Epilogue
“Now, remember Lii, grandmaster Vowlshten is in charge while we are gone. And remember to take care of your assigned chores while we’re gone,” Master Shi’en instructed Nezha before boarding the airship to go to the Hollow Throne tournament.
“Yes, master,” Nezha said with a polite bow. Master Shi’en nodded and boarded the ship, greeting the captain happily. Nezha waited patiently as the ship took off and left. He waited until the ship was far over the horizon before entering the forest. He needed to train and gather his strength. His master instructed him on many things. Magic, chakra combinations, and chakra manipulation. The kind that allows one to split a core.
Nezha went deep into the forest, far from any village where his master would meet him for training. Over the past week, his master informed him how the monster Zeana cycles its cores, how many it has, the chakra channels it made, and instructed him on many other things. Magic, chakra combinations, and chakra and core manipulation. After many years of research that she’s conducted, she found a way to split a core without the person dying.
First, Nezha needed to collect the right chakra for his new combinations. He walked into a hidden cave on a cliffside that his master had made for his training. The tunnel was dark, and he couldn’t see far ahead. So he cycled his first core to his right hand to create a small fireball with Fire and Air chakra, creating an Inferno core. The fireball lit his way, and he calmly walked deeper into the cave, ignoring a few false passages that led to traps and other deadly rooms.
After a few minutes of walking, he reached the section of tunnels made for him and him alone. Four tunnels lay before him. The leftmost passage led to his personal quarters and study. Next to that, it led to the kitchen and experimentation laboratory. The next led to the training hall and meditation rooms. The rightmost passage led to the guest rooms, which were currently full of guests.
Nezha looked between the tunnels and remembered, “I have to do my chores now, don’t I?” With a blast of fire, he sent chakra into an almost hidden crystal above him. Orange light shot down crystals that led down each passage. He dispelled his fireball and followed the light down the second passage to the kitchen. He gathered a dozen loaves of bread and bowls of old cooked rice there, stacking them high on trays and piling those onto each other with six trays in each hand.
He then went down to the guest rooms. Dozen steel doors labeled with numbers one through twelve lined either side of the tunnel, and Nezha took a deep breath. The stale air smelled of feces, rotting food, and spoiled meat. It wreaked of death. He could feel the concentrated Death chakra permeating the world and rotting it. Parts of the earth tunnel had crumbled, exposing the dim crystals above, and all the steel doors had rust forming on them.
Nezha placed the pile of trays on the ground and opened sliding hatches on each door to look inside the guest rooms. Rooms one, two, eight, ten, and twelve had guests who couldn’t stay any longer. Their bodies were skin and bones, with flies buzzing around and maggots crawling on them. Rooms three through seven, nine, and eleven had guests who loved being there. They shied away from the light, and a few cowered in a corner, rocking back and forth on their heels. All except one.
The guest in room eleven was a new female his master had acquired for his training. She had black hair and brown slanted eyes and wore a simple brown cloth that went down to her knees. She looked up at the light when Nezha opened the hatch to peer inside, and immediately asked, “Wh-who are you? Wh-where am I?!” Nezha closed the hatch without saying anything and heard the woman stand and bang against the steel door, screaming for him to wait. He hadn’t so much as turned around as he collected the food trays and slid them into the rooms that still had guests.
Some of the guests took the extra food gratefully, while others waited for Nezha to leave before taking the food, and the woman in room eleven took the food and threw it across her room as she screamed. Then Nezha slid in her extra tray of food, which seemed to anger her even more.
While his guests ate, Nezha began collecting those who wouldn’t be staying with him any longer to bring them to the training and cultivation room for the next stage in his training. Each door he opened creaked as they opened, and Nezha added oiling the hinges to his chore list.
***
Ming sat in the pitch-black one-meter by two-meter cell. Her knees to her chest, and rotting food scattered around her as she cried. She had been there for weeks, if not longer. First, the bandits attacked her village, made her watch as they did things to her sisters and her, and just as she was released from the infirmary to try and resume what semblance of life she could regain, she gets attacked by someone whom she can only assume is another bandit.
