[Young Master Xian]—❈—63:: "It Was Nice Knowing You."

Fixing my soulscape of the Wild Qi corruption had been difficult, disgusting, and horrifying on a bone deep level I spend most waking moments trying to not remember.

It hadn’t just hurt Sunny (and me), it hadn’t just wrecked my soulscape, it had twisted it, corrupted it.

It had turned the inside of me into half a waking nightmare. And it had left me almost too weak to fight back.

Compared to that, the damage caused by resisting The Empress’ subjugation technique is, well I hesitate to say trivial, but it certainly doesn’t measure up to the sheer danger the corruption caused to my continued survival.

Even with the lesser severity of the damage, fixing it still takes time, though it’s hard to know how much since the passage of time is hella wonky down here.

The first thing we do is raise Sunny’s army. It’s the first thing we did last time too, though we’d had to kill the abominations they’d become first.

That had been a bloody fight.

Due to the corruption, my techniques hadn’t been working effectively, and Sunny had been too hurt to help much, so I’d had to, almost singlehandedly, mow through the thousands of corrupted soldiers in physical combat.

Well, if you can call swatting people away by the dozens with a huge tree ‘physical combat.’

Honestly, it probably would have been a rather amusing and cartoonish sight if not for how horrifying it was. In a cartoon, when a person is knocked twenty feet into solid rock, their bodies generally don’t explode into a gory mist of meaty chunks and viscera.

In cartoons, sharp branches don’t pierce through bodies, sticking them to the tree like macabre flowers blooming in a spring of death.

I shake off the memory.

They hadn’t been real people. I know that. They can’t even speak. Or think. They’re merely expressions of my cultivation that Sunny could only create because of my uniquely sturdy soul or whatever.

Like a plant with easy access to plentiful water evolving big, wide leaves because it never has to worry about drying out under the sun.

So no, they weren’t real people, as had been evident when they melted into the ground some time after I killed them all and we raised them again from the earth, fresh and hale and ready to serve.

Unfortunately, while my head knows they aren’t real people... my heart is just taking a minute to catch up.

Resurrecting the army is a simpler matter this time around, and with it done, I watch with wide eyes as they begin to fix everything else.

“This is new,” I say.

Sunny looks pleased with himself. His appearance is getting better too, wounds slowly closing, colour returning, clothes patching themselves up.

Now he looks less like he was on the losing end of a fistfight with a tiger, and more like he was waylaid by a pair of emus looking to collect a debt.

“As I said, Qigang, Wild Qi and a divine Plum make for a potent combination,” Sunny says.

“Yeah, if you’re BFFs with Lady Luck,” I say.

For all the boons I’ve enjoyed from eating that corrupted Plum, at no point has it escaped me that, the only reason why I’m even still alive to talk about it is because of how stupendously lucky I’ve been.

Like seriously, the number of things that have had to go right to get me where I am today, damn near beggars the imagination.

Hell, even just finding a Celestial Plum in the first place, much less a divine rank one was already ridiculous. Having that Plum then be just the right amount of tainted with Wild Qi, and there being a part of my consciousness that hated the rest enough to split my soul and steal my body out of there, leaving the original Qigang to be lost to the corruption, and all this before we get into the sheer madness that is the rolling power, or ‘cosmic dice’ as a certain someone calls it.

You know, maybe Xiuying was on to something when she joked that I must have saved an entire kingdom of kind old grandmothers in a past life, because otherwise, if there is such a thing as a karmic balance, then I can’t even begin to imagine how much I owe.

“I suspect we are reaching the limits of its abilities though,” Sunny says.

“We are? Well, that makes sense, I guess. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken us this far,” I say.

“That only surprises you because you know nothing,” Sunny says.

I roll my eyes, the dig barely even registering.

Returning my focus to the army who are using a combination of telekinesis, elemental control, sheer brute strength, and good old technology, to repair everything that’s been destroyed in record time, I say, a little amazed, “So my cultivation can fix itself now. Crazy.”

“Your cultivation could always self-repair,” Sunny says. “Every cultivator’s can, yours simply has a higher capacity for it.”

“I suppose,” I say, accepting his words.

After a few silent minutes watching the army work, I ask, “Why are they all male?”

“What?”

“Your army, I just noticed that they’re all male. Did you design them that way, or do they somehow choose their own looks?”

Sunny gives me a long, steady look. “I designed them,” he says.

“You did? Huh.”

“Huh, what, Xian Qigang?” Sunny asks, a dangerous flatness in his tone.

“Huh, nothing,” I say quickly. “I didn’t say anything. Just… you know.”

“Know what, Qigang?”

“Hey, I’m not judging. It’s your army, they can look however you want.”

“You really think this the place for a feminist movement?” Sunny asks.

