Rui Yifu's hand ached, the flesh had split open on his palm and beneath he could see the thin muscle fibers twitching as his fingers curled and uncurled in reflexive pain. Most all disciplines used the Four Flames, and Fish People relied mostly on the Jade Flame. But there was a fifth more subtle current in existence, one that was hypothesized to be a more dispersed version of the pale flame that everyone so feared, but he had simply found more use currently as a way to artificially extend his current body's life. It sat in the body, trudging through meridians, providing the living breath. With enough practice, one could use it for other applications as well.

He had used that knowledge to push Bo towards the gate, watching the man hurtle away like he had been smashed aside by a giant.

But he was gone.

Safe, Rui Yifu felt, in whatever was beyond that gate.

Yet now standing on the stone it was just him, alone, and abruptly he had come to realize how much he already missed Bo.

It was like a limb was missing, or a weight that had become part of him over time. He told himself it was just because he had been acting as Bo's legs for a good few... he paused, how long had they been wandering together? It felt like years, but maybe it had only been months.

He was snapped from his thoughts by a ripple on the black water.

Wang Huaqing was not dead, merely changing. Rui Yifu moved away from the edge the ripple was closest too just in time for a slimy tendril to slap onto the stone where it felt around desperately before submerging back into the water. The surface stilled.

Then another tendril reared up from the water, a strange blazing purple color in the darkness as it swung it down onto the stone. Rui Yifu threw himself out of the way and head first into the dark waters that embraced him with the consistency of honey on a summer day. He hissed instinctively, thrashing until he felt himself break through a thin membrane and splash into still water below.

The water was chilly, not enough to freeze but enough to send a shiver through his spine. Scarred gills worked overtime as he pushed himself through the water, slithering from the human shape into his true self, a two meter long shark that hastily swam deeper into the water to find its prey.

Life was sparse. Slowly drifting stagnate shadows of ancient fish and other creatures drifted slowly in the water, barely even responsive of each other much less him as he eeled past them to look for the shade of purple that the tendril had been.

The still water felt uneasy around him, as though his movements were disturbing a peaceful slumber it had. The shadows continued to move in a play of their actual lives, and finally his eyes caught a dingy purple glow further down in the depths. He shot towards it like an arrow from a bow, picking out the gelatinous 'bell' where chunks of skull and hair still clung, the remnants of a spinal chord and ribs desperately clinging to each other in the tangled mass of tendrils beneath.

Deep in the water, Rui Yifu could also see buildings. They had long ago become nothing but ghostly monoliths, but even still as he pursued the drifting purple shape he caught sight of windows, of strange broken domes that more buildings sat within. It reminded him vaguely of the oldest hidden cities of the Fish People, ensconced beneath the deepest and darkest waters and shielded by carefully built domes following geometric patterns their greatest elders discovered to be the most auspicious and closest to the hidden shape of reality.

Wang Huaqing's new form swam disjointedly, the 'bell' swelling and then shrinking as it pushed itself along. The swelled brain was just barely visible in the bell. Rui Yifu knew this was some sort of jellyfish, a usually brainless creature that followed the currents and feasted on things that were unlucky enough to get caught in its tendrils. Sometimes they were more active though, like Wang Huaqing was being.

Why a jellyfish?

Wang Huaqing had a head start, but Rui Yifu was faster and more familiar with aquatic movement. He slithered rapidly through the water towards the bell and bit into it, his needle-fan shaped teeth sheering through the gelatinous mass, fouled blood spurting into the dark water. Flaring ropes of pain shot through him and he opened his mouth, squirming quickly away from the tendrils that flailed around. He surged upwards and then corkscrewed downwards again, diving towards the pulsating brain. The tendrils moved quickly, but missed him by the scantest of distance, he opened his mouth again and tore into the surface, then into the brain below.

Brains were, in reality, incredibly soft blobs of fat that stood little chance against teeth, even Rui Yifu's which were meant more for the bodies of squids than anything else. The brain was easily torn through and reduced to globs of disconnected chunks as he pulled away before another tendril could swipe at him. He darted under the main body briefly, avoiding the more lazily drifting tendrils before he swam back upwards.

The torn bell was reknitting itself, and he could see the mush of the brain coming back together as well and felt a brief pang of frustration before he realized it was coming back into a much smaller form. The ridges that characterized brains had been smoothed over. He tore through it again, easily mashing through the gelatinous form and the brain, somewhat grateful he did not have a strong sense of taste like this. Then he rounded again, tearing through it another time. As he moved back he saw the creature once again pulling itself together, sending out questing jellied branches to reknit itself. The creature flailed its tendrils again just as got close enough to bite, arresting his movement.

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The downside to changing into his true form was that he had none of his usual abilities. True there were plenty of Fish People who could shape the Flames in either form but he was not one of them. He had spent so long stealing life from humans that he had forgotten many skills he may have accumulated in his past lives.

