How long did Ji Ying lay there in pain, listening to her shoulder blade and collar bone crack back together. It came as pops and bubbles, the amber that made up her bones partially melting to form back into the proper shape. She rolled on the ground, wanting to rip out the burning semi-liquid bones if it meant the pain would cease. Something sharp closed around her sides and she felt like she was about to be sliced in half, her limbs knocking against the ground. It felt like hours of pain that stretched her mind into one long scream. Her eyes were blinded by the agony she could not voice. She could barely even find the strength to cry out, instead biting into the dry grass and dirt below to expend her pained shrill sounds.

Her tears pooled on the ground, sticky orange things that stuck to the grass as she rolled onto her back to stare up into the reddened sky. The moon looked like it was covered in fresh red paint that might start dripping down at any moment. She remembered that the moon turning red was a sign of something deeply troublesome. It could only be initiated by the three divine siblings. But she, being a celestial servant, a very finely made doll, did not know much more than that.

Something told her she should worry, but she angrily stuffed that feeling away and forced herself to sit up. The First Palace's strange nature seemed to have warped the area around her, or perhaps she had been moved. She was in a garden courtyard where the ruined parts of some massive door had partially sunken into the ground and been devoured by grasses and wildflowers. Several white flower-enveloped bodies, still in their royal armor and clutching weathered corroded weapons, marched a circuitous route around the courtyard. Their steps were uneven and their breaths rasped, the bodies still trying to breathe. Ji Ying could see roots in some of their mouths, extending a finger's length from their shriveled lips.

Wobbling a little as she got back to her feet, she took a deep breath and felt something pop in her ribcage, wincing with the pain before she took a step forward, and then another one. Step by step she made herself go forward. There was something ahead, he was there she knew. She could sense it in her empty chest, the radiation of Flame against amber. Up the few steps, into the antechamber where another massive door stood with what seemed to be the hanging head of an older man jutting from the side of it. The sickly sweet smell of flower sap and metallic scent of blood seeped out from the door. As Ji Ying came closer the head suddenly looked up.

"A visitor?" The head wheezed.

"No," she answered sharply, placing her hands against the massive heavy doors and shoving.

But they did not budge.

She pushed harder.

They were as solid as a mountain even as she threw her weight into her pushing.

"Did you want to go inside? Young lady, the door can only be opened by two ways," the head said.

"What? Do I need to do some task for you like I'm your servant?" She spat, glaring at the door.

"You either ask me, or pull."

Ji Ying chose to pretend she never heard the head speak and that she had not spent any time pushing the doors.

She gripped two petals of a carved lotus bloom on the door, pulling backwards as hard as she could. Even then, the doors seemed to take their own time opening, grinding inch by inch as she yanked. The smell of blood and flowers grew even stronger.

Finally she had opened the doors just enough to squeeze herself inside into an old throne room that looked like it had been turned into a furnace at one point. So much of the structure within had been blackened to the point of char that she was surprised it had not collapsed in on itself. On the ground were numerous flower-consumed bodies, their blooms and armor riven with jagged streaks that still pulsed with a strange blueish glow that mingled with the dark coagulated blood and floral sap that leaked from them. She wondered why they had been attacked. Was it simply to become new hosts for the flowers? There were no lanterns or windows but light threw everything into a stark relief. White flame still ran rampant in the form of almost vein like structures on the ceiling which seemed to writhe down the walls and to the ground, where they swarmed to the melted and charred throne that he currently sat at.

Ji Ying wanted to call him Liu Xie, but she knew that was not true. In her creation as a celestial servant she had been imbued with certain knowledge, hardly relevant to her sole original task of serving tea and pleasantly standing around, but the knowledge was there. The Headless God, she knew, had not always been headless. There had been a reason as to why though, the necessity of creating a new weaker entity from the headless body, and how the head had been moved elsewhere. The reasoning was not known to her except for one thing; the White Flame's nature made it dangerous. The being in front of her was sitting with his eyes half closed, his head resting atop the poor red haired woman's own head as she was laid out in his lap.

His eyes then opened fully. They were black empty voids with only the most dim of white lights so deep within they might as well had not been there at all. Yet she could feel their withering gaze upon her.

"You had laid on the ground for so long, I thought it prudent to bring you over here so you would not get lost," he said, his voice warm.

She gritted her teeth, girding herself for whatever verbal battle was about to commence. "You threatened to eat me if you saw me again."

"Yet you came here to me," he nodded. "I'm not unreasonable, Ji Ying, this structure is incoherent. If I left you out there, you would not be able to do what I asked you to do."

"I'm not going to do it," Ji Ying said. "Not unless you keep your side of the deal."

He blinked, looking slightly surprised. "You think I was not going to uphold my side of the bargain? Ji Ying, I said you would have your freedom, so you will so long as you bring me my daughter. I didn't turn you into a pig, after all."

Stolen story; please report.

Now it was Ji Ying's turn to be surprised. "Even after you said-"

He smiled faintly, "consider it motivation. In truth, I really do want to help you. I want to help everyone. But my patience is not infinite, do you understand? I have been waiting for so long and..." he paused, casting his eyes upwards. A rumbling like distant thunder rattled through the charred room. "Ah, how ridiculous of them. They haven't changed. Not that I needed to leave from here anyway."

"What is it you even want?" She asked. There was a soft snapping noise, as one of the fallen flower soldiers groaned and began dragging its broken body out of the throne room. Another soon followed, somehow even slower. As she watched, she saw in the corner was a severed head, and a shriveled ruined body with a split open chest, blood still leaking out. The head was mouthing something, but this far she could not hear it.

