11. Yángguān Sāndié #2
“So that’s where the rings came from,” James said like he was taking mental notes, “but Qin Shi Huang died relatively young right? So you guys defeated him?”
“That we did Master Zhang. It was long and bitter work; it took years before we fully mastered the powers we had so desperately sought out for ourselves. But when we finally overcame those hurdles, we were ready to dethrone the Emperor at last,”
With another flash of light, Dustin and the others found themselves once again standing over an open field; but this time there weren’t two armies clashing…
only the Emperor in his antlered armor, and the five Elemental Sages.
The battle was like something out of a comic book; Qin Shi Huang was a force to be reckoned with, summoning wind and rain and lightning like he was composing an orchestra of bloodshed.
The Sages were ready for him though, working in perfect unison to counteract his every move.
When lightning tried to scorch them, Yanli sheltered them with shields of stone, reinforced by Minghua’s metal spine.
When the wind threatened to blow them away, Sima Yao’s vines held them in place.
When the blinding rain obscured their vision, Fusu turned it into a canopy of water that gave Huhai just enough visibility to blast their father with blazing streams of orange flame.
It was like watching the Ancient Chinese X-Men kick ass, and Dustin was completely mesmerized.
“I have sacrificed everything to build this empire, kept my children in luxury’s lap for the whole of their lives, and given purpose to an entire nation…
and this is how I am repaid? In betrayal and conspiracy?
!” Qin Shi Huang groaned as he dropped to one knee, a scorching hole burned into the chest of his armor, “you may kill me here, but know this; my power, my DIVINE RIGHT will live beyond me. My soul will not rest until the world I sought to build comes to fruition; a world that fears the name Qin Shi…”
His words were silenced by a razor sharp metal shard flying into his throat; a section of Minghua’s armor that she’d detached and fired off like a throwing knife. Dustin winced at the sight, while the others covered their eyes or looked away entirely.
The Emperor gurgled and collapsed into a lifeless heap; the black storm clouds overhead finally dissipating as he drew his final breath.
“Damn, she didn’t even let him finish his villain monologue,” Bailey mumbled, “a queen move for sure but… brutal,”
“We were victorious. A new era awaited us as Prince Fusu prepared to ascend the throne and rule as the next Emperor of Qin. But, as we were soon to discover, Huhai had other plans. In the years between the forging of the rings and our defeat of The Emperor, the younger prince developed a deep disdain for Prince Fusu. He came to believe that his elder brother was not fit to lead the empire, and that only he could succeed where their father did not,”
The open field beneath them was swallowed in a veil of fog, which rapidly consumed the group as well. They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear everything; metal clanging, water whipping against stone, tree bark crunching… the sound of crackling flame. And then came the disembodied voices.
“Huhai?! W-why… how could you turn on us, a-after everything?” Yanli’s tired sobs gave way into a final exhale as she seemed to breathe her last breath.
“You had better pray to the gods that your next blow strikes true, because if you fail, I will thunder down upon you with the full might of my ancestral line you traitorous snake,” Minghua’s words were like venom, before they were smothered by the sound of roaring fire.
“Brother… you don’t have to do this. We can still be better than him. We… can… still,” Fusu’s sentence trailed off into unbearable, eerie silence.
“Baobei… my precious thing. Please,” Sima Yao pleaded, his words trembling like the strings of a violin, “please do not end it like this,”
A sniffle came afterwards, but not from Sima Yao.
“I’m truly sorry my beloved, but I am the only one who can be what this empire needs. I cannot risk you or the others standing against me, but fret not. We will meet again in the next life, I swear it,”
Dustin swore he could feel the heat from the surging flames that followed as the fog evaporated, leaving him and the rest of the group standing in the Palace of Radiant Clouds once more, before a pensive looking Sima Yao.
No one spoke for a long moment; clearly trying to process whatever the fuck they’d just heard. Sima Yao folded his hands into his sleeves, and chewed furiously on his bottom lip as his eyes focused intently on the ground.
Eventually James broke the silence.
“I’m so sorry,” he tried to put a hand on Sima Yao’s shoulder, but it phased through like a hologram at first, before his ring glowed with faint azure light that allowed him to actually touch the ghost. Like a resonance between the two Wood Sages, “you loved him… and he murdered you,”
“You are a kind soul Master Zhang, but I did not show you these things purely to elicit sympathy,” Sima Yao breathed deeply before continuing, “after my death, my soul was removed from the cycle of reincarnation at the behest of the Jade Emperor, ruler of the Heavenly Court. I was informed that due to his consumption of Ao Guang’s scale, Qin Shi Huang’s soul had truly become immortal.
When my allies and I defeated him, it was shattered into 10,000 fragments that would inevitably reconstitute,”
That was it; the pieces were finally coming together. Qin Shi Huang’s storm magic, the freak weather events, Leo’s possession only after being caught in the rain… he’d been possessed by a fragment of the dead Emperor’s soul.
“Okay so, pieces of Qin Shi Huang’s soul can possess people who are caught in those freak supernatural storms. But can it happen to anyone at any time? Are we safe because of our rings? Is anyone safe at all?” Bailey asked, anxiously pinching the skin of her elbow.
“In order to be taken over by the Emperor’s will, one must be spiritually compromised. In emotional anguish or despair. You all will remain safe, so long as you are vigilant,” Sima Yao clarified.
Dustin felt a knot in his stomach; Leo must’ve been “compromised” because of Dustin rejecting him. Just another way that all of this was his fucking fault.
“Is that why you’re here? To find people to become the new Sages before his soul fully revives?” Chris wondered aloud. Sima Yao nodded.
“I’ve remained in this palace, the place where the five of us once labored to master our power, for that purpose alone. However, I did not expect Fusu’s descendants to be among those destined to resume the fight,”
Fusu’s… descendants?
Sima Yao looked between Dustin and Chris, and soon Chloe, Bailey, and James’s eyes were on the twins as well.
So it was true… they were from the same bloodline as the first fucking emperor of China.
That explained why they looked so much like the prince and shared a family name with Ying Zheng.
Dustin’s immediate thought was wondering if his mother had ever suspected that the man she married came from the same family as the emperor she’d devoted her career to studying.
The second thought was much grimmer though…
The way Huhai turned on his team and massacred them, including his own brother.
He couldn’t help wondering if power would turn him and Chris against each other in a similar way… but that was impossible, wasn’t it? Sure, they had their moments, but they loved each other deeply. They’d never hurt each other like that; he couldn’t let what he saw shake his faith in his brother.
“This technically makes you royalty,” James said, smiling brightly at Dustin, “I don’t find that shocking at all,”
“Even flirting at a time like this. Now that’s commitment,” Chris said, flippant as ever, though his voice was clearly shaken. Whether it was from the vision Sima Yao had shown them, or the revelation of their bloodline, Dustin wasn’t sure.
“Again, Young Masters, I apologize for not giving you this revelation sooner, before one close to you lost their life in the crossfire. But now you are aware of the true magnitude of the threat we face. It is your responsibility to defeat Qin Shi Huang once more, lest he bring the entire world to ruin,”
The group exchanged glances with one another, all clearly suffocating under the weight of what they had been tasked with. Dustin’s mind was far too exhausted from everything he’d been through in just one day to fully comprehend it all, but he knew one thing for sure.
If he was going to be drafted into a supernatural war against an undead megalomaniac, at least he wasn’t alone.