A sense of weariness overtook him, slowing his movement enough for the tendrils to lash out again, wrapping around his eel-like body and pumping blinding pain through him. He thrashed, gills working quickly as he felt the violent pain surging through every bit of his body, sinking past the flesh and into his cartilage and organs.

It had been snowing that day.

But the embers still made things warm as they passed through the remnants of the village.

They had walked side by side, his voice had still been raspy from where he had cut into his throat but he could speak without pain and walk without help. The elderly king of the Northern Kingdom had just passed away and his three sons were now violently vying for control of the throne since each believed the other corrupt and losing the mandate of heaven due to whatever nonsense he had never bothered to learn.

The princes warred largely from the comfort of their palaces while the towns and villages between them bore the brunt of their rage. Fields were scorched to deny the enemy the food, and people cut down to rid their rivals of reinforcements.

The village they walked to had been just one among many that they had witnessed burnt to a husk. The bodies were still relatively fresh, they had not been covered by snow just yet.

Rui Yifu caught movement from the corner of his eye, and saw the lumpen shape of a young woman pressed to the wall, her bloodied back turned to them. He held up a hand to catch Wang Huaqing's attention and pointed. Wang Huaqing also stopped, observing the body as it moved. Both men nodded to each other and walked closer, and Rui Yifu realized the woman was dead. Her chest was not moving because she was breathing, but because something beneath was desperately trying to get out from under her. He quickened his step and kneeled down beside the body, putting his hands against the ice-cold limbs and gently turning it over to reveal a pale frightened toddler still clinging to his mother's sleeve.

The blood that had soaked her back also soaked her front, multiple stab wounds piercing through the fabric. Yet somehow she had shielded the little boy from anything more than a small scratch on his left cheek.

How fragile, he seemed there in the snow, surrounded by corpses.

Rui Yifu gently lifted the boy into his arms. "We should bring him with us," he said.

Wang Huaqing was quiet for a moment, eyes cast upon the woman's freezing corpse on the ground. "...Humans are fragile creatures," he sighed softly. "The princes war with each other, and at the same time doom themselves doing this. What will happen when one wins? He'll rule over a land purged of most human and plant life. He'll need to rely on the Eastern or Western kings to help validate his rule unless he wants to deal with rebellion from the starving remnants of his peasantry and officers."

"Do you speak from experience?" Rui Yifu asked, wrapping the shivering toddler in his arms in his outer robe. His clothes were thick enough that the cold did not terribly bother him.

"I'm from the Eastern Kingdom, I suppose you could say yes with the last war although that was between two generals," Wang Huaqing replied with a small smile while looking down at the woman still. "Do your people suffer like this? The body is just a vessel for you, so this scene is not so common is it?"

Rui Yifu tapped a finger against his chin. Wang Huaqing was always curious about his kind, "hmm, no. We don't leave the 'dead' behind. We take them from their bodies and wait a few decades before giving them new bodies. I've never experienced it myself, but my mother in my third life had been taken in such a way. After a few decades of dreaming, the anger and pain of losing your old town fades. We exist for so long that holding grudges for longer than a few years becomes tedious. Why kill someone if they will just return anyway?"

"You frame it as a terrible thing, but it seems to me that immortals such as you suffer less from the common frailties of mankind. The ever changing forms, the ability to see things not in the terms of days or months but by centuries... I do not understand why you seem to view your immortality so negatively."

"I am not immortal."

Wang Huaqing did not answer, instead shrugging lightly and turning around to peer into the distance. "We should get going though, this village was only recently attacked. If its destroyers aren't coming back to make another sweep for survivors, then I'm certain another army will be here soon. It would be best if we do not get caught."

Caught in the tendrils, Rui Yifu could feel himself being dragged around. The currents of disturbed water beat over his still gills, and he was slowly suffocating. But the amorphous form of Wang Huaqing did not seem to be doing anything else. It was as if he had forgotten he had Rui Yifu in his grip.

He could make out the top of the bell, the brain was flattened and branching out, reducing to more tendrils.

Rui Yifu reached deep into his last reserves of energy and thrashed his body, ripping weaker tendrils off the jellyfish and biting away the thicker ones while powering through the pain that erupted through him again, swimming free and feeling life return to his form with the choking suffocation fading quickly. He swam with renewed vigor and bolted around towards the jellyfish. It was a solitary dim purple glow in the water, moving this way and that way. It made no effort to move towards him. Or towards anywhere. There was no reasoning to its movements. Rui Yifu realized that unless he could somehow become big enough to swallow the jellyfish whole, he would not be able to kill it.

Its tendrils occasionally tried to catch the shadows of fish that passed by it, but since they were merely intangible remnants the tendrils harmlessly passed through them.

Killing Wang Huaqing again, for good, no longer mattered he thought. Baichan had rewarded his devoted follower, and Rui Yifu could not imagine a better gift.

Sharks could not laugh, but somehow Rui Yifu managed to choke a bubble of bitter amusement out.

Wang Huaqing had found his immortality.

He would float forever, free of the suffering of mortality and humanity, in the drowned husk of a dead world...

As a stupid jellyfish.