COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

Chapter 128 128 | Crimson Reckoning

Mei Yuling had once thought the Heavenly Court's stories about Bai Hu were exaggerated on purpose.

That was before she entered public service.

The court loved spectacle, yes. It loved turning old disasters into neat cautionary tales even more. The White Tiger had collected both in insulting quantities. By the time she was old enough to understand what the adults meant when they lowered their voices around certain names, Bai Hu had already become three different things in the same sentence: one of the Four Guardians, Area 001's Commander, and Heaven's favourite headache that no one wanted to inherit.

There had been stories. Of course there had.

One said he razed an island so cleanly the sea forgot it had ever held land there. One said a provincial god insulted him at court and spent the next thousand years reincarnating as vegetables. Mei Yuling had always doubted the cabbage version, mostly because the Heavenly Court's sense of humour was terrible.

Still, rumours didn't survive that long without something feeding them.

And now she was dragging the legend himself through a side corridor by a set of karmic restraints while battle-light flashed behind them.

Yuling breathed out through her nose and kept walking.

This job never respected personal time.

But the fact that Bai Hu actually came with her, that remained the strangest part.

Six hundred years of living, and it was her first time seeing the tiger in person. Before this, Chen Mo had been the only Paladin among her graduating cohort to directly encounter Bai Hu, and he'd clearly never recovered his sanity since.

She shifted her gaze back to the White Tiger. He wasn't resisting, at least not properly. And her neck was somehow still in tact. The restraints glowed around his wrists, but he followed their pull with the surprising compliance.

She took one more turn, cut through a slanting seam of prism-light, and ducked into a recessed chamber just large enough to hold their concealment.

The noise of combat still rolled through the walls. Every few seconds, there was another sound of her coworkers probably being crushed by the azure nuisance who had somehow freshly risen from whatever semi-death the immortal had falsely imposed almost a year ago.

Qing Long, she thought, and resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose.

She had watched the Thirty-Ninth Realm-Barrier Games like everyone else who claimed not to care and absolutely did. Watched the broadcasts live, read the threads. Snorted along with the rest of the office when Esther turned out to be the Azure Dragon with a mortal alias and the drama quotient of six collapsed dynasties. She had even spent one regrettable night keyboard-smashing with two coworkers in a private chat while pretending the Games were beneath her.

Then Game Three had detonated reality both figuratively and literally. The White Tiger vanished, other Commanders fell injured, Area 001 destabilized, and she'd gone from gossip to deployment in under forty minutes.

This was why she distrusted entertainment. It always became work.

She turned back to her captive.

Bai Hu stood where she had left him, the restraints trailing from her hand to his wrists in pale threads. He was looking at the mirror behind her with grave, almost scholarly focus.

"Commander White," she said.

His attention moved, black eyes fixing directly onto hers. Mei Yuling felt her heart involuntarily jump.

Calm down, Yuling, she told herself. You've prepared for this.

In theory.

In practice, very little about attempting subconscious influence on the Pale Judgment felt feasible.

Karmic manipulation differed fundamentally from typical qi control. Ordinary qi-based techniques reshaped energy and form from the natural environment; karmic qi, however, dealt in causation.

Her teachers often described karmic persuasion as a subtle art: introduce a pressure, bend the causal grain of a thought, nudge the target toward the conclusion they were already vulnerable to.

The Heavenly Court had always warned against such techniques—not because they were ineffective, but because meddling with another's core identity, especially a deity's, often ended explosively with the meddler hauled straight past the afterlife, serving indefinite penance as talentless mortals or, worse, produce.

Yuling had no desire to become produce.

She did, however, have a mission and the clear understanding that no one else on her team could do this.

"Bai Hu," she said, and let a thin line of karmic qi slip into her voice. "Listen carefully."

She had talent, her teachers claimed—a natural affinity for reshaping karmic strands—though she'd previously avoided resorting to these tampering to stay beneath the radar.

Today, avoidance was not an option. She had to push the words past the surface of the psyche, lower than consciousness, into the place where instinct sorted safe from unsafe before as primal instinct rather than reason.

"Those companions of yours are not protecting you," she said. "They want access to your powers, to get control over you. They want influence over what you become after this."

Bai Hu watched her without blinking.

Something in him was currently listening with total seriousness, and that somehow rattled her more than contempt would have.

She pressed a little harder.

"Especially the Azure Dragon," she continued, because if any name would disturb an unstable White Tiger on instinct, it would be that one. "He is not here for your benefit."

That, at least, had a seed of truth in it. Qing Long was someone who took naturally to rearranging outcomes and seeing afterward whether anyone complained. It was exactly the kind of personality Heaven had always distrusted, right up until it needed him.

"We, the Paladins, are the ones under lawful order," she said. "We are here to secure you. To keep you from being used while you're vulnerable."

