Gengxin scowled.
Mistress of the Seven Poisons, they called her.
Before the old bastard had come, they'd named her the Witch of Decay and it had been only a matter of time until the Devil Bees fell entirely into her hands.
Now, she was little better than a servant. Not even a concubine! Not that she hadn't offered, but the old bastard had just chuckled and told her to find someone else to kill. Xinyue had just laughed at her, as though she wouldn't have tried!
No, no. She calmed herself. Xinyue wouldn't have tried. She never saw the benefit of trying every possible end, even if it was likely to fail. Xinyue had been the sort of creature who commanded a legion of Devil Bees in her own right, using her pets to consume more and more of her rivals, rising rapidly through Core Formation and from there into Nascent Soul. A talent, a genius, a piece-of-shit whore she was going to kill one day.
Gengxin on the other hand had clawed her way up. She'd killed and fucked and fought, and done the most useful in each situation. Pleasure a man - or a woman, as distasteful as the thought had been a the time - for favor? She could always repay the humiliation once she stood above them, and she had done so. Thirty-two lovers, each dead now. Nobody who had thought to step on her still lived, each of them suffering a slow and gradual death, a cruel decline into nothingness. That was the price of seeing her weak, of exploiting her weakness.
It had not made her popular, of course, but who needed popularity when one could dose their subordinates with poisons and ply them with antidotes for loyalty? Only an idiot like Sun Diaxing trusted others. She relied on more certain means.
Now she feared, though. She had not truly feared Xinyue. The other woman was mighty and proud, but lacked her sense of subtlety, always feared her. After Xinyue had sent nearly a quarter of a million Devil Bees at her and seen them fall in a cloud of poison, there had been a peace between them. Xinyue sought allies, slowly encroaching on Gengxin's territory, subverting her people and stealing her bee-mounts. Gengxin poisoned Xinyue's people, ensuring they served her or died. She had controlled less territory, but more Core Formation underlings.
She had a plan, too. Poisons placed here and there, in a great array ready to face Xinyue with. It would have poisoned the other woman permanently, weakening her badly unless she found the antidote. Decades of planning gone, and Sun Diaxing came in, striding in like he hadn't just lost an entire Sect to the other old bastard across the mountains. She didn't know what he found so frightening about Konstantinos. Some old man who had a cleaver and a dagger and couldn't fight for shit? Even Gengxin would be able to kill him, to say nothing of the three of them together.
Still, she'd better focus on the present. She was sure Old Cannibal was going to kill her one day, but he wasn't going to kill her until she stopped being useful, and this... this would be useful.
"Five Soul Transformation Poison."
A vial of glimmering green at first, shifting to red, then blue, then yellow, and finally white. It shifted back to green, continuing the cycle.
She grinned. This was a masterwork. With this, surely she would gain an advantage over Xinyue. Then she'd step into Mid Nascent Soul, and then...
Well. Both of them had seen her weak, humiliated. She couldn't have that.
-------------------------------------------------
Sun Diaxing sighed.
The two girls were unruly, the Devil Bees as bad as his own Cannibals had been, except that they could more easily fly off and hide to disobey orders.
Not that he needed more than a few. He had gathered a small group of mortals, and raised them in the last years. Given them the truth of the world, that there was only competition and consumption. That only bonds between those who consumed could truly oppose the cattle who brayed so loudly when they were slaughtered, else they would end up devouring themselves as well as others.
Perhaps one in ten would truly understand the lesson, but it was a difficult one to teach.
Bringing them all to Foundation Establishment had been the matter of simply killing a few Core Formation elders of each of the girls' side to bring them into line, and to raise a small cadre loyal to him.
Now, he brought them with him, flying behind on their Devil Bees, creatures under Xinyue's command. She was quite aware he would look dimly on the death of his new disciples.
Chuan Clan.
They had raided all around it to make it obvious the blow would fall there. They flew in confidently, openly, high above the cities and under the clouds, seeking to show that they had come to kill.
Why?
If the Verdant South united against them, he was confident in their escape. And that would tell them something incredibly valuable. But if they did not, this simple impudent tactic would go unexpected.
He smiled thinly.
Enemies who could not read your very heart were so much easier to deal with.
He still wasn't sure how Konstantinos had manipulated the last series of events, but the more he thought about it the more sense it made. Get the Saber Palace to incite a rebellion in his lands, forcing him to go hat-in-hand to Konstantinos to kill his own disciple. Push him to the brink, force him to war. Even the Light Qi he had taken as his sole prize from those peculiar, terrifying Caves had been foreseen and used against him, forcing him into a battle he was unable to win. Every single move had seem planned, forcing him into a series of bad choices from which there was no coming back.
From a certain point on the board, defeat was unstoppable no matter the moves you made. He should have simply made war when Alexios died, brought every Cannibal he could find across the border and begun a slaughter great enough to end the Devils and damn the consequences. But he had wanted to wait, to see the old Elder's death had been some noxious plot planned to lure him out and kill him. Inaction had killed him, but the fact that Konstantinos had been able to plot against him had killed him even more.
