66. Inversion

  The garden of the new arrivals was a place of beauty. The architecture of the palace borrowed styles from a hundred worlds throughout the Lord of the Realm’s domain, with a wing for every land in which ascended ones were expected to arrive. This was to ease the transition of the newly ascended soul by giving them a place of familiarity in the days following their ascension.

  Not every ascended one chose to stay in familiar quarters, however, and the most recent ascended one complicated the palace staff by insisting on sleeping in a different room every night. This wasn’t especially a problem given that there were a thousand bedrooms to choose from, but it presented a number of difficulties.

  For one, the palace staff was forced to move a significant amount of furniture to ensure that the ascended one always had a bed with the proper softness, sheets with the proper thread count, and covers with down from the correct geese.

  The ascended one was not told of the problems his eccentricity was causing, but little birds watched with amusement as the men and women who made the palace work while fading into the background grumbled about the ascended one behind his back.

  The fact that the ascended one slept in a different bed every night meant that Mai Mai never knew where she would be sleeping. Although the ascended one had never once made any advanced beyond thanking her for the tea, the palace superiors insisted upon keeping her near him in case he expressed a desire for her companionship. Which meant that when he slept in a new room, Mai Mai would sleep in the nearest servant’s quarter and wonder if tonight would be the night when he asked for more than tea from her.

  She was willing. More than willing; being his lover would elevate her and her family significantly in the rigid social hierarchy that she had been born into. She was but of the bronze path, but few Welpakians rose above that rank. But with the seed of an ascended one, perhaps her children might be…

  Well, they would be Descendants, that was true. But perhaps they might be powers of their own right.

  She did not really understand these things, but if the ascended one managed to cultivate to the diamond path, then his own station would elevate, and any of his children who had been conceived prior to his ascendance would be retroactively granted special privileges. However, if he did not ascend past his current rank of the golden path, then he was effectively a ‘dud.’

  Not all ascended ones were equal. If this one who had taken an interest in her did not advance soon, then he would be asked to leave the palace of new arrivals and integrate into society. The golden path was not so great or grand in an ascended realm, after all. The ascended ones were revered for their ability to reach the ascended realms, but they were often not especially powerful when they arrived.

  But Mai Mai had confidence that her ascended one would achieve the vaulted Diamond Path. And when he did, the courtesans that he would be granted would turn green with envy that he already had a child in this world, and that that child was born to a Welpakian like her.

  She smiled as she picked out the tea leaves for the afternoon tea that she would serve him. It was a pleasant fantasy, but it was ultimately out of her hands. She was willing. But he had only thanked her for the tea, and it was entirely possible they were reading too much into these things.

  Satisfied with the tea leaves she had picked out, she carefully arranged them on the platter and carried them forth into the room where the ascended one was cultivating and the guards and watchers stood by to make certain that he wasn’t disturbed.

  She kowtowed, and without a word began going through the rigorously practiced ritual of making a proper cup of tea.

  “Make a cup for yourself as well,” the ascended one said.

  She froze.

  “As the ascended one wishes.”

  “Call me by name. My name is Di Phon,” he said.

  “As you wish, Di Phon,” she corrected herself.

  Would tonight be the night? Her heart beat fast as she thought of it. She had been told that this might happen, that she was not to refuse him. She might be unworthy, but the ascended one’s interest made her worthy , and so if he gave her a cup of tea then it was permissible to take it.

  Another servant appeared with a second cup for her, and she poured herself a cup next to his. He took his cup and motioned for her to sit next to him as he studied a dao painting that was six millennia old. She stared at it and her mind went dizzy.

  “Tell me, Mai Mai. Do you have a man that you love?” he asked her.

  “I do,” she said. For he was sitting right next to her.

  “That is good. One of my regrets that was holding me back from ascending was that I had so many lovers, but no true companions. Why is your cultivation stalled at bronze? Is it a lack of resources?”

  “I was never taught to cultivate beyond the basic precepts that all children learn,” she explained. “When I was judged worthy to serve in the palace, it was determined that there was no further need for my education on such matters. I was taught to make tea.”

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  “And the man you love? What is his cultivation?” Di Phon asked.

  “He walks the golden path, but there is hope that he will step onto a higher path yet,” she said.

