The time had finally come.
Sure, the Ninth Prince was dreading this a tiny bit, but that was completely and totally natural.
After all, he was going to be face to face with one of the strongest Chosen in his generation, the probable next Sect Master of the Seven Divine Saber Palace, and also a colossal bastard.
In addition, said colossal bastard hated the devils with a fiery passion, and cared so little about mortal life that he was willing to just let hundreds of thousands of escaped mortals wander aimlessly in the heart of blood path territory with nothing but a few saber cultivation manuals to protect them.
No, the Ninth Prince wasn't really looking forward to this at all.
Still, personal sacrifices for the greater good were inevitable, and sticking close to Fang Tai would help the Hydra rescue even more mortals than they would have otherwise.
Step one to that plan was, regrettably, trying to convince Fang Tai.
But all of the Ninth Prince's current internal musing was just to stall for time, lengthening the blessed peace before he had to meet someone he already despi-
The Ninth Prince slapped himself. Hard.
Then, as a condemned prisoner walks to the headsman's block, the Ninth Prince slowly and methodically made his way to the hill upon which Fang Tai was standing.
The first thing he noticed was the sheer
pressure emanating from the Chosen, something he'd only felt from the Nascent Souls of the Naag when they were
truly pissed, sheer will radiating out and forming a physical force.
Only- It wasn't coming from Fang Tai. It was coming from his saber.
...Yeah the Ninth Prince wasn't gonna touch whatever
that was with a ten foot spear.
Instead, he turned towards Fang Tai, making sure to give away nothing of his disgust for the bastard, burying it between dozens of layers of pure willpower in the sake of cooperation between the Golden Devils and the Righteous Path.
The Ninth Prince slowly extended his hand to shake, making sure to be as non threatening as possible, and got ready to deliver a carefully crafted speech about cooperation, what an honor it was to work with such an illustrious chosen, and a dozen other platitudes that made him sick to his stomach but were necessary to making sure their nascent alliance didn't crumble in on itse-
And then before he could do anything, Fang Tai spoke, almost confused at something. "The mortals you currently protect."
...The Ninth Prince had a bad feeling about where this was going. Desperately keeping himself from jumping to conclusions, the last scion of the Naag plastered a carefully neutral expression onto his face. "...Yes? What of them?"
You know, the Ninth Prince was actually proud of how he'd handled that! There was barely a single tremor in his voice, and to basically everyone else, it'd look like he was perfectly calm. Yes, the Ninth Prince had a feeling all of this was going to turn out just fine!
And then Fang Tai opened his mouth.
The Dao Child of the Seven Divine Saber Palace looked honestly baffled as he asked the Ninth Prince his question, which obviously just made everything so much worse. "Why exactly are you doing so?"
What.
No, legitimately, what.
The Ninth Prince just. Couldn't right now.
What the fuck.
Wasn't he supposed to be a fucking
Righteous Path cultivator?
...Ah, there was the anger.
But unlike other times, the Ninth Prince wasn't too inclined to hold himself back. This fucker wanted to play, to get a reason to kill him? The Ninth Prince was more than happy to give Fang Tai a
reas-
No. No, that wouldn't do. The Ninth Prince didn't just have himself to worry about, or even just him and his snakes. He had a legion counting on him, and if he gave Fang Tai a reason to break the truce, then that would mean a battle that the Hydra would lose without a doubt.
Hells, the Ninth Prince technically had the
Clan to think of. After all, if Fang Tai killed him, the Grand Elder wouldn't let the Saber Palace off lightly, and that would almost certainly cause war, a war that the Clan couldn't afford with the trials this close.
So, instead of listening to the venom bubbling in his veins, instead of listening to the howling will within himself screaming to crush Fang Tai into the dirt, show him what would happen if he
messed with a PRINCE-
Instead of that, the Ninth Prince took a single breath, pushing his rage and fury down. Then, once he was fully calm, or as calm as he was going to get, he began to speak, voice still tight and shaking with anger. "And…
What exactly do you mean by that?"