“I never said feminist, you’re the one who brought up the word,” I say immediately. “All I did was ask why they’re all male.”

Sunny’s quiet for a moment, and I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll be able to let it go when he says, “They’re not real people, Qigang.”

I give him my most innocent expression. “I know they’re not.”

“Exactly,” he says, “so you know it doesn’t matter what gender they are. I made them male simply because it was easier. It was a simple matter of convenience.”

“Yes, women can be so terribly difficult,” I agree.

Sunny glowers at me something fierce, and it takes everything I have to not smile evilly at him.

I don’t even know why this is getting to him so much, but whatever the reason, I’m all for it.

We’re riding this train to the finish line.

Said finish line unfortunately comes much too soon, because Sunny, exhibiting very noble self control, says, “Let’s just go see the Cosmic Dice.”

So, of course, I say, “Ah, yes, you’re right, let’s go see the Heavenly Gambling Balls.”

Sunny stands deathly still for several moments, and I watch with wicked glee the pained expression on his face.

Finally, he sighs, and as though talking to himself, he says, “I should have let you die.”

I smile at him beatifically. “Please, we both know you love me.”

He lets out a slow, steady breath, then he says, “Do you wish to see it or not?”

“Yep,” I chirp, and in the blink of an eye, we’re somewhere else.

Somewhere unlike I’ve ever seen before.

Well, saying it’s unlike I’ve ever seen is inaccurate, since what the place is is a room. A simple, unadorned one, at that.

There are no windows, or doors, and the warm, almost sunlight type illumination lighting it up come from indiscernible sources.

In the middle of the room, is a familiar structure, one that I’d set up by myself in a fountain in an out of the way corner of Sunny’s colossal garden.

I stare at the four egg-shaped rocks leaning on each other.

“This is my consciousness?” I ask Sunny. I mean, I know it is. I don’t need him to tell me that, seeing as I can feel... me coming from the rocks and the room entire. But even so.

Seriously? This?

Sunny looks at me. “What did you expect?” he asks. “A mini you?”

“What? No? Of course not.” I actually had expected a mini me.

Sunny must be able to tell though, because he gives me a look like I’m an idiot.

“Why does it look like the monument I made to honour the echoes that make me?” I ask.

Sunny shrugs.

I frown at him. “Do you actually not know, or are you just being a dick?” I ask.

He stares at me flatly, not an answer in sight.

I huff, deciding to let it go in order to take in the little of the room that there is to appreciate.

Unpainted stone walls, windowless, doorless, even the floor is, wait, hold on.

Are those...? They look like hieroglyphs.

They’re very faint, but the longer I stare at them, the clearer they become.

Now that I’m paying attention, I notice that they aren’t just on the floor, they’re on the walls too, the ceiling even.

The longer I pay attention, the more I realize that I actually understand what these hieroglyphs say, and the information they contain both surprises me and yet, at the same time, makes perfect sense, because truly, what else would the hieroglyphs in my soul talk about if not my life?

Over there, with the female form with wild hair and a stick, that’s one of my training sessions with Xiuying. Our second one actually.

Over there is a short conversation I had with one of the manor’s staff back in Silver Springs that I had completely forgotten about.

And up on the ceiling is the first time Meng Yi hugged me.

Objectively, the language of the hieroglyphs makes no sense, in one instance, Xiuying is represented as a female form with wild hair and a stick, and in another she’s represented as a tiger, or just a spear, or even just a weird, obviously made-up symbol.

Good thing this isn’t an actual language, cause if it was learning it would be impossible.

Something catches my eye, and my focus shifts to it to see C̵͉͋̔͞ḣ̖̻͛̓ā̤̓̍͘o̯̱̊͊͢s̠҉͍͊ͅ. C̵͉͋̔͞ḣ̖̻͛̓ā̤̓̍͘ṇ̤͛̒̍ĝ̽̓̀͑ẹ̿͋̒̕. W̯ͤ̾ͣ͝ā̤̓̍͘r̴̨̦͕̝p̞̈͑̚͞. D̶͔̭̪̻ẹ̿͋̒̕ā̤̓̍͘t̲̂̓ͩ̑ḣ̖̻͛̓. L̸̖̽̌͂ỉ͔͖̜͌f̵͖̜̉ͅẹ̿͋̒̕. D̶͔̭̪̻A̷͙ͭͫ̕N̺̻̔̆ͅG̩̱ͩ̏͜Ḛͭ̉̇͟R͉̜̎͡͠! D̶͔̭̪̻A̷͙ͭͫ̕N̺̻̔̆ͅG̩̱ͩ̏͜Ḛͭ̉̇͟R͉̜̎͡͠! D̶͔̭̪̻A̷͙ͭͫ̕N̺̻̔̆ͅG̩̱ͩ̏͜Ḛͭ̉̇͟R͉̜̎͡͠!