“Why me?” Ming sobbed as she tapped the back of her head against the stone wall behind her. A soft thud sounded next to her, and after only a day of being there, she quickly figured out it was a cup of water. One appeared in the same spot four times a day and disappeared after thirty minutes, which is how she kept track of time. One every six hours. This means the man who fed her was here at least twenty-four hours ago, and there would be more food soon.
Her stomach grumbled, and she quickly drank the cup of water next to her. Setting it beside her, she felt a low rumble through the earth, followed by another soon after. Several more rumbles shook the earth, and hope blossomed in her chest. Ming’s mind flashed back to the small fox girl who came to save her on that horrible day, and she realized she had never had a chance to thank the girl properly for saving her and avenging her family.
The rumbles drew closer and closer with each one, and loud booms began reaching her ears. One loud boom came from just outside her door, and she began banging against the steel door, screaming, “HELP! HELP ME! HELP!” her voice was horse and cracked as she yelled, but the water she just drank helped with that.
Whoever her savior is might not have heard her as she heard them opening hatches to check all the other rooms. Ming never stopped banging on her door with all the might her weak arms could muster. A loud kerchunk sounded from her door, and it squealed as the door swung open. A handsome man in an orange gi and grey belt stood on the other side of the door. He had short black hair and slanted brown eyes like hers and looked at her with worry. “Ma’am, are you all right?” the man asked. His voice sounded soft and comforting, and Ming could feel herself trusting him as she stared up at him.
Ming burst into tears as she shook her head, sobbing, “No!” and threw herself into his arms.
He stumbled back with surprise and, after a moment, wrapped his arms around her, whispering, “Shhhhh, shhhhh, it’s all right now. You won’t be here for much longer.”
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Ming sobbed into the man’s broad chest.
They stood there for a few more moments before the man gently pushed her away from him and bent over a little to look into her eyes as he said, “We should move now. I don’t think there’s anybody else in these tunnels, but I don’t want to run into them if there’s more. So let’s move.”
Ming nodded and held the man’s strong hand as he led her down the tunnel. The crystal light above illuminated the hallway for them, and Ming saw the battle that must have happened as they walked. Scorch marks covered the walls in some places, and every once in a while, a charred, smoking corpse rested in a bend in the tunnel. “Umm,” Ming began after a few minutes of walking as she mustered up the courage to talk to the man, “What’s your name? Are you a cultivator from Ree’ze village? Do you know a small fox girl there?”
The man didn’t answer immediately as he walked. “I am a cultivator from Ree’ze village,” the man answered after a moment, “and I do know a little fox girl. Are you perhaps asking about Zeana?”
“Maybe,” Ming hedged, “I never learned her name.”
The man nodded, “Ah, well, she’s the only one I know who would fit your description. There are not many fox girls in these parts. Why do you ask?”
“Well, she saved me once when bandits attacked my village. I never got a chance to thank her and was hoping for a chance to do so,” Ming answered as they reached an intersection and took the first right down a tunnel.
“I see,” the man said, adding a moment later, “I’ll be sure to pass along your thanks when I see her. She’s in the Wong Empire, participating in The Hollow Throne Tournament.”
Ming nodded solemnly and said, “Okay, thank you.” After another minute of walking, they reached the end of the tunnel, and it opened up to a large dark cavern that echoed as they entered. “Oh, and you never told me your name,” Ming said, asking again.
The man stopped walking, and the crystal lights behind them went out, drowning them in darkness. The man never let go of Ming’s hand, and she could feel him shrug as he said, “I suppose telling you now won’t make a difference.” Then he pulled her close and whispered, “I’m Nezha Taiyang. And you’ll be helping me collect some chakras.”
“What?” Ming asked, confused. Then she felt a foot strike down on her knee, and it bent backward with a loud snap. She screamed in pain as she toppled to the ground, Nezha letting her fall. A dim orange light filled the darkness around her, and she looked back to see Nezha smiling sweetly as crystals high above illuminated the room.
Ming took in the room and screamed as she saw five piles of bodies around the room, all stacked around a pole with either a man or woman still alive and tied to the poles. Ming tried to stand, but Nezha quickly kicked down and snapped her other leg, making it bend at odd angles.