  “Then it is my wish for you to walk the same path as the man you love, so that you might not die before he does and cause him to mourn you for the rest of his life,” Di Phon said, and he took a cup of tea.

  “If that is your wish,” she said. She too took a cup of tea, and she closed her eyes. She tasted it, savoring the flavor that had always been denied her before this very moment. And she cursed her traitor tongue for the question that came out of her mouth. “But who will serve your tea?”

  ~~~~~~~

  Li Toh spun the energy around into the technique that he had been practicing.

  It was an inversion technique. It would take the target’s Qi and invert it, causing the target to inflict significant harm on their own body as their own Qi ripped them apart on its own, following their passageways and making use of their own body.

  It was a thing of horror.

  It was a thing of beauty.

  He looked at one of the nearby ghouls and decided that the army could spare one foot soldier in the name of experimentation. Rather than dissipating the technique, he fired it at the undead minion and observed the effects.

  At first nothing happened.

  The undead monster looked at him in confusion. It opened its mouth, as though to speak, but then it seemed to remember that it was dead and had no words worth speaking. Instead an awful belch escaped it.

  Li Toh groaned and tried to ventilate the area before the stench could--

  The corpse exploded, covering him with gore. He frowned. It would take more than a simple ventilation technique to get rid of that smell now, he reflected, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

  He looked at the other gold-ranked member of his team. “What?” he asked.

  The other member remained silent.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Li Toh said. “I have half a mind to try the technique on you to see what happens.”

  Phal Rei said nothing. He’d said nothing since his death six weeks ago, when he and the remaining purity fanatics of the Sovereign Summit Sect had ambushed Ko Ren and his retainers in an assassination attempt. An attempt which had gone terribly for the assassins.

  Now, Phal Rei served the very enemies he had sought to save the world from. He walked on an artificial leg, grafted from a lower level ghoul. His right arm was similarly constructed. On his face was a scroll which limited his intellect and made him biddable, but only by Li Toh. And where his heart should be was an iron spike, flared on each side of his chest to keep it in place.

  Li Toh grinned. He had achieved gold rank through hard work, insights, and the sacrifice of several of his kinsmen. But Phal Rei had been deliberately raised from silver rank upon his death, and Li Toh loved the fact that his former frenemy was now completely under his control.

  “I know it’s a waste, but I need to explore the new technique. That means test subjects,” he explained. “It might be messy but—”

  “Stop wasting resources,” Wen Shi said, stepping carefully through the gore. She looked out through the night and counted the undead army that was gathering at their rally point. “You can experiment when our numbers don’t matter. We’re behind enemy lines with no supply lines. You don’t—”

  “Our forces are undead, we don’t need supply lines,” Li Toh argued. “And everytime they kill an enemy our forces grow stronger. Soon we’ll be standing on a mountain of living corpses eager to follow our every command. Just because you’re slightly stronger than I doesn’t mean that you can—“

  “We don’t have our army yet,” Wen Shi pointed out. “So stop destroying them before they can recruit more for us.”

  Li Toh tsked, but ultimately accepted the rebuke. Wen Shi wasn’t the commander, but he doubted he could kill her in a fair fight, and if she reported back that he was putting the mission in jeopardy then Ko Ren might be reluctant to give him more techniques like the one he’d used to reach gold rank, or the latest one that corrupted a target’s own essence.

  He looked off into the night. He frowned. He sniffed.

  “I think I smell the living,” he commented.

  “So let’s do something about that,” Wen Shi said. She waved her hand, and the three hundred undead she’d managed to gather began to march in the direction that the scent was coming from.

  Li Toh spun together another technique and launched it at a ghoul just as it walked by her. It exploded, covering her with gore. She turned to glare at him, and he glared back.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I need to make sure that it works,” he explained.

  “So practice on animals or something,” she scolded. “These corpses are valuable.”

  He muttered “These corpses are valuable” in a mocking tone.

  Wen Shi pretended that she didn’t hear him.

  It was time to begin the attack, and as much as she wanted to kill him, Li Toh would be useful in dealing with the two golden path cultivators who were known to be in the area.

  After all, what could one do when their own Qi turned against them?

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