Fullepub 
Chapter Forty: Scourge of The Universe
CHAPTER FORTY
SCOURGE OF THE UNIVERSE
All three hundred and twenty-nine active Chrysalises that have gathered at the Sui-Tang frontier set off while the stars still glitter above. We race in a spaced-out line across the Hundun wilds, quaking the earth and juddering up gray clouds of dust.
As predicted, there was a freak-out over An Lushan going missing, but they couldn’t delay the deployment hour. Daylight is too important. We’d be at a huge visual disadvantage if the battle dragged past sundown.
We hid An Lushan’s body in the lavatory of a random bunker. If they find it, I doubt we’ll know. They wouldn’t compromise morale by announcing something like that.
Shimin and I barrel forth in the Vermilion Bird’s Standard Form, claws smashing the ground, splitting it here and there. Wind slices over our wings and tail of long feathers. The White Tiger and the Black Tortoise keep pace on either side of us, still within sight though we’re a considerable distance apart. The formation has stretched as widely across the plains as possible so we don’t leave any significant gaps for the Hunduns.
Countless armored trucks storm a safe distance behind us, looking as tiny as beetles, ramming through the dust clouds we stir up. They’re carrying radio wave transmitters that extend the range of scouting drones and Chrysalis speakers. Whenever they approach a new range limit, a line of them stays behind.
If we destroy the closest line, it will blind the army from our further actions and prevent them from feeding commands to the other pilots. That’s how we plan on surviving after broadcasting An Lushan’s confession.
I shouldn’t even call them “the army” anymore. The strategists are just a bunch of senile string-pullers who have never risked their lives on the battlefield, and the soldiers only deal with regular people across Huaxia, not the terror of the Hunduns. The real army is with us. Shimin’s reaction to the truth gives me hope that other male pilots might feel the same fury. They can’t all be heartless monsters, fine with feeling concubine after concubine die. If we’re convincing enough, this unstoppable legion of giant transforming war machines could soon be ours instead of theirs.
Then the strategists and the Sages will have no choice but to bow.
I catch myself drifting off into outlandish fantasies of the Sages pleading on their knees and pilot-concubines cheering on the Great Wall.
Focus, I berate myself.
We’re not in human territory anymore. A Hundun herd could charge out of the horizon at any time. If they somehow got past our line of Chrysalises, it’d mean disaster, since the Sui-Tang frontier is basically undefended. It’s also why we can’t broadcast the truth before taking down the Hundun nest, no matter how much I want to scream it at the world every passing moment. The chaos it’d cause could mess with the battle too much. We do need to actually win against the Hunduns to guarantee our collective survival.
Keeping our spirit senses active the whole way would be a huge drain of qi, so we’re forced to trust the strategists and their scouting drones to alert us to any enemy activity. The Zhou province is so flat, it’s like striding over a repeating glitch in the universe. Perfect for farming and herding; terrible for defending against Hunduns. Hence the terrifyingly fast loss of the whole thing when they broke through over two hundred years ago, and probably why they stuck to the Kunlun Mountains to make their replication nest. Even though it’s all the way at the other end of the province, the mountain range remains faintly visible on the horizon, like a row of crooked teeth. There are no major natural bastions inland.
I initially fume about how, for two centuries, the Hunduns have sucked these lands dry. Lands that are barren desert now would’ve been covered in verdant squares of crops and clusters of villages—one of them being my own, my true hometown, the place my ancestors toiled, labored, laughed, and sang for generation after generation.
But then, after about thirty minutes, a lush forest rolls in from the distance. And shows no sign of ending.
Keeping contact with us via the speakers, Sima Yi explains that this is just how it is beyond the battle-intensive zone. The Hunduns have freedom of movement, so they never exhaust any single area of qi, and vegetation can actually grow.
Huh. For so long, I’ve imagined the whole province as a wasteland.
The trees are at least not an issue to trudge through. The Vermilion Bird’s Standard Form is fifty meters tall, more than three times the height of most of them. However, an alarming wrongness squirms inside me as two-century-old trunks and canopies snap and swish and collapse under our prancing claws. It’s a disturbing cacophony of death and destruction. The noises rise across the forest as other Chrysalises bulldoze through it as well. Birds constantly startle out, black against the brightening dawn, like a fluttering layer being ejected farther and farther west.