I rip my eyes away, breath suddenly heavy and a chill crawling over my flesh.

It takes a moment to recover myself, and when I do Sunny and I share a look.

We say nothing. We don’t need to. The memory of our clash with the Wild Qi storm is one neither of us need any reminders for.

Deliberately avoiding that whole section of wall, I search for Meng Yi instead, wanting to see what memories of her I can find.

There are many. In fact, now that I’m looking, it’s harder to find a memory that she isn’t in. Pretty much every aspect of my life has her in it.

I guess we do spend a lot of time together, don’t we? Hell, she’s there even when I bathe.

As I skim over the memories, a particular one stands out.

It too has the glitchy quality of the memory of entering the Wild Qi storm from earlier, but in a much less violent way.

C̵͉͋̔͞ḣ̖̻͛̓ā̤̓̍͘ṇ̤͛̒̍ĝ̽̓̀͑ẹ̿͋̒̕. L̸̖̽̌͂ỉ͔͖̜͌f̵͖̜̉ͅẹ̿͋̒̕. P̧͕̒̊͘o̯̱̊͊͢t̲̂̓ͩ̑ẹ̿͋̒̕ṇ̤͛̒̍t̲̂̓ͩ̑ỉ͔͖̜͌ā̤̓̍͘l̙͖̑̾ͣ. S̵̙͕̀̃ẹ̿͋̒̕ẹ̿͋̒̕ḑ̴̞͛̒.

There’s more, but it quickly becomes too glitchy to make out what it says.

“The thing I did with Meng Yi’s cultivation when she entered Weaving phase, that was Wild Qi?” I ask Sunny.

“In part, yes, and I’ll ask that you not do it again.”

“Why?”

“Because there was a four in five chance that you would have permanently crippled yourself and/or turned your servant into a bloody mist.”

My eyes widen at his words, and I recall Xiuying saying the same that morning about how she didn’t understand how Meng Yi hadn’t exploded into bloody chunks over the walls from what I did.

“A four in five chance?” I ask, scared to believe it.

“Yes, and I suspect the risk will be higher if you try again,” Sunny says.

I swallow. Understood.

“What exactly did I even do? Do you know?”

“You created a lesser copy of me and injected it into her.”

“A copy of you? Then why did she see me in that cultivation vision she had?”

“Because I’m not just me anymore, Qigang. And you are not just you. That becomes truer by the day. It was true even then, much as I hated to admit it.”

“I see,” I say, then after a moment, ask, “Will congruence help? If I’m congruent will it reduce the danger?”

Sunny shakes his head. “It worsens it. Congruence means we fuse fully, doing that then means creating a copy of yourself to put into someone else. The best outcome in that scenario is that they warp into some cheap, twisted mockery of you.”

Right. Good thing the question had been purely academic then. Sunny and I may have our differences, but I’m not reckless enough to ignore his warning.

“We’ve dallied enough,” Sunny says, and without so much as a by your leave, he does the weird teleporting thing, and this time, we really are somewhere unlike I’ve ever been.

We’re in space. And above our heads, is a single dice; one thousand sided and so colossal in size it makes a planet look like a pebble next to a mountain.

This thing is far bigger than a star. Maybe even bigger than a solar system.

No wonder it adds so much weight to my soul.

I gape at the object for several minutes, understanding Sunny’s name for it now. Cosmic Dice indeed.

“Where did this even come from?” I ask. “Did we make it somehow?”

Sunny scoffs, and the act, so unfamiliar from him, stuns me for a moment.

“There aren’t enough Celestial Plums in this realm to enable base creatures like ourselves to create something such as this,” he says. “Best I can understand, this is the work of some higher dimensional entity, discarded for whatever reason. You must have picked it up during your trawl across realities for pieces to complete yourself.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “Although, it does raise the question, what if the owner doesn’t appreciate some lower lifeform taking and using their stuff? Even if it’s ‘discarded?’”

Sunny stops and thinks about that for a very long moment.

Finally, he says, “It was nice knowing you.”

I want to react to his words with surprise and offense, but then I think about how face down-ass up screwed we will be if the owner of the Cosmic Dice actually comes calling.

“You know what?” I say. “That’s fair.” And we both go back to watching the colossal dice slowly spin.

—❈——❈——❈—

—❈——❈——❈—

I feel like I didn't give the Cosmic Dice the amount of gravitas it truly deserves. But let's hope this was good enough.

Thanks for reading.

PS: a very very big thank you to everyone who's purchased, borrowed, and/or reviewed book one on Amazon.

Thanks to you, the launch was so much bigger than it would have been otherwise.

If you haven't gotten yourself a copy yet, and would like to, here's the link.

Take care.