Chapter 16: 16 The Golden-Threaded Robe

◎The evil ghost breaks the branch—come with me to ultimate bliss◎

It was like making a deal with an evil ghost.

Looking straight into You Fusang’s eyes, Yan Rushi thought of that comparison for no reason at all.

Night blindness had blurred the light and color around her; in the shadowed dimness, all she could see was a pair of golden eyes.

Red-gold, shimmering like light.

A devil cultivator’s eyes should have been the most bloodthirsty and filthy of all, yet this pair was pure and clear—a pool of golden springwater, its riverbed a faint, brilliant gold, reflecting glittering ripples.

Those eyes were smiling.

Yan Rushi panicked.

“Young Sect Master Yan, if you don’t speak, others will take it as consent. The world is simply that unreasonable.”

Without waiting for an answer, You Fusang lowered her face and lightly pecked the blood pact’s cinnabar mark—Yan Rushi’s left earlobe. “The blood pact’s location is far too hidden… they can’t see it, no wonder they dare act so recklessly.” You Fusang kissed it, and still it wasn’t enough; sharp teeth closed on the earlobe, the tip of her tongue lapping at it. “Perhaps a different spot would do better?”

Her fingertips trailed downward, inch by inch across Yan Rushi’s jaw and the front of her throat, her palm caressing her collarbone, gaze wandering as she asked, “Tell me—where should it stay?”

“…”

Drip.

Something touched You Fusang’s fingertip—hot, sticky—rolling down and dripping, drip, drip, onto the floor.

It was blood.

The Silver Needle Geng Ying had flicked moments ago was now pinned dead center at the back of Yan Rushi’s neck, carrying pitch-black poison, drawing blood in a steady stream.

Yan Rushi’s eyes reddened with pain, yet she still let You Fusang arrange her as she pleased, her jaw resting lightly in her palm. “Sorry…” she was still apologizing, resigned to it. “I don’t know how to remove her needle. I tried so many times and never succeeded. I’m too useless.”

You Fusang raised a hand and tapped the Silver Needle lightly, devil qi driving back the tainted blood, her eyes lowered in silence.

Yan Rushi answered with a feeble smile instead. “Venerable Lord, I understand their concerns, and I understand your dilemma too… Perhaps the best way is still to allow me to fall into devilhood. Then I could never return to the Righteous Path, I wouldn’t embarrass you, I could take my revenge as a devil cultivator—and I could… stay by your side forever.”

She lowered her voice a little.

“In your mercy, Venerable Lord, you understand the suffering of falling into devilhood, and Rushi’s heart is unsettled—fated to have no part in that path. You were right. If you wish to leave a blood pact upon my body, to live and die together, bound through fortune and ruin, I dare not refuse.” Yan Rushi bore it as the blood stained her lips, her teeth, her brows crimson. “From this day on, with you I share life and death…”

“With you, I share ultimate bliss.”

Where had Yan Rushi learned the words of the blood pact? You Fusang surfaced from a daze, no longer capable of thought—she only felt an irrepressible desire flood her head the instant those words fell.

Share life and death, share ultimate bliss; share the same quilt in life, the same coffin in death.

Perhaps no affection sustained it, but this was the mightiest of pacts, made when life and death left no other choice.

Two trapped beasts driven to a dead end; the moment wildfire burned through the darkness, they could only clumsily bite, struggle, entwine…

Sweat soaked through their clothes.

Plundering nourishment from each other, stealing each other’s breath, then nestling close, unable to let go.

They gazed at each other for a long, long time, licking their wounds.

The blood pact on the earlobe, the cinnabar between the brows, the muddled light and dark before her eyes. The wound at the back of her neck had healed, yet the sting spread all the way to her earlobe; the taste of blood was harder to ignore than it had ever been. Yan Rushi brooded a moment, then her nails scored down You Fusang’s back.

The scent of all that blood was stirring in You Fusang’s heart some… indescribable emotion.

She had lost control. You Fusang knew she had lost control—lost it utterly.

Perhaps this was ultimate bliss: knowing full well the sea of bitterness lay ahead, yet pressing on without looking back.

The blood pact was, by origin, a bond between devil cultivators, later extended outward across the entire Heretic Path.

The pact is nourished by devil qi and blood qi; between the two individuals a distinction of master and servant emerges, the latter receiving orders, obeying, held in thrall by the former. The star-point trace You Fusang had once left on Yan Rushi’s earlobe had been more a beginning, a pastime better than nothing. Now Yan Rushi’s blood pact spread outward from the wound at the nape, giving off a faint glow, replicating You Fusang’s devil tattoo—like Flood Dragon scales.