She let out another pained scream as Nezha laughed, “AHHHAHAHAHA! The look of hope on your face when I opened the door was priceless!” Ming gritted her teeth through the burning pain in her legs and crawled across the floor. “I knew you were the one that little monster saved, and I had been preparing for this moment for a while. Slowly letting the bodies here pile up, oiling the hinges on the doors so they wouldn’t creak, making sure the other guests knew to fear me and stay quiet.”
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Ming cried as she pulled herself across the ground and sobbed, “Please! Stop!”
“Please stop! Please help me! Pfft! Haha! You sound so pathetic!” Nezha mocked as he walked around in front of her and knelt to look into her eyes, “You were dead the moment those bandits attacked your home.”
Ming paused and closed her eyes. Letting tears drip down her face and onto the ground, she gritted her teeth and came to terms with what Nezha said. Then she slowly turned her head up to him, defiance filling her expression, and she spat in his face. “I curse you,” she growled, “I curse you monster! I curse you to die a slow and endless dea—” Ming never finished her sentence as Nezha stood and kicked her face with his heel, breaking her nose and dazing her.
Nezha wiped the spit from his face and growled, “I am not a monster! I kill monsters! I’m the good guy!” then he grabbed Ming by her hair and dragged her to the central pyre where nobody was tied to the pole. Nezha quickly bound her wrists behind her, securing her to the wooden pole atop the rotting pile of bodies.
Then he jumped down from the pyre and said, “With your death, I will be able to cleanse this world of its sickness! There will be no more war! No more bandits! No more monsters! I will rule the world and no one else! That is what my master promised!” then Nezha took a deep breath and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be that aggressive. But then again, I don’t have to apologize to someone who’s about to die.”
A small ball of fire shot out of his hand and lit the pyre on fire, and the fire spread along several lines to light the other pyres. Ming watched blearily as the fire formed a five-star pentagram, and then the flames began licking her skin. The pain slowly grew, and she began to scream. The screams of the other people in the pyres began to join Mings as Nezha sat before four chakra jars. He smiled as he reveled in their screams and cycled the chakras he created.
***
The little monster Zeana stopped and turned around to ask the old man Guru Shi’en, “Are you coming, Master?”
Guru Shi’en pulled his staff onto his lap and looked at it sorrowfully before saying, “I will in a moment. My old legs aren’t what they were long ago.”
“O-okay, Master Shi’en,” Zeana said hesitantly before adding, “Have a good rest of your day.”
“I will, young Zeana,” Guru Shi’en said with a smile and a wave, and then the door shut behind the monster. Guru sat silently in the training room before saying, “Enjoying the show?”
A chuckle echoed in the room as Zise revealed herself, appearing out of nowhere from behind Guru Shi’en, “How surprising. You were able to see through my magic,” Zise purred.
“No, not see. I know a dark presence when I feel one, though. Especially when you constantly focus it on one of my students,” Guru Shi’en said as he looked around to peer at Zise out of the corner of his eye.
Zise walked confidently around him, her thigh-high heeled boots clacking on the stone ground as she turned to sit cross-legged before him. Her arrogant smile never leaving her lips. “So, you have no intention of joining the winning team?” Zise asked playfully, getting to the point.
Guru Shi’en glared at her, “You disrupt my teaching and plan to wage war across the world until there is nothing but ash and destruction! I will never join you.”
With a slight pout, Zise put her chin on her hands and said, “Aww, little god doesn’t want to play with his better? How unfortunate. And I was going to help you with your … ” she marked a short pause before saying, “Little problem.”
“You are the cause of the problem!” Guru Shi’en yelled, getting to his feet and swinging his staff at her head in an instant.
Zise lazily ducked and disappeared, appearing next to Guru Shi’en as she kicked his leg out from under him. Guru Shi’en fell to the ground with a hard thud, his staff rolling away from his fingers. Zise clicked her tongue a few times as though she was admonishing a child and said, “Now that was rude, old man.” Guru Shi’en began crawling toward his staff, Zise continuing to admonish him, “I extend you an offer, and you attack me,” as the old man’s fingers brushed against his staff, Zise gave it a slight nudge with her foot to make it roll a little way and making the old man crawl further, “I was then going to ask if I could borrow your student Zeana. But I guess I already know the answer to that.” Zise gave the staff another light nudge with her foot, “Does she know about the prophecy?”
