Chapter 100: Doom for all

The Matriarch dropped him. Feng gasped for breath as he collapsed to the ground, eyes wide with horror. 

“Monster… What…” he staggered back. “You are—”

“Do not act so repulsed,” the Matriarch tutted, the veil covering her face once more. “After all, this is what awaits you in your wife should you persist in this marriage. Lianshi is my daughter. She takes after me in many ways, even if she dislikes acknowledging them.”

“She will never turn out like you!” Feng snarled, his mind racing. What in the world happened to the Matriarch? Was it a mutation? A spiritual curse? Or perhaps…

Was that hideous sight the eventual maturation of all who followed the Path of the Split-Headed Carnivores?

“And how would you know? How many Carnivores within the Spirit Realm have you seen before? Or even just in the Nascent Realm, for that matter.” 

The Matriarch’s laughter was mocking, but it was also bitter. Feng could not manage a retort.

“There is a reason why we continued the Nights of Famine, why we kept our Elders hidden beneath palaces of ice and stone,” she continued. “The issue never truly lay with the procurement of Yang flesh. No, there is something festering in all the Carnivores of the Fang Mountain — driven mad by a theft aeons ago — and if it is not tamed…”

The woman turned to him. Even with the veil returned to place, Feng could not help but look away. The mere memory of that ‘face’... He wanted to hurl.

“The thing within us Carnivores is cruel, hungry, and desires nothing more than man flesh and man blood,” the Matriarch continued. “Lianshi’s beauty will wane one day, replaced by that gestating thing within us. And when the moment comes… When your eyes begin to wander for more pleasant sights… She will despair and devour you whole, such that you will never leave her.”

The Matriarch crouched down, placing a finger under his chin and forcing him to look up into her midnight veil. “That is the greatest secret of the Split-Headed Carnivores. Our beauty blooms like nothing else, but it is fleeting. And when it wilts, all that is left is the hunger. I am sparing you that fate, do you understand?”

“Lianshi is currently in the same standing as you,” Feng retorted breathlessly, unable to look at her face, even if it was hidden. The memory of the visage behind the veil left him shaken. “She does not suffer your… condition.”

“Not yet. Perhaps the gestation slows in a younger body. Or perhaps she is soon due to wilt. Another decade, another year… Perhaps even next week. Who knows?”

The Matriarch’s finger tapped against the side of his head. “I have heard the rumours: that you hesitate in the marriage, when all other men would have leapt with joy; that you fear my daughter, despite all the gentleness and love she has given you. Perhaps some part of you, deep down, knew there was something terribly wrong with us beautiful monsters. You were wise to fear our love. Perhaps you can be wise once more.”

The woman offered her hand. “Renounce your marriage to my daughter. I shall send her away, deep into the Inner Provinces, where you shall not need to see her again. In exchange, I shall give you any number of my girls. That Core Disciple, Jin, perhaps? Or perhaps someone younger? You may even change them out once they grow older. As their appetites fester and their beauty wanes… Or if you grow bored with them. Whoever you want, how many you want them… They are all yours.”

The Young Master could not believe what he was hearing.

It had to be a bad joke. Feng scoffed, half in disbelief, half in disgust. “You would turn your entire Sect into my harem so that I would relinquish your daughter’s hand? You are insane!”

He was courting death by insulting a Matriarch, but it needed to be said. This type of behaviour… It wasn’t rational. It was beyond ludicrous. Lianshi’s talents were outstanding — far beyond anything the Outer Province had ever seen — but what the Matriarch offered was to have her entire Sect made into a subsidiary of the Beheaded Phoenix’s Hei Clan. It was unthinkable.

“You have not the slightest inkling of her value,” Chen Zijing replied calmly. “You believe Lianshi’s true worth lies in her cultivation? Have you not once considered that the impossible growth she enjoys now is exactly that: impossible? In a mere eighteen years, she has reached the Spirit Realm. Not even practitioners in the Core Provinces cultivate that fast. You could condense the ambient qi in the entirety of this Province, stuff it in a room, and it would have been nowhere near enough to support that ridiculous growth!”

Feng frowned. A sense of unease built in him. “What are you saying? Is she… in danger?”

“I have already spoken enough.” The Matriarch’s reply frustrated him, but whatever retort he prepared died on his lips when a razor finger punctuated his throat, spilling blood. “Accept my offer, my kindness, while I can still give it. Save yourself now, before it is too late.”