Completely unconcerned (or completely oblivious) by the Ninth Prince's incredibly obvious rage, Fang Tai replied. "Two things. One, why are you even bothering in the first place? If they die, it's their fault for not cultivating hard enough. I
did leave them some Saber Path manuals, high quality stuff too. They had the ambient qi, they had the manuals, and they should've had the drive. Two, why are
you in particular bothering in the first place? You're a member of the Demonic Path. I'd expect this kind of thing from Xu Zhen and the Strength Purity Sect, maybe the Bear Enslavement Sect and the Ma Clan, probably the Arrow Rebels too. Not a Devil."
The Ninth Prince couldn't help it. He started laughing. No, that was inaccurate. The Ninth Prince was straight up
cackling, laughing his ass off and generally looking like a madman.
As Fang Tai's troops slowly reached for their sabers, and Fang Tai himself looked completely confused as to what was happening, the Ninth Prince
finally stopped laughing, or at least, stopped laughing long enough to speak. "Hooo… I needed that, let me tell you. I really did. Here I was thinking you were some sort of monster, an evil bastard who just didn't care about mortals or general human decency."
The Ninth Prince wiped a venomous tear from his metal face, flinging it down to the ground, where it burnt straight through about a meter of soil. "It is
such a relief to be proven wrong. You don't have any inherent malice or anything like that."
"Thank you?" Fang Tai was just. So confused. Apparently spending all of your time training to be a 1v1 melee beast to the exclusion of everything else didn't really play well with politics and wordplay.
But that was fine, because the Ninth Prince was more than happy to educate him. "Yeah. You're not a monster or anything. You're just an idiot."
Almost immediately, the Ninth Prince was at the center of a perfect ring of sabers, each held by a Saber Palace cultivator, and each cultivator charging a technique of some sort. The saber immediately in front of him was the one wielded by Fang Tai himself, whose eyes blazed with fury as he bit out a single word. "
Explain."
Despite being in a situation where he could easily die, the Ninth Prince was still confident and cocky, leaning back and putting his hands to the back of his head. "Gladly."
"So, the first thing we're gonna talk about here is your first point, specifically the thing about the mortals dying being their fault. Your argument is that if they wanted to die, they simply wouldve cultivated, right?"
Fang Tai looked slightly less murderous, but still ready to gut him at the slightest provocation. The Ninth Prince just hoped that his legion didn't see this, since they'd almost certainly do something incredibly stupid. "Yes. That's correct."
The Ninth Prince smiled. "Well, as you already know, I think that's incredibly stupid. And, since I'm actually trying to change your mind here, I'm going to explain why exactly this is a shitty idea."
"First off, talent isn't a thing that exists. What we call talent is just compatibility with a certain technique or manual. It's why I can reach the Ninth Heavenstage in 20 years with my Nagaraj Art, but I'd need about ten times the time to reach the same level with something like a water manual."
The Ninth Prince put up a single finger as Fang Tai opened his mouth. "A-bup-bup. Before you say anything, I already know exactly what you're gonna talk about, so there's no real reason for you to say it."
"However! Since I doubt that your minions can read your mind like I can, I'll do you the honor of explaining your train of thought."
Huh. The Ninth Prince didn't know that Fang Tai could turn that shade of red.
...Maybe he should let off on him, just a
little bit.
Nah.
"You were about to say something like 'You're just proving my point. If talent doesn't exist, then the mortals should've been able to cultivate to a high enough stage to save themselves'."
The Ninth Prince smiled again. It wasn't a nice smile. "Am I right?"
Fang Tai didn't say anything, simply nodding tersely once.
The Ninth Prince clapped his hands. "Perfect! But if you'd actually listened carefully instead of dismissing my words as unworthy of your time, seeing as they came from a Golden Devil, you wouldn't think that. As I said earlier, what we know as talent measures how compatible someone is with a cultivation technique."