“No,” the old man growled as his fingers wrapped around his staff and a heeled foot stepped on his wrist.
“She doesn’t?” Zise mock gasped, “How intrieging. I should talk with her soon.”
“She … can never … know!” Guru Shi’en said through gritted teeth as he tried to free his hand from Zise’s heel.
“Oh, of course not. We wouldn’t want her to know what will happen now. Maybe I’ll give her a fake prophecy. One that’s close to the original but not the same,” Zise mused aloud.
“Stay away from my students!” Guru Shi’en growled, focusing his gaze on Zise.
She looked down at him, and her smile grew almost menacing as she leaned down and said, “I have taken your power, and your health is degrading day by day. I will do as I like,” Her voice dropped to a low, sultry whisper, “and there is nothing you can do about it.” Then she vanished, leaving Guru Shi’en alone in the room.
***
Grandmaster Vowlshten walked out of his small home just before sunrise. He began stretching out his stiff muscles with ever-increasing difficult positions, bending his body in ways most people couldn’t manage. After an hour of stretching, the first rays of dawn peaked over the horizon. The light illuminated the snow-covered mountainsides with a warm orange glow, reflecting off the still, calm lake far below as though it were a mirror.
Vowlshten breathed a sigh of contentment as the light warmed his scared body. Then he got dressed, at breakfast, and cycled his chakras before leaving for Ree’se village. With his speed and strength, he made the hundred-kilometer journey in seconds, landing on the Fusang tree’s floating island without so much as a whisper. He took another deep, content breath before attending to his duties as the temporary leader of the empire. One of which he needed to attend to immediately.
He lept from the island, landing in the rice fields below where an ancient-looking woman knelt, hunched over in the mud and pulling out stock after stock of rice. Vowlshten approached the woman calmly before bowing deeply, showing all his respect for her, “Good morning, Lady Sheji. I must speak with you immediately.”
Lady Sheji paid him no mind as she continued pulling out rice stocks. Once she had a bundle of ten, she tied them together using the green part of the plant and continued pulling the rice out. After half an hour of Lady Sheji not speaking a word as she pulled the rice stocks and tied them together, she had six bundles of thirty. She picked up her staff and put three on each end of the staff before hefting it and putting the load onto, the still bowing, Vowlshten’s shoulders. Then she turned and began walking down the mud wall, waving for him to follow.
Vowlshten dutifully followed her with the rice still on his shoulders as she led him to another pond at the bottom of the village crater, passing all the ones she had already planted new rice stocks in and still needed to plant. Once they reached the last pond, which took half an hour to walk to, with Lady Sheji’s slow pace, she gestured for Vowlshten to drop the stocks into the pond.
He did so and returned Lady Sheji’s bamboo staff to her. She took it with a nod, “What do we need to talk about?” she said in a slow, halting voice.
“I bring a message from Master Shi’en,” Vowlshten answered quickly, “He says your presence is needed in Nexus for the Hollow Throne Tournament. Evidently, Haze and her newest beast need additional training that only you could provide.”
THWACK!! Lady Sheji swung her bamboo staff with enough speed that Grandmaster Vowlshten couldn’t see it, and with enough force, he fell and splashed into the muddy rice pond. Vowlshten splashed and spluttered as he pulled himself up from the mud, cursing as he wiped the mud and water from his eyes. Once he finished, he turned to glare at Lady Sheji when a massive presence bore down on his very soul. It was as though the world had fallen on his shoulders, and he struggled to get back to his feet as the end of a bamboo staff pressed itself under his chin, forcing his head up.
Fear stuck him next as he looked into the shining silver eyes of Lady Sheji. She held him there for one minute, but it felt like an eternity before she spoke, her words clear and powerful, “Speak ill of Zeana again, you never will. Once a student of mine, is why you still have a tongue.”
