giant’s blood, almost as tall as she is and with skin that look grey and lightly green. Almost a third of the cultivators and servants that she senses fall into some category of beastblood, with scales, feathers and more abounding. In this, at least, she can’t fault the Hungering Roots sect: willpower and potential are what define cultivators, not physical features, and there’s a variety of different groups of people in the sect as they walk.

And, she admits, it’s pretty peaceful. Well, besides everyone scrambling to find out what caused the alarms. The lack of personnel and initiates is what causes it mostly, sure, but the walls and buildings of the sect seem designed to minimize noise as much as possible, making it so the distant sounds of birds and the wind are the only sounds that clutter the air beyond the distant foundries and the alarmed panic her entrance brought about. It’s nice. She doesn’t remember it being quiet when she was here… but she wasn’t really of a mind to notice. Always pushing, always uncomfortable standing still. She still is, she supposes, but it’s more a choice than a burden now.

They get to the front gates of the sect, and with all the commotion, it takes Hisheng almost twenty minutes before they manage to get through, even with explicit permission and the authority of a core cultivator of the sect. She mostly spends her time intimidatingly looming over the poor gate guards and smoking what’s left of her bowl.

And then, far less dramatically than she returned, she leaves the Hungering Roots sect.

It… surprised her a bit just how venomous her feelings were toward the sect. She knew, on an intellectual level, that she was hurt that they’d abandoned her, that she hadn’t considered herself a part of the sect anymore all the way back when she woke up and realized they hadn’t come for her in Paleblossom city, but it’s another thing to experience those feelings. There was almost a weight to her as the Want had pushed them all forward, hungry and aching with genuine fury at the assumption that she’d just fall right back into the fold. That she’d be grateful for “all they’d done for her”.

It wasn’t… surprising, per se? It didn’t feel like something that the Mask or the Flesh needed to step in and stop… but it felt easy to get dragged into.

Past the sect gates, they start down the trail of the sect’s plateau. It’s a lot shorter than most of the ones she saw in Cragend and Paleblossom city, but even still, it is a plateau large enough to house the entire complex, and without leaping, it’s a decent enough walk. It’s only after they’re a few minutes down the trail, well-trod and with carved paths for carts, that she feels Hisheng unclench and let go of some of his tension.

“So,” he says, “what now?”

“Now? …Well, I imagine my “boss” will want a word. We’ll see when he shows up, but Elder Shang Hao is most certainly going to try to make some trouble for me there. Other than that… Li Shu’s got a big ritual I’m gonna help her with. That’ll be interesting. I have some stuff to discuss with a pond… and I think Hao Nera is getting close to being ready with his project. Qen Hou is mostly just focused on cultivation, really.

“As for you… well. Me and Elder asshole up there came to an agreement. You’ll be getting all the special treatment they can give. Ask, and ye shall receive, and if they try to suppress you, send a letter to the same place you’ve been sending mine. They’ll make sure he stays in line.”

Hisheng snorts, loud and happy and incredulous. “You really don’t do things by half measure. It’s… weird to think about how far you’ve come.”

“I guess it is. The whole place feels smaller now, but… it always felt a bit restrictive to me.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t just mean with the sect, or the politics. It is mad that you have the weight to make deals and demands with an Elder of our- of my sect, but that’s not it at all. You’ve gained real, genuine allies, ones that are growing strong, fast. Every time I’ve visited, all three your… housemates(?) have been noticeably stronger, in just a few months. You’ve gained not just strength, but skills and ideals all your own. It’s a bit intimidating, in a way.”

“It’s not like you haven’t gotten stronger,” she tells him. “You’re a core disciple, and you’ve gotten most of the way through Core Formation realm since last I saw you. You were barely starting just a few years back.”

He laughs. “A big fish in a small pond situation, perhaps. It’s hard to take compliments from geniuses like you.”

She gives him a more searching look, her senses stretching forth to better interact with his biology. Despite his words, he seems almost weirdly at ease.

“Do… you want something else?” she asks.

A shrug, and then a sigh. “Not really. I think I’d be pretty content here for… well, at least a few more years. I just want to meditate and enjoy life. Be kind where I can, learn new skills here and there. I could see myself still here in a few decades, with my friends, with new family, with genuine peace.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“But it’s still tempting, to see you. To think of grand adventures, of exploring the world and making a mark on it. It’s just… it’s not me, you know?”

“Yeah. I know… exactly how that feels.”

“I’m glad. It’s hard to explain, except that… it might be fun for a vacation. But I wouldn’t want it to be my life. For now, my life is here, and it’s quiet. At least compared to yours.”

She looks over at him, taking in the full breadth of him. Of his face. How he breathes. The way his heart always sounds so steady, so consistent. How he seems genuinely in balance with every part of himself, even with all the messiness of a human body.

“I’m going to miss you,” she says, and it is True.

He smiles softly. “Flattering. I’ll miss you too. But it was always going to end with us, I think. Considering how much better our relationship is now compared to when we dated, maybe in another decade we’ll be speaking wedding vows.”