Feng’s qi was mingled with the Matriarch. Though his senses were less effective against a cultivator of such overwhelming superiority, he still felt the emotion in her words.

That last line was delivered with utter sincerity and fear. 

Fear… Fear of what? What would a Matriarch have to fear?

There were many things he did not understand. The doubts that he had thought buried with his resolution resurfaced. His hesitation towards marrying Lianshi had stemmed in part from his lack of romantic love for her, but what if there had been something else? Something instinctive that had held him back?

But… Even so…

“She has sacrificed everything for me,” Feng forced out from his mangled throat. “She wants me to walk at her side. I will not refuse this from her. Not for you. Not even for my life.”

“It will cost you more than your life,” the woman replied neutrally. “This coming tribulation is beyond you. It will take from you everything. It will hurt her.”

“I will hurt her if I refuse her now,” Feng growled. “I would not be myself if I left her alone!”

The tension in the Matriarch’s fingers, inexplicably, wavered. “You will harm her far more with this stubbornness… More than you can ever imagine.”

“I will not abandon her. Not when she has decided she needs me,” Feng declared. “I am resolute in this.”

Silence. Seconds passed. The only sound was the dripping of Feng’s blood from his mouth and neck.

The woman stood up, claws retreating. The pressure upon him faded.

Feng immediately leapt away, even if the distance would mean nothing to a Spirit Realm cultivator. 

“I think I can see a little of what my daughters see in you now,” the Matriarch remarked. “But it matters little. Your foolishness will doom all parties.”

“That is not for you to decide,” Feng snapped back.

“No, but some things are clear even to a woman as depraved as I.” She turned away from him. “There will be no victory for you if you pursue this, Young Master. No happily ever after with my daughter.”

“Are your threats meant to change my mind?” Feng mocked as he rubbed his healing neck restlessly. His body was tensed, ready for combat, even if the notion was entirely ludicrous against her. “Your negotiation skills need work.”

“They really don’t.” The Matriarch shrugged. There was a weariness to her frame that was not there before. “Not for you. There’s no point negotiating with those who reject my kindness.”

Feng gave a startled laugh. “You threatening me with death is kindness?”

“No. Killing you would be a kindness,” she corrected him. There was a long-suffering sigh, so unlike the regal air she held before. “Though it is of little worth to you now, and no doubt even less once the month is passed… I apologise for what is to come, Young Master Feng.”

Feng breathed out shakily. That sense of unease in him redoubled. “Whatever ploy you are plotting, it won’t work. You are nowhere strong enough to take on my Father and Lianshi. Duke Kang’s protection means any association you pulled with the Inner Province to foil the wedding is doomed to fail.”

“Plotting?” The Matriarch chuckled. It was a slow laughter, tinged with hysteria. That, above all else, was sending Feng into full panic. “Fool. I had already set my ploy into motion before I even stepped foot in here. This was but a formality; a courtesy, in recognition of the man who utterly won Lianshi’s heart.”

Her body turned towards him once more. The pressure of death returned in full force. 

“Perhaps I can still do you that courtesy,” the woman whispered, more to herself than him. Her finger fused and elongated into twin talons, each black as night and long as a forearm. “Killing you would have consequences for me… But it is the least I can do to spare both you and my daughter the suffering to come. Yes… It will be a penance and favour served…”

There was nothing he could do. No tricks he could pull to prevent his death. His strongest summon would take at least a full minute to prepare, and the Matriarch would need but a single eye blink to end his life.

Feng prepared himself to die.

“Not yet. And not at the hands of this insignificant insect.”

The Young Master’s body jerked, startled. The wraith? He screamed in his thoughts: Where have you been?! I have needed you here since yesterday!

“Busy. By the way, you may want to sit down before you fall over.”

What nonsense are you—

Feng did not have time to finish the thought before he was bowled over.

The air suddenly imploded with supersonic force as something large and impossibly fast swooped down into the clearing. There was a horrifying screech of clashing blades as sparks flew. Feng was thrown back by the exchange, disoriented but unharmed.

When he looked up, Matriarch Zijing was a mere arm’s reach away. Her claws were extended to impale him, but they had been repelled by an enormous winged carapace of scales and hollow bones.

Those wings protruded forth from the back of an angel. Hair of midnight blue and a face perfect beyond mortal imagination, Chen Lianshi’s wrathful eyes landed on the veiled face of her mother.

His Fiancée’s snarl was nothing short of monstrous.

“Get away from him! OR I’LL TEAR YOUR WORTHLESS CARCASS APART!”