Then the presence lifted, and Vowlshten was able to breathe again. Lady Sheji said nothing more to him as she walked away to gather whatever she needed to bring with her. Once Vowlshten caught his breath, he climbed out of the muddy pond and went to the new bathhouse to bathe and change his gi.
***
Vowlshten spent the rest of his day in relative peace. Lady Sheji left for the Wong empire after lunch, and he was free to finish any remaining tasks he had after that he could relax. He sat atop the Fusang tree and watched the sunset in the west as the sky turned orange, pink, red, and purple. He took a deep sigh of contentment, and as the sun fell behind a large hill, Vowlshten lept from the tree and landed gently on the ground far below.
The ground shook violently as he landed, and he stumbled, catching himself a step later. ‘What’s happening?’ Vowlshten thought as the ground rumbled and shook beneath his feet. Lights began to spring up around the village as people left their homes to see what was happening and soon saw what made the rumbling. The large pulsed as though something was breathing.
The hill kept pulsing, and soon, several of the Masters in the village joined Vowlshten in watching the hill breathe. Up and down, up and down, up and— BOOM! The hill slowly stood, the earth incrusting the being underneath falling away and crashing down. A soft, sickly green glow emanated from the towering monster. It stood two kilometers tall, and its body was fat and swollen, covered in sores and bleeding holes that oozed yellow-green pus. It took a step to turn and face the village with its yellow glowing eyes, shaking the earth with its absurd weight. Its head looked sunken, with its neck almost enveloping it. Then it opened its maw, and its sickly green skin opened down its middle and on either side of its head, showing rows and rows of rotten teeth, and noxious gas escaped its dark, endless depths as it roared.
Fear shot through Vowlshten and the rest of the Masters around him as it roared, and Vowlshten held his breath. “Wh-what is that?!” one of the masters behind Vowlshten asked, fear-tinging their voice.
Before Vowlshten could answer, someone else did, their voice unusually calm, “That is a calamity class monster. The embodiment of fear, plague, and decay. That is Wenyi.”
Vowlshten turned to face the speaker and saw Lii standing behind them all, wearing an orange gi that had never been commissioned to him. But if Lii was correct, they didn’t have long to evacuate the village, “Start the evacuation now!” Vowlshten commanded, wasting no time.
As the other Masters moved to follow his orders, Lii raised a hand and laughed, “That won’t be necessary.”
“What do you mean?!?” Vowlshten barked.
“Well, they’ll die either way, so why bother? The best you can do for them is kill them quickly so they don’t suffer. I have it on good authority that Wenyi likes to play with people and subject them to new diseases it creates,” Lii answered with a smile on his face.
Vowlshten ground his teeth and yelled, “Stop wasting our time, Lii! We have to save as many—”
“MY NAME IS NEZHA!!” Vowlshten was cut off as Nezha yelled, “Lii died months ago.”
“What do you mean?” Vowlshten asked, cycling his second core.
Nezha abruptly laughed, throwing his head back and bringing one hand to his face, “I mean, I am not Lii! My Master remade me and gave me a new name. I am Nezha!” he lowered his head and hand so he could glare at them over his fingers as he said, “And my Master has ordered me to kill all of you. I don’t plan to disappoint.”
Grandmaster Vowlshten growled and returned the glare as he said, “Start the evacuation. I’ll handle the brat.” The other Masters quickly dispersed, and Nezha did nothing to stop them. They stood there and watched each other for a heartbeat before they exploded forward and clashed with a loud crack and a flash of light, stopping a few paces behind each other. A breath passed, and Grandmaster Vowlshten clutched his chest, falling to his knees.
Nezha laughed and turned, “Even with all your power! You still aren’t powerful enough to fight your age!” Nezha walked back to Vowlshten as he tried to stand and stumbled forward, collapsing again, “Every morning, you eat a heart-healthy breakfast and do light exercises that get your heart pumping but not too much so you don’t strain your heart. In conclusion, you must have a heart problem. One shock, and you’re dead.” Nezha walked past the dying old man, giving him another swift kick as he passed, “Now, to finish what I started.” Then he vanished as he went after the rest of the Masters, leaving Vowlshten to die.