Fang Tai sucked in a sharp breath, as he
finally got what the Ninth Prince was going for. "So, you mean that-"
The Ninth Prince smiled once more, this time with no malice. "Exactly! The cultivation techniques you left the mortals were all Saber techniques, and more than that, pure saber techniques, the exact sort of thing that you cultivate, and cultivate well."
"But wait. Surely there have to be mortals that
do have an aptitude with saber techniques right? How come
they didn't reach the heights you did?"
The Ninth Prince put on a surprised expression, tapping his head as if deep in thought. "Actually, Fang Tai. How exactly
do you cultivate so well with the Saber techniques?"
"
Surely it has nothing to do with your innate Saber Body, or the mountains of Spirit Stones you use on a daily basis (mountains
we sell you by the way), or the Nascent Souls and Core Formation cultivators that are all too willing to assist you with anything you need, or the Secret Realms the Saber Palace pays for, or the-"
And then the Ninth Prince saw god.
A God of War, each breath, each blink, each motion containing power enough to shatter a world, a Shura God whose steps caused the cosmos to quake, caused dragons and phoenixes and immortals to prostrate themselves in front of him, not out of respect but out of fear, fear that his saber would cut them down.
There was a saying in the cultivation world, one that the Ninth Prince had previously scoffed at. 'The sword is for war. The saber is for slaughter.'
When he'd first heard it, the Ninth Prince didn't understand the proverb. Both the sword and the saber were equally useful in most forms of combat, yes? He chalked it up to the obsessive rivalry between the two types of cultivators, laughed a little, and went along with his day.
The Ninth Prince wasn't laughing now, for seeing that Shura God's saber made him understand the truth.
The divine saber the Ninth Prince beheld was simultaneously a holy and demonic weapon, the final arbiter of death and the instrument by which it was dealt.
Hundreds of millions of howling souls swirled around it, cursing the world and universe that had spawned such a grand and terrible weapon, a weapon to cut worlds and break nations, a saber able to shatter the devil and suppress the demon, a saber made in hell to kill those of hell.
Merely looking at it caused the Ninth Prince to feel a thin line bisecting his body, as if the intelligence of a cosmic beast was very briefly on him, and had left a mark for later ease of cutting.
The God of War and his saber stood on a mountain of corpses, immortals, demons, dragons, gods, devils, and ghosts lying broken before and under them, hacked to pieces and left to rot.
The sheer
pressure in the air, a thousand million cuts all aiming straight for his heart, an unsurpassed killing intent and will to slaughter guiding them with unerring accuracy, forced the Ninth Prince to his knees, hoping, praying that perhaps if he prostrated himself in front of the Shura God, the divinity would spare him and move on to more worthy prey.
Then, a voice began to boom from all around him, infused with the pure essence of hacking, each letter and syllable an all out attack that could slaughter devils and suppress gods.
[Oh for the love of the Divine Saber, will you please shut up?]
In the face of a will like that, what else could the Ninth Prince do but obey?
[Good. Now that that's taken care of, I can actually respond to your points.]
[You've made some relatively reasonable arguments, as you show yourself to be in possession of the low animal cunning that characterizes the members of the Demonic Path, but the sheer mental capacity of one of the Chosen of the Righteous Path shall vanquish you.]
[You say some mortals have no aptitude for the saber. You say that I was afforded more time and advantages than any of them, that my saber body and resources and the advice of my elders allowed me to gain unsurpassable advantages.]
The skies darkened and crackled with thunder, heavenly tribulation lightning that bowed to the Shura God's will.
[To that, I say this.]
The God of War spread his arms wide, looking up to the heavens, fanaticism written all over his face as his saber began to move on its own, hovering point up over its wielder's head, slowly rotating over and over and over and over again.
[Those fools didn't believe in the saber hard enough.]
The saber continued to rotate, picking up speed and generating holy light, until it was a single unbroken pillar of metal and light stretching up into infinity.