If he was ever still, he would fall. Only by growing sufficiently to simply crush his enemy would he ever be free of him.
This, he thought, was a good first step.
An old man rose out of the sky. Old, like Konstantinos.
"Old Fish."
Diaxing inclined his head respectfully.
"This Sun Diaxing greets you. May I know why you are impeding our travel?"
Scales shimmered over the body of the old man, and the whiskers of a catfish poked out from his cheeks. His whiskers twitched as he spoke.
"You will find no purchase here, Devil Bees. Return to your lands or else this old man will force you out. These people and these lands are under my protection."
Diaxing chuckled.
"I of course intend no harm to your people or lands. Please, we are merely surveying the lands about us in preparation for a diplomatic... exercise."
Below them stood the Noble Koi Palace, the mirror image of the Undersea Gold Palace. A fortress of mighty power, that once closed could only be opened by Old Fish himself.
Old Fish ignored his words, lashing out.
Silver scales dispersed from his flesh, flying into the air. Each one sharp and powerful, spinning towards him, ready to slice him in half.
Diaxing simply moved - his body no longer where it had been, and Xinyue moved in to intercept the scales. She parried them, using her pair of fans to do so again and again. Gengxin drank from a vial, spitting at the scales, each blob of spit dissolving a scale in the air where it was.
From the air, Diaxing drew his bow.
The Screaming Intestine Bow had been unpleasant to draw at first, but it was a marvelous weapon. Infinitely resizeable, a series of human heads making up what would ordinarily be wood, ropy intestines forming the bowstring. When he drew it the arrows formed naturally, a storage of human Qi unlike almost any other. It could be used as a reservoir to help one cultivate in the bad years as populations recovered, or, more importantly, it could form arrows fundamentally compatible with almost any Blood Art.
The arrows formed from bone, well-fletched and well-carved.
He drew it back, and the arrow flew out. It hunted after Old Fish as the scales hunted him, and arrow after arrow went into the air.
Old Fish parried one, and another, and another, as the two girls removed scale after scale.
Panting, Old Fish spoke.
"Are you convinced of my sincerity yet?"
Sun Diaxing - no, he was Old Cannibal right now - laughed.
"Fine. I'll send the two girls away. If you can take this one strike of mine, I'll naturally leave."
Old Fish drew his remaining scales back onto his body, preparing.
Old Cannibal chuckled, drawing the bow even further back. An arrow of majestic complexity began to fashion itself, more and more Qi pouring into as the bowstring stretched, the heads screaming louder and louder in a symphony of delightful agony as he did so.
He could see the intent of Old Fish. The Palace stood behind him, sealed. He would unseal it in an instant, dodge inside the Palace, weather the blow, and return outside to continue fighting. With such a fortress he could leap in and out, striking at Diaxing and his disciples with impunity, harrying them until they went away.
What a good plan.
What a pity, he thought. Konstantinos thought in plans inside plans, and he was used to plotting against so many such. Here, the Verdant South had forgotten the true cost of war. Not the cost it levied on them, but the cost others were willing to pay to wage it. They bickered like children, unwilling to give up a scrap of power, plotting in asinine matters even as the world burned around them. It was a pleasure to bring the world to them.
He drew the arrow further, and Old Fish began to cough.
"What..."
Old Cannibal chuckled.
"Gengxin, this is your triumph. Why don't you educate our friend?"
She smiled, dimples on her cheeks, seemingly delightfully. Diaxing's own smile thinned - she usually looked like that when she was going to try and kill someone.
"Old Fish, this junior apologise for her presumption, but the Five Soul Transformation Poison works by forcing those with transformation arts to transform into a single chosen form of the poison-brewer's choice. For you, I know your old catfish form is mighty, but also know that it cannot survive above the surface of the water for long. By infusing one of your scales with this poison it can force a transformation, even it could not poison you otherwise. Your scales are a part of your catfish form, and despite not being part of your human form in truth... well, it's a simple enough thing to draw an equivalence between the two provided the owner is a soul cultivator of sorts, no?"
The old man gasped, arms and legs turning into fins, face growing longer as he flew and flopped away, moving towards the ocean at all speed.
Diaxing smiled.
"Xinyue, how many Core Formation cultivators are inside the Palace?"
She frowned.
"Almost fifty. Perhaps half of the entire Chuan Clan's core strength."
"Good. I have no interest in winnowing them out just yet. They will be needed to head north. If we denude the lands around them, Old Fish will have nothing left to defend, beyond a palace we cannot hope to take. As such, he will head north, facing the Noble Devil Alliance, knowing we will not return for many decades to come. We need to keep all of our enemies off-balance, keep every side neatly balanced as we seek to form a side of our own. For now..."
He grinned.
"Consume. Consume every mortal you can find, every misbegotten Righteous Path cultivator trapped outside a formation. Kill them and eat them and eat your fill, for there will be no easy feasts like this again. Eat and know I am no liar, disciples mine. Know that when I promised you food, promised you power I made that promise in good faith. This is only the beginning, though. Follow me and we will rise ever-higher, until we challenge the Heavens themselves."
He licked his lips.
He had not been able to feast in so long.