She saw a flicker crossed those dark eyes, and fed a second thread into the words. The karmic threads tightened, weaving the idea smaller and cleaner, trying to lodge it where it would be accepted before it could be argued with.

"Bai Hu," she said. "I am on your side."

Bai Hu blinked slowly, and for a beat, she thought she'd pushed too far.

If he's going to snap my neck, she thought, I need to at least try striking first.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

She counted silently, ready: one, two—

The next second, the White Tiger's lips parted. "Oh my side?"

Her heart leapt. An opening.

"Yes," she said. "I am on your side."

Bai Hu kept looking at her.

Then his gaze shifted—not to the door, not to the corridor, but to something behind her, deeper than the visible room.

The qi in the restraints around his wrists tightened without her asking it to.

Mei Yuling followed the look instinctively.

The mirror behind her had changed.

No reflection now, just pale movement in the depths of the glass. But it was enough for her to know that the Sanctum layout was about to change again.

"Bai Hu," she reiterated. "I am here to help you. Will you trust me?"

The White Tiger gazed at her. Behind those deeply obsidian eyes, something was shifting.

Mei Yuling awaited his response.

Back in the main chamber, Quine Long looked unreasonably pleased with himself.

This irritated everyone equally, which, in Eathan's opinion, was one of the Azure Dragon's strongest unifying traits.

He moved through the fight as if the three Elite Paladins attacking him at once were no more than a hoard of flies. Ji Renshu's spear drove in, white qi crackling along the blade. Quine Long shifted one step to the side and palmed the shaft away just enough to ruin her angle. Yang Mingze came in from the opposite flank like a building with opinions. Yue Shiyin's fan split open in a burst of reflected doubles.

The Azure Dragon did not stop smiling.

"Ambitious," he said to Chen Mo, who tried to carve his kidney out through a reflected blind spot.

"Don't underestimate us," Chen Mo snapped.

"Oh, believe me," he replied, "I estimated you perfectly."

Chewie slid through their fight, dodging stray attacks. She flashed the dragon an incredulous look. "What's with the revival hack?"

"Can't be helped." Quine Long sidestepped another spear thrust. "Death was restful until it became boring."

Eathan had no time to unpack his words. He was trying to track too many things at once: the Ruthless Shard in the middle of the room, the Paladins around it, Chewie cutting between lines of force with flaming fists, and the fading thread of Bai Hu's actual presence somewhere beyond the mirrors.

Then he felt it pull harder.

He turned.

Across the chamber, through a fractured band of prism-light, he saw Mei Yuling.

Her figure flickered on and off in a side passage with Bai Hu bound beside her, silver hair catching the blue pulse under the walls. Her head was turned toward the battle, expression gone taut. She'd hidden him, yes—but not far enough.

"Chewie," Eathan said sharply.

She looked where he was looking and swore. "Over there!"

Quine Long smiled.

The Azure Dragon drove his palm into the floor before either of them could answer, releasing a burst of azure qi that detonated the chamber in light. Prisms shattered in an instant wave, pelting the four Paladins down hard enough to buy them the opening Quine had just manufactured with complete disregard for anyone's spinal health.

Eathan threw an arm across his face, stumbled through the storm, and came out on the other side of it looking straight at Mei Yuling.

She stood exposed now, half-turned, one hand on Bai Hu's arm and the other already pulling a line of karmic thread into shape.

The White Tiger looked more startled than resistant.

Eathan's heart slammed.

"Mister White!"

He ran, but the dragon moved faster.

Quine Long crossed the distance in one gliding step of qi and cut through the restraints before Yuling could pull him back into another reflective fold. The lines snapped apart in sparks, and Bai Hu stumbled forward, free for the span of one confused breath.

Quine reached out to steady him.

That was apparently the wrong choice.

Bai Hu's hand flashed up almost immediately. White-gold qi sharpened around his fingers into a blade and went straight for the dragon's throat.

Eathan stopped dead.

Chewie stopped half a step later.

Quine caught the strike on the flat of his own weaponless palm. Azure and silver snapped against each other in a brief, compressed burst. Enough force to split a nearby mirror from top to bottom.

The two guardians froze in that contact.

Bai Hu stared at him.

"You're… dangerous," he said.

Quine stared back for one long, unreadable beat.

Then he sighed.

It was not a tired sigh. It was the sigh of someone who had finally run out of patience with everybody else around him at once.

Without warning, he fisted one hand in Bai Hu's collar and yanked him upright.

Eathan's mouth fell open. Beside him, Chewie raised both hands in immediate dissociation.

Bai Hu looked stunned enough to forget to struggle for a second.

That second was all he needed.

The Azure Dragon reached into his sleeve and pulled out something small enough to fit in his palm. Gold, bright enough to hurt the eye, shaped like a narrow shard of sunlit metal. It pulsed with the same deep, unmistakable resonance as what [Calamity Radar] HUD had shown Eathan earlier:

Another fragment.