She laughs at that, a sharp bark that actually makes Hisheng jump a bit. “Aww, I’m almost hurt! To think, you’d consider our relationship better when I’m not making you cum your brains out!”

He blushes, but only a little bit, smiling wide. “What can I say, I treasure our mutual emotional development ever so slightly more than your physical talents.”

“Only slightly? Ah, I suppose I can let it be then.”

They laugh, and the walk down the cliffside goes peacefully as they wind down the path.

When they reach the bottom of the plateau, then and only then does Hisheng’s voice get truly serious.

As they stand just past the gates that block “common” access to the path up the mountain, Hisheng turns to her and bows.

She blinks, cocks an eyebrow. “What are you-”

“You went out of your way to think of me, and stood up for me against a sect elder, when all I have done is offer a bare minimum repayment of what I owe you. This humble Hisheng is grateful to you, and swears that all I have sworn to you shall forever be upheld. So long as I live and breathe, all you need is to ask, and I will carve a place for you to rest.”

And he speaks the oath, and it is True.

She laughs. Low, and quiet, and then gradually it builds, until she’s almost doubled over, laughing harder than she’s cackled in years. She belts out a genuine wheeze as her altered lungs fail to keep up with the demands of mirth, and then she sees Hisheng looking up at her and incredibly confused and laughs harder.

By the time she’s done, she’s sitting on the grass, looking up at him.

“Well. That helped clear something up. Oaths, huh?

“But that deal ain’t exactly fair. Let me offer you one, too.”

She stands, and bows right back to him, matching the depth he bowed to and clasping both hands against her sternum.

“Call upon me for help, and so long as I hear of it, I shall always answer.”

Hisheng actually steps back as the weight of the oath lands on him, the vow of simple words spoken in Truespeak. It was his saying it, his making that vow, that broke the dam, cracked the code; her Truespeak doesn’t make things come true. It’s nothing so powerful, though it might perhaps influence things here and there. No, it’s not that she can force things to be true that aren’t; it’s that she can’t say anything that isn’t True. She can’t speak falsehoods in it. That’s why Shapefixit had trusted her words so immediately back in the tunnels beneath Cragend; Truespeak cannot say a lie.

She and Hisheng both are now bound by it, their oaths turned True. And Hisheng smiles at her.

She looks at him there. The man who swore, unconditionally, to always carve out someplace safe for her. Who risked reputation, life and limb to keep her safe, and apparently almost tore himself apart on hearing about how she had suffered. Tall, well defined muscles, more lithe than one might expect, with richly tanned skin and those bright, swirling tattoos across his head. Sparking eyes, bright as emeralds, and a smile so genuine she can literally feel it.

“So… want to go find someplace quiet? For old times’ sake?”

He blinks. Opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. And then busts out laughing.

She frowns. “Come on, I was serious! You don’t need to laugh!”

“No, no, it’s not that!” he says, nearly shaking. “It’s just- you just- after all that- and the- only you would proposition someone right after swearing a binding vow like that!”

She snorts, tossing her hair back. “I am brave where many are fools, it’s true.”

He shakes his head, still laughing. “Aaaaagh. We’re still like right outside the sect. Elder Shang Hao probably heard that entire conversation.”

A shrug. “Good. Means he knows how serious I am that it would go very poorly for him if he tried to hurt you.”

He laughs again, but it’s quieter this time. He looks at her… pauses. Shakes his head. And then-

“Alright, sure. Why not. I know a spot a little ways away.”

It takes considerable effort for Raika not to morph into Gigant form and carry the bastard in a dead sprint the whole way there.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And what of Feng Gao? Any updates?”

The room is dark, cold, and violently off. Though every surface is as black as the void, there are glimpses in each wall as if something moves, just off to one side. Here and there, strangling vines tougher than steel and sharper than razor wire grow out of the impossible dark, as if one is standing beneath the roots of an impossible tree- if only its soil were darkness itself, made into sharp angles and twisting corridors.

The voice comes out of the dark as if from far, far away… yet always seems to speak from directly in front of anyone that can hear it.

A man kneels, his face covered in a veil, his clothing a simple mix of gold, green and white. “None, honored ancestor. No mark was found of his passing, but his life-lantern remains cut off. We know only that he has passed; any insight into the details of it shows us only darkness.”

“...is that… bull-thing still interfering? Errath’s little pet in their new Division?”

“His efforts have diminished of late, honored ancestor. We believe it was protective instinct over his standing and projects, but our efforts to examine him remain.”

“Good. Keep searching. If nothing can be found, make something up. It would please me to use the beast against his master, and we cannot let any involvement in the death of a named Feng descendant go unpunished.

“And when you find him, inform me immediately. Things are beginning to shift within our borders, and I would have it known that all who challenge the authority of the Feng clan will find themselves… re-educated on the wisdom of such an idea.”

The man in simple robes, who has crushed cities and woven branches so finely through institutions and armies that they did not even notice when they were unwoven, bows his head to the cold floor in a perfect kowtow.

“It shall be done, master. Glory to the Feng Clan, and Glory to the Empire.”

And then He Is Not There.