[The Saber is truth, the Saber is life, the Saber is death, the Saber slaughters the demon and suppresses the devil, stifles the blood and chokes the plague, cuts the strings of fate and pierces through space and time! It is the source of all that is needed for cultivation, the ultimate equalizer!]
The Shura God rose up into the air, earth shattering around his feet as he kicked off the ground, earth that was drawn into the saber pillar like iron drawn to a magnet, earth that was devoured by the saber until there was nothing left.
[TALENT?! TALENT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE GIFTS OF THE SABER! RESOURCES?! THE SABER IS THE ONLY RESOURCE YOU NEED! THE SABER WAS ALL THOSE MORTALS NEEDED TO CULTIVATE, FAITH IN THAT MOST PERFECT OF WEAPONS ALL ONE NEEDS TO SLAUGHTER ONE'S ENEMIES!]
The sky shattered and the earth broke, corpses died once more and space itself was crushed into a million billion infinitely small fragments, the world around the Saber God collapsing into the God Saber until there was nothing left in all heaven and earth but a man and a saber.
[So yes. I was right to leave those mortals with nothing but sabers and saber manuals, for if they had believed hard enough, if they had wanted to live hard enough, all of them would have been in Foundation Establishment already, and all of them would have survived.]
The Ninth Prince forced himself to his feet, cut by razor saber winds until his flesh was as ribbons.
"...No."
"...Y-you're wrong."
The wind howled around him, pushing the Ninth Prince to his knees once more as the world closed inwards onto him, the same divine voice resounding from all around him.
[Oh? What did you say?]
"...I ...said."
The Ninth Prince stood up, bloody, broken, and battered, but unbowed, unmovable and undefeated.
The wind howled, but didn't cut him. The world closed in, but didn't touch him.
"...You're
WRONG."
And then the Shura God disappeared.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Fang Tai watched as the Ninth Prince slowly stood up from his kneeling pressure, the Dao Child's Anima Flare being shrugged off through sheer willpower.
And then, the Ninth Prince disappeared from his view.
Actually, everything disappeared, his sworn brothers, the terrain around them, the feeling of his father's saber in his hand, all of it gone.
Instead, in their place, Fang Tai saw a monster.
A Snake-Man-Hybrid thing, a perfect fusion of both reptile and humanoid, visage equal parts beautiful and terrifying.
Its entire body was covered in thick scales, each scale containing an array carved in twisted iron and corrosive acid, glowing a sickly greenish grey, Fang Tai's skin starting to melt just by looking at them.
Its body was shot through with wires and cables and plates of iron, hollow iron haunted by the ghosts of murderous demons from beyond the stars, howling out for vengeance against a cosmic serpent that ate and ate and ate and ate until there was nothing left.
Its claws, hands and feet alike, dripped with a greenish grey venom and acid and molten metal, corroding and poisoning and shattering space and time as they slowly, lethargically dripped down towards the ground, a ground that parted before the droplets like it was a mortal crowd getting out of the way of a gang of cultivators.
The spear in the hands of the monster was not entirely there
, shimmering and flickering out of view like a heat haze or mirage, twisting and shifting into dozens of different forms until it was impossible to tell which part of the spear was real and which was merely an illusion.
At the monster's feet, hundreds of millions of snakes of all shapes and sizes and powers, from mere mortal adders to the oldest of the true wyrm dragons, bowed at the monster's feet, not out of fear or even respect, but out of an instinctive reverence for the greatest of their kind, the true heir of Vritra, Plague Incarnate.
But even beyond that visage of snakes and venom and otherworldly steel, there was a second presence hidden within and behind the Serpent King.
A being of pure and unfettered golden power, a man who was a natural law unto himself, a universal constant like Qi or Gravity. The sky was blue, the Third Sea was dead, and Anush Naag of the Naag Clan would rule the world.
There was an instinctive desire to prostrate himself before this God King, not out of respect or fear or reverence or any other emotion, but because that was simply how the world worked. Cultivators fought, the Saber was the premier weapon, and he bowed before this figure.