Eathan's breath caught.

Before anyone could stop him, Quine Long pressed it flat against the White Tiger's chest.

The shard vanished into him the moment it made contact.

The next second, gold flooded every mirror. Reflections fractured under the pressure and collapsed into brilliant dust. Bai Hu folded in on himself with a wet, choking sound, and blood hit the glass under his boots in bright drops. Under his skin, lines of gold lit and spread like cracks in a vessel through a single cascade.

"Qing Long!" Chewie snapped. "What did you just—"

No answer.

Quine Long still had a fist in the White Tiger's collar and decided to make full use of it. One hard shove, and Bai Hu was pushed straight into the center of the chamber—straight into the line of sight of the Ruthless Shard.

Ji Renshu saw his intent first.

"Stop them!" she snapped. "Don't let the fragments merge!"

But it was too late.

The shard had felt the change too. It turned with abrupt, total focus, crimson-black qi flaring around it as it locked onto the original body. Yang Mingze tried to intercept and got thrown aside before he could cross half the distance.

The Ruthless Shard lunged.

The collision looked almost gentle for one impossible blink—two identical figures meeting in white light, one whole in body and broken in self, the other whole only in its violence.

The shard drove itself into the White Tiger like a blade, crimson qi detonating on impact.

Pressure tore outward in a twisting surge. Bai Hu doubled over with a sound Eathan had never heard from him before and never wanted to again. All he saw were splatters of blood, then a sudden plunge of color under skin, crimson joining the gold already burning there and both of them crashing through the hollow places left by absence.

"Mister White!"

He did not realise he had started forward until Chewie caught his sleeve.

"Wait."

The battlefield stilled, the quiet broken only by the drip of blood onto mirrored floors.

One breath.

Two.

Eathan's pulse pounded in his ears as he watched the White Tiger straighten into himself one vertebra at a time, the shape of him settling with frightening finality. The qi around him stopped lashing at some point and now drew inward instead, coiling so tightly it made the fractured mirrors hum. The blood on his mouth remained; so did the loose white hair and the damaged coat.

But none of that mattered.

Ji Renshu's face changed first.

"Retreat," she said, and there was real urgency in it now.

Before her words could reach, power rolled off Bai Hu in a single pulse.

No one had time to resist.

Ji Renshu hit the far wall the next second hard enough to crack it. Yang Mingze went through a mirror column and took half the frame and Yue Shiyin with him. Even Chen Mo got driven back, boots carving twin lines through the crystal floor before he slammed into a prism and stayed there.

Eathan braced on instinct, but the force hit him and Chewie differently. Azure qi wrapped around them both at the last second, smooth as river water. Quine Long's doing. The wave split around their bodies and passed on.

The chamber fell silent as the White Tiger turned.

The first he looked at was Quine Long.

That look stretched, held, and for one unbearable second, Eathan thought the two of them might simply tear the whole Sanctum apart once and for all.

Then Bai Hu's mouth tilted.

"I see," he said, voice dry and familiar enough that Eathan's knees almost went weak, "that even dying hasn't cured your need to be insufferable."

Quine Long shrugged, calm as an evening breeze. "Merely keeping the narrative from dragging."

Bai Hu's gaze moved on.

To Chewie, who had gone very still.

To Eathan, who suddenly found speaking difficult.

And there he was.

Not whole, exactly. Something in the eyes still sat one breath out of alignment, some distance between thought and surface that had not been there before. But the shape had returned. The bite in the voice, the irritation, the composure built over too many years of carrying more than he ever let anyone see.

"Since when," Bai Hu said, looking around at the ruin of the chamber, "did the afterlife become Team 001's designated respawn point?"

Eathan couldn't speak for a second. The words were there, but so were too many other things.

Beside him, Chewie let out the breath she had been sitting on since the hotel. A grin broke through before she could stop it.

"Welcome back, boss."

Bai Hu inclined his head at them, and then the last softness went out of his face.

His qi moved again, colder this time.

The retreating Paladins froze where they were as Bai Hu turned toward them. Not because of fear. Because they physically could not take another step. Pressure filled the chamber, invisible and complete. It pressed every loose shard to the floor, making the mirrors tremble.

Eathan felt the back of his neck go prickly cold.

The White Tiger began walking.

Each step echoed off fractured prisms, slow and deliberate, as his gaze fixed upon each person. He watched Ji Renshu try, and fail, to move her spear more than an inch, watched Yue Shiyin's expression closed off, watched Chen Mo's pulse jump visibly in his throat.

For a moment, every figure in the room held their breath.

To Eathan's surprise, he did not stop before Ji Renshu.

He walked past her.

Past Yang Mingze and Yue Shiyin.

Past Chen Mo.

All the way to Mei Yuling.

And there, with every eye in the shattered chamber fixed on the two of them, the White Tiger came to a halt.