The deepest blood pact must begin with a devil tattoo, and the devil tattoo is the most secret, most powerful, yet most taboo-to-probe part of a devil cultivator—both the weapon that carries her devil qi and her softest weakness.

Apart from the two bound by the pact, no third person may glimpse a devil tattoo; one who forcibly probes it will be wounded by backlash—the pact’s devil qi invades that body and devours its spiritual power or devil qi until death.

Yan Rushi bore the pact’s attachment, eyes lowered, shoulders trembling faintly, saying nothing. The devil tattoo climbed her nape in a paler shade, like mud staining a snowy branch—not falling into devilhood, so much as a devil tribulation.

You Fusang felt tenderness—and, with it, the sweet vertigo of damnation.

The Pagoda Ghost bared its fangs.

She didn’t know what lay ahead. Didn’t know whether sharpness still hid beneath Yan Rushi’s forbearing exterior.

She only saw the last teardrop fall from the person before her, luminous as moonlight—and through it glimpsed some tattered scroll of painting and inscription: All sounds fall silent; the Pagoda arises. Heaven and earth hushed—to be born is to die, to die is to be born.

In the Pagoda Palace, who, in the end, was the evil ghost—and who the divine Buddha?

Geng Ying couldn’t work it out no matter how she turned it over: she had already taken a beating before the palace at mao hour—so why, past noon at wei hour, was she assigned another punishment? And of the heaviest sort.

When she came clamoring to intercept You Fusang outside the Pagoda Palace, You Fusang was fussing over the orchids in the bamboo grove. It was midsummer; the long noon sun blazed down, and the orchids had wilted considerably.

Like the orchids, a listless air hung about You Fusang’s face—a dissatisfied listlessness that made the heart tighten at the sight of it. Geng Ying looked at her, and the moment she opened her mouth, her aggressive, interrogating air scattered entirely. “I just wanted to ask… about my… you… this…”

You Fusang ignored her, quietly wielding a wisp of devil qi to coax water from the wood—and accidentally drove a little too much. She murmured, “The roots will suffocate.”

“Ahem.” Geng Ying cleared her throat. “Venerable Lord, you owe me an explanation! Why—”

You Fusang was still studying the orchids. “The stem’s about to snap.”

Geng Ying found it strange: the Venerable Lord had never been one to cherish flowers. Normally she wouldn’t glance at these orchids, let alone tend them—why had her temperament changed so suddenly today?

You Fusang paid her no heed, walking straight past toward a black-robed messenger who had appeared unnoticed in the shadows. “I sent you to investigate the matter of Penglai. What news?”

The Black-Robed Messenger bowed to her. “Reporting to the Venerable Lord. Penglai lies forty-eight thousand li from Pagoda City, garrisoned by over three thousand demon cultivators, half of whom are currently resting and recuperating. As for the Pagoda aura you inquired about—the trail ends at Queen Mother Peak in Penglai; those without demon bloodlines are not permitted to ascend…”

“Useless thing. Probed or unprobed, it’s all the same. Before you ever set out, I already knew the trail breaks at Queen Mother Peak.” You Fusang’s face was expressionless. “Pagoda City is this large, and we cannot find a single civil official who can do a job properly or speak plainly.”

The messenger dropped to her knees at once. “Punish me, Venerable Lord! But those Demon Kings were truly unreasonable, and you did say not to spoil relations unless it was urgent… and you also said, I—I’m only a civil official…”

“Oh? You’re a civil official, so you can’t fight?”

The messenger mumbled and nodded.

“You can steal, you can rob, you can play the shameless wretch and throw tantrums. You can curse, you can flatter, you can seize the conversation in a negotiation. And you claim you can’t manage a single one of them. Demon cultivators size people up before serving the dish. If you act so meek and get looked down on and brushed aside by them, whose fault is that?”

“I…”

Geng Ying hopped about, gloating. “She’s not a patch on Elder Sister Qingluan, is she! Can’t speak articulately, can’t put two thoughts together—what a great big fool. Ooh, ooh, you ought to let Elder Sister Qingluan out of the Pagoda Tower. Besides, Elder Sister Qingluan used to be a demon cultivator—she must know Penglai very well.”

