Chapter 206 Inevitable

I saw Chin amongst those corpses. I saw Medin, the girls, Nai, Cai. 

I saw the people I cared for and what would happen if I failed them. I looked up at the World-Kings and wondered what they felt. What did they see? 

I didn’t expect them to notice me or say anything and for a while they didn’t. 

For a while the ship just floated in an empty patch of chaos, breathing after the battle. 

Then the corpses were gathered. 

Wang Hou looked at the sight and bowed to the dead. 

“Senior, what happened?”

“There was a small attack,” I answered.

I didn’t do much. I had fought and I had saved some people. 

Some. 

“Drean!” Lao Thoul. “Our sect leader wishes to talk to you.”

I nodded and followed her. 

Wang Hou looked at me. He wasn’t aware that I had fought in the battle. He and a lot of others were victims of the corruption and even they were still recovering. 

I was still recovering. 

We walked through the ship, step by step and turned through many halls. I felt the land beneath me shift and felt us enter another part of the ship, another dimension of the fifteenth rank automaton. 

In front of me stood a man with the head of a sparrow, the torso of a man, giant tree trunk legs that seemed to be buried in place, giant dragon wings, and a thorax.

He looked at me. I bowed. 

“You were unaffected by the remnant corruption of the World King? Why?”

“I have been trained against being reformed,” I answered. 

“Curiouse, and you are not part of the Cult, or aspiring to be?”

“No Honored Master. I follow the Tome and seek only truth.”

“There is truth in order, in the Primordials, blessed be they.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But it is not the truth I seek.”

The sparrow head turned and looked at me. The thorax flinched. 

“Very interesting. Who of the Tome Keepers do you work under?”

Uh-oh, why was this guy digging so much?

“I work under only the Tome.”

“Truly? What talent to work underneath an Imperium.”

“Honored Master think too highly of me. I am merely too small to be noticed by my betters within the sect.”

“And yet you resisted a fifteenth rank’s residual attack?”

I held still. 

“Calm down boy, your secrets are not mine to pry. Now, what do you want as a reward?”

“Reward?” I asked. 

“Yes, you saved hundreds of thousands of our people. Many died but many more would have been lost to the corruption, their souls stained and twisted beyond repair if not for you culling and bringing the lesser beings to focus on you.”

“I have earned rewards enough,” I replied.

“Yes, your dao, a strange thing it is. It has grown. But to live as you are is your own reward. We honor our debts. What would you like?”

I tensed up. 

This was one of the issues with strong people. He was saying I had to take a reward. Not because of his honor or pride, just because it would be rude to refuse once he had offered. 

He was irritated that I had rejected joining his Primordial Cult, but I was under the Tome and he could accept my rejection on behalf of the Keepers Of the Eternal Tome. 

But I had to ask for something now.

It was the same with the Dragon Rider. Sometimes an offer, no matter how kind or reasonable it was meant to be, could be disastrous to refuse. 

“I will accept whatever you deem worthy.”

The sparrow head studied me, turning and twisting upon its strange throne of a body. The torso was human, as were the hands, but everything else was a strange amalgamation of beast, insect, and plant. 

“Curious,” he chirped. 

Then something came down, a tongue as big as my own body. No, even bigger. 

“This is one of the fourteenth ranked Speakers of Corruption. It has been killed, cleaned, and sealed. If you wish to make use of it or sell it in the Law Lands, you may.”

I stared at the pink pile of flesh. It had been cleaned, that was true. But it was the corpse of a fourteenth rank, something that I had no familiarity with. And even worse, it was a chaos being, something that I couldn’t work into an array. 

“I thank you for your graciousness,” I replied, bowing once before the World-King. 

I took the giant tongue into my storage space and then I was led out by Lao Thoul. 

“My teacher, he is gracious," She commented. “If demanding.”

“He is magnanimous," I replied, without a hint of sarcasm in my voice, which was in itself a certain level of sarcasm. 

“What will you do with the tongue?"

“Sell it, probably. I have no use for something like this,” I replied. 

“It is a hard thing to use. Chaos beings refuse to be materials except for those who practice order.”

“Does the Primordial Cult use these?” I asked. 

“Oh yes. To cultivate our insect nature, we often use chaotic aspects as opposition. We press ourselves against their chaos and in defeating them, we become stronger.”

I nodded. 

My dao had done the same thing. I had tried to uphold peace against astronomical chaos, and in that mere attempt, I had launched my dao to the thirteenth rank. On one hand, I could cultivate now. 

I had dealt with one of the major setbacks I suffered from. I was now equal in rank with my dao and that was a new type of power. 

Even now, I could feel the corruption cleaning off my body, falling off my soul. 

I could feel myself getting better, my peace growing with every step. 

And for all of that inner peace and growth, it felt like I had barely just woken up. I was fixed, mostly. 

I could now grow.

I remembered looking into the peace dao initially, searching the Eternal Tome for it. Learning of its paradoxical nature, questioning it, pushing it. 

And now here I am. 

What had I learned? 

Peace was many things, but it was also one thing. It was action. It was kept. It was held. It was made, and it was protected. 

Peace was a choice, like many things, you had to choose peace over and over and over again. You had to fight for it. You had to protect it. 

Sure, war was inevitable. Suffering was inevitable. Some chose it and some ran from it. 

But those things happened because someone pushed for them. Whether it was the nature of life or the choices people made, change was inevitable. 

Even the World-Kings of this ship, with their own reincarnation cycle and sects were not free of that. 

Even they lost the ones they tried to protect. 

That might happen to me, but if the horrible things in the world were bound to happen, then I had to make sure the good things followed suit. 

War would end, chaos would fall, life would bloom.

I would make peace inevitable.