Chapter Forty-Seven: Everything I Deserve

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

EVERYTHING I DESERVE

Chang’an, the City of Everlasting Peace, is now anything but peaceful.

A wall of human noise rushes up through the cooling air, growing louder as we approach in the Dragon. A final flush of sun drains beyond the mountains framing the valley of skyscrapers. Under the descending night, the neon-peppered streets are flooded with people, as if the over-packed buildings have vomited themselves clean. The shadowed crowds fall to their knees and prostrate themselves over and over. They must have heard from the villages and cities we passed over that we were coming.

Once I took Yizhi back from the White Tiger’s cockpit, I left the army of Chrysalises at the Zhou frontier. I’ll deal with them later.

After it’s too late to reverse what I’ve done.

Qieluo and Yang Jian’s fed-up attitudes—and the fact that Yizhi and I owe them our lives—make me trust that they won’t try to stop me. But even if they do trek back to the Sui-Tang frontier, they’ll find that I’ve destroyed the Kaihuang watchtower.

I did not care who was in there. If the strategists are as smart as they say, they would’ve gotten out the moment I went rogue.

This is my admittedly graceless strategy: annihilate every center of power, so everything will collapse into chaos and people will have no choice but to obey the new most powerful thing—me.

The Dragon’s shadow slinks like the Wei River over the pleading and sobbing masses, straight toward the Palace of Sages on a mountain lording over the city. I remember glaring down at it the first time I flew in.

Now I’m going to do everything I wish I could’ve done then.

“Pilot Wu!” shouts a gravelly voice through what sounds like the palace’s entire speaker system.

“It’s Empress Wu!” I roar back, effortlessly louder.

There’s a stunned pause before the voice keeps going. “Stop right there! Think about what you’re doing! Think about the consequences!”

I just laugh. I can’t believe he’s even try—

“Tian-Tian!”

I stop dead in the air, almost crashing over the skyscrapers and millions of people below.

It’s my mother.

I zoom the Dragon’s vision in on the huge, floodlit courtyard in the middle of the palace complex’s manors and pagodas. There she is, held down with the rest of my family by a bunch of soldiers. One of the Sages—I don’t know which, they all look the same with their heavy robes and long white beards—holds a microphone to my mother’s mouth.

My spirit clenches inside the Dragon. This is really happening. I’m really being forced to make this choice.

And I brought this on myself. Qieluo was right; this is my ass, being bitten, right now. If I hadn’t fallen for Xiuying’s “A little compassion goes a long way!” spiel, my shitty family would still be safe in our shitty frontier village.

Or maybe the Sages would’ve taken them here before the battle regardless, just in case.

But one thing would be different if I hadn’t opened my heart to them again: I wouldn’t be hesitating now.

Just when my silence threatens to betray my weakness, my father snatches the microphone.

“Please…” He weeps, pushing my brother Dalang out of the huddle of people. “Punish us, not him! Let him go—he’s your brother!”

Something shatters inside me.

I watch in a daze as Dalang sobs harder, then stumbles back and drops between our parents again. They cry out, trying to push him away, toward some illusion of safety from his evil sister trying to take over the capital in a giant metal dragon.

So this is the capacity they had all along.

This is what they would do for their son, while they sold me and Big Sister without batting an eye.

I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to look at them. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to remember, to compare, to confirm that I have always, always, always been nothing but water meant to be hurled out the door to these people. These people, who are the only blood family I will ever have. Who I’m expected to love and defend no matter what.

Who will forever be used against me if I don’t relinquish them in this moment.

What kind of life would that be? Being tools, being leverage, for the rest of their existence?

They’re the ones who taught me how horrible that feels.

I know what the real mercy would be.

“Sorry,” I say, cold as Big Sister’s ashes. “You’re in my way.”

I crush the entire palace with the Dragon’s claw.

Stone, marble, and dark wood snap and crumble in blooming clouds of smoke. Screams tide through the city. Huge chunks of debris tumble down the mountain, shocking back a wave of people below.

Nothing ripples in my heart.

I can’t close the Dragon’s eyes, so I just stare vacantly as smoke billows away from the rubble.

It’s a long time before my mind grinds into motion again, and it’s only because of something absurdly pathetic: a hovercraft clattering toward me, cutting through the white noise of screams.

I raise a claw to strike it down.

“Hold on!” a voice blasts through the hovercraft speakers.

I do.

Because it’s Gao Qiu.

“Hold on a second, Pilot Wu—or, no, you go by Empress Wu now, don’t you?” The hovercraft hatch skates open, revealing him in a flood of fluorescence. He’s surrounded by sobbing little girls clinging to his black leather robes. A few goons stand guard behind him.

In my utter horror, I find myself impressed in the most vile, disgusting way.

The Sages should’ve taken notes. This is how you paralyze me.

“Now, I understand what you’re trying to do,” Gao Qiu says, cool and even. “And I understand that there’s no brute force left in Huaxia that could possibly stop you. So I’m here to bargain!”

“Bargain?” I roar, with a force that sends the hovercraft teetering back.

“Whoa, whoa, let’s have a civil conversation.” He laughs with maniacal abandon, hanging on to a handle on the hovercraft ceiling. The little girls shriek some more, and I hate the way it makes me instantly clamp the Dragon’s mouth shut. “See, I doubt your Mama and Baba ever taught you how to run a country, so you’ll need some assistance to make sure things don’t spiral out of control. Make me your regent! Not only will I help you run things, I’ll make sure a certain video never gets sent to my darling fifth son.”