“Feeling sorry for her?” You Fusang smiled. “No rush. Soon enough you can go in and keep her company too.”

“No no no no no! Venerable Lord, I beg you, don’t punish me again! Don’t you think I can handle the Penglai business? I’ve dealt with all those demon cultivators—fists and quarrels alike. I’ve met those Demon Kings too, gotten along with every one of them!”

That much was true.

Geng Ying was flighty, amoral, loose of tongue, and full of tricks—she got along famously with Penglai’s demon cultivators.

Yet You Fusang remained unmoved, saying flatly, “Then I’ll go myself.”

You Fusang: “Geng Ying, your punishment is postponed. When I return from Penglai, you’ll go into the Pagoda Tower. These next few days, first…” She thought for a moment—what Geng Ying feared most wasn’t the slaughter inside the Pagoda Tower but sitting down to calmly practice calligraphy—so she said, “These next few days I’ll have someone pick out a few scriptures for you to copy. Sit in the study a full four hours each day. Even if you can’t write, trace the strokes from the scrolls. If you threaten or bribe anyone into copying for you, I’ll break your hands first—then take off your head.”

A few steps on, as if remembering something, she turned back toward the sleeping quarters. “Tend to that Young Sect Master Yan properly. Otherwise I’ll truly believe there is no one left in Pagoda.”

You Fusang set out for Penglai, across forty-eight thousand li of Cloud Sea.

She had questions about Penglai—and now, with Qingluan imprisoned and Geng Ying punished, You Fusang resolutely chose to go herself. For one reason only.

Beyond Penglai lay a dissipated trace of Pagoda aura.

Succession between the City Lords of Pagoda City was an inheritance through death. Every devil cultivator who had ever taken the City Lord’s seat had buried her predecessor.

Behind that seat stretched painted beams and carved pillars; on the floating walls, nine dragons held a universe within. They sat there, above ten thousand others, and had only sighs.

Sighs for the one who had passed—and a fore sight of their own dead end.

Those who cultivated the Pagoda Token grew mighty enough to touch heaven, but in the end every one of them would be devoured by the backlash of her own technique. Without exception, without reprieve.

So it should have been.

And yet You Fusang had traced the previous City Lord’s final aura to the borders of Penglai. True, the trail broke off at Penglai—but if she could pick it up again within Penglai, did that not mean everything might yet take a turn…

Perhaps, at the final layer of the Pagoda Token, the Golden Cicada Shedding Its Shell?

The Cloud Sea around her drifted, mist and haze; Penglai shrank to an ink dot at the far end of her sight.

Standing at that height, You Fusang couldn’t help recalling her first meeting with Zhuang Xuan.

Back then she had fled the Yan Sect, carrying a killing stroke of Yan Qingjue’s sword qi, coughing blood with every step, until she finally collapsed in some desolate wilderness—her blood-qi startling apart a whole swath of sunset and crows.

The sky darkened, and the cold around her fell unbearably deep. With every breath, bone-piercing chill invaded her marrow along her veins. You Fusang hurt so much she wanted to cry.

But it seemed she no longer had the strength even to cry.

Her mind still worked, though her body would not move; her thoughts rose and sank with the cold forest wind and the night. So cold… she thought. She thought of the bamboo blossoms on the Yan Sect’s Back Mountain—tender-red oleanders and white peonies; of Junior Sister Yan gathering the freshest morning dew to drip into a teacup for new tea. The look in her eyes whenever she watched her had still been reliance and delight; she would smile and call her “Senior Sister Fusang.” But their last look… When Yan Rushi had looked at her, there was nothing in her eyes but terror, startled by that bloodthirsty devil qi. Why had she… left the person she loved such a wretched, such an ugly, such an unbearable final image of herself…

The night grew very still. A wind passed somewhere far off; all things lost their voices. Bright moon and reed flowers were all a dream.

When she woke again, there were voices beside her—someone seemed to be keeping her company, lying close, having built a small fire from broken leaves.

Who…

“City Lord Zhuang, aren’t we going to save her?” You Fusang dimly heard someone ask.

“Save her,” another woman answered, her voice clear and bright, accompanied by the soft crackle of twigs being arranged in the fire. “But—I am still waiting.”

“What is the City Lord waiting for?”

“She refuses to treat the living.”

“…”

Ah. She was waiting for You Fusang to breathe her last completely.

And so young Fusang, in a state halfway between life and death, spent the last of her strength to prop up half her body—and spat a mouthful of blood at that City Lord.