Fang Tai was halfway through kneeling when he snapped out of it.
Immediately, he exerted his own Anima on the surroundings, Saber God manifesting over a mountain of corpses, Saber ready to slaughter demons and suppress devils.
The Ninth Prince's Anima faltered and grew hazy, before almost immediately springing back into full view, Serpent King standing at the head of a world of snakes, ready to devour everything in its path, as the God King stood behind it, exerting its right
to rule over all before it.
Two wills clashed, Anima Flares sparking and crashing off of each other as each avatar tried to suppress its counterpart with presence alone, the prowess of their controllers showing in their every action.
This battle of the will could have gone on for eternity and a day, and most likely would have, Fang Tai being too proud to back down and the Ninth Prince much too angry to give up, the two locked in a silent contest of Anima until they abruptly died of old age.
Of course, this didn't happen.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Instead, their conflict was abruptly halted.
The Ninth Prince snapped out of his battle trance first, shaking his head to get rid of any lingering traces of Fang Tai's anima, and opening his eyes to see what lay before him.
The Ninth Prince really wished he hadn't opened his eyes.
To his right was a band of Noble Devil Alliance Chosen, representatives from the Demonic Altar and Noble Knowledge sects heading a group made up of those from the Gao Clan, Heavenly Time Shatter Sect, and more.
They wielded masterful arms and armor, manifested sublime techniques, and shone with Qi, visible even to the naked eye.
The leader of the band, a muscular demonic atar sect member clad in black and red armor, wielding a mace that howled with blood and souls, stepped forward and bellowed out a challenge, voice amplified and replicated by the hungry ghosts swirling around him.
"FANG TAI! I NAME YOU COWARD, I NAME YOU HEATHEN, I NAME YOU DISGRACE TO YOUR SECT! DO YOU DARE TRY AND REGAIN EVEN THE SLIMMEST BITS OF YOUR HONOR BY FACING US ALL AT ONCE?! THIS SHOULD BE NOTHING TO SOMEONE OF YOUR… CALIBER!"
To the Ninth Prince's left, a tiny dot in the distance but quickly eating up ground, surrounded by an enormous shroud of poison, death, bones, and blood, all bent to his will and all made for a single purpose, was a Core Formation Cultivator.
...Yeah, there was nothing else he needed to say.
Apparently that one girl's claims of having a Core Formation Master weren't false, proven even more so by the furious howls that drowned everything else out.
"YOU IMPETOUS FUCKING BRAT! KILLING MY DISCIPLE AND THINKING YOU'D JUST GET AWAY WITH IT?! JUNIOR, YOU DARE?!"
The Ninth Prince and Fang Tai shared a look.
"Truce?"
"Truce."
"You take the Core out for my blood-"
"-And you take the Chosen who'd dogpile me before doing
something to kill me?"
"Sounds like we have a plan."
"Sounds like we do."
As Fang Tai sprinted off into the distance to cross blades with the Early Core Formation cultivator, the Ninth Prince jumped high into the air, iron muscles and tendons propelling him far farther than he could otherwise.
As he sent out a call for aid from Ulo, Kha Li and Ya, and Raj through the Mindweb, and landed right in the middle of the Chosen group, spear already darting out to slash the Time Shatter chosen across the ribs, the Ninth Prince allowed himself a smile. Maybe this meeting wouldn't be so bad after all.
Of course, that was immediately when everything went to hell.
A/N: This took me way too long, like, yall have no idea, this took so much time, but thanks to a few suggestions from a few people on the discord, and a few music playlists (side note, I always reccomend listening to some sort of instrumental music if you're gonna write, it really gets the creative juices flowing, especially if you pick music that matches the mood/scene you're going for), I got through this little omake.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy this, it took a lot of time and I'm actually pretty proud of it!
Ah yes. Those backstabbing assholes. Not like we've never put a knife in someone's spine, right?