And who knows what creatures are failing to get out of our way?
It’s baffling, how neat and undisturbed the forest looks, when Hunduns of all sizes have supposedly roamed it for two centuries. The closest answer to how they’ve gotten around without squashing everything is a pattern of round gaps in the trees. Each is big enough to fit the leg of a noble-class Hundun. But the holes are so clean-cut, the only explanation is that they meticulously reuse the same stepping spots. That idea is simultaneously absurd yet disheartening. How can they be better at treating this world than us?
I find myself looking for evidence that my ancestors even lived here. The sun, climbing steadily behind us and shortening the Bird’s shadow over the forest, glints off only the occasional flash of what might be metal or concrete. Sure, the cities and towns back then were smaller, but to see so few signs…
Dread hollows through me. We spend so much effort living these lives, yet every trace of their substance and meaning can be erased so quickly. So easily.
For hours, no Hunduns appear, even though scouting drones are usually shot down by them after less than twenty minutes out in the wilds. It’s not a good thing. It means the Hunduns have collectively retreated to the Kunlun Mountains, and they are ready for us. The Hunduns seem like such mindless mechanical beasts most of the time that there’s something unshakably eerie about the concept of them thinking, making calculated decisions. It would be best to face us near the end, after the journey exhausts a good portion of our qi.
There’s a volcano at the heart of the Hundun nest, Mount Zhurong, that acts like a portal straight to the hyper-concentrated qi in the planet itself. We might be able to recharge there, but it’s also where all the replicating Hundun larvae are. They’ll give their everything to prevent us from reaching it.
When the terrain inclines upward, approaching the mountains at last, the newest intel from the scouting drones sets me on edge. It’s about to get increasingly misty. We won’t have much of a visibility advantage after all.
The Kunlun Mountains are a bad battleground to begin with. Many of them are shaped like chiseled stone pillars soaring toward the heavens, as if skyscrapers carved by nature. Fluffy trees spill over their rough tops and flood the many canyons between them. The Hunduns will have plenty of hiding spots, while our army will be forced to divide like rivulets to deal with them.
Just when the first canyons rise into view, made by sharp peaks that slice straight up like walls, a column of dark smoke rises from one of the possible Hundun stepping holes in the last of the forest.
“Skies, is that man-made?” Yizhi says through a microphone connected to the cockpit speakers, something he installed “to better communicate” with us, but which is actually meant to make the An Lushan broadcast audible to the camera drones when the time comes. We also made him an open grid in the cockpit for ventilation and a view of something other than my and Shimin’s unconscious bodies.
Shimin and I both startle, causing a hitch in the Bird’s steps. The White Tiger and Black Tortoise slow down in the distance as well, but we’re closer to the smoke than either of them. We run even faster through the trees, squashing trunks like straw while zooming the Bird’s vision in on the source of the smoke.
A person dressed in furs trots on a horse inside the hole, steadying the reins with one hand while frantically waving the other. The smoke signal is coming from something behind the horse.
My cry of surprise spurts out loud through the Bird’s beak.
A nomad. An actual nomad.
Of course I know there’ll always be nomadic tribes persevering in the wild, but this is the first solid evidence of life beyond the Great Wall that I’ve seen with my own eyes. His courage shakes me. What makes him dare to stray this close to a Hundun nest?
“H-hello?” Shimin speaks through the Bird as we slow to a stop before the hole, overshadowing it. Despite his heritage, he sounds as dazed as I am.
The nomad shouts something I can’t make out, so desperately that his face goes red. He pulls a weathered scroll of parchment out of his furs. He lets go of the reins to hold it open, unveiling a line of bold writing.
My spirit quakes when I realize I can read it. It’s Han script. That means he’s likely not Rongdi, but a descendant of my people, those who didn’t make it out when Zhou fell.
Can you cure the Emperor?the scroll says.
“Okay.” Sima Yi speaks up before questions pour out of us. “Truth be told, a few other Chrysalises have come across these people as well. We’re having trouble understanding their dialect, but they seem to be referring to Emperor-General Qin Zheng.”
Now I can read the nomad’s lips. Huang di, over and over. Emperor.
“So he’s really here, then?” I exclaim. “Frozen and waiting for a cure for flowerpox?”
“We’ll have to look into it after the battle. But speaking of flowerpox, close your vent and don’t lean too close! He could be carrying a latent strain that our vaccines don’t work against. Rich Boy, if you see any boils on any of you, inject the antivirals immediately!”
“Got it!” Yizhi says.
“Also—shit, shit! Go! Pretty sure we just spotted signs of Hunduns!”
We swing our Bird vision up, zooming out. The chorus of dying trees amplifies as other Chrysalises kick up in speed and advance into the maze of canyons and pillar peaks.
As much as I wish I could stay to figure things out with the nomad, Sima Yi is right. This has to wait until we finish off our own enemy Emperor. We can’t prod around the mountains with Hunduns around.
“Sorry!” I say to the nomad before launching the Bird into motion again, convulsing the ground and startling his horse. He almost falls off.
He gathers the reins and keeps yelling, but he’s inaudible under the symphony of Chrysalis movements.
Our frontal assault squad gathers, consisting of the strongest Chrysalises in our army. They’ll help us take down the Emperor Hundun, while the others will provide peripheral support in a tightening semicircle, preventing the smaller Hunduns from pestering us too much.
We charge into the canyons, the White Tiger and the Black Tortoise pouncing behind us. It’s a little unnerving, having to trust Qieluo and Zhu Yuanzhang, but whatever grievances they have against me and Shimin—and each other—I trust that they’ll set them aside for humanity’s sake.
The gap between the first two pillar peaks barely accommodates the Bird’s wings, and the ones after vary greatly in width. Most peaks are over twice our height—jarring, after we’ve towered over everything for so long. They splice up our view of the rest of the army as we move. Most other Chrysalises appear in only brief flashes between rock.
Anxiety builds in me. I’ve never felt small and vulnerable in a Chrysalis, and it’s somehow worse than feeling it as a human. I give in to the temptation to flare my spirit sense and scan the area for myself.
It’s a terrible idea.
A massive spirit pressure crashes down on me like a torrent of ice water, drowning out all else. My vision flickers black. The Bird stumbles. Shimin has to brace one wing against a pillar to stop us from buckling.
“Mei-Niang?” He steadies me in the yin-yang realm.
I gasp, clutching his spirit form, winded.
“Are you guys all right?” The Black Tortoise crawls up behind us, graceful as mercury, speaking with Xiuying’s voice. Even though it’s a Prince class, the top of its gleaming shell barely comes up to half our height. Water types are the smallest of Chrysalises. Xiuying is Water-dominant herself, so the Tortoise’s eyes don’t light up visibly as she speaks, but it gives off a faint black aura all over with her increased qi conduction, thanks to Water types’ leaky nature.
“Yeah, it’s just…” I say through the Bird with a strangled, disbelieving laugh. “There is definitely an Emperor class here.”
“Hey!” Sima Yi chides. “Stop wasting qi!”
I keep my spirit sense off as we move on. The misty calm in the air now feels like a massive delusion.
When we finally spot the Hunduns, which appear as a dark clutter inside the trees between pillar peaks, something’s not right. The herd is perfectly still. Waiting.
Hunduns are never still. They’re supposed to be swarming onto us like bugs.
It’s weird, but at Sima Yi’s urging, we crack the Bird’s wings and stomp toward them.
The herd scurries away from us, shifting under the trees.
Now we’re really freaked out. The whole assault squad hesitates to keep going.
There’s a long pause before Chief Strategist Zhuge comes onto all of our speakers. His grave voice fills every cockpit, creating an eerie echo through the canyon. He assures us that the strategists realize this is abnormal Hundun behavior, but the herd is likely just baiting us into using qi attacks to exhaust ourselves more. As long as we don’t fall for it, we should be fine.
We’re still not that eager to follow the herd, but we have no other sensible choice. It’s going in the same direction as the volcano.
The fog thickens as we chase them. The narrow gaps between the pillar peaks make it so we have to constantly swerve the Bird’s colossal body or fold its wings. We gain on the Hunduns only when the mountains shift from pillar-like to more normal slopes. The temperature plunges from spring to winter as the elevation scales up. The bristly coatings of trees on the mountains become dusted in frost. With the thick fog also present, the world is swallowed up in so much whiteness that when Sima Yi screams for us to stop, that the Emperor is right there, it takes me a second to see it.
I mistook it for a mountain.
Chills wrack through me. I grip Shimin’s arm in the yin-yang realm. It’s dumbfounding, processing something that huge as alive. I cannot imagine encountering it in my human form.
With a slow, shrill creaking, it creeps toward us. I can now see the six unusually long legs on the sides of it, jointed like a spider’s and just as thin-looking, a sharpness only Metal types can achieve. It has to walk on the mountainsides to fit in the valley. Every movement of its huge body pushes a tide of chilled fog toward us. The common Hunduns scamper beneath its belly, as if children ducking behind a mother. A frozen black lake gleams past it in the foggy valley.
The White Tiger’s eyes shine green as Qieluo speaks up. “Let’s—!”
A sudden pressure in the fog tightens around us.
Something compresses the Bird’s wings against its body. We panic and thrash, but the pressure refuses to ease off, and we topple against a mountainside with a colossal boom, shaking off an avalanche of frost.
Cries spurt out all around us. It’s happening to the others as well. As strategists yell questions through our speakers, I glance around madly, trying to figure out what’s going on.
There’s a white residue over every Chrysalis. It’s as if the fog is condensing into strings—
No. Oh, no. It’s not the fog. It’s spirit metal.
I gawk at the Emperor. It has spun its spirit metal, its own body, so finely that the threads can make webs. They must’ve been spread across the valley before we got here, disguised by the fog and frost. No matter how we fight, the webs just yield to our movements like mist, impossible to shake off.
The strategists come to the same realization and order us to calm down, but their wavering voices betray how they had no idea a Hundun could be capable of this.
An overwhelming wave of emotion courses through me. Grief, sadness, anger. However, the feeling is so abrupt and distinct that I realize it’s not natural. Sima Yi has warned me that Hundun emotions can bleed through to pilots via certain kinds of contact. This must be what’s happening.
Just when I pray to the gods to never feel this again, a horrible song slices through my head.
“Humans…scourge of the universe…” A voice scrapes out of the dissonant melody like a nail scratching the inside of my skull. “Get out! Leave us alone!”
A stupefied silence hushes the valley.
Then a fresh chorus of screams fills it, qi light pouring from the mouth of every web-snagged Chrysalis. I’m a part of it. Fear crushes down on me so intensely that I can’t overcome it, can’t reason my way out. I have no idea what this voice is. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before.
The strategists can’t hear it. They have no idea what we’re shrieking about.
The world seems about to end when a thunderous roar rumbles through the valley, puncturing through the screams. The White Tiger rises against the web it’s caught in, green and black light split out from its smooth surface. It simultaneously transforms into Heroic Mode while ripping its signature dagger-ax out of its chest. It swings the weapon against the web.
I come to my senses. Why am I acting like I’m helpless? Taking down the Emperor is the reason we’re here. Fire melts Metal.
On my call, Yizhi, Shimin, and I surge out our qis. A transformative tension builds in the Bird, then it bursts toward Heroic Form. In the yin-yang realm, Shimin and I shatter into butterflies. Our minds swirl and spiral into one.
We rise, claws extending into legs, arms morphing out from our wings, body turning humanoid like an armored warrior with a bird mask. We stretch and grow as tall as the Emperor. The web around us balloons out, but noticeably forces the Emperor to spin out more thread, like a silk cocoon.
More Chrysalises calm down and follow our example. Lights dazzle through the valley, as if it has stranded a constellation. The Emperor rapidly diminishes in volume. It keeps backing away.
“Leave us alone!” the voice growls again. “Leave us! Leave us! Leave us!”
We gape at it. Is it this Emperor-class Hundun that’s speaking to us?
Panic pushes close to overwhelming us again, but we can’t afford to think about anything except winning. Crying out, we grasp the web around us and heat our hands with qi. The threads break off and slither away.
No matter how much control the Emperor has over its spirit metal, it’s all still part of its body. It must still feel pain through every thread.
