From above, a bleak light briefly broke into the small root-lined cavern. It vanished quickly, replaced by a rapidly plummeting shape that Bo had to squint his remaining eye to get a good look at. His heart, exhausted and torn from repeated beatings, blood loss, and tears, leapt back up with full strength when he realized who was plummeting down. He gathered up Zhu'er in his arms and was about to race the very short distance when Rui Yifu landed neatly on his own two feet and tucked into a brief roll before coming to a stop before him. He stood back up, clearly weary and with his body leaning strangely, arm limp at one side and odd burn marks around his neck going further down under his collar. He was drenched from head to toe, dripping water that mixed with the ancient dust around him.

"Why are you crying, you stupid dog?" Rui Yifu asked, at him with exhausted eyes and a just as tired smile.

Bo managed to free one arm from the iron-grip it had around Zhu'er to wrap it around Rui Yifu, and Zhu'er also managed to disentangle her own arms to awkwardly turn her torso so that she could also hug Rui Yifu. The Fish Person made a very strange grunting sound as he was suddenly tightly pressed against two people. Only then did Bo realize he was crying. Tears flowed from his remaining eye, catching on the wet locks of Rui Yifu's unbound hair. "You're back," was all Bo could whisper. "You're both back-!"

"Of course I'm back!" Rui Yifu huffed. "I didn't say I wasn't going to come, there was just no time for me to say anything else." But still, Rui Yifu's arms also wrapped around them both in a tight hug. Through the wet sleeves, Bo thought he could feel parts on Rui Yifu's arm where... skin was missing. Where the flesh seemed to dip downwards. But then he was pushed back, and Rui Yifu was peering down at Zhu'er, "and you...! How did you come back?"

"I didn't go anywhere," she said, confused. She peered up at Bo, then at Rui Yifu, then at the space around them. "Where are we? What happened to the swamp!?"

Bo took a deep breath and also looked around, back at the massive skull and the perpetually leaking mummified corpse within it. He too had that question, too much had happened for him to have even considered asking it before. But now, with them all together again, the question had wormed its way onto his tongue.

Rui Yifu released them both and wiggled out of Bo's grip, moving over to the skull. He clasped his hands together behind his back as he leaned over slightly, inspecting the gruesome sight within it's maw. He was quiet for a long moment, then he grabbed a small object that could have been a bone or a root and stuck it into the leaking black muck. He then pulled it out, and the object had a twisting burst of floral life in a rainbow of colors that quickly turned to ash and fell away, leaving behind only a thin branch before it too tumbled to dust that sank back into the muck. "Hello, Celestial Mother, you've likely seen better days, haven't you?" He said softly.

"What?" Bo had heard the name before, who had not? Everyone had at least some sort of story of how the world was made by the efforts of the Celestial Mother, who only ever appeared in that single particular kind of story. Most ended with her leaving, or dying. "That dead thing is-?"

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"She's not dead," Rui Yifu said. "Something like her can't truly die as we do, just like her children can't die."

Bo glanced down at the withered corpse, the ooze that perpetually fell from her body and yet the puddle never grew any bigger. "I don't get it." He looked at Zhu'er to see if she understood, but she also looked confused.

"She's older than the world, the previous world, the world before that one, and the world beyond that one. This vestige is just all we can see of her. This entire area," he looked up at the root 'walls', stretching upwards with their dying embers into the darkness above. "It's all just remnants. But remnants still hold power," he glanced back down at the black puddle. "Ancient primordial chaos, from where everything sprang." He stopped, looking back over at them as though he just remembered he was rambling.

"Zhu'er came from that-" Bo pointed at the puddle. "I... I don't know how, the sword slipped in and I got it but-"

"Did I?" Zhu'er furrowed her brow.

Rui Yifu's eyes widened, only briefly, and then he nodded with a smile that was somehow both relieved and bitter. "Maybe, somehow, this was all more of the Jade Prince's manipulation. Maybe he had hoped we would make it all the way down here."

Bo was still looking up. Wasn't there a massive root that had been there? Where did it go? But now he could not be sure if it had ever truly been there. Maybe he had simply been so distressed he had imagined it, although he could not imagine why. Instead, his mind turned to another more pertinent question. "How are you going to get out of here?" Bo pointed down at the 'primordial chaos' puddle, "are you going to do that water thing with this?"

Rui Yifu's eyes widened, "no! I don't think even K'un could handle that."

"Who is K'un? Another ex-boyfriend?"

"No, I'll tell you about him later," Rui Yifu assured. "All I need is some liquid-" and without any further explanation, Rui Yifu rolled up his left sleeve to reveal more strange burn scars that had wrapped up his arm and sank his sharp teeth into the limb. Zhu'er screamed and Bo yelled, but Rui Yifu seemed quite unperturbed as blood quickly soaked his arm. He stopped biting and swept up some of the blood with his fingers, rapidly drawing a shape in the air that the wet blood clung to before swirling rapidly into a thin dark circle. "I don't know where this will go, but I won't send you alone this time," he said, holding out his bloodied hand to Bo.

Bo adjusted Zhu'er so she was sitting on his hip and he could hold her better with one arm. Her small arms wrapped around his neck for extra stability. He looked down at Rui Yifu's hand and then at his own, which was still covered with the dried mixture of sweat, water, and ash. He flexed his fingers, expecting the flesh to fall off and reveal bone but it never happened. Somehow he was still alive, and someone was waiting for him, despite everything that had happened so far. What had he done to deserve any of it? He took a deep breath and looked at Rui Yifu, "alright! I'm beginning to feel a bit cramped in here anyway." He reached for Rui Yifu's hand before pausing, turning back around to the dragon's skull and the mummified vestige within. For some odd reason he had the impression of an old husband and wife standing there now, watching them all. He bowed, as much as he could while holding Zhu'er. "Uh, thanks! Sorry for bothering you, but thanks!" He said. Then he faced Rui Yifu again and took his hand, holding firmly so it would not somehow slip from his grip.

Together, all three of them fell through the red portal, which shut itself with a resounding 'clang' of a copper bell.

The echo continued, traveling further upwards, until it too was gone.

And all was silent in the tomb of the Last Prince of the Yellow River and the Celestial Mother once again.