"I want Eona, I want Idony, and I want peace for everyone," he replied. His face was a mask of benevolent mercy as he spoke. "The world is full of suffering and the gods do nothing about this. The Empress does not stop the famines, the Jade Prince does nothing for the floods. The Amber Emperor cannot hold back the desires for war and the infernos that consume homes and flesh. The gods in their Houses do nothing either, the Immortals stay within their mountains or are ineffectual. Every time I've tried to help mortals, my siblings have cast me away. So, here I am once more, trying once again. I wish for tranquility for all living beings, I do not understand why they do not do the same."

"There's rules, you know. You can't expect the Empress of Hell to go around tilling fields, and the agricultural gods are always arguing. Of course the Immortals aren't doing much, there's only three of them left after one went insane and killed the others!" Ji Ying said.

"I know," he replied.

"Humans get into wars without any prodding from the gods too."

"I know," he said again.

Ji Ying had nothing to say in response to that. Instead she looked down at the woman trapped within his arms and felt some measure of pity that she was going to be stuck with someone who wanted to try bringing 'peace' to humans who really did not want it as far as she could tell. Was he going to sit in the First Palace and try sending the beasts he's been mashing together with human bodies and flowers to act as wardens?

As Ji Ying looked at the woman, she realized something. Her chest was rising and falling. Slowly, deeply, but it was moving. Ji Ying hoped she would not open her eyes any time soon.

"I believe we've talked enough, Ji Ying," he pointed out the door, rumbling filling the room again. This time it was different, closer. It was like the roar of an ocean in a tempest, the waters thrashing against a tiny town.

The large doors creaked open a little more, uneasy red light pooling in.

"What's out there?"

"A pathway. The shark had apparently opened a portal to allow Bo to take my child, Idony is somewhere in this direction," the man's beautiful face finally changed into one of annoyance and concern. "I know she's going northwards, but otherwise I cannot tell exactly where she's being taken...." he sighed. "It's likely the red moon's influence to some degree."

"Where is Rui Yifu then?"

"...In the library still," he inclined his head slightly behind him, but Ji Ying was not curious enough to go see what he was gesturing towards. "...If he survives, I would love to speak with him."

"And Li?"

"Outside these doors," he pointed forward. "Waiting for you."

She stood still, glancing from him, over to the doors, then to the sleeping body.

What was that little girl going to say, seeing her mother like this? In the hands of someone like that?

He seemed slightly delusional, there was a strangeness to how he spoke of 'peace'. Ji Ying was not made to think very deeply, or much at all in truth, but something unsettled her about the god that sat across from her. Liu Xie was, at his best, a grouchy and apathetic god who cared little for the affairs of the Heavens and instead preferred to stay buried in the ashes of his home. But this thing was different. It professed a desire for mercy towards all living beings.

No.

She would think no farther on this.

She had gotten what she wanted, an assurance of her freedom. She decided to trust that for every odd thing this entity spoke of, he really did want the best for Idony at least. She would be free, Idony would be safe, everything would be fine.

Ji Ying turned on her heel and walked away from the throne, from the god that sat on it and the woman he clung so desperately to, and went past the doors.

The red glow of the moon was such a contrast to the white light of the room she felt her eyes sting for a few minutes. Right as the pain from her eyes finally subsided she noticed Li Chunning only a foot away, with a branch.

"You traitor!"

The strike to her head was so heavy that she fell to the ground as the world spun around her. She clutched at her head, as though it were an egg and the yolk would slide out if she did not desperately hold it closed.

"You-you did this!" He brought the branch down again, but she had already quickly clambered away, the branch hitting her covered shin instead.

"I didn't... I didn't do this!" She protested, getting to her feet. "Stop trying to hit me!"

Li Chunning had been winding up for another attempt to strike her, but froze mid-position.

"Ah...?" She straightened up, still clutching her head with one hand. "Oh, so you gotta listen to me?"

"No," he said, relaxing his posture. "I just want an explanation."

Ji Ying snorted, "an explanation? What would you even do with that? Does that change anything about what's going on?"

"I want a reason, Ying!" He shouted, lifting up his branch once more.

"Fine!" She threw up her hands while still taking several more steps away from him. "Look, that thing in there said I'd be free if I helped. That's all."

"Free? Free of what?"

"Of-of being a servant! Of being a doll!" Ji Ying said, the words like vomit. She saw the confused face on him and felt her chest twist. "Don't look at me like that! I was created by the Amber Emperor himself! How dare you look down on me! Even as a doll I'm still higher than you! Yeah so I was just made to serve tea, so were hundreds of my other sisters. I'm-... I didn't want to be like that forever, or until the spark in me fades away. Every! Day! Was! The! Same! Tea! Endless pouring of it! I hated it! So I splashed some on him!" She was wheezing, the words rolling out of her. "It felt really good seeing him so upset! But no, he couldn't have just extinguished me, he had to 'punish' me, and turned me into a pig. If I'm a good girl, I can go back to being the same mindless construct the rest of my sisters are!"

Li Chunning's arm dropped to his side, the branch scraping against the grassy ground. "I don't get it..."

"Of course you don't! You're a human. You got an entire banquet of choices to pick and look at you, you're a pathetic fat overgrown child who wanted to cry and run away to his mother!" She mocked. Honestly Li Chunning was actually very thin now, but she could not erase the first time she saw him. A panicking chubby kid.

"No, I just... don't get why you didn't ask the Amber Emperor if you could have been something else after your punishment," Li Chunning said quietly.

Ji Ying's breath stuck in her chest. The words. The words made no sense. "Something... else?" She repeated back, as though that would clarify their meaning.

Li Chunning stared at her for a long time before he spoke again.

"...You're really pathetic."