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215 - The Divine Emperor in the City of Glittering Petals [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2023-04-20 00:09:15 +0000 UTCXiān Dì took a jaunt upon a flying sword to one of his many secondary palaces all across the empire, this time to the south-central City of Glittering Petals, a center of gambling and crime. The city was a pipe dream for many, being isolated from the rest of the country by dangerous land full of outlaws, just as Xiān Dì had intended when he decided that it would be built there. It was Las Vegas of a sort, and its political purpose was to serve as a capital for the Land of Lingering Smoke, a containment zone for the shady elements that the state apparatus could not control. As such, ensuring that it remained somewhat separate from the rest of the country was paramount.
There, in his mansion in the City of Glittering Petals, Xiān Dì summoned one of his most loyal and trustworthy servants, a rugged man by the name of Shen Liang. He was not a chancellor, an official, or a general, and his cultivation, for as long as he had lived, was mediocre at best. Mediocre spirit roots, mediocre constitution, mediocre martial aptitude, mediocre to the last, at least by the standards of the era of his birth. Were he born in modernity, he would be the prodigy of the generation. Out of all those who had warred against the Three Kings by Xiān Dì’s side when his name was still Tian Feng, this man was among the few to not just survive, but to somehow avoid ever making himself the target of a political purge. The man wasn’t just a good politician, he was a phantom, Xiān Dì’s own shadow. Not only could he face down Xiān Dì without so much as flinching, he could stare him in the eye. Indeed, Shen was easily comparable to the Divine Generals in raw power, and far outstripped most of them in terms of sheer skill and experience, for that was what it had taken for a mediocre man like him to reach greatness and immortality through the Supreme Law of Drunken Dreams. There was no master of deceptive martial arts equal to him, though Xiān Dì hesitated to call Shen’s style “Drunken Fist”. Rather, the potent illusions conjured by Shen’s motions brought to mind psychedelics. Just watching him for a few moments could send those with weak minds into seizure or entangle them in phantasmagoria. So potent was the art that even those able to see through illusions could be overwhelmed by contradictory stimuli.
Shen Liang also happened to be a prolific crime lord, a hidden hand of the Emperor in the Land of Lingering Smoke, subtly manipulating events to ensure a careful balance and to curtail elements that could eventually threaten Xiān Dì’s rule. None save Xiān Dì himself and Shen Liang knew of this arrangement, for they had both formed a soulbinding pact when they were both yet mortal men.
“How long has it been since we last spoke like this? Twenty years? Thirty? Do you still like wine?” the lavishly-dressed criminal asked, taking from his belt a large gourd, bound in silken red rope and wrapped top to bottom in a single excessively long seal. The truth was that they had last drunk together no more than a year and a half ago, but Xiān Dì knew this was not what Shen had meant. The question pertained to drinking face to face, in private, in an unofficial capacity, unknown to the world.
Xiān Dì knew well that the poisonous concoction within had as much to do with wine as Ikesian CP-T had to do with gasoline. He nonetheless answered: “Yes, I do.”
The two men, for once each able to let down at least one of the many masks they wore, drank tiny shots of a swirling, glittering liquid whose beauteous hues belied a poisonous blend so potent it would melt any mortal man from the inside-out. To compare this liquid to the most potent of mundane acids or poisons would be an insult; it was a horrific, bitter, burning thing, even for the likes of Xiān and Shen. Baijiu for immortals.
“So, heard you decided to finally go back on that Cultivation Suppression Edict of yours. Looking to take another go at conquering Ikesia when that wall loosens up a touch more?” Shen asked.
“Let us not speak of such things just yet,” Xiān Dì said. It embittered the already horrid taste of this wine to think of the small betrayal which he would soon have to carry out upon his old friend. This was, in fact, not a casual meeting, but one of serious and wide reaching consequence.
There was one particular facet of Shen’s character that Xiān Dì had developed a sort of envy for: The ability to live day-to-day as if he were mortal. No apathy, no detachment from the world of the living. Xiān Dì could not understand it.
They spoke and drank without care for some time, and for that short time, Xiān Dì once more became Tian Feng. Unfortunately, that man could not remain in control long, and the man-god Xiān Dì soon returned to the forefront. It was prompted by Shen himself, mentioning something of import.
“I guess I should let you know that several months ago, I returned one of the Borean Exiles to his homeland. An elder of one of their clans, one Kristina Ramdall, called in a debt for her family’s cooperation during Cao Hu’s attempt to conquer the Scorchlands. However, I did not predict that the woman’s inner demon was so powerful as to drive her to attempt taking over the great capital of Oaseby by the force of a mask-maddened dragon.”
Xiān Dì chuckled; he knew, by the look in Shen’s eye, that besides what he said, he also intended those words to bring to mind one of Xiān Dì’s own failures. Ten Billion Fathoms, that mighty trump card in his war against the Three Kings, which he had so woefully misplayed. It, too, was deployed as a last-ditch effort to put down a single city, and it, too, met its end by way of one of Koschei’s titans. He hated it when history rhymed like that.
Comments
Marble
Complex and layered, but still an evil bastard. Nice
Tehd11
Guess who's back! Back again...
Jessy
Ayy, good to see this novel again.