I freeze.

“Video?” Yizhi speaks up from inside the cockpit. “What video?”

“Yizhi, it’s nothing,” I say quickly, sounding far less assured than I wanted. I never thought Yizhi needed to find out his father made me strip nude to seal the deal, and now this…this is the worst possible moment!

Unfortunately, even my tiniest voice is audible to Gao Qiu.

“Oh, it’s not nothing, when you clearly never told him about it!” he says, with a glee that surges me close to crushing the hovercraft in my claws.

But one look at the girls, and I clench them back. I do have limits to what I can consciously do, and Gao Qiu has guessed them.

I internally scream at how the Dragon just had to be Earth type, the only one that can’t do qi attacks. If it were any other kind, I could be attempting a precise qi strike at him.

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” he goes on. “This is perfect! Hello, son! You won’t believe the footage I have!”

“What is he talking about?” Yizhi’s tone sharpens.

“I’ll explain later!” I growl, thoughts fraying. “Right now, just let me deal with—”

“Later?” Gao Qiu jeers. “Empress Wu, this offer has a time limit. I can’t guarantee what will happen if you don’t take it within the next ten seconds.”

The hovercraft starts flying backwards.

“Let me out!” Yizhi shouts with sudden force. “Let me talk to him!”

“Yizhi, it’s not what you—!”

“Just do it,” he says, cold enough to crack my heart.

My world crumbles apart more than it already has, but I can’t keep him locked in when he doesn’t want to be.

Feeling like I’m tearing a hole out of my very soul, I make an opening in the Dragon’s forehead. Yizhi steps out onto its long snout and into the whipping twilight winds.

“Father!” he calls into his wristlet.

“Son!” The hovercraft swings back. Gao Qiu taps his wristlet and speaks into it as well. “You should tell your lady friend what’s good for h—”

Yellow-green lightning bursts across the air.

My qi flow stuns to a standstill. Even Qin Zheng jerks alert in my head from his half-asleep state.

Radiance beams under Yizhi’s fluttering robes. A war cry scours out from the bottom of his lungs. Electric-hot Wood qi, boosted by Earth qi, bursts from his fingers, held like a gun. It streaks across the ether and into Gao Qiu. A smell of roasting flesh blows over on the wind.

It’s over in less than three seconds, but shocks enough for a lifetime. The shrieking little girls scramble away from the charred, smoking shape that used to be Gao Qiu. His goons freak out as well, kicking it out of the hovercraft. It plunges into the city, splattering over a random rooftop, triggering another tide of screams.

Yizhi doubles over, panting.

When he turns around, his eyes burn both yellow and green, and so do the meridians in his face. Blood trickles from his nose. He wipes his upper lip with his thumb.

“I believe you,” he says, cool and plain.

He yanks his waist sash loose and throws off his robes. The fabric billows away against the budding stars.

A fraction of my Vermilion Bird armor gleams on his bare torso, the spinal brace like a line of blood down his tattooed back, the shoulder and arm pieces like parts of a torn bird carcass.

A single term sizzles in my mind: Baofeng Shaoye. Young Master of the Storm.

This could not have been what Gao Qiu imagined when he promoted Yizhi with that nonsense.

“Attention, all Gao Enterprises personnel!” Yizhi shouts into his wristlet between ragged breaths. “New bargain: defy us, and all of you and your families will die! Obey us, and you’ll keep everything you have and more!”

The goons in the hovercraft exchange bewildered looks.

Then they sink to their knees among the sobbing girls.

“Now, repeat after me. Long live the Iron Widow!” he yells, pointing a finger to the sky.

“Long live the Iron Widow!” Their pledge is conducted through the hovercraft speakers.

Yizhi taps the comm line on his wristlet shut. He looks back at me with a cock of his head. “Looks like I just inherited one point four billion yuan.”

The closest I can come to describing my current feelings is the look on Qin Zheng’s face in the yin-yang realm: brows twisted, eyes scrunched, mouth open.

Then he shakes his head, blinking. “Hold on, how has inflation been? Is that still a lot of money?”

I burst into uncontrollable laughter, out loud through the Dragon. This time, I’m really not sure if I can stop. Yizhi has to rush back into the cockpit so he doesn’t slip and plummet from the shaky motion. Emotions crash through me like a whirlwind: grief and exhilaration, rage and relief, pain and ecstasy.

What a day.

What a month.

What a life.

I’ve been told endless lies since I was born. That I was not kind enough, considerate enough, humble enough, honorable enough, pretty enough, pleasing enough. And that if I failed to meet the needs of those around me, I did not deserve to live.

Propaganda. All of it. Propaganda to keep me chasing after the approval of others on my bound and broken feet, as if being a good servant is the only thing I should be proud of.

Now, I see the truth.

This world does not deserve my respect. It is not worthy of my kindness or compassion.

When I gather my senses at last, I turn to the wailing and kneeling populace below. I can’t believe they still have voices after screaming so much. It’ll be tough to make them accept a new world order established by me, and I know that taking over Chang’an does not mean Huaxia belongs to me yet, but this is a start.

“So much for that cabin in the mountains, huh?” I mutter, just loud enough for Yizhi to hear.

“Fuck the cabin in the mountains,” he says in the Dragon’s head. “Let’s rule the world.”