We morph a long bow out of our breastplate and flood it with qi so the web can’t go near it. Our combined qi shines so brightly, a gold-tinged pink, that it flickers in our vision. We take aim.
“Die!” the voice screeches again.
The Emperor leaps on its spider legs and lands with a seismic impact through the valley. Frost shudders off the trees, triggering another cloud of ice crystals. We stagger off balance.
The black lake behind the Emperor shifts. It seems at first to be a trick played on our shaky vision, but then the frozen-looking water floods through the valley, around the Emperor, around us. A steel-cracking coldness accompanies it.
Behind us, the water begins to rise. Higher and higher, ink-black and glistening, rounding out, almost like a—
“Oh, fuck!” Sima Yi shouts through our speakers. “That’s another Hundun! Another Emperor class!”
Our minds quake, almost splitting apart. How is this possible? Sure, Water-type Hunduns can change shape slightly, but it shouldn’t be able to go to this extreme.
Somehow, the Emperor Hunduns’ abilities have evolved beyond our understanding. What’s more: Fire is weakest against Water.
“Kill the Metal one!” Sima Yi keeps screaming. “Now, now, now!”
Our first instinct is to run.
With a sonic crack of our wings that echoes through the valley, we blast into the air. Web strings cut into us, blinding us with pain. We frantically gush our qi across our whole body. Fog hisses away. The web expands away from the heat but hovers in place, ready to snag us the moment we stop beaming. It’s like setting ourselves on fire to stay warm. This cannot last long.
Everything we want to do, want to accomplish, want to change flashes through our minds. How have things gone wrong so quickly? This was supposed to be the easy part!
“Vermilion Bird, where are you going?” Chief Strategist Zhuge yells hoarsely. “Do something! Please!”
“We have to recharge!” We search for the volcano, which should be nearby, but do a double take on the valley.
Our comrades crowd around the still-shifting Water Emperor, desperately blasting and stabbing and striking it, even as they’re trapped in the Metal Emperor’s webs.
Clarity surges into our minds. The direst enemy should’ve always, always been these alien invaders who have robbed us of our world. Not our fellow humans. Nothing will matter if everyone dies.
We have no time to set up and risk a ranged shot, so we drop like a meteor.
We crash-land against the Metal Emperor. It doesn’t expect this, and collapses on its underbelly, rocking the valley yet again.
“Tell the others to take us to the volcano after!” we roar for the strategists, then press a hand right where we can feel the Emperor’s core. We pour our qi toward it. It blasts out like water hitting a spoon, pushing us up, but we furiously flap our wings and keep the stream going.
“Die! Die! Die!” the voice screams in our head.
What feels like a thousand swords slice through us, shaved out from the Emperor’s body. But we were ready for it. One does not engage a Metal-type Hundun in melee battle without expecting this.
We flash out our qi from every surface like a dying star. Our spirit metal turns molten from the inside out, every particle slick and mobile with qi, keeping cohesion even when pierced. A war cry bellows from our throat. Frost and fog evaporate around us, revealing a carnage of crushed trees. They erupt into real flames under our extreme heat. We seal our cockpit shut like a tight core of iron to protect our human bodies.
The Emperor writhes under our shining onslaught. Its legs push against the mountainsides, making our grip slide—
A black shape flashes in our periphery.
We panic that it’s the Water Emperor, but it’s the Black Tortoise in its Heroic Form, like a brawny warrior with a sleek black helmet and muscle-like armor. Shields like tortoise shells are braced against its forearms, ringed in Earth yellow. It prowls across the burning mountainside, then loops its massive, bulky arms around two of the Metal Emperor’s spider legs, clamping them in place.
With the support, we push ourselves toward the limit that will automatically disconnect us if we exhaust too much qi. We incinerate the mechanism and keep going.
For vengeance.
For freedom.
The Emperor’s core explodes. White sparks fly out with the force of a blizzard, throwing us back. We collapse into Standard Form as we fall.
The Tortoise catches us, supporting us. We hang on to our connection. We have to make sure they take us to the volcano.
We open our beak, but a biting coldness floods into us. The Tortoise’s spirit metal worms around us like slush.
“Hey—” we start.
And never get a chance to finish.
With a snaking grip around us and a violent tug, the Tortoise rips one of